Albertville, FRANCE - 1992 Winter Games, Figure Skating, Ladies' Free Skate - Chen Lu of China skated a brilliant Free Skate that vaulted her up from 11th to 6th Place overall.
Chen was always like the sleep who no one thought about! In 1994 and 1998 she snuck in and took a medal, and honestly had the judging been more fair she should have had a medal here as well.
In hindsight this performance is definitely worthy of those marks, especially in comparison to the flawed performances that followed it. But there is absolutely no way that this performance would have earned marks of 5.8 or 5.9. She skated before the final group, and even though she did a wonderful performance with six triple jumps, there were at least two or three women in the final group who had the technical content that could have beaten this performance by Chen Lu. The judges had to leave room. Even if she had managed to pull off that final triple toe, she wouldn't have been at 5.8/5.9. This is really a huge problem with the old system, it was extremely rare and almost unheard of for anyone not skating in the final group to get high marks even if they deserved it. The code of points has completely done away with this concept as we've seen people win medals even though they skated their long program before the final group.
@@mikeg8375Agreed, with the 6.0 system, being in the final group would get you the highest marks. Even after school figures were removed, the system was still as rigged. You could place 3rd in the short but win the long and capture the gold. If you were in the third group, it was very unlikely you would be placed in the top 3 in the LP. First and second group were an automatic loss.
Agree, but it wouldn't have mattered even if Lulu had finished 3rd in the long. She was way too far behind after the short program, so her overall factored placement still would have put her behind Kerrigan. Best she could do if she'd finished 3rd in the LP would have been to jump over Bonaly for 5th place.
for anyone complaining about the COP, they should watch this .... holy cow, this was a travesty! two triple lutzes, flip, loop, salchow and toe ... 6 triple jumps, more than midori and kristi .... how she could have been placed behind kerrigan is unfathomable ... sigh ...
The fact she skated before the final group and had no practical shot at a medal meant the judges were going to leave room for the final group, which had 3 or 4 people AT LEAST who had the arsenal to beat this. So the judges has to make sure there was marks available for all of them. Its just how things were back then.
I agree but Kerrigan was hugely favored here and at that years worlds. The judges loved her lines, she would have had to completely bombed (like at 93 worlds) to lose that medal.
She was definitely under marked but remember these were the times when the judges would "save" their best scores for the top competitors. Had Lulu skated in the final group, her marks surely would have been much higher and closer to the truth. As it was, she was a relatively unknown and unproven skater and this performance sort of came out of nowhere. No way the judges expected her to turn in a performance with more triples than any of the top ladies landed and so there was no way the judges would give her marks that couldn't be surpassed by Yamaguchi, Ito, Kerrigan, Bonaly, etc. In hindsight, we now know that no one in the top group skated a clean program. Again, we have the benefit of hindsight. All of the top ladies had programs that would have matched or surpassed Lulu if skated cleanly, so the judges had to give the benefit of the doubt that someone else would best that performance.
Great comment, you do a great job articulating one of the biggest problems with the 6.0 system.... Because everybody flopped to some degree in the final group it made it really hard to rank everyone fairly with ordinals. Similar problems plagued the men's competition here as well, sometimes the judges can run out of marks to give due to so many flawed performances that are difficult to compare.
@@mikeg8375And that's what happened to Elvis, he didn't improve in the standings despite landing all his Triples and was cleanest skater of the 6 in the final group in 1992. They simply gave the other skaters ahead of him too high of marks despite mistakes including Vitkor, Petr and Kurt who had some inflated marks at the Olympics that year in the long program.
@TheWayWithKhuwayne Yeah i read somewhere that the judges ran out of marks to give him. Thabk God these problems dont exist with the current judging system.
@lutz84 Well, I would need to see all of the SPs, but she had a stumble which cost her, but they did really take a lot off , more than I thought they should. I guess there were a lot of clean SPs there.
@metsdudenj she should have been "fairly" judged in the free skate and not be slotted in at wherever she was slotted in just because she had "no chance" to make the podium ....
Fair technical marks considering that her spins were still rather weak and the first lutz not securely landed. Presentation marks too low except for GBR (LOVE Vanessa Riley!) and EUN and even 5.6 really should be a minimum for that performance. But as others have suggested, they couldn't award her, say, 5.8, and remove the possibility of Yamaguchi, Kerrigan, Ito, Harding, Bonaly, even Hubert (great short program!) getting better marks later.
