Olympic Ice Skating, Part Three Redux

Was the gold medal in men’s awarded to the right man? To listen to the silver medalist Evgeni Plushenko, the resounding answer is no! He said that one could not be the Olympic champion without a quad.

"Just doing nice transitions and being artistic is not enough because figure skating is a sport, not a show," he said.

What an interesting comment since part of his long program consisted of pelvic gyrations and blowing kisses at the judges.

Then Vladimir Putin weighed in. "I would like to sincerely congratulate you on the wonderful Olympic performance -- your silver is worth gold," Putin said in a telegram addressed to the skater. "You were able to overcome all the obstacles in your brave comeback and performed the most accomplished program on the Vancouver ice."

So the Cold War has become the Ice War.

What did determine the outcome? There were a couple of obvious factors. Plushenko front-loaded his program with jumps and did fewer after the half way point of the 4 minute-40 second program. Jumps after this point receive a 10% bonus. Lysacek simply had more jumps in the second half of his program. Plushenko also lost grade of execution points on his jumps. It is testament to his ability that he was able to land a couple of them. It is ironic that his forte was the reason he lost.