The Politics of Figure Skating

Rgirl said:

Anyway, under the 6.0 system, it seems that judges could get together, decide the placements of the most likely top skaters, and as long as each skater performed decently, there wouldn't be a justifiable reason to question why some judges placed a skater in 4th, some in 2nd or 3rd, and some in 1st. Rgirl

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Rgirl ... why couldn't this also work for the NJS? Why couldn't the judges get together and decide what the PCS scores should be for the top contenders ... regardless of how perfectly, or not, they skate at the competitions ... as long as they don't self-destruct.
Now I don't know about blatant cheating here. I just totally believe that they have already decided Irina is the best and will be marked accordingly, and that she would have to have probably more than 2 major errors before it would significantly show in the marks. Since they can't mess with the technical marks, the PCS is where they can play with things a bit.

And since Irina is an excellent competitor, I hardly see her making that many major errors in one program ... hence I feel she's assured the gold medal.
And for the record, if she skates well and deserves it, there will be no complaining on my part.

Choreography as a part of the PCS scores can be questionable. Sokolova in SA did all her jumps down the center of the arena into each of the curves of the rink. There was little choreography and Alissa did beat her in PCS scores but Sokolova's scores were high enough for her to hang on to first place.

This is one example where judges can hold up a skater in the PCS scores. They don't have to show they were the best, all they have to do is make the score close.

Joe

nymkfan51 said:

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...Now I don't know about blatant cheating here. I just totally believe that they have already decided Irina is the best and will be marked accordingly, and that she would have to have probably more than 2 major errors before it would significantly show in the marks. Since they can't mess with the technical marks, the PCS is where they can play with things a bit.

And since Irina is an excellent competitor, I hardly see her making that many major errors in one program ... hence I feel she's assured the gold medal.
And for the record, if she skates and well and deserves it, there will be no complaining on my part.

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The problem is Irina made two blatant errors in the Worlds 2005 SP and still wound up first by virtue of PCS scores, even though 3 other skaters had no errors. And that was in the SHORT program. At Worlds 2005, she did legitimately win the FS and the competition.

But the same thing could happen at Torino: Irina not being clean in the SP and winning it anyway, and then not being clean in the FS and winning that, too, despite other skaters turning in two clean programs with great skates. No other lady skater gets 8s in PCS, and judges give her those huge scores even when her skating doesn't rate them. It would be easy for Irina to walk away with the OGM even if others skate better than she does.

PRE-DECIDING A COMPETITION IS CHEATING. Period. Judges are supposed to mark on what they see in front of them, and under CoP, they are supposed to mark the tech scores AND the PCS scores based on actual PERFORMANCE, not REPUTATION.

I couldn't agree with you more chuckm. Unfortunately, what should be the case, is often not actually what is the case, where figure skating judges are concerned.

In the SP at Worlds ... even with Irina's 2 errors ... she scored higher than Michelle on every single PCS category. Whatever one wants to call this ... it was just plain wrong.
Which is why, again I say, Irina is a lock for gold in Torino. Unless she falls on her face three times, the other ladies are toast.

Rgirl, here is a quicky for now, with a promise of a more extended analysis later.

How would the judge or judges in your examples know if his/their score(s) would not be thrown out as the random one(s)?

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They wouldn't. That aspect of the NJS would, at random, either strengthen or dillute the supposed conspirators' hand.

Or if he/they had the high or low scores in their chosen area?

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The trimming of the mean muddies the conspiratorial waters and does mitigate the effect of low-balling your rival. Some observers think the ISU should go all the way in this direction and use the median score, instead of a modified mean, which would make the procedure impervious to manipulation of high and low scores.

But there are still two points to consider. If you artificially score your favorite way too high, even though that score is thrown out, that puts into the mix someone else's high score which otherwise would have been the one eliminated.

Second, as in the example of Sokolova and Czisny at Skate America, manupulating scores in the middle range (raising a score from 6.25 to 6.50) can have an effect in the final outcome, especially if a group of scoundrels all do it in concert.

Also, Rgirl asks re this example, "1.0 points x 5 components x 2.4 factor for SP and LP together / 7 (averaged over 7 judges) = 1.71," with 11 judges, the two high and two low scores thrown out, plus two random scores, wouldn't that be averaged over 5 judges instead of 7?

