Skating

This is a form of entertainment(?) that I'm really not all that into, but -- we were over at Mom and Dad's house for a get together, and this was the only non-rerun thing on worth watching. Yippee rah. I haven't followed it very closely lately, but aparently everybody's darling is Michelle Kwan (I personally root for Katarina Witt -- she's my age, and for the longest time was the only womens figure skater with a woman's figure (and yes I have seen the pictures -- shame on me)). But here we were watching the show. We watch former Olympic Gold medalist Oksana Bauil show that she has lost most of her old style and grace -- I guess capitalism doesn't sit well with her. We watch Katarina give a well executed, but mature performance (meaning more flow, less jumps). See a young chinese girl do a routine to a Santana song that was old when she was born. We see the darling of the night give a flawless, but dull performance (and score outrageously as well). Then it's Nicole Bobek's turn. She's one of those wildly inconsistant skaters -- sometimes quite good, sometimes quite bad. This night was a good night -- not only was her performance as flawless as Miss Kwan's, but far more difficult as well. It was very artistic, very well done, and was the best performance of any one, male, female, or couples turned in that evening. But of course, the fix was in -- Nicole is not the darling of the skating world -- as the marks came out, the crowd started booing -- quite loudly. And although she didn't complain about it, you could see the disgust in her expression while the scores were being announced. I guess Figure skating is becoming like wrestling -- there's some much money to be made and won, they can't let things just happen, they have to pre-pick a popular winner before the event takes place. My sister told the story of the previous nights competition(??) -- where one male skater flubbed an important jump, but shortly after, noticed a cufflink from his costume had fallen off. He went to the judges with his accoutrement problem -- they asked when it fell off, he said just before his (flubbed) triple. They allow him to restart from just before the jump. BUT -- let's go to video tape.....Look, isn't that the missing cufflink, still on his costume before, during, and most particularly after his flubbed jump? Surely he wasn't cheating was he? Surely the whole event wasn't rigged was it? Surely I wouldn't rather watch Winfield Cup Rugby from Australlia? Do I hear an Amen out there?