Tara Lipinski has been owning it on the commentating front this Sochi Winter Olympics. Just like Tara Lipinski owned it during the figure skating program at the 1998 Nagano Winter games.
American skater Ashley Wagner became this Olympics’ McKayla Maroney for her “that’s bullsh**” reaction face, and the memes that look inspired soon took off.
Wagner harshly ripped figure skating’s hierarchy and the Winter Olympic judges on Thursday night after being pushed down to seventh in the ladies’ individual competition.
Last night, Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir opined on the judging in Thursday’s ladies’ free skate competition:
Hey, figure skating is a sport of hypocrisy with an arbitrary ruling system. There really isn’t much of a meritocracy. It’s literally “judged;” with lots of human error corrupted by judges. There’s a lot of suspect properties in this sport. The scoring system can be very easily corrupted.
Tara Lipinski: “It’s figure skating. First off, figure skating is always going to be subjective no matter what judging system it’s under. But if you really were to look and break down their scores, Adelina won in the technical score with about six points, which is a huge lead because going into this, her technical content was much higher than what Yuna had planned. Also, if you’re going to get nitpicky with the jumps, Adelina did a magnificent double axel-triple toe in the second half of her program, which you receive a 10% bonus. Yuna, much less difficulty and if you’re just going to look at the scores, that’s where it makes the difference.”
“Also, the grade of execution. That’s a huge part of the scoring so if you look at Adelina’s jumps they were so free and big where if you look at Yuna’s, they were a little tight.”
Tara Lipinski on why it makes a difference if skaters do something at the beginning versus the end of the program: “Because you’re tired. Those legs, they feel heavy.”
The skating telecast team of Johnny Weir, Tara Lipinski and Terry Gannon will host coverage of the Sochi Olympic Games figure skating gala tonight.
Paul M. Banks owns The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. An MBA and Fulbright scholar, he’s also a frequent analyst on news talk radio; with regular segments on ESPN,NBC, CBS and Fox. A former NBC Chicago and Washington Times writer, he’s also been featured on the History Channel. President Obama follows him on Twitter (@paulmbanks)