Judging the "Old-Fashioned" Way

silverpond · Jun 25, 2011

While flipping through one of my figure skating books, I saw several photographs of judges from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

Two of the pictures showed several of the judges, literally on their hands and knees, with their heads pressed close to the ice, inspecting the precision of the compulsory tracings placed by one of the elite competitors. This was serious business, and all of the judges wore super-intense expressions.

Other pictures showed another group of judges at a World championship as they displayed their marks. They stood on the ice with two boxes attached to their waist, from which they pulled up and displayed cards - 5.9, 5.6, etc.

And other photographs showed the judges sitting at their panel area, displaying the scores with those cards.

Those were the days before instant replay, so the judges had only one opportunity to watch the performance. They did not have the luxury of watching replays of any of the jumps, spins, or other parts of the programs.

Many of those competitions were held outdoors, and the judges were bundled up with heavy fur coats, knee-high boots, fur hats, gloves, etc.

attyfan · Jun 25, 2011

I'm sure the skaters were just as cold; did they get to bundle up in the K & C, waiting for their marks? The ladies even had to wear short skirts ... and I doubt that their tights kept them very warm.

Blades of Passion · Jun 26, 2011

silverpond said:
Those were the days before instant replay, so the judges had only one opportunity to watch the performance. They did not have the luxury of watching replays of any of the jumps, spins, or other parts of the programs.

Even with instant replay, live judging will always be inherently flawed because art sometimes must be seen and considered over a period of time to realize its full value.

Joesitz (RIP) · Jun 26, 2011

If we are just speaking of school figures, then carriage was also judged. A rise and fall at a junction of a serpentine shool figure would show how well the contestant managed his form as much as executing an ice turn on the circles. If school figures were judged today, I believe a Tech Panel would not be needed.

silverpond · Jul 1, 2011

Some of the photos of the skaters performing the school figures were included in the section I wrote about previously. The women wore short skirts, sweaters, gloves, and sometimes wore hats to ward off the chill. The men were dressed in long pants, sweater, gloves - also doing their best to stay warm.

The only time I recall ever seeing any competition television coverage of the school figures was at the 1990 Worlds, the last international competition to include them. Midori Ito, the defending World champion, skated disastrous figures, finishing 10th in that segment of the competition. She won the short and long programs and pulled up to second place overall. Ito almost stopped while performing one of her figures and sort of lurched forward, nearly falling onto the ice. One sportswriter reported that Ito's tracings resembled "the Santa Fe railroad". The figures were definitely Midori's undoing at that competition.

A segment on Kurt Browning of Canada, training for the same Worlds, showed him tracing the school figures at his ice rink in Edmonton. He was alone and circled the figure eights over and over and over.

Carriage and good posture were essential elements in performing the school figures. Not to mention a very acute sense of balance!

Mathman · Jul 1, 2011

One of the problems with the scoring back then was that the gap in points between a good figure and an outstanding one was very large. In free skating, even if you finished third or forth, you did not lose many combined points.

So outstanding figures plus OK free skating would always win over the skater with opposite skills, no matter what percentage of the total was assigned to which part.

silverpond · Jul 2, 2011

Mathman said:
One of the problems with the scoring back then was that the gap in points between a good figure and an outstanding one was very large. In free skating, even if you finished third or forth, you did not lose many combined points.

So outstanding figures plus OK free skating would always win over the skater with opposite skills, no matter what percentage of the total was assigned to which part.

That certainly enabled Trixi Schuba to win the 1971/1972 World titles and the 1972 Olympic gold medal. She was probably the finest compulsory school figure of all time - or at least one of the best ever - and she emassed a huge point lead after the figures. Her free skating, in contrast, was very average, nothing to write home about. Typically, she finished 6th or 7th in the skating, but her combined scores were good enough to give her the titles.

Joesitz (RIP) · Jul 2, 2011

Lest we forget. The name of the sport is FIGURE skating. I think it should be changed to Program Skating. No?

mskater93 · Jul 5, 2011

Mathman said:
So outstanding figures plus OK free skating would always win over the skater with opposite skills, no matter what percentage of the total was assigned to which part.

That was why in the late 70s or early 80s they went to FP (factored placements) where a 1st in that segment was factored based on it's percentage of the overall competition. It made it more exciting and understandable for the casual fan.

There's video on youtube of the figures segment from the 1980 Olympics (Charlie Tickner's undoing - I think he finished 4th or 5th in the figures segment but ended up 3rd overall) and then also the 1988 Olympics (Fadeev, Boitano, Orser after figures). From time to time, when Sasha Fadeev is at our rink, we bug him into doing the paragraph loops for us because they are still beautiful to this day.

blue dog · Jul 5, 2011

Joesitz said:
Lest we forget. The name of the sport is FIGURE skating. I think it should be changed to Program Skating. No?

