Im not saying the cup is completely free of palm greasing..but I dont think every win is tainted.
You can't be half-pregnant. Either the contest is legitimate, or it isn't, right? If *some* of the wins are tainted, then doesn't that affect the ranking of every other strain in that given contest?
Again, the staff members from High Times, have themselves said that the houses that spend the most on promotion (including giving away free weed) heavily influence the contest in their favor. They said it in the 20th anniversary cup documentary from High Times (200
, kind of shrugging it off, as "oh well, yeah, what do we care if some of the cups are bought and paid for". Unfortunately, its been a while since I've seen this, and I can't point you to the exact spot, but its in here, watch it and see for yourself, and you'll get some idea of what actually goes on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8o6C_Gkqz4
In 2003 Arjan Roskam of Greenhouse seeds had two cup wins reversed when he was caught red-handed bribing judges. In any other "competition" being caught bribing judges would be a lifetime ban, but in the HTCC, apparently, it doesn't matter because (quoting the organizer) the rules against bribery weren't clear. In the meantime, Arjan is let right back in to compete in 2004, and he's won a number of cups since then (and before). So does anyone believe that 2003 was the *only* year in which he bribed judges? That every OTHER of his 30+ cups were won legitimately, but JUST those two were because of bribery? The fact that the guy is even still allowed to compete says something pretty sleazy about the contest (let alone that he's won cups in 2008, 2009, 2010, etc).
Does this mean that every cup winner is crap? No, of course not. If you go down the list of winners from the last 20 years, and go through the names, plenty of them are great classic strains that have stood the test of time: Skunk, Northern lights, White Widow, AK-47, Blueberry, Bubblegum, White Rhino, Jack Herer, Super Silver Haze, are all past cup winners, that have become the equivalent of "household names" in the cannabis world.
I've heard Nico Escondido (who is in the video above) say recently that they've (ie he's) gone to great lengths to make the contests more objective (presumably in light of the widespread perception that the cup wasn't on the up and up) so I also think its plausible that in the last year or two things have improved a bit.
So to be clear, my issue here isn't that the cup winners are no good. In fact, the opposite is true, most are excellent. I'm just saying that the hype surrounding this particular contest outweighs its value in actually selecting the top strains (which is highly subjective anyway). A cup winner may be good, but its not necessarily the best thing around, let alone necessarily even better than other entrants in the contest it beat.
Plenty of top notch strains never get entered into this contest, and again, there are many top-level breeders who don't want to enter, figuring the expense and hassle isn't worth it, when they think they're not going to have a chance at winning.