Scoring bias at the national level

[Mathman]

To me, Virtue and Moir in 2018 were not Virtue and Moir in 2010, while Papadokis and Cziseron went into the competition primed as the rising stars who were going to make everyone forget all about Torvill and Dean. Davis and White had more of a long-standing traditional rivalry with V&M and provoked passionate responses from fans. Nobody had any dislike for P&C.

About the participation of federation officials as judges, I don't know for sure but I can imagine that this might happen a lot in the case of a small federation that has only a few ISU-certified judges, all of them active in fedearation affairs. For Canada, it would not be so much of a burden if the iSU were to decide that this is a bad look that might open the ISU to criticism.

Weaver & Poje and Gillis & Poirier is another case where am not surprised to see a wide discrepancy among judges. Both of these teams struggled mightily to achieve the international results that they so richly deserved, in the view of Canadian fans. (And don't get me started on Bourne and Kraatz!) I can see where human nature might push a judge in the direction of "righting the unfairness."

 

[4everchan]

Nobody had any dislike for P&C.

That is not true. Many fans complained about two things : Simpler and repetitive lifts, One-note programs.

About the participation of federation officials as judges, I don't know for sure but I can imagine that this might happen a lot in the case of a small federation that has only a few ISU-certified judges, all of them active in fedearation affairs. For Canada, it would not be so much of a burden if the iSU were to decide that this is a bad look that might open the ISU to criticism.

Exactly, Leanna Caron is not to blame here. It's the ISU who invited her.

Weaver & Poje and Gillis & Poirier is another case where am not surprised to see a wide discrepancy among judges. Both of these teams struggled mightily to achieve the international results that they so richly deserved, in the view of Canadian fans. (And don't get me started on Bourne and Kraatz!) I can see where human nature might push a judge in the direction of "righting the unfairness."

Let's not even start with Bourne and Kraatz indeed and for sure, Weaver and Poje deserved a world title and/or an Olympic medal. They ended their career without either. (BK didn't get an olympic medal either)

 

[4everchan]

Only in the Short Dance, no French judge scored the Free.

They scored P/C almost exactly the same as the average of the panel (+0.17), but scored V/M a bit lower than the rest of the panel (-2.17), so the difference would be 2.34 from the French judge in favour of P/C.

So, milder but still a favourable national bias.

The Canadian judge gave V/M a higher score by 1.43 and P/C a lower score by 3.23 points, i.e. 4.66 in favour of V/M in the SD. In the FD, the difference of the Canadian judge's TSS was 6.25 in favour of V/M.

The number in the TSS cannot be compared if there was no French judge in the FD. It may have counterbalanced considering that indeed, the panel in general felt the French won the Free Dance. See what I mean ? If anything, the French lost their Olympic medal due to the draw of judges ? That says everything

The point is that the ISU really needs to stop having judges from top contenders.

I'd say neither of these are the biggest differences I've seen in favour of their own country (though looking at Ms Caron's scores for W/P and G/P, maybe it is actually more than I realised on her part (over 11 pts more for W/P than the actual event score, she would have put them in 3rd overall) ), but Canada definitely had the advantage here when it came to a helpful judge.

Well well that's interesting I think Weapo were blatantly underscored so I guess I am not the only Canadian who thought so


In any case, overall, the problem is not Leanna Caron but the ISU itself

1) they accepted a judge that may appear to be in a conflict of interest
2) they should never appoint judges from the feds of top contenders in ISU championships
3) it seems like the draw of judges has a huge impact on the overall results, especially in ice dance where scores can be tighter. The ISU needs to think this better.

In the other event that opened up this thread, the problem was really the judge not the ISU

 

[Kittosuni]

I also would be curious to find out if other presidents who are also ISU judges have served in ISU championships/Olympics. I suspect Caron is not the only one.

No one has done it except for Skate Canada’s president Caron.

 

[4everchan]

No one has done it except for Skate Canada’s president Caron.

