Arm Chair Athletes

Sasha Cohen and (a very pregnant) Me

I love the Winter Olympics as much as the next person, but one thing I do not love about them, and televised sports in general, is how it brings out the arm-chair athletes.

Using figure skating as just an example, there are people who, though they have never skated a day in their lives, feel qualified to comment on the world of figure skating as if they are a Senior level skater. While it is possible to be a knowledgeable commentator and unable to actually perform a sport as a high level, just as it is possible to be an art critic who cannot paint, you still need to have some basis for doing so. You need to understand all of the technical elements of the sport, all of the rules for scoring, as well as have a generally idea of what it feels like to do the sport, so that you understand how difficult the various aspects of it are.

If you understand these elements, you can spot fraud and cheating because you understand how something should have been scored, when it has been correctly scored and when there is room for debate.

However, many arm chair athletes lack the necessary vocabulary to comment meaningfully on a performance and so they instead delve into simplistic and misguided political analysis of the performances. Instead of noticing, for instance, that a skater, although more graceful than another, did not perform as technically difficult maneuvers which resulted in a lower score, an arm chair commentator will simply state something along the lines of “They got less points because the judges are biased!” While it may very well be the case that the judges were biased, when the commentary strays from analyzing the actually qualities of a performance, it is hard to believe the complaint has any merit. If you truly wanted to demonstrate bias you would look at the same two elements performed side-by-side by different skaters and see if they were scored the same. This is what the current skating judging system is designed to do and it is actually very complicated. (Tangentially, this is the reason I am sad about the elimination of the Compulsory Dance.)

It is no surprise to me that, while I was writing this post, when Adelina Sotnikova earned the Gold Medal, over Yu-Na Kim, there were immediate cries of Russian cheating and favoritism. So much so, that the NY Times did a side by side comparison of the jumps. However, some people might not understand that a Senior level program requires more than just jumps. It requires a certain number of items, certain types of spins and step sequences and has many other requirements regarding music and costumes and timing. In high level competitions, like the Olympics, every skater submits their proposed program prior to competing and every single element is given a rating by a technical panel, that is composed of former high level skaters, for a final total possible score. While they may change their program on the fly, they must still meet the required elements if they do, and so very few skaters do this. It stands to reason that a skater whose program has more possible points overall, has greater leeway when they make an error. This is how you can know going into a competition who the top people will likely be beforehand. Of course, you never know who is going to fall, which is part of the excitement of the sport! If two skaters' programs are nearly identical on possible points, it will come down to how each element is performed on the day of the competition. If there is bias, it will be noticeable when you go back and look at the scores. (Which are available here.)This is not the old system were they simply hold up a number on a card up to a perfect 6.

This just one example of what arm chair athletes do not understand. I wouldn’t even fathom to comment on the other Winter Olympic sports, which I know nothing about, and yet other people seem justified in doing so on every comment site and message board around. 

If you really want to know how hard these athletes work, get out your arm-chair and try some of these sports yourself. You will see how easy they make it look.

So, why not just enjoy these athletes amazing skills and how talented they all are? It is okay to simply say “I liked her skating better.” “I enjoyed the music she used.” You don’t have to be an ethnocentric jerk who disparages a whole country. That really isn’t the spirit of the Olympics at all, IMHO.