During the men's Winter Olympics team figure skating event, U.S. skater Adam Rippon skated without any falls or stumbles.
OAR's Mikhail Kolyada and Canada's Patrick Chan fell.
Yet somehow, Rippon scored worse than both of them. That's because the new scoring method, which started in 2010, values innovation over clean skating.
Please sign this petition to demand the Olympics go back to valuing clean skating over innovation!In the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, American Evan Lysacek won gold even though he didn't do a quad. He scored well because his skating clean.
Russia's Evgeni Plushenko performed a more difficult move but didn't skate very cleanly and won silver. Plushenko was angry and the rules were changed to how we see them today -- valuing innovation over clean skating.
I dont think this is fair, because it
leads to skaters who fall scoring better than skaters who execute a clean performance. Watching a clean performance is much more enticing than one with a lot of bells and whistles but lots of falling, and demonstrates better craftsmanship overall.
Please sign my petition to ask the skating world to go back to scoring higher based on clean execution rather than innovation.