Cheating is such a loaded word. (One poster here used it to mean cheating on the jumps, which is an entirely different meaning: it just means under rotation. That's not cheating in the large sense of the word, doing something underhanded.) In most sports, scandalous cheating involves the athletes: did they fix the game, or take banned substances that give them an advantage in strength? This is not what happens in skating. The judging is out of the athletes' hands. If there is any chicanery, such as planning before a competition to favor one skater over another, it is on the part of judges (which is a very serious charge and not one any of us have proof of), or of federations. If that is going on in any unethical way, of course it must be found out and stopped.
But what we are talking about is a seemingly incomprehensible weighting of marks so that a u/r costs a skater more than an outright fall. This isn't cheating but a misapplication of scoring criteria (in my mind at least). Of course this should be rectified, but I can't see using the word cheating in the way it was used in baseball, for example, when several of the best home run hitters turned out to have built themselves up with steroids, or in cycling, when almost none of the major winners were riding clean. That's cheating. Dennis Ten getting a silver medal is not.
But what we are talking about is a seemingly incomprehensible weighting of marks so that a u/r costs a skater more than an outright fall. This isn't cheating but a misapplication of scoring criteria (in my mind at least). Of course this should be rectified, but I can't see using the word cheating in the way it was used in baseball, for example, when several of the best home run hitters turned out to have built themselves up with steroids, or in cycling, when almost none of the major winners were riding clean. That's cheating. Dennis Ten getting a silver medal is not.