Sasha Trusova and the judging hypocrisy
For some reason this is a very taboo topic on here, but I don’t really care anymore. It’s been bugging me for a long time and has even turned me away from the sport and the fandom.
I’m very tired of people, not just the general public, but self-proclaimed figure skating fans, villainizing and criticizing Sasha’s reaction during Beijing 2022. She had every right to react the way she did. She was robbed in broad daylight.
How are figure skating fans and so-called experts unable to see that Anna had plenty of mistakes that simply weren’t called? If they had been, Sasha would’ve won.
Her quad flip combination wasn’t clean, and all of her Lutz edges should have been called in both the FS and SP. Not to mention toe hammering and severe pre-rotation. Despite all of that, her jumps still got high GOEs. Some of her spins were traveling, and she didn’t even have good speed on the ice. None of this was reflected in her scores, but all of Sasha’s mistakes were called. That would have cost Anna way more points than the original gap between them.
Again, I’m not saying Sasha was perfect, of course she wasn’t, but her mistakes were actually called, while all of Anna’s were ignored. Can someone explain that? Why is it not allowed to be talked about? I understand that Beijing 2022 was very traumatizing and hard to watch, but half of the damage came from that same biased judging.
I just don’t understand the hypocrisy from the fandom as well. Adelina Sotnikova is regularly criticized and Yuna Kim is still called the Olympic champion by everyone, yet people here don’t even want to entertain the idea that MAYBE the judging wasn’t fair and MAYBE Sasha should have been the champion? Of course she reacted the way she did. Imagine training your whole life for something only to lose out on it because the judges decided to penalize all of your mistakes but ignore your competitor’s.
The general public may not understand the ins and outs of judging, but why is the figure skating community so adamant about not recognizing that it was biased?
Again, I know this is a rant, and I don’t care if I get downvoted. It’s just so unfair and cruel to Trusova. And if anyone wants to just move on from traumatic Beijing 2022, I’m sorry but no. Trusova is still to this day getting criticized and crucified over her understandable reaction. She literally did the impossible, was then cheated out of gold due to the judges’ unexplainable bias for Anna, and did not get any support from the figure skating community despite the obvious evidence.
I do not want this to come across as hate for Anna because I genuinely do not have anything against her. What I do have a problem with is an unfair sport, misinformation, bias, and clear hypocrisy when it comes to one skater versus the others. How can someone be expected to watch and stay invested when there is so much bias and corruption?
Thankfully Sasha protested against the scores, but so many other skaters also got cheated and robbed yet stayed quiet, so they are rarely mentioned or talked about