Skating, My Way

Japan won the Gold in women's ice skating last night. America won Silver, Russia won Bronze. From the reports I had been listening to, it was surprising. Russia or America was supposed to get the Gold, but the two women both fell during their programs. Pressure!

If I were in charge of women's ice skating, I'd change the rules a little bit. I'd change the scoring to a scale of 1-10, easy. 1 means you're just not trying very hard, 10 means outstanding, and the rest fall somewhere inbetween.

I'd cut the long program and make it two short programs. Skating has gotten progressively more demanding, and the women have to do more difficult stunts, turns, and twirls to get higher scores. I heard over and over again how, with the new scoring, every move counted, and saw the skaters fall, either because they were tired, or injured, or not confident. Wouldn't it be more pleasant for the skaters to do programs they could actually do and liked doing, and wouldn't it be more fun to watch? I mean, I love drama, but leave that part for my next idea.

Part of the score would consist of choice of outfit. Why this has never mattered before is beyond me. Some of those costumes are horrendous! Some of them are gorgeous, and the scores should reflect that.

Finally, I would require interviewers to greet skaters in the following ways:

To the skater in 12th place: "Congratulations, you're in the Olympics!"
To the skater who won Bronze: "Congratulations, you won a Bronze medal!"
To the skater who fell twice: "I loved your program. It looked like you landed pretty hard that one time. Are you okay?"
To me, skating in the 2010 Olympics: "Wow, you don't look 41! And that outfit is fabulous!"