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Yeah, I knew when I was writing it that I wouldn't be able to slip that one by you. I didn't want to compicate the explanation by having to consider separately, and then average over many competitions, the various cases where 0, 1, or more of the conspirators' scores were thrown out.

For the Grand Prix, I think there are 10 judges, 3 thrown out in the random draw, 1 high and 1 low thrown out. This means there are 7 actual judges before triming. There is a 2/7 chance that you will be trimmed, in which case your contribution is 0, and a 5/7 chance that you won't get trimmed, in which case your contirbution is 1/5 of the total. The weighted average of these effects is 1/7 x 0 + 5/7 x 1/5 = 1/7.

But this is a statistical average, not the outcome of any particular contest.

I think for the Olympics there are 12 judges, 3 eliminted in the random draw, 1 high and 1 low eliminated, then the other 7 averaged. (Is this right?)

To me, the bottom line is not whether it is easier or harder to cheat now or before. The New System is here, to Irina it's clear, to Michelle it's severe, it's a puzzle to Weir, the Olympics are near. In a close contest it is possible for unethical judges to skew the results.

Mathman

MM, the Ladies results won't even be close, as long as Irina can rack up huge PCS scores no matter what. So in Ladies, it's the silver and bronze medals that the judges will wheel and deal for. People think these will be decided among Cohen, Arakawa, Kostner and (maybe) Kwan. Folks, look out for Sokolova.

Anything can happen, but so far I can't see this vast Irina conspiracy. If there is one, every judge in the world (including U.S. judges) must be in on it, because Irina gets consistently high scores in every PC category from every judge.

At Cup of Russia Irina skated the lights out of her short program and got super scores. In her long program she came back own to earth a little, but still skated well, and got good scores.

Has Irina kidnapped the firstborn child of every ISU judge and is holding her/him for ransom? This supposed global conspiracy to hold up Irina at all costs just doesn't make any sense to me. Is she hiding weapons of mass destruction?

MM

Rgirl said:

So please, if you don't mind, convince me with either tougher examples or some of Dr. Rossano's theories.

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Here is the link to Dr. Rossano's web journal. Just scroll down and click on any of the articles whose titles sounds promising (like, "Program Component Scores -- What is the ISU THINKING?!" LOL.) You will find plenty of criticism of the ISU on other fronts, too.

http://www.iceskatingintnl.com/archive/index.htm

About "convincing you," I am not trying to convince anyone of anythng. I do not have anything against the New Judging System. I did not have anything against the Old Judging System. I did not have anything against school figures. Judges are human. Some times humans cheat. If we came up with a system in which there was no possibility of judges cheating, there would likewise be no possibilty of judges judging.

IMO the problem lies with the whole culture and political climate of the ISU -- and for that matter of Olympic sports in general. Cheating isn't bad, getting caught is bad. Suspend the whistle-blowers, reward the crooks.

Still, like Anne Frank, I believe, in spite of everything, that most ISU judges and officials are good at heart.

Finally, where are the judging panels listed for each discipline for the '06 Olympics?

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This was posted by Hockeyfan on another thread. I can't find it now, and I can't find t on the ISU site either.

Hockeyfan, can you please repost this?

From memory, it seemed like the men's and women's panel was just what the doctor ordered for the pro-Western bloc, LOL. Gold medal for Sasha -- and this doesn't even count Sasha's mom phoning up her old pal George Bush to call in her favors -- and a podium sweep by Weiss , Savoie , and Jahnke

The pairs panel, on the other hand, was heavily weighted toward the dreaded Soviet Bloc (the true reason why Hongbo Zhoa is faking that Achilles tendon injury.)

MM

Mathman said:

... Has Irina kidnapped the firstborn child of every ISU judge and is holding her/him for ransom? This supposed global conspiracy to hold up Irina at all costs just doesn't make any sense to me. Is she hiding weapons of mass destruction?

MM

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MM, I can't speak to conspiracy theories ... I just feel that Irina is being given too much of an edge over other top skaters in the PCS scores. Maybe there hasn't been a real test of this yet ... but let's see what happens at TEB. If either Sasha or Shizuka skate a "lights out" SP ... then let's see what their PCS are. My guess is no matter how well they skate, they will not score as high as Irina. And ... Sasha's program is a wonderful one, and her positions are absolutely superior to Irina's ... so let's just see how things go.

