ISU Congress- Decisions bring new rules

Joesitz (RIP) · Jun 22, 2008

merrybari said:
Clarification please.

Simply put do I understand correctly that the scores from all the seated judges will count - that none will be randomly dropped?

If true this goes a long way toward at least leveling the field IMO.

Also re: substitute judge. Score only used to replace the score of a "real" judge in the event that one gets sick or is otherwise unable to complete the job?

Is it for the Olys only? If not, I would think that 10 judges with one acting as substitute would make it easier to 'fix' the results. If judges are not going to be identified by name (and country) and only one score is 'dropped' so to speak, it's kind of obvious that hanky panky is a bit easier.

merrybari · Jun 22, 2008

Joesitz said:
Is it for the Olys only? If not, I would think that 10 judges with one acting as substitute would make it easier to 'fix' the results. If judges are not going to be identified by name (and country) and only one score is 'dropped' so to speak, it's kind of obvious that hanky panky is a bit easier.

Yet another reason to do away with anonymous judging. Making judges scores public knowledge is the most obvious way to do away with hanky-panky. By refusing to do so, the ISU leaves itself and the judges wide open to the accusations of "fixing." I thought elimimating fixing was supposed to have been the reason for the "new" judging system in the first place.

Has anyone seen the rationalization for keeping the judging anonymous?

MissIzzy · Jun 22, 2008

merrybari said:
Yet another reason to do away with anonymous judging. Making judges scores public knowledge is the most obvious way to do away with hanky-panky. By refusing to do so, the ISU leaves itself and the judges wide open to the accusations of "fixing." I thought elimimating fixing was supposed to have been the reason for the "new" judging system in the first place.

Has anyone seen the rationalization for keeping the judging anonymous?

Actually I thought the fancy "fixing" that this new change would make easier was done by federations rather than individual judges, thus the anonymous judging preventing the federations from bullying their judges. The problem the random droppings created, on the other hand, was when judges from certain nationalities were just biased, because if the wrong judges were dropped their marks had more impact.

Sylvia · Jun 22, 2008

merrybari said:
Has anyone seen the rationalization for keeping the judging anonymous?

IIRC, it's to "protect" the judges from pressure from within their own federations...

I'm all for larger judging panels and using ALL of the judges' marks.

merrybari · Jun 22, 2008

Thanks for the info. Really pitiful that the judges would need protection from their own federations.

ITA - ALL scores should count.

chuckm · Jun 22, 2008

Mathman said:
IIRC at Torino there were 12 seated judges, with 3 scores discarded in the random draw.

As I read the proposal of the Russian federation (#134), their proposal is to eliminat the extra "dmmy" judges and the random draw that currently reduces the panel of 12 down to 9, before trimming. The proposal seems to be to seat 10 (or perhaps 9 for lesser events like Four Continents and Europeans), have a computerized "random draw" only to determine which of the the 10 will be designated the "substitute," then use the other 9 as the scoring judges (before trimming.)

I think this is a good proposal. It does not address the question of anonymous judging one way or the other. But it eliminates the need to have three "dummy judges" sitting at the table with their fingers up their noses pretending to be judging something, when if fact they are not. Plus, it will save the ISU a couple of bucks.

This proposal ensures that nearly all of the judges' votes will be counted. If the panel can be 'packed' with judges from one European region, so much the better for the federation controlling (or lending) those judges. And so much the better for pre-engineering the outcome.

Tonichelle · Jun 22, 2008

until they get rid of the subjective components (and therefore eliminating figure skating as we know it) there will always be a way for one 'bloc' (eastern, western, american, european, martian...) to win out over the others...

antmanb · Jun 23, 2008

Mathman said:
The justification offereed by the Russian federation was: (a) to save money, and (b) to provide for a substitute judge within the current framework.

This was the propsal. I don't know whether it was passed or not.