Only English-speaking nations (UK, Canada, Australia, USA) call it figure skating. The rest of the world call it artistic skating. Asian nations simply call it ice skating.

http://youtu.be/UTQ5ilIvjNE

Jaana · Jul 5, 2011

blue dog said:
Only English-speaking nations (UK, Canada, Australia, USA) call it figure skating. The rest of the world call it artistic skating. Asian nations simply call it ice skating.

What about Russians? I believe they call the sport "figurnoe katanie" or something like that? Figurnoe sounds to me like figure, LOL, but I could be wrong, of course.

Joesitz (RIP) · Jul 5, 2011

The bottom line is FIGURE skating came first as a judged sport. It wasn't a program of tricks until Jackson Haines started doing those tricks with music. He was also the creative artist who introduced the sitsspin. From what I read: some skaters and fans of today do not know their Skate History, nor do they care to. They seem only interested in what makes them feel something special by a performance of emoting. I'm not sure if it is more the music than the skater that gets to them. Someimes, However, there is a Trick (4Flip) which gets them going, with Falls that are forgiveable with a wrist slap.

blue dog · Jul 5, 2011

I still maintain that the way figures were skated back then, if re-introduced today could be judged by a computer. A lot of advances have been made in computer science that will most likely enable us to do this. The computer will be fairer than your average judge. It certainly won't be toe-tapping to communicate to the computer sitting next to it.

mskater93 · Jul 5, 2011

LOL! Thanks for bringing up Judge Balkov here! How would you program the computer to judge body carriage and speed?

gkelly · Jul 5, 2011

blue dog said:
It certainly won't be toe-tapping to communicate to the computer sitting next to it.

mskater93 said:
LOL! Thanks for bringing up Judge Balkov here!

You mean Judge Babenko and/or Korytek, I presume? (1999 Worlds pairs scandal, Balkov was involved in the 1998 Olympics dance scandal)

How would you program the computer to judge body carriage and speed?

I suspect that the challenge would be more in getting the computer to perceive those qualities, in three dimensions over time. Once the sensing technology is perfected, writing a program to give consistent weights to each relevant quality over the time it takes to complete the figure should be relatively straightforward. Of course, first the ISU would need to decide on how to weight speed vs. carriage vs. accuracy of the print, etc.

Mathman · Jul 5, 2011

^ Would that be a good thing?

Once we program a computer to model the perfect skater, then we can start up a eugenics project to produce him. :yes:

Joesitz (RIP) · Jul 5, 2011

There's really no point in bringing back school figures. They don't make money, and the Organizers need money to run the Sport and also for their salaries.

mskater93 · Jul 6, 2011

Mathman said:
Once we program a computer to model the perfect skater, then we can start up a eugenics project to produce him. :yes:

Why not just clone some of the best skaters now and maybe mix up their genes a little to get the perfect skater? The technology exists. They could spring into existence full grown.

Mafke · Jul 8, 2011

silverpond said:
The only time I recall ever seeing any competition television coverage of the school figures was at the 1990 Worlds, the last international competition to include them. Midori Ito, the defending World champion, skated disastrous figures, finishing 10th in that segment of the competition.

She didn't do too badly on the first figure, an LBO paragraph double three, placing 6th or so if memory serves. Her second figure a RFO paragraph loop was a true disaster and was around 16th. It was probably the worst figure ever done by a skater who ended up medalling.

Looking at the marks for Calgary at winter memories she got lower scores for her loop than for the first two figures. This feeds into my theory that while she could improve the figures with turns her powerful jumping legs could never really be brought under control for loops. This meant that reducing the figures to two (as long as one of them was a loop) actually hurt her more than helped. Kind of ironic....

Does anyone know what figures the ladies skated in Paris in 1989? More specifically what loop figure was skated?

Joesitz (RIP) · Jul 8, 2011

Mathman said:
One of the problems with the scoring back then was that the gap in points between a good figure and an outstanding one was very large. In free skating, even if you finished third or forth, you did not lose many combined points.

So outstanding figures plus OK free skating would always win over the skater with opposite skills, no matter what percentage of the total was assigned to which part.

I don't know what 'gaps' have to do with scoring. Figures were judged on quality. If a skater had quality figures, the scores reflected that. A skater who won the Figures would still have to skate a Free Program. The two scores were combined with the school figures at an advantage. It was incumbent on the winner of Figures to skate a better than average free program to win the competition. Some did, some didn't. Winning the Free Skate segment would always bring the skater up from whatever results he had after figures. The results of a winning school figure skater compared with a winner of the free program were always full of emotions, but that was the game of FIGURE skating. As I suggested, the name of todays game should be changed to Program Skating. However, since money is so important I doubt that change would bring in more fans.

Some posters scorn Figure Skating history as unimportant, and only consider figure skating at the time of their interest.

Judging the "Old-Fashioned" Way

silverpond

attyfan

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Blades of Passion

Skating is Art, if you let it be

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