Despite Revamp, Figure Skating Gets Mixed Marks

SOCHI, Russia — A figure skating judge ordered a quick bowl of soup for lunch at the Cup of Nice international competition in France. She did not finish the meal that October day in 2012, putting her spoon down and walking away in shock and anger.

Another judge, Natalia Kruglova of Ukraine, had approached at the rink cafe and asked illicitly that the pairs team from Ukraine be propped up with high scores.

“You know, they need every mark they can get,” Kruglova told the other, unidentified judge, according to a disciplinary report issued by the International Skating Union, the sport’s world governing body.

Kruglova denied trying to manipulate the results, but in May 2013, she was barred from the sport for two years.

After a vote-trading scandal by judges discredited the pairs and ice-dancing competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, skating officials overhauled the scoring and judging systems, trying to make the sport more objective and less susceptible to corruption. But people in the competitive skating world and independent experts still question the sport’s credibility.

The major problems are that judges continue to lack independence; nationalistic impulses still often prevail; apparent conflicts of interest abound; and the anonymity of the judges’ scoring has undermined efforts to increase accountability and transparency, according to interviews over several months with more than 70 judges, referees, athletes, coaches, officials and other experts.

But those who support the system say it ensures that performance more easily triumphs over reputation. The International Skating Union said that under the current system, judges follow the same detailed criteria, no longer have to compare one skater’s performance to another’s, give more consistent scores and feel less pressure from outsiders. Bloc voting is now “almost impossible,” the governing body said, and subjectivity has been “substantially decreased.”

The current scoring system, which scrapped the familiar 6.0 method in favor of a code of cumulative points, has left skating incomprehensible for many casual fans. Where 6.0 was once a universally understood measure of perfection, a number like 212 means little to many people. But it is not without virtue: Unlike the 6.0 system, which provided only one overall mark without explanation for technical merit, today’s system assigns a numerical value to every jump and spin and gives all skaters a precise accounting of their strengths and weaknesses.

As usual, figure skating will command marquee attention over the next 18 days at the Winter Olympics. Yet the sport has lost much of its popularity, especially in the United States, two decades after the knee-whacking of Nancy Kerrigan by associates of Tonya Harding brought unprecedented attention and television ratings.

“Now every judge knows how to work the system,” said Patrick Ibens, a retired judge from Belgium who officiated at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. “In reality, everything is still the same.”

Under the current system, now a decade old, nationalist partiality may have actually increased, according to Eric Zitzewitz, an economist at Dartmouth who has analyzed seven years of judging data. Under the cover of anonymity, judges still give higher marks to skaters from their own country than do other judges, Zitzewitz found. Judging bias under the current system is about 20 percent greater than in the 6.0 system, which publicly connected each score to the judge who gave it, Zitzewitz said.

“A less optimistic view” of the International Skating Union, he said, was that its goal “was to reduce the perception of corruption rather than actual corruption.”

Objective to a Point

Almost every sport involves judging. In some aspects, figure skating is no less objective than say, baseball, where every unhit pitch is judged, not strictly according to the rule book, but in relation to each umpire’s personal strike zone. Skating also makes greater use of instant replay than baseball.

Subjectivity, or more precisely, artistry, is what attracts many to skating in the first place. Cultural preferences that differ from Asia to Europe to North America must be accounted for. Complete objectivity is neither attainable nor desired.

“There has to be room for everyone’s style, because we don’t want it to look like cookie cutters,” said Tom Zakrajsek, a prominent American coach.

Still, for many, skating’s judging system remains troubling despite attempts at reform. In baseball, for instance, each team does not get to choose the umpires. In Olympic skating, judges are chosen by their respective national skating federations. Inherently, judges feel pressure to support the skaters from their own countries, Ibens, the retired Belgian judge said, adding, “Nobody is honest.”

Charlie Cyr, an American who judged at the Vancouver Olympics, disagreed, saying the current system “throws the emphasis off the officials, and the onus of being the winner goes onto the skater, where it should be.”