The cynical justification may be (a) having three dummy judges makes it very difficult to rig the result if three of your bought judges are thrown out in the mix (b) knowing that only one judge's scores will not count makes it easier to see if you will have a certain majority on any panel to rig said event.

Ant

Joesitz (RIP) · Jun 23, 2008

antmanb said:
The cynical justification may be (a) having three dummy judges makes it very difficult to rig the result if three of your bought judges are thrown out in the mix (b) knowing that only one judge's scores will not count makes it easier to see if you will have a certain majority on any panel to rig said event.Ant

That's exactly what I was thinking when I brought this up. There is no more 12 judges with only 9 being used for scoring, A substitute could be one of the 3 being dropped. However, it didn't happen. They cut the 12 to 10 so it helps a Federation who is able to get assistance from like minded other Federations if his abettors are included in the 10.- less possible chance to be 'dropped'

This is all so silly. Just name the judges and their scores and let the media and fans make hay of it.

Joe

merrybari · Jun 23, 2008

Joe, ITA

This is all so silly. Just name the judges and their scores and let the media and fans make hay of it.

OK - that said, I have more questions from the uniformed.

How are the judges chosen for each event in the first place? Do federations "offer" to send them? Are they chosen - randomly - by the ISU? Who pays their expenses?

Every federation should always be represented on the judging panel, but I know that sometimes is not the case.

Another thought - have the judges be independent of/from the federations.

What a mess! Whatever happened to honesty, anyway? :scratch:

Mathman · Jun 23, 2008

merrybari said:
How are the judges chosen for each event in the first place? Do federations "offer" to send them? Are they chosen - randomly - by the ISU?

I think it goes something like this. All the federations who have qualified judges participate in a random draw conducted by the ISU. That is, the draw determines which federations will send a judge. The choice of the actual individual is then made by the federation (that's one reason why the judges have to stay on the good side of the federation bosses.)

That having been said, if the draw is truly "random," it is amazing how often the most powerful federations get lucky.

Merrybari said:
Who pays their expenses?

I believe that the ISU pays the judges a nominal expense allowance, but the judges are volunteers who do not get a "salary" or anything like that.

Every federation should always be represented on the judging panel, but I know that sometimes is not the case.

There are about 70 member federations in the ISU. I am not sure how many have qualified judges, but a lot do. So it is not possible for every federation to have a judge on the 12-judge panel.

Another thought - have the judges be independent of/from the federations.

There is quite a lot of strong feeling about that. I believe that Mr. Cinquanta would like nothing better than to take the judging power out of the federations' hands and put it in his own. This is what was behind the decision to make the technical specialists chosen directly by the ISU and not the member federations. At competitions, every year the tech specialist gets more power and the judges less.

The reason that Cinquanta can't move too quickly in this direction is that the ISU is an association of national federations. The federations vote Cinquqanta into his position and can fire him if they don't like what he is doing. So he can't assert the central authority of the ISU administration over the federations too vigorously.

OT -- By the way, there is a rumor going around the boards that Cinquanta will be voted off the International Olympic Committee in August and replaced by the head of the world hockey association.

fumie_fumie · Jun 23, 2008

Mathman said:
OT -- By the way, there is a rumor going around the boards that Cinquanta will be voted off the International Olympic Committee in August and replaced by the head of the world hockey association.

The hockey song came to my mind:

Oh! The good old hockey game,
Is the best game you can name;
And the best game you can name,
Is the good old Hockey game!

:rock:

merrybari · Jun 23, 2008

Thanks for the clarification, mathman.

Obviously not possible for every federation to be represented as there are so many. I hadn't realized.

Not sure if Cinquanto should have the power in his hands so to speak, but it seems possible that the judges could be part of a regional/sectional/larger group pool somehow that would dilute the "authority" of the home federation to exert pressure. Then the mid-level group/federeation, whatever, would have intermediary authority to choose the judges.

Course there are pitfalls to this as with any system - corruption and collusion can be part of any attempt to "fix" this. This could be debated 'til h**l freezes over - and no doubt has been - without any changes that really are workable as long as bias prevails.