Again, who did allow her as a judge for that event ? Fair enough if no other presidents did judge but do you really think that Didier didn't have any influence on his French judges ? What about the president of other nations with their respective judges? I think it's naive to think other nations never sent judges that were very involved within their own feds.

 

[Andrea82]

Again, who did nominate her as a judge for that event ?

Skate Canada nominated her. Canada was drawn for the panel and it was up to Skate Canada to nominate on of their ISU judges to serve.

 

[4everchan]

Skate Canada nominated her.

Sure, I misspoke. They nominated their eligible judge to the event. Fine. I think my point is that the ISU is accepting these nominations by not having strict rules about appearance of conflict of interest

 

[Kittosuni]

Exactly, Leanna Caron is not to blame here. It's the ISU who invited her.

Correct, even though the optics were really bad, it was technically not agaisnt the rule.

And no, the ISU did not invite her to judge. It’s up to the Federation’s discretion on which judge among their pool of judges to nominate. In this case Skate Canada specifically assigned her.

 

[4everchan]

Correct, even though the optics were really bad, it was technically not agaisnt the rule.

And no, the ISU did not invite her to judge. It’s up to the Federation’s discretion on which judge among their pool of judges to nominate. In this case Skate Canada specifically assigned her.

Yeah I got that. Skate Canada appointed her, but the real issue is not within Skate Canada nor Leanna Caron. The issue is that the ISU rules didn't have proper ethics here to avoid appearance of a conflict of interest. Now they do... but it's not going far enough and do we see really an improvement in judging ? Apparently not, since this thread exposed a judging bias from the USA judge.

 

[Mathman]

2) they should never appoint judges from the feds of top contenders in ISU championships

I don't think this is really possible. Every federation has the right to send judges if their country is selected in the draw.

For one thing, the ISU does not want to be put in the position of having to pre-judge the competition by officially declaring beforehand whp are regarded as the "top contenders" and who are just there as cannon fodder.

3) it seems like the draw of judges has a huge impact on the overall results, especially in ice dance where scores can be tighter. The ISU needs to think this better.

It is better than it used to be, One year, I think it was 2002, Michelle Kwan got an unlucky judges' draw for Worlds, with 6 Irina Slutskaya federations selected (as I recall) with only 3 Michelle Kwan countries represented . They asked Dick Button on TV what he thought Michelle's chances would be in the upcoming competition. Button replied, "With this panel? 0."

To be fair, Slutskaya did skate better, especially in the short program.

I think the only way to reduce the luck-of-the-draw factor would be to increase the number of judges. And in fact the ISU did increase the panel to 14 judges for 2003, with the Interim Scoring System (so I remember -- corrections invited as always ).

 

[4everchan]

I don't think this is really possible. Every federation has the right to send judges if their country is selected in the draw.

For one thing, the ISU does not want to be in the position of having to pre-judge the competition by officially declaring beforehand whp are regarded as the "top contenders" and who are just there as cannon fodder.

I may be mistaken but there is already a measure along these lines. It's not about pre-judging, it's established from previous reasons. Someone can find the appropriate ruling about this.

It is better than it used to be, One year, I think it was 2002, Michelle Kwan got an unlucky judges draw for Worlds, with 6 Irina Slutskaya federations selected (as I recall) with only 3 Michelle Kwan countries represented . They asked Dick Button on TV what he thought Michelle's chances would be in the upcoming competition. Button replied, "With this panel? 0."

Well.. so why bring up Leanna Caron then that was ONE judge favouring VM Only one

To be fair, Slutskaya did skate better, especially in the short program.

One could argue that knowing the panel, she was less nervous and skated freely.

I think the only way to reduce the luck-of-the-draw factor would be to increase the number of judges. And in fact the ISU did increase the panel to 14 judges for 2003, with the Interim Scoring System (so I remember -- corrections invited as always ).