Safeguards against bias are in place, Cyr said, such as throwing out the high and low scores for each skater and establishing a mathematical corridor in which judges’ marks are expected to fall. Yet, Cyr said: “There is still that personal part. These are skaters from your country, so whether you do it intentionally or whether you do it subconsciously, I think if it comes to a point where it’s a very tight fit, it’s human nature. You’re going to pick the preferable skater.”

Under the 6.0 system, fans and reporters could more easily scrutinize the scoring for potential favoritism. Each judge’s vote was made public by name and country. Now, only a composite score for each skater is flashed on the scoreboard.

Fans must go online to see the individual scores, but they are given anonymously. An exception is the United States, which attaches the names of judges to the scores at its national championships. For international competitions, the votes by each particular judge are kept in a safe at the I.S.U. headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, according to Sonia Bianchetti of Italy, who has judged at seven Olympics.

Anonymity was granted to the judges in an effort to lessen pressure from their respective national skating federations. But this makes it extremely difficult to detect collusion and nationalistic bias, Bianchetti said.

“Nothing has changed, and in my opinion, it’s worse,” she said. She added that “secret judging” is “just to help the I.S.U. avoid having another public scandal.”

The anonymous judging has also robbed skating of drama and theatrical villainy that once made it so engaging, especially during the Cold War, skaters and officials said. Depending on one’s allegiance, it was delicious fun to accuse the American or Soviet or East German judge of partiality before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Skating fans yearn for a simpler time, said Brian Boitano, the 1988 Olympic champion, when “they only had to know one number, 6.0, and how close did it come to that and show a close-up of the guy who gave 5.7 and we can hate him.”

Top skating officials from the United States said they would try to persuade international officials to eliminate blind judging after the Sochi Games to restore interest in the sport.

“It should be open,” said Tamara Moskvina of Russia, who has coached pairs skaters to four Olympic gold medals. “We don’t need to hide the opinion of the judges.”

Qualifications Vary

The qualifications of the judges vary from country to country. The United States, for instance, requires that its judges officiate a world championship before they become eligible to officiate at the Olympics, Cyr said.

Not every country has such stringent requirements. At the 2006 Turin Olympics, Ukraine sent an ice dancing judge, Anastassia Makarova, who had never officiated at the world championships or the Olympics. Her mother, Ludmila Mikhailovskaya, was a member of the ice dancing technical committee of the I.S.U.

At those Olympics, Ukraine won its first-ever medal in the event, a bronze. Mikhailovskaya told The Globe and Mail of Toronto at the time that she did not see a conflict of interest with her daughter as a judge.

“She judges; I am on the dance technical committee,” Mikhailovskaya told the newspaper. “That is completely different.”

Potential conflicts of interest also surfaced in ice dancing at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Jodi Abbott of Canada was chosen to judge those Games while she was the vice president of the board of directors of the Canadian figure skating association. Another dance judge, Alla Shekhovtsova of Russia, is the wife of Valentin Piseev, who was then the president of the Russian figure skating association and is now its general director.

In the close-knit world of skating, fraternization among judges and athletes also occurs at a level that might not be acceptable in other sports. While there is supposed to be complete separation at an event like the Olympics, judges and skaters often travel together and eat together on the international Grand Prix circuit.

Sometimes, judges also attend practices to assess skaters’ performances and communicate with athletes by email. Cyr said he considered himself friends with skaters whom he has judged for years, like Patrick Chan of Canada, the reigning three-time world champion, and Carolina Kostner of Italy, the 2012 women’s world champion. It was important, Cyr said, for skaters to become comfortable with judges, while adding that judges must maintain their integrity.

“If I treat one athlete one way, you better be able to treat everybody the same way,” he said.

Disconcerting to many is that disgraced officials can regain power in the sport, most conspicuously Didier Gailhaguet of France, who was at the center of the vote-trading scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake Games.

Suspended from the sport for three years, Gailhaguet is again the president of the French figure skating association. He is considered by some a serious candidate to succeed Ottavio Cinquanta of Italy as the next president of the I.S.U. in 2016.

If Gailhaguet becomes the head of the world governing body, it “would be a travesty,” said Sally-Anne Stapleford of Britain, who was a whistle-blower during the 2002 scandal, adding, “It doesn’t get worse than cheating at the Olympics.”

