The tiebreaker geared towards the free program implies two things :Personally, I thought it should have been declared a joint win.
I don't like tie-breakers in things where somebody's score is reached through combining a number of scores. Having tie-breaks makes the results inherently biased towards one part of the score, which is not fair. Because although one person may have scored higher in that part than the other person, to get a tied overall score it means that they also scored lower than the other person in another part.
No, let them both have the glory! Share the love!
1) it's making sure that in the case of a tied overall score, the winner is the skater who did best in the longer portion of the competition...
2) if's making sure as well, that in the case of a tied overall score, the winner is the one who did best in the last segment of the competition.
I think it makes a lot of sense for figure skating.
I did mention swimming in my answer above... but see, the point here is that they race at the same time and finish at the same time... pretty hard to find a tie-breaker
Weight lifting has the worst tie-breakers ever athletes are pretty much obligated to take a heavier load if someone else before them has succeeded it...