The simple point that we are still talking about this, even after IJS -which was going to solve judging issues and hasn't, shows that there is still obvious problems within the sport. I don't see other judges sports having entire threads dedicated to biased judges as much as in figure skating

 

[Mathman]

I may be mistaken but there is already a measure along these lines. It's not about pre-judging, it's established from previous reasons. Someone can find the appropriate ruling about this.

I would be very muich opposed to applying different rules about selection of judges that depend on the perceived strength of their skaters, We want fair judging for the medal contenders. But we want equally fair judging for the skater whose aspiration is to make the top ten. Or to do well enough to qualify his country for spots next year. Or just to make the free skate. Or even just to skate his best and to receive a fair evaluation for his efforts. Whatever steps we take to improve judging accountability for the medal contenders should be applied to everybody and to all federations and countries.

Well.. so why bring up Leanna Caron then

The poster (@Kittosuni) who brought up Leanna Caron did so in response to information (posted by @Andrea82) regarding the details surrounding the 2018 revision in the conflict of interest rules.

I do think that the ISU has improved, both in terms of public perception and in actual fact, on the different issue (different from the home cooking and conflict of interest issues) of backroom deal-making, bloc voting, vote-swapping, internal ISU politics, etc, that traditionally plagued the sport.

 

[4everchan]

I would be very muich opposed to applying different rules about selection of judges that depend on the perceived strength of their skaters, We want fair judging for the medal contenders. But we want equally fair judging for the skater whose aspiration is to make the top ten. Or to do well enough to qualify his country for spots next year. Or just to make the free skate. Or even just to skate his best and to receive a fair evaluation for his efforts. Whatever steps we take to improve judging accountability for the medal contenders should be applied to everybody and to all federations and countries.

The poster (@Kittosuni) who brought up Leanna Caron did so in response to information (posted by @Andrea82) regarding the details surrounding the 2018 revision in the conflict of interest rules.

I do think that the ISU has improved, both in terms of public perception and in actual fact, on the different issue (different from the home cooking and conflict of interest issues) of backroom deal-making, bloc voting, vote-swapping, internal ISU politics, etc, that traditionally plagued the sport.

Here
So it's not about the judges but about the tech panel / referee.

1.2 No individual shall serve as a member of the Technical Panel or as the Referee at and the Olympic
Winter Games in a discipline in which Skaters/Pairs/Ice Dance couples of his/her own ISU
Member participate who has/have placed 1 – 5 at the ISU World Championships in the
immediately preceding season or who can reasonably be expected to place 1 – 5 at the respective
Olympic Winter Games.
1.3 When appointing the members of the Technical Panel and the Referees for ISU Senior
Championships, whenever possible, there shall be no appointments of Officials from ISU
Members whose Skaters can reasonably be expected to place 1 – 5 in the respective discipline.
In case this is not possible, all members of the Technical Panel and the Referee for the respective
discipline shall, whenever possible, be from ISU Members whose Skater(s) can reasonably be
expected to place 1 – 5 in the respective discipline at the ISU Championships concerned


I wish they extended that to the judges as well... maybe top 3 if top 5 is too difficult to do.

 

[Skating91]

There was a national championship recently with a 10+ PCS gap between 1st and 2nd. The correct person won, and was well ahead of the competition. Still, it seemed quite extraordinary to me.

Has this ever happened before?

These kinds of gaps in PCS for 1st and 2nd might happen in a tiny skating nation where 4-5 people take part in the competition with one pro against four amateurs, but in one of the bigger skating nations I'm not so sure.

 

[skatingguy]

If we go back to 2010, there was also a huge uproar but not so much in the scoring of ice dance but in the very problematic cultural appropriation OD presented by Bobrova/Soloviev.

I think you meant Domnina/Shabalin.

 

[4everchan]

I think you meant Domnina/Shabalin.

that is correct. sometimes, the names... sigh. I corrected it : thank you.

