http://www.isu.org/vsite/vcontent/c...6-3787-4771-layout46-129898-news-item,00.html
Good. I thought it was pretty useless now that Cop is in effect.
Good. I thought it was pretty useless now that Cop is in effect.
No more QR at Worlds, Euros
- Thread starter R.D.
- Start date
:agree: 
So now the question is will the SP be broken into two groups, or will it just be one long enormous ordeal for the judges.
There were 40 men and 43 ladies at 2006 Worlds. I can't imagine one judging panel sitting through 43 performances. That would be a 6.5-7 hour nightmare.
There were 40 men and 43 ladies at 2006 Worlds. I can't imagine one judging panel sitting through 43 performances. That would be a 6.5-7 hour nightmare.
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- Jul 26, 2003
Bummer. I loved quali rounds at Euros and Worlds. I was hoping that the change would be either auto-byes for top skaters or full qualis, with the scores wiped out after the field was narrowed.
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- Mar 19, 2006
Mathman said:
I don't know if I can agree that it did all that wonderful of a job as they say, "has ensured objectivity." But maybe it is true. It might appear to give them more freedom to "pump up" a favorite of theirs, yet allow them to score based on what they really think opposed to the pressure of pleasing the fans. ?
Who are the ones doing the review anyway, is that not the national federation officials?
It all seems kinda "iffy" to me that they wouldn't just do the job like they should in the first place. It is not like a Mile High game where the fans are going to start throwing snowballs at them. And even after incidents like that they still call them like they see'm. So why should the judges of FS be any different? Why should they need to hide for any period of time?
When has it not been up for review that they would need to shift the emphasis?
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- Jun 21, 2003
I think it's that "cost effective" that they snuck in there that tipped the scales.hockeyfan228 said:
The qualifying rounds probably drew small audiences and little television interest. (I have been to events where they just let you in for free for the compulsory dance.)
euterpe said:
At Junior Worlds there were 51 ladies in the two qual rounds (which didn't count).
Short programs are shorter, but that is a very long competition. At club events or domestic qualifying events, or some of the larger internationals like Karl Schafer or JGPs, judges may serve on panels for many small to medium-sized events or two large ones in a single day and so end up judging more than 50 skaters in a day. Usually judges would have breaks between events though. And of course at the lower levels the programs are shorter.
At least there's no longer any need to compare skaters directly against each other.
And now the draw for the SP will be completely random again?
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- Jun 21, 2003
It's not pleasing the fans that is the problem, it's pleasing their own national federation chiefs back home.SeaniBu said:
In the Salt Lake City scandal that accelerated the whole CoP movement, the charge was this. The French judge (Marie-Reine Le Gougne) was instructed by the President of the French Skating Federation (Didier Gailhaguet) to place Russian pairs team Berezhnaya and Sikharudlidze ahead of Canadians Sale and Pelletiere, in exchange for Russian support for the French Ice dancing team Anassina and Peiserat, which she did. (Later on she broke down in a tearful confession, and eventually both Le Gougne and Gailhaguet were wrist-slapped by the ISU.)
Anyway, the point is that the judges are nominated by the officials of their own national federations, not by the ISU, so if you don't play along you will be in the dog house with your own federation and you will not receive any more national or international judging assignments.
So the anonymous judging was supposed to help the honest judges resist this pressure. If the judging at Salt Lake City had been anonymous, Le Gougne could have voted her conscience and then lied to Gailhaguet afterwards, and everyone would have gone away happy (except B&S).
In fact, Mr. Cinquanta's whole plan is to weaken the grip that the powerful national federations hold over the ISU (and correspondingly strengthen his own). The Technical Specialist and his crew are not nominated by the federations but rather they are hired directly by the ISU. Judges at major events are no longer identified by nationality, but rather just as "ISU judges."
Is this good or bad? It depends on who you think is the bigger crook, Speedy or Piseev and his counterparts.
