[Dr Winston O Boogie jr]

I listened to Tara Lapinski and some male figure skater give their opinions. They both agreed that the judges were correct. They explained that the Korean girl did a lot of the difficult jumps early in her program whereas the Russian did more difficult jumps and did them later. That seemed absurd to me but they went on to explain that a jump done later in a program gets a higher mark because the skater is tired. It's much easier to come out and do a triple axel for example as your first jump than it is to do the same jumped to finish your program.

We, who don't watch figure skating all the time, don't understand how it is scored. It always seems pretty arbitrary to me, but I have to remind myself that I don't really understand much about the sport.

I've never liked the fact that point are given for artistic merit. I am one who believes that sport is sport and art is art and that they are two very different disciplines that should not be combined. I always feel that these skaters should be graded on their skating ability and not how lovely they look when they wave their arms in the air, how they interpret the music or by the beautiful smile on their faces, but those things are, unfortunately considered.

If I were running the sport, I would have them all do exactly the same routine to the same music with the same uniforms. But, that's me. As a casual observer, I enjoy watching the pretty girls in different costumes doing all the acrobatics involved in figure skating. I don't look at it as a competition. I just watch and enjoy.