Let the skaters skate!! I don't envy them being caught in the middle or at the apex of all this politicking. It's their careers and futures that are at the mercy of all the politics. Too sad.

Joesitz (RIP) · Jun 23, 2008

I guess 'qualified judges' mean they are specialists in a particular discipline. So let the judges from countries you never see on the panel be on the one that they are specialist in. Come to think of it, has there ever been a Swiss judge on a panel? Yet one does see Danish very often.

What would happen if a judge from a country which has a high ranking ISU skater in a competition. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see a judge's panel like: Andorra, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Thailand, India, New Zealand, Mexico, S.Africa, Puerto Rico. I am sure they are all capable of honest judging and it would not be necessary to hide their scores.

Interesting rumor about Cinquanta being usurped by Hockey and will take a back seat at the Olys. I really can't grasp that rumor.

merrybari · Jun 23, 2008

Joesitz said:
Wouldn't it be wonderful to see a judge's panel like: Andorra, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Thailand, India, New Zealand, Mexico, S.Africa, Puerto Rico. I am sure they are all capable of honest judging and it would not be necessary to hide their scores.

Now there's a thought. :thumbsup:

antmanb · Jun 23, 2008

Joesitz said:
That's exactly what I was thinking when I brought this up. There is no more 12 judges with only 9 being used for scoring, A substitute could be one of the 3 being dropped. However, it didn't happen. They cut the 12 to 10 so it helps a Federation who is able to get assistance from like minded other Federations if his abettors are included in the 10.- less possible chance to be 'dropped'

This is all so silly. Just name the judges and their scores and let the media and fans make hay of it.

Joe

Totally agreed :agree:

Ant

Mathman · Jun 23, 2008

Here is the list of all the countries that have qualified ISU judges, International judges (they can judge lesser contests, but not Worlds, etc.), referees and technical specialists in each discipline.

http://isu.sportcentric.net/db//files/serve.php?id=662

If a country only has only one or two qualified judges, sometimes they decline to participate in the draw.

Here, as an example, is how the draw went for ISU championships last year.

http://isu.sportcentric.net/db//files/serve.php?id=712

One aspect of the system that has been heavily criticized is that a country (read Russsia) which has lots of ISU judges can "loan" judges to countries that don't have any. That's why you see so many folks judging for former soviet SSRs and other eastern European countries who are still part of the Russian figure skating fraternity.

Sylvia · Jun 23, 2008

Mathman said:
Here is the list of all the countries that have qualified ISU judges, International judges (they can judge lesser contests, but not Worlds, etc.),

ISU judges can judge the Olympics and ISU Championships -- Worlds, Europeans, Four Continents and Junior Worlds.
International judges can judge Senior and Junior Grand Prix events, Senior Bs, junior and novice internationals, etc.

merrybari · Jun 23, 2008

Mathman said:
One aspect of the system that has been heavily criticized is that a country (read Russsia) which has lots of ISU judges can "loan" judges to countries that don't have any. That's why you see so many folks judging for former soviet SSRs and other eastern European countries who are still part of the Russian figure skating fraternity.

Thanks for the links. :agree:

And frankly, the idea of "loaning" judges reeks!! :banging:

Joesitz (RIP) · Jun 23, 2008

merrybari said:
And frankly, the idea of "loaning" judges reeks!! :banging:

And you therefore understand why one particular Federation wants to keep secret judging.

Why can't there be another vote on secret judging?

ISU Congress- Decisions bring new rules

Joesitz (RIP)

merrybari

MissIzzy

Sylvia

merrybari

chuckm

Tonichelle

Idita-Rock-n-Roll

antmanb

Joesitz (RIP)

merrybari

Mathman

fumie_fumie

merrybari

Joesitz (RIP)

merrybari

antmanb

Mathman

Sylvia

merrybari

Joesitz (RIP)

Similar threads

Connect with us