MM
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- Jun 21, 2003
No, it is the ISU. There is a special "Officials' Assessment Commission" comprised of experienced figure skating referees of various nationalities, which reports directly to the ISU Technical Committee. You can check it out here:SeaniBu said:
http://www.isu.org/vsite/vfile/page/fileurl/0,11040,4844-168605-185823-91843-0-file,00.pdf
Organizationally, the ISU is a queer bird. No person is a "member" of the ISU. The "members" are the national federations. ISU President Cinquanta rides herd over that unruly mob, but at the same time he continues in office only at the pleasure of those same member federations that keep throwing monkey wrenches into the works by their interior politicking and skullduggery.
Sort of like every organization, LOL.
MM
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- Jul 26, 2003
I don't think so. LeGougne later said that she did vote her conscience and that B&S were the better team. If she had kept her mouth shut, instead of kowtowing to her fellow judges in front of the elevator -- she wanted to be on the Technical Committee, the false carrot that Gailhauget was danging in front of her, and Stapleford, who chastised her for her vote, had a lot of power at that time -- there would have been moaning and groaning and wuzrobbing, until the Men's competition started and there was a new story. No amount of moaning, groaning, and wuzrobbing in the past caused the ISU to change a result, but a judge who claimed publicly that she'd been pressured, including at a judge's meeting, was something they couldn't quite ignore.Mathman said:
In theory, her scores would have been anonymous, but given how tight the judges are, I suspect by the end of the day they all know who was in column 1 and who was in column 9, and their Federations know as well. And a relatively straightforward program can determine which scores counted
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- Mar 19, 2006
Mathman said:
On the same thought that this could not encourage, I wondered how much it made it more allowable. They could just get "the pay-off" and say they were the ones who gave the highest score. Yet with the institution of reviewing after any inflated scores would be in question. With a review following, that could circumvent the whole problem. I do agree with it - and you of course
- and can see where that is a viable attempt at getting the issue under control. if the theory is clean.Now as
That makes me wonder once again how it will make a difference.hockeyfan228 said:
BTW, that was a great synopsis on the SL scandal. I really was aware of that and why - not that far out of the loop
. But you put it so well I didn't mind. Wasn't there something more serious that happened to Marie Reine because of that? That I really don't know, what was the "wrist slap." Wasn't more like a "boot to the butt?" I thought it was a serious consequence. What did everyone think of hockeyfan228 idea? I would love to now about that.
and the
hockeyfan228 said:
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SeaniBu said:
At first thought I reckoned it was a nice idea, too. However, if the scores would be wiped out, it is more than possible that most of the skaters would not have the motivation to perform better than it's needed to qualify. I don't think it would have much appeal to the audiences, and thus would not be very cost effective. What's more, even if the skaters would not perform at their best, it would still put some additional stress on them (as opposed to the copmplete elimination of QRs)
I like the change intoduced by ISU better. At first I felt kind of sad, as one of my favourite performances of the last season happens to be a QR performance. Looking at the bright side however, if there had been no QR, perhaps the skaters would have been able to preserve strenght (both physical and mental
) and perform at their best in the LP. 
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- Mar 19, 2006
Mathman said:
Isn't that really the same thing as a lot of jobs anyway. The amount I was getting payed still incurred debt. I do see the difference, yet "for me" the idea of doing that and having just enough compensation to do it, beats doing the other and being left in the same boat.
And from the point of view of the Mile High Figure Skating Association's take on volunteers
I still say it is better.http://www.mhfsa.org/
Plus the Kudos
Nice to note that they don't get payed, I didn't know that until 2005 season. I think it was the GP in Russia I finally heard that.
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- Mar 19, 2006
Okami said:At first thought I reckoned it was a nice idea, too. However, if the scores would be wiped out, it is more than possible that most of the skaters would not have the motivation to perform better than it's needed to qualify. I don't think it would have much appeal to the audiences, and thus would not be very cost effective. What's more, even if the skaters would not perform at their best, it would still put some additional stress on them (as opposed to the copmplete elimination of QRs)
I like the change intoduced by ISU better. At first I felt kind of sad, as one of my favourite performances of the last season happens to be a QR performance. Looking at the bright side however, if there had been no QR, perhaps the skaters would have been able to preserve strenght (both physical and mental
Nice thoughts, that does seem like it would be changing a little too much of what happens in the SP. Makes it more like a race event.
