MacSmiley comments

This is not just a case of sour grapes or disappointment. Plushenko & Mishin started the quad campaign weeks before the Olympics started to sway the media and the judges in advance.

Truth be told, Evgeny Plushenko could have kept his gold crown if he had only done the math!

“Quad is quad,” said the Russian. Er… not exactly.

Plushenko had planned to open with a quad-triple-double combo. However, he did not land his quad cleanly. That threw off his triple jump which then forced him to skip the double jump. The double jump was worth 1.5 points. Lysacek won by 1.31 points.

The defending champ could have inserted that double jump anywhere else later on in his free skate in combination with another jump, but he didn’t. Instead, he blew kisses to the audience/judges and wasted time undulating his hips and related body parts.

Quad or no quad, Pleshenko let the gold medal slip through his fingers, and Evan Lysacek was right there with enough hard-earned points to intercept it cleanly!

Paul Wylie compared Plushenko to an (American) football team that depends on long passes into the end zone and Lysasek to a team that methodically plows its way down the field to score touchdowns. Within the rules of the game, both approaches are 100% valid. There is no debate about which strategy has more merit, and there's no law against mixing both modes of play in the same game.

PS. Regarding Shaun White, whom I love to watch, his first run in the half-pipe was considered to be conservative. He did the same tricks his competitors did, only MUCH better. Shaun didn't throw in his new double McTwist 1260 into his second run until he'd already nabbed the gold with his first run's score. Why? Because half-pipe snowboarding is a JUDGED SPORT!