The Undefeated Season | Page 2 | Golden Skate

The Undefeated Season

anonymoose_au

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But I don't know why it wouldn't?:confused:

Oh I count it too, but the original post mentioned skaters who did more than three competitions in a season. And then I was like do Nats count?

And jumping off from your post, I think Scott Hamilton may have been undefeated in his Oly gold year (and in fact for a year before that as well).

I tried to verify with my friend Google and websites are saying that Scott has not lost a competition since 1980 :shocked: leading up to his 1984 gold. But no details.

That's impressive and Wikipedia says so as well...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Hamilton_(figure_skater)

Nice work, Scott!

Of course from the olden days there's Ulrich Salchow who was unbeaten for 11 seasons! :shocked:
 

TontoK

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I never miss an opportunity to point out that my personal hero, Irina Rodnina, never lost a competition (in which she competed) from the 1969 European Championships to the 1980 Olympic Games.

So, she had many undefeated seasons. Tons of them.

She did take off the 1978-79 season to have a baby, but I think we can forgive her for that.
 

Blades of Passion

Skating is Art, if you let it be
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And jumping off from your post, I think Scott Hamilton may have been undefeated in his Oly gold year.

Which was a huge joke, because his LP at both Olympics and Worlds should have only ranked 6th. Orser, Fadeev, Boitano, Kotin, and Sabovcik all outskated him both times. He was overscored in the SP at both events too.
 

TontoK

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^^^I knew I'd have to look up a few of their programs. They were amazing. And in light of the recent conversations about pronouncing names, I love that at the end they mention their coach Tatiana TaraSOva. :laugh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lbgbi166tE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hezu89-XrY

She was so powerful, with both of her partners.

That first link, the SP from 1980, sounds like some weird mash-up of Flight of the Bumblebee and the theme song from the old TV series Charlie's Angels.:laugh2:
 

figurefan0726

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Yuna Kim was close in 2009-10 just that darn worlds! She was tired after the Olympics but the KSU still went her to get some spots for 2011 (KSU still hasnā€™t changed at all smh)
 

IceCrystalChris

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As you said other than her unbeaten 2016/17 season Evgenia Medvedeva came close in her 2015/16 season, losing once at GP Rostelecom (silver) but won everything else.

As a side note from the 2015 GPF to the 2018 EC she was unbeaten, winning 13 consecutive singles titles. The last ladies skater to accomplish this streak was Sonja Henie in the 1930's. [emoji3]
 

jenaj

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Scott Hamilton was undefeated for four seasons in a row, from 1980-84. He won the Olympics in 1984 based largely on his figures. Those were the rules at the time. But there is no doubt he was (and continued to be) an exciting and charismatic free skater, despite not skating his best in the free in '84.
 

Blades of Passion

Skating is Art, if you let it be
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Again, Hamilton should have placed 6th in the LP, and 3rd at best in the SP. He "won" because of horrendous judging, not because of a great figures result (and it's impossible to know how truthful those figures results were; a lot of reputation judging came into play). All of those other guys did way more Triples in the LP, including a 3Axel from some of them, or in the case of Alexandre Fadeev, a Quad that frankly should have been ratified as the first ever. They all gave good performances with strong skating quality too (Fadeev's program was particularly intricate), just Sabovcik was lesser in that regard, but he was the only guy to land each type of Triple jump cleanly, so his technical mark should have carried the difference over Hamilton.

Thus, even if we take the figures rankings as accurate and include them into the scores, Orser definitely won those Olympics and Boitano should have placed ahead of Hamilton too. At the World Championships he should have been off the podium altogether, as Fadeev skated his SP cleanly there, unlike at the Olympics where he made the silly mistake of falling on a tano 2Flip.

Speaking of Hamilton's other "undefeated" seasons, I also think he should have lost 1981 Nationals to David Santee, who was the more refined skater at the time and skated perfectly there, with slightly more tech content even. It's debatable who should have won Worlds. Santee stepped out of his 3Flip there, but Hamilton completely fell while doing crossovers.
 

anonymoose_au

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Be that as it may there's no need to act like Scott Hamilton went over, dropped money on the judges table so he could win.

You said yourself you don't know how Scott's figures looked and nearly half the score back then was figures, for all you know they were outstanding figures and under the rules the win was fair.
 

Blades of Passion

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30% of the score was figures and everything was based on rankings in each segment. So again, even with those figures placements, Hamilton should have lost Olympics and not even made the podium at '84 Worlds. He was simply held up, because of the usual judging methodology of grading on reputation and politics. Many other people outskated him and the judges simply ignored the superior content that others were doing, with the exception of Brian Orser, who had been establishing himself as a very strong freeskating competitor for years beforehand.

Be that as it may there's no need to act like Scott Hamilton went over, dropped money on the judges table so he could win.

Nothing of the sort was implied.
 

anonymoose_au

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Nothing of the sort was implied.

You called it horrendous judging and considering Scott was undefeated for all those seasons you're either suggesting every SINGLE judge at every event he competed at was unqualified or otherwise cheating the system. How else do you explain it? You might not have said it, but you're clearly implying something rotten was going on, in that case Scott was either in on it or ignored it, both of which are crummy things to accuse someone of.
 

Blades of Passion

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Like I said, it was judging based upon reputation and politics. Not sure why this surprises you. It's still extremely common these days, and even more back then. At the time, judging was almost explicitly based upon "you have to wait your turn" and "every federation picks their top champion and that's who we give the top scores to".

Dick Button showed his worst side in the commentary of the performance and interview afterward, saying "you have to judge him on overall body of work", and "you didn't make any mistakes" (which even Hamilton himself immediately disagreed with, LOL).

I would suggest watching the performances for yourself and comparing. Many aren't on youtube, but I can give links. Here is Vladamir Kotin at 1983 Europeans for example though - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKO56REgQvI - he did an even better job technically the following year, landing the 3Loop cleanly. Try and tell me that performance deserves to be ranked below Hamilton's in '84. The judging was just a huge joke back then, even more than it is now.
 

jenaj

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I think all of those "undefeated" seasons (11 in a row) of Ulrich Salchow are suspect, too. I think he should have lost Worlds to Madge Syers in 1902!
 

1904sk8

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Dec 16, 2018
In addition to their 2019 undefeated season, p/c were undefeated in 2015-2016 (although they only did French nationals, Euros, and Worlds due to a severe concussion)
 
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