Mathman said:

Anything can happen, but so far I can't see this vast Irina conspiracy. If there is one, every judge in the world (including U.S. judges) must be in on it, because Irina gets consistently high scores in every PC category from every judge.

At Cup of Russia Irina skated the lights out of her short program and got super scores. In her long program she came back own to earth a little, but still skated well, and got good scores.

Has Irina kidnapped the firstborn child of every ISU judge and is holding her/him for ransom? This supposed global conspiracy to hold up Irina at all costs just doesn't make any sense to me. Is she hiding weapons of mass destruction?

MM

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That's exactly what leaves me :scratch: about this topic. If the Slutespiracy is on, then EVERY judge must be in on it, and I just have a hard time believing that, or finding evidence of it.

LOL - Now THAT would be a lot of kids to take care of!!

DG

Rgirl said:

some of the reasons it seems easier to me for judges to cheat under the 6.0 system is that, as we heard on phone taps regarding I believe Bourne/Kraatz finishing off the podium in ice dance in exchange for a Russian team (I think--don't recall all the details) finishing on the podium in ice dance or pairs at the '98 Olympics, a strong judge could call four other judges and "arrange" the placements, ie, "Canada 4, Russia 3" and thus five judges would be in agreement. Four phone calls and the fix is in,

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Of course it takes more than just making a phone call. You'd have to convince the person on the other end to vote the way you want. Which probably means offering them something in exchange, such as a higher placement for the skater/team from their country, either in the same event or in a different discipline. Or just cold hard cash.

no worrying about scores between competitors or the cheating judges' scores being thrown out, either randomly or because of high or low scores.

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Well, under the interim system of 2003 and 2004 there was (anonymous judges, random selection of which judges scores count and which don't, OBO calculations).

Also, in the 6.0 system, one skater simply had to have the majority of first place votes, even if that meant only three, just as long as the other six judges placed other skaters in a variety of place from 2nd to say 6th.

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No, in the old (pre-1998) majority system, a majority is a majority of all the judges, and if there are 9 judges, than 3 first places does not give you a majority of firsts. Firsts from 5 of 9 judges in a given program would guarantee you first place in that program, but firsts from 3 or 4 judges would not guarantee anything even if no one else had that many. You'd have to look for who had the best majority of second-place ordinals, or in some cases even thirds, which might not be same person who had the most firsts.

Take a look at the pairs' long program from 1996 Worlds. I don't have the actualy scores ordinals available, but as I recall Shishkova & Naumov had four 1sts (the most of any of the teams) and either five 4ths or four 4ths and one 2nd or 3rd.

The other five 1sts were split among the three teams who ultimately finished on the podium.

Eltsova & Bushkov won with a majority of 2nds and possibly additional tiebreakers. Shishkova & Naumov ended up 4th, despite having more 1st-place ordinals than any other team.

In the OBO system used after 1998, it was a little different. But again, if no one had a majority (5 of 9 judges, or 4 of 7 or 3 of 5), then the calculations for first place got more complicated.

In a large event the more complicated calculations would surely be involved in determining several of the placements lower down.

This is all really moot now, at least at the international level. But the point is, where there was disagreement among judges, whether in two clear blocs and especially when scores for several competitors were all over the place, the placements were anything but straightforward.

Of course I never did get the mathematics of how a 4th place skater after the SP could win as long as the 1st place after the SP was beaten by somebody else and I know you do,

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This is pretty simple, having to do with factored placements from the various phases of competition, not as complicated as figuring each program results from ordinals under the majority system or OBO, but since it's a moot point under the new system I won't get into it now.

I don't see any conspiracy theories and I don't know why posters who are holding up the great scores of Irina constantly bring that phrase up. The posters who do not think Irina deserves the big scores are not talking conspiracy.

BTW, I don't see anything wrong with a conspiracy theory of any dispute or criminal action. Conspiracy theories make one think. There is none here about Irina except the posters who bring the subject up in order to put down other posters thoughts.

What I think, and I've said it many times before, is that there exists in life cultural biases which produce results in favor of the biased. One only has to look at election results.

Joe

Joesitz said:

The posters who do not think Irina deserves the big scores are not talking conspiracy.

Joe

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I disagree. I think there are posters who raise legitimate concerns, including specific examples of PCS criteria and how it all is being scored generally who have a valid point. Those posters (IMO) are not questioning Irina's scores per se, but are questioning the judges PCS scores in general based on the rules based criteria.

