I agree 100 percent with you. Too many people are OK with corruption when it benefits their skater. Unfortunately, lack of integrity is a human trait not limited to skating. The Wakaba/Kaori comparison also points to another huge problem in skating. The huge influence of Feds and their influence on scoring of their favored and non favored skaters. As a fan of Wakaba and also Rika, I would go on the Japanese forum and criticize the scoring of the Russians and Kaori. I would get an avalanche of agreement on the Russian favoritism, but silence on Kaori, except for Wakaba and Rika fans who had experienced the JSF favoritism for her from the start. LolI apologise if you're talking about another poster, but I think it was my comment that started this rabbit hole, so I feel justified to defend myself.
In my case, I only come to the international threads when criticising missed calls and judge bias, simply because I don't watch Russian Domestic Competitions. I haven't watched Channel 1 Russia livestreams since the start of the war, and therefore I don't criticise skaters that I don't watch. I have no idea what's going on in Russian FS right now, so it would be highly inappropriate of me to start writing posts in Russian domestic events section of goldenskate. I can't remember even ever posting in Russian domestic thread (it could have been possible a while back if I was talking about Russian men before the olympics, particularly on Olympic spot allocation on run up to the olympics).
The fact is some people are so defensive about criticising non-russian athletes, that it does overlook unfair judging internationally. For me, at the olympics, if Wakaba was judged to all other standards she would have won the olympic short program, without a shadow of a doubt. And for me, that means ahead of the Russian girls and ahead of Kaori. Wakaba got an < and q!, both of which were insanely harsh calls given Kaori had a clear lutz edge violation, Sherbakova had a bad edge, Trusova got ridiculous PCS inflation, and Valievas jumps got excessive GOE. I have pointed out four skaters, with different issues, who didn't get penalised for those issues. Three of those were Russian, One of them was Kaori. But Wakaba, another Japanese skater, was heavily penalised for minor issues.
In this event, most of the calls were correctly given. Kaori, as wonderful as she is, benefitted from incorrect calls at this competition, and this is unfair to other athletes at this event. On a conversation about this event, people get mad because I pointed out a biased/unfair call. I'm not insulting Kaori as a person, or other attributes. I'm saying that she was held to different standards, and given high GOE for an obvious flutz.
Last edited: