New COP and judging. Improvement?

Another insider is apparently weighing in on the backstage shenanigans in figure skating. Bringing up the question: is the new CoP system an improvement?

Check out this article: fs judging-is cop an improvement?

Okay, their source is a fs/isu insider with a new book coming out. (Cracked Ice). Does she have a book to sell or are her points valid?

What I thought was most interesting about the article was the discussion about the tech specialists. The ISU believes that the biggest cause of cheating is national federations conspiring and pressuring judges. This supposedly would be mitigated by have the tech specialist and his/her crew appointed directly by the ISU.

But now there is the suspicion that Ponomarenko, serving as tech specialist, might have cheated against the rivals of the skaters that he coached, having nothing to do with national bias. Personally, I don't see any evidence to back up that claim, but that's the point. The suspicion lingers, especially in the minds of people who support the alleged victims -- in this case in the mind of this columnist for the Manchester Guardian who no doubt supports Kerr and Kerr.

That has always been a potential problem with the CoP. The tech specialist and his team have pretty much unlimited, and pretty much unsupervised, powers over the outcome of the contest.

It is always bad, in any sporting event, if the fans leave the arena talking about the referees instead of the players.

Mathman

I agree that his introduces a potential for appearance of impropriety, which is not good. However, I think this is a baseless acusation against a very honorable man; the deduction had a reason. While obviously it would have been improper for Sergei to be a technical specialist at an event where his team would be skating, I just find it hard to believe that he would mark down the Kerrs because they are his team's rivals. It just doesn't add up. Also, frases such as Leading coaches have been approached to become technical judging experts. Some have declined, but others - including Sergei Ponomarenko, the former Russian gold medal-winning ice dancer who coaches the British pair Pamela O'Connor and Jonathan O'Dougherty - have agreed. imply that there is something wrong with agrying to be a technical expert.

There is nothing to stop a group of 4 or 5 judges from getting together to decide in advance which skaters/teams will win or place on the podium or the top 10 in a competition.

Judges can see results from previous competitions and know pretty much the average PCS marks in each component category for the different skaters. All they have to do is colloborate on the PCS marks, marking certain skaters automatically lower or higher than other skaters, based on those averages. That will either drive the average up or down, as desired.

I think judges are already doing this.

I still thinks that needs a little work. What I like about it is that you can comeback easily if you have a bad short program

euterpe said:

There is nothing to stop a group of 4 or 5 judges from getting together to decide in advance which skaters/teams will win or place on the podium or the top 10 in a competition...

I think judges are already doing this.

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Just like in 6.0 ordinal judging, in the judging of school figures, or for that matter, the 9 justices of the U.S. Supreme court deciding legal matters.

All we can ever do is hope that the judges are people of integrity and expertise, and keep them under the scrutiny of the public spotlight. This is why we need to be wary of secret judging.

But then, too, it was the public outcry that led to the reversal of the judges' decisions in Salt Lake City, and that didn't do much to inspire public confidence, either.

Mathman

Bianchetto has been around judging for many, many years, and she knows what goes on. I'm surprised she is owning up to it now but I guess she has been waiting to sell her book before the 2006 Olys. I'll buy it. I suspect she has a lot to say.

As for the CoP there is plenty of room for some judges to cheat and in cooperation with the Caller if he is able to. Collusions can still occur, finagling with the + and - scores either subjectively, in collusion, or as one poster mentioned, in revenge. While the random drawing may illiminate some sulldugery, it still will exist. the only answer to this is to publicize the judges' names.

So read the book and then decide if the Olys or Worlds will be on the up and up.

Joe

Unfortunately, as long as human beings are involved in the process, whether as judges or technical specialists, there will be accusations of bias and favoritism. As I don't think mechanical robots could do either of these jobs, this is always going to be a problem. Even if we used robots to do these jobs, there would probably be accusations that the person who programmed the robots programmed them in a biased way. Some people may have legitimate gripes sometimes, but sometimes it is much easier to blame others than to critically evaluate your skating or your programs.

Personally, I doubt that Ponomarenko was biased. I think he has too much integrity to do that--at least he strikes me that way.

It's not like we didn't have to worry about similar incidents happening with the old judging. Remember during the 1994 Olympics the Ukrainian judge Alfred Korytek was the father of Oksana Baiul's former coach.

Eeyora said:

It's not like we didn't have to worry about similar incidents happening with the old judging. Remember during the 1994 Olympics the Ukrainian judge Alfred Korytek was the father of Oksana Baiul's former coach.

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Eeyora, one controller could potentially do far more damage than one judge. A judge is just one of many, but caller is unique.

The difference is we KNOW who the caller is (all 3, the Technical Controller, the Tech Specialist and Assistant Tech Specialist, have to agree on a judgment). If a caller consistently favors certain skaters and downgrades elements for others, it's pretty obvious.

Even if we see patterns of too-low or too-high marks from judges, we have no way of knowing who the culprits are.