 

[Jumping_Bean]

I don't see other judges sports having entire threads dedicated to biased judges as much as in figure skating

Not a connoisseur of Rhythmic Gymnastics then?

Granted, things have gotten a bit quieter on that front since the Russians aren't competing at big international events anymore, but there are whole YouTube channels and IG and Twitter accounts dedicated to the CoP and judging analyses. And when Daria Varfolomeev won all five golds at the WCh in 2023, there was a big discussion about whether or not she deserved it.

The only reason people aren't going in on individual judges is because the system quite literally doesn't allow for it. Not only are the scores given by individual judges not publicised, the panel is also separated into multiple smaller groups of judges who look at different aspects of the routines - From counting the difficulty (further separated into body difficulty and apparatus difficulty), to execution judges and judges for scoring artistry, no judge actually gives a full score for a routine (as that would just simply be impossible to do, the routines are just 90 sec long, but packed with difficulty and each small execution fault has to be marked down as well). In skating, yes, there's a separation of technical panel (the equivalent of the D judges in RG) and judges for everything else, but because of this we can calculate what score individual judges would have given if they were alone on the judging panel, which is not possible for RG.

 

[icewhite]

Scoring in Rhythmic gymnastics is such a joke, I don't watch it for exactly that reason.

 

[Mathman]

Here
So it's not about the judges but about the tech panel / referee.

1.2 No individual shall serve as a member of the Technical Panel or as the Referee at and the Olympic
Winter Games in a discipline in which Skaters/Pairs/Ice Dance couples of his/her own ISU
Member participate who has/have placed 1 – 5 at the ISU World Championships in the
immediately preceding season or who can reasonably be expected to place 1 – 5 at the respective
Olympic Winter Games.

Other parts of the same document specifically bundle judges together with referees and tech specialists.

For purposes of whether a conflict of interest exists under the Code of Ethics, there is no reasonable objective basis to differentiate between the perceived fairness of Officials appointed by the ISU and the perceived fairness of Judges selected by their ISU Member. In other words, because these other elected and paid ISU Member leadership positions are considered to be a conflict of interest by their very nature for ISU-appointed Officials under the Code of Ethics, the same conflict of interest exists under the Code of Ethics for Judges selected by their ISU Member. Therefore, to be consistent under the Code of Ethics with respect to conflicts of interest, the same limited restrictions will now apply to Judges under this Communication No. 2589 paragraph 2.2 as have been applied to ISU-appointed Officials since July 2019..

1.3 When appointing the members of the Technical Panel and the Referees for ISU Senior
Championships, whenever possible, there shall be no appointments of Officials from ISU
Members whose Skaters can reasonably be expected to place 1 – 5 in the respective discipline.
In case this is not possible, all members of the Technical Panel and the Referee for the respective
discipline shall, whenever possible, be from ISU Members whose Skater(s) can reasonably be
expected to place 1 – 5 in the respective discipline at the ISU Championships concerned.

I had to laugh when I got to this part. Am I reading tit right? If possible then the 1-5 rule applies. If this is not possible, then, um, never mind.

To me, this is not a good rule at all. Can a federation official who aspires to serve as a tech specialist challenge the ISU's opinion as to who can reasonably be expected to finish 1-5 in a competition that has not taken place yet? Me, I would hire a lawyer to put forth the asrgument, "You think that our crappy skaters can finish in the top five?"

This rule is intended to insure fair judging for skaters whose competitors "can reasonably be expected to finish in the top five." Why isn't there equal concern for skaters whose chief rivals can reasonably be expected to finish no higher than 10th? (I suppose that this falls under, "it's not possible.")

 

[skatingguy]

I had to laugh when I got to this part. Am I reading tit right? If possible then the 1-5 rule applies. If this is not possible, then, um, never mind.

It's written that way in case the rule excludes all qualified candidates to fill the role. In a sport like figure skating that is so dependent on the national federations to train, and develop the sport it's always going to be difficult to develop officials who aren't strongly connected to the national federation.