IMO, the broader "hollering" about Irina's PCS scores seems to be more related to opinons about what other skaters such as Sasha Cohen (we've seen her once this year, and it was the Campbell's Cheesefest) and MK (who we have not seen at all this year) MIGHT get. It sounds like "Irina's scores are unbeatable!!" "That's UnFair!!" "Kwanspiracy / Cohen-Spiracy / Slutespiracy!" At least that's how it sounds to me.

I'm still waiting to hear about a comp that Irina has won this season or last that she should NOT have won, and why. Europeans last season was the most questionable outcome. But...Irina kicked butt in the SP, left the door WIDE open in the LP, and nobody stepped up. (I will point out the specific errors in Poykio and Liashenko's progams IMO if you want me to - IMO - neither stepped up to walk through the open door).

Since judges at every competition seem to be giving Irina high scores, and no one seems to be disputing her wins, what the heck is the fuss all about? Could it be a fear that MK won't get those scores? How in the heck would MK (or her fans) even KNOW where MK is in terms of judges opinions?

FACT: We know what the broad juding community thinks of Irina.
FACT: We do not know what the broad judging community thinks of MK.

I think the bottom line of this type of discussion is "MK WuzRobbed!!" I'd have more respect if 1) specifics were mentioned in terms of who Irina beat that she maybe shouldn't have (and WHY) and/or 2) why Irina's scores really bother MK fans so much (being honest!! - not just saying "Irina's PCS is too high....blah blah)

Well. That's probably at least a dollars worth. Normally my limit is 2 cents.

DG

I agree with Doggygirl. Alot of the Kwaniacs are sensing that Michelle's chances to beat Irina at the Olympic Games might be pretty bleak at this point with the way Irina is skating, the scores she is receiving, and questionability of how Kwan can stack up against Irina under the new COP considering some of the factors currently against her-current injury, not skating GP season last year to get early start on getting familiar, showing at Worlds, etc.....Thus the best way to relieve the frusteration is to complain about Irina's PCS scores and some supposed conspiracy against her and her victories, never mind Michelle has barely skated against Irina, nor has she outskated her in a single competition under the new COP yet(the one time they met at Worlds last year Michelle certainly did not outskate Irina or even close to doing so).


The only questionable competition she won since her return was Europeans last year, but was it really the wrong decision? Her scores at the Europeans last year in the free program were inflated absolutely, but she also deservedly had a big lead after the short program on skaters like Pokykio, Liashenko, etc.....and it is doubtful any of those skaters, who under any kind of judging system are at a deficit to somebody like Irina on just pure skating ability to begin with, were close enough to their own very best in the long program to make up that difference, even with how many errors Irina made.

I don't think the Kwan fans are raising an outcry by themselves. As I understand it (and I am not CoP-savvy enough myself to know if this is true), many of the questioned decisions are admitted, even by Kwan fans, as not outcome-determinative (such as Irina's scores at Euros or during the SP at Worlds). However, it is not unfair bias or paranoia to wonder what the judges would do in an event where inflated marks are needed -- especially since the judges are anonymous, there is no public accountability of any kind, and people who have already been found guilty of biased judging are still on the panels.

Believe me if Irina wins the OGM and it is clearly undeserved, fans and experts alike will holler out and they will be heard. Anybody remember SLC pairs?

slutskayafan21 said:

Believe me if Irina wins the OGM and it is clearly undeserved, fans and experts alike will holler out and they will be heard. Anybody remember SLC pairs?

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Actually, I think the only reason that anything came of the Salt Lake City thing was that the French judge let the cat out of the bag. Speedy will make sure that doesn't happen this year.

Mathman said:

Actually, I think the only reason that anything came of the Salt Lake City thing was that the French judge let the cat out of the bag. Speedy will make sure that doesn't happen this year.

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You are entitled your opinion, and you might be right, but I still have to disagree personaly. I sensed enough rage and pent-up frusteration building up in the 36 hours before that revelation that it was going to become an Olympic-sized issue anyway.

About the conspiracy to give Irina inflated PCS at Cup of China, I just looked up the judging panel.

Aha! Here are the nations that were in cahoots:

USA
Bulgaria
Great Britain
Russia
China
Uzbekistan
Canada
Czech republic
Japan
Estonia

I never did trust those Estonians.

MM