Wow!!!!!!!

[redice]

That was Sarah's sister, Emily last year.  IIRC, Sarah skated at Lynah the first time, 7 years ago.    At the end of her routine, I told my wife:  "we're going to watch that girl in the Olympics someday."  I didn't know how prophetic I could be.  Congrats to the Hughes' family.  What a moment!!

[min \'97]

how old is emily now? will we be seeing her in the next olympics, wherever that is?

[jtwcornell91]

Gold medals for Dana Antal and Sarah Hughes.  Of course I'm so oblivious to the mainstream coverage that I thought the figure skating final was tomorrow. ::worry:: So at the time I was watching my tape of curling from earlier in the day, which would have been more enjoyable if my satellite signal hadn't kept cutting out.

[Adara]

Emily Hughes is 13 (I think).  So we might see the two sisters competing in  the same Olympic games 4 years from now.

[nshapiro]

Nice plug mentioning Dad captaining the Cornell Championship team....sort of makes up for the fact that Cornell didn't get mentioned with all the other schools during the womens hockey medal ceremonies.


And it was also nice to hear Great Neck North mentioned. (sorry Jordan, couldn't resist)

[Jordan 04]

And it was also nice to hear Great Neck North mentioned. (sorry Jordan, couldn't resist)

That's ok. I'll accept her as part of the broader Great Neck Public Schools....I guess. ;-)

It sure has been intriguing over the last number of years reading often in Newsday about her progression....seeing profiles of her life growing up in Great Neck, going to North, etc.

And we over at South need no NBC mention.  We stand on our own.

:-P

[Al DeFlorio]

This one sums it up very nicely.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/comment/brennan/2002-02-22-brennan.htm

[Jordan 04]

Guess the judges got it right for once....

Apparantly the Russians don't think so....::rolleyes::

I don't know why the IOC and Mr. Rogge didn't see all of this coming when they gave the Canadians the gold, but that was a decision tha was clealy going to open up a can of worms, and has.

The Russian Skating Federation plans on filing a formal protest, saying that Irina Slutskaya (sp?) should have been given the gold medal last night, as was the victim of juding bias.

Take it FWIW, I guess....

[melissa]

OK. I'm not American (so no cultural bias) but I know that Hughes deserved that win last night. The russian was artistically inferior and tho very athletic was last night also technically inferior. this is different from the canadian situation where they obviously ( though there is a handful who disagree) had the best performance of the evening to the point where almost everyone was certain that something underhanded was going on ( which it was). here the best girl simply came from behind to win.

[Al DeFlorio]

One of the bonehead judges had Sarah fourth in the long program. ::yark::

Seems to me the whole scoring system needs an overhaul.  Simply put, to have the Hughes/Kwan relative placing depend on how well or poorly Slutskaya skated makes no sense whatsoever.  (Suppose she did a triple axel into the boards and fractured her coccyx--should Kwan then get the gold instead of Hughes?)

They oughta add up scores, factor in some kind of degree-of-difficulty measure (to  counter the Kwan/Eldredge posing and posturing effect), and whoever gets the most points wins, a la diving, gymnastics, etc.  And the judges oughta be accountable after the fact for the reasons for their deductions, particularly for technical merit.

[Al DeFlorio]

Well, if this quote from USA Today is correct, one Russian thinks so.:-P

"But Russian Olympic Committee president Leonid Tygachev said of the women's figure skating: "I think the result is right.""

[Jordan 04]

Oksana Baiul, in an MSNBC interview this morning, also thought the decision was clearly the correct one.

[Greg Berge]

> Gold medals for Dana Antal and Sarah Hughes.

And Joe still has a chance.

Did any other Cornellians medal?  I know we had some competing in the stoner... er... arial and snowboard events.

[KeithK]

The International Skating Commision has already proposed a new scoring system.  I read this on CNN a couple days ago.  The system will award points based on completion of elements with attention to degree of difficulty.  The other change is in the judges. Currently there are nine who rank the skaters and the highest number of first place votes wins, essentially.  In order to make this more objective and reduce possible vote trading there will now be 14 judges allocating points but only 7 (randomly chosen by computer) will count.
Here's the proposal on CNN: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/olympics/2002/figure_skating/news/2002/02/18/scoring_comparision_ap/
It seems a lot more vague at this point than the original story made it sound. But a step in the right direction I think.

[Jordan 04]

Travis Mayer (Meyer? Maier?) won a silver in something.

Moguls maybe?