I think you are right about the no QR, and the decision to eliminate it. But I am always subject to other ideas. I really think the fact of "strength preservation" is really valid. And the idea that cost can be decreased is helpful as well.
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- Jun 21, 2003
I agree with everything Hockeyfan said about judging and Salt Lake City. The only thing about Le Gougne's testimony that I am not 100% sure of, is which team she really thought was best, since she said both, at various times, depending on who she was talking to.
My personal feeling is that Madame Le G is not a bad person, but that she felt emotionally overwhelmed over the whole thing and didn't really know what she was saying from one moment to the next.
Sean, the penalty for Le Gougne was that she could not judge any ISU function for three years and she could not be a judge at the 2006 Olympics. After that, all is forgiven.
The actual wording of the ISU resolution that pronounces the verdict is interesting. I don't have it before me, but the wording very clearly found her guilty of "saying that one team gave the best performance when she actually believed that the other team had."
About figuring out which judge gave which marks, you can almost always easily determine which judges were eliminated by the random draw and which set of actual scores were used to determine the result. To go further and to say that "judge #4" was "Joe Blow from Lower Slobovia" -- well, that question cannot be addressed mathematically, but, as Hockeyfan says, you can often pick up clues -- or just wait until the judges start blabbing about it in the cocktail lounge.
What got me started in this vein in the first place was this sentence from the report:
"The system has allowed officials to work in an independent manner, while the anonymity of the Judges for major ISU Events has ensured objectivity as evaluating bodies are not informed of the identity of the Judge under review until an Assessment (official warning) has been confirmed."
To me, the first short clause tosses a bone to the original intent of anonymous judging. But since their really isn't any evidence to make us thing that the New Judging System has really "allowed officials to work in an independent manner," they went on to talk about the evaluation procedure.
There, I think the point is well taken. If you were one of the referees on the Officials' Assessment Commission," and if a report came to your attention that one judge had given a +3 GOE to a certain element, while the average of the panel gave a -1, and it was your job to check it out -- well, at some point we have to turst somebody to carry out his/her duties responsibly.
My personal feeling is that Madame Le G is not a bad person, but that she felt emotionally overwhelmed over the whole thing and didn't really know what she was saying from one moment to the next.
Sean, the penalty for Le Gougne was that she could not judge any ISU function for three years and she could not be a judge at the 2006 Olympics. After that, all is forgiven.
The actual wording of the ISU resolution that pronounces the verdict is interesting. I don't have it before me, but the wording very clearly found her guilty of "saying that one team gave the best performance when she actually believed that the other team had."
About figuring out which judge gave which marks, you can almost always easily determine which judges were eliminated by the random draw and which set of actual scores were used to determine the result. To go further and to say that "judge #4" was "Joe Blow from Lower Slobovia" -- well, that question cannot be addressed mathematically, but, as Hockeyfan says, you can often pick up clues -- or just wait until the judges start blabbing about it in the cocktail lounge.
What got me started in this vein in the first place was this sentence from the report:
"The system has allowed officials to work in an independent manner, while the anonymity of the Judges for major ISU Events has ensured objectivity as evaluating bodies are not informed of the identity of the Judge under review until an Assessment (official warning) has been confirmed."
To me, the first short clause tosses a bone to the original intent of anonymous judging. But since their really isn't any evidence to make us thing that the New Judging System has really "allowed officials to work in an independent manner," they went on to talk about the evaluation procedure.
There, I think the point is well taken. If you were one of the referees on the Officials' Assessment Commission," and if a report came to your attention that one judge had given a +3 GOE to a certain element, while the average of the panel gave a -1, and it was your job to check it out -- well, at some point we have to turst somebody to carry out his/her duties responsibly.
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