[109] in Humor
HUMOR: The _Real_ Rules of Figure Skating
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Mon Feb 28 10:16:27 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 94 10:12:43 EST
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 94 13:32:01 PST
From: ckleinja@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
Subject: HUMOR: The _Real_ Rules of Figure Skating
------------------- The Rules of Figure Skating ---------------
Figure skating is a wonderful sport! A very strict and consistent jury
scoring system has eliminated the unpredictability that would be
inevitable if jury members just followed their own impartial judgement.
For those of you who'd like to know the _real_ rules of figure skating, I
will disclose them to you, but first I will give you some historical
background information.
Skating itself is, of course, much older than figure skating. But as
anyone who's ever tried will have noticed, skating involves a lot of
falling flat on your ass. So people decided to make a game out of "Not
Falling Flat On Your Ass While You're Actually Doing Things That Normally
Make You Fall Flat On Your Ass." Because this is a lousy name for a
sport, and because less and less people were actually falling, "figure
skating" was invented.
Every year, a commision of ex figure skaters meets in a (wheelchair
compatible) hotel somewhere in Europe, and decides (by doing some
elementary data analysis on tournament data from the previous year) which
jumps have caused the largest amount of falling incidents. These jumps
are then decided to be obligatory for the coming skating season.
Now as I promised, I will explain the rules to you. Rule one is already
stated, but I'll repeat it because it's so important: Don't fall. The
purpose of the game is Not Falling. Because not falling in itself is
pretty boring to look at, some measures have been taken by the organisors
of the game to ensure that the spectators are having a pleasant time.
For example, they play music, precribe a maximum amount of clothing for
the skating ladies, and let the skaters do a number of nice and elegant
stuff in between the dangerous jumps.
The most ingenious part of the rules, however, is the jury scoring
system. In order not to make it too hard for the jury, the scoring
system is made very simple. Scoring is from 4.0 to 6.0, with the
following rules:
1. Initially, every contender has score 5.2, unless the contender has
never won a major event, in which case the initial score will be 4.8.
2. Every time someone falls, subtract 10% of the points.
3. Every time someone _nearly_ falls, subtract 0.2 points, unless rule 5
applies.
4. If two contenders are equally good, the last one to perform gets
higher marks than the first.
5. Being generally considered the favourite gives you 0.7 points.
So in case any of you out there are wondering why yesterday the best skaters
won the silver medal, you now know. Isn't it a great relief that it's
actually a strict and fair application of international figure skating
rules?
(C) 1994, Nijmegen Committee for the Promotion of Jury Sports
