Danny ChaiAllen Barra has an interesting article on the whole figure skating thing, and figure skating in general that’s really good if you can get through his obnoxious writing style.
But he makes a couple points I totally agree with. One problem I have with figure skating is not that it’s judged, but that it’s judged on some notion of aesthetics. The problem is, people around the world have completely different senses of what’s beautiful. And with this whole skating controversy, it’s not just that the French judge picked the Russians. The majority of the judges picked the Russians. I dunno, you can say it’s a conspiracy, and maybe it is, but in general, people around the world have different aesthetic tastes. So discrepancies like this are bound to happen.