Athletes, coaches and officials who have long dealt with politics and learned to accept the sport’s realities seem to carry a resigned acceptance.

“If you choose the wife when she’s young, you should keep her your whole life,” said Alexei Mishin of Russia, who coached Evgeni Plushenko to Olympic gold in 2006 and silver in 2010. “It’s not possible to be divorced from the new system. Maybe somebody likes to be divorced, but it’s against human being rules.”

Artistry vs. Sport

Skating’s eternal tension between artistry and sport was in sharp relief at the 2013 world championships, held last March in London, Ontario. Depending on one’s view, the men’s competition confirmed everything that is right or wrong with today’s judging system.

Denis Ten of Kazakhstan finished second to Chan. It was for many a stunning result. Until that point, Ten was known more for potential than success at the senior level, having finished no higher than fifth on the Grand Prix circuit, 11th at the Olympics and seventh at worlds.

That Ten, then 19, could essentially come from nowhere to win a silver medal confirmed to some that the current system was superior to the 6.0 system, which often left skaters waiting their turns behind those with more established résumés.

“I think most young people want to know that on any given day, they can win if they’re good enough,” said Zakrajsek, the American coach.

For those unhappy with the results, this was exactly the problem.

Some believed that Ten deserved to finish first, not second, after Chan fell twice in the long program, stepped awkwardly out of another landing and reduced the number of planned rotations on a combination jump. For Ten’s supporters and some in the news media, this was perceived as another case of Chan’s receiving overly generous scores, known by his critics as Chanflation.

Chan and his supporters made a counter argument: He had set a world record in winning the short program, giving him a nearly 7-point cushion, enough to finish first over all, even after Ten received a higher score in the long program.

Chan prevailed by a narrow combined score of 267.78 to 266.48. Also, Chan’s supporters noted, he is a far more complete skater in terms of his edge work, speed, transitions between maneuvers and musicality, all factors that figure in the scoring along with jumps.

“The new system is a lot better, even though it may be harder to grasp for fans,” Chan said in an interview at Skate Canada in October in St. John, New Brunswick. “It rewards fairly every little bit of effort you put into the program.”

In the 6.0 system, one tiny mistake could keep a skater off the medal podium, Chan said, and the judging seemed based more on failure than success. In the current system, to encourage risk taking, skaters are still rewarded at least 70 percent of the value of a jump on which they under-rotate.

Frank Carroll, who coaches Ten in Southern California, said his skater “could not have been happier” in finishing second. Ten’s success had seemed improbable for a young man who learned to skate on outdoor rinks in Kazakhstan — a former Soviet republic that had won a medal at the world championships — bundled in so many layers of clothing that he said he “looked like a cabbage.”

But Carroll took issue with what many see as a vulnerability in the judging system — the program component score, or P.C.S., a rough equivalent of the artistic score given in the 6.0 system. In the previous system, a skater received one score for artistry or presentation. Under the current system, the component score is actually five scores given for skating skills, linking footwork and movement, performance, choreography and musical interpretation.

The subjectivity of the component score, skating officials concede, still allows judges to manipulate their marks, taking a skater’s reputation into account when he or she has a subpar day. This is sometimes known as awarding “hero points.”

“I think Patrick is fabulous, but when you fall a couple of times or make three or four mistakes, why are you the best in choreography, the best in artistry, the best in skating skills?” Carroll said. “That’s the problem with the new scoring system.”

After Chan narrowly defeated Ten, Todd Eldredge, the 1996 world champion from the United States, said on Twitter, “No disrespect to Patrick but a skater shouldn’t be able to fall twice & get such high PCS.”

In a broader sense, the 2013 world championships also validated for Carroll and some other experts that skating had become what he called a form of bean counting.

By this, he meant that skaters spend so much time trying to accumulate points that a sameness develops in the routines and artistry suffers. Some skaters and coaches have also expressed concerns about the increased potential for injury as more difficult tricks are performed.

“A spin is a rotation in a beautiful position,” said Carroll, who coached Evan Lysacek of the United States to a gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics. “It’s not turning yourself inside out, wrapping your free leg around your neck and spitting out nickels.”