U.S. figure skater Adam Rippon made his Olympic debut Monday morning to exceptional reviews from audiences watching at home, but judges in Pyeongchang, South Korea were not as impressed.
After skating a flawless routine lauded as one of the best of his career by commentators Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir, judges ranked Rippon second behind Mikhail Kolyada for Olympic Athletes of Russia. After Patrick Chan of Canada performed and nabbed the top spot, Rippon was bumped down to third.
While both Kolyada and Chan fell during their performances, their routines had higher degrees of difficulty than Rippon’s, which led to higher scores (even with the missteps).
Folks on Twitter were quick to express their outrage at the judges and scoring system that Rippon was first rated second, then third, in the men’s free skate, especially considering he didn’t fall once and seemed to slay his routine.
According to USA Today, the scoring system used to evaluate men’s figure skating performances grants points to skaters who try new, different and challenging moves ― like the famous quadruple jump.
So even though skaters are penalized one point for falling, they still may earn more points overall for attempting those elements and executing parts of the move well.
Rippon ended the competition in third place, but his strong performance contributed to Team USA nabbing third place in the overall standing of the team event, as of this article.
Still, Twitter was pissed. Check out some of the responses below.