In honor of the olypics (hopefully part I)

I'm trying to watch the opening night of figure skating (pairs' short program) which is being interrupted constantly by luge (I don't care) advertisements (many of them totally awful - there was one about a "preparation H"), and talk of the luge competitor who was killed (I feel awful about this - he was younger than me :( ).

So, in honor of figure skating, here's this article from the Washington Post, about the utter crud music that figure skaters perform to. There is a clear bias against modern music in the article, one which I think is worth a bit of thought. Why is pop music so rare? One reason the article states is that vocal music (sung words) is against the rules in singles and pairs, if not ice dance. But why couldn't you do arrangements of other popular music?

Again, back to the purists where classical music is the only good music. Personally, I feel like a Sondheim arrangement might be kind of cool - and unique. "You need something people can relate to, something that can evoke some kind of picture quickly," Weisiger says, wondering how many iterations of "Phantom of the Opera" will be heard at this year's Olympics.

Why is ballet and classical music the only music that both gets "good for figure skating" and "good music" tags?

If you actually have knowledge about this, I'd love to hear what you think.