How To Win Silver: Come In Third

While I’m no specialist on the new Code of Points system for figure skating, it does seem to have reduced the rigid quality of skater ranking.

The results of this freedom include oddities like the medal standings from the men’s Olympic event.

The silver medal is awarded to the competitor who comes in second. How you get to second is up to you. Today, Swiss skater Stephane Lambiel got there by finishing 3rd and 4th.

In theory, there was always the potential for this to happen. But under the Ancien Régime skaters were lucky to move more than one place in the rankings between programs, thanks in part to Franco-Russian pre-negotiations (which came with their own rather blunt form of quality control).

So how did Lambiel succeed? Figure skating has two components: a short program and a free program, with the latter counting as 2/3 of the final score.

In today’s long program, the second-place finisher from the short (American Johnny Weir, who missed his bus and complained he didn’t have enough time to squeeze into his, ahem, “sausage suit”) came in sixth, and the sixth-place finisher from the earlier event (Canada’s Jeffrey Buttle) was second.

Floating up the middle, his dross transformed to silver, was Lambiel.

Ice Shavings: It’s worth noting that Buttle had his best free skate of the season, and coming in second to Plushenko is a great day for anyone in this event. On the other hand, he's demonstrated terrible design and legal sense by littering his web-site with what are probably unlicensed Olympic rings.

Emanuel Sandhu, predictably, was awful, and should go back to his first love, trying on new clothes in front of a mirror.

And as for Lambiel (pictured at left without further comment), where to begin? According to his bio he "collects and cherishes ladybugs." There's no topping that.