2010 Winter Olympics: Are the Aussies Getting Shafted?

Controversies are like religion. They are like faith. They exist because people believe in them. Tonight, Lydia Lassila became Australia's fifth gold medalist at a Winter Olympic Games with a score of 214.74 at Whistler's Cypress Mountain, besting silver medalist Li Nina (207.23) and bronze medalist Guo Xinxin (205.22) of China in women's aerials.

The Monday prior to the finals, Lassila and Jacqui Cooper called foul on a number of freestyle skiing judges who they strongly believed were biased towards the Northern Hemisphere teams, including Norwegian moguls judge Morten Skarpass. The tirade took place after the qualification round, in which all four Chinese team members qualify.

"There are random scores, and that's not good enough," said Lassila on the purported bias. "We've dedicated our whole lives to this. It's not good enough at an Olympics."

During the qualification round, Lassila noticed the bias from the judges on her jumps. "I felt my jumps were really underscored," she said after finishing ninth in qualifying. "I was thinking 95, not 85. That's 10 points, which is a lot.

"I saw [Guo] Xinxin from China do a full full full [triple twisting triple somersault], and she crashed it and got 88.08 points. That doesn't make sense. I stomped a double full full and got 85. Even though her degree of difficulty is higher, she still crashed. That's something I don't understand. 

"They've got to get their act together and make sure they don't make mistakes and that they judge it fairly."

Lassila argued that a number of judges are not qualified to give scores without a sufficient understanding of aerials and moguls.

"They might come to one or two World Cups, and then they don't see aerials for a year," Lassila said. "Some of them are more specialised in moguls than they are in aerials, which is why we are seeing some differences. I would like to see more former athletes become judges or have specialty judges there to inform the judges, educating them and keeping them refreshed."

Even Australia's team performance director Geoff Lipshut believes that partiality has been rampant among the judges.

"The whole thing should be under review," Lipshut said. "There was a very disappointing result for [silver medalist] Dale [Begg-Smith] in the moguls. They need a specialist panel of mogul judges…and a special panel of aerial judges. 

"The IOC does an incredible job with the organiser and puts on an event, each country spends a lot of money bringing its team here. I think the sport has a responsibility to get the right result for the athletes at the Olympic Games."

But could this all be just a way for the Northern Hemisphere countries to disregard Australia as a rising winter sports power? Five golds in three Winter Olympiads is quite an accomplishment for a team that has never medaled until 1994. This is also the first-ever time that Australia earned three medals at a single Winter Games.

Could this all be a conspiracy? Are the Aussies getting shafted? Was Lydia Lassila right?

Sound off and voice your opinion on the question: Is Australia getting the short end of the stick at the Winter Olympics? As always, keep it clean, and keep it on topic.