Judges not following the rules?

[theflaminskater]

I witnessed a competition recently where a skater did jumps not allowed + more jumps than allowed in that level yet still won first place. They also fell out of their spins and, just in general, had a difficult time (even crashing into the wall). I don't see how this is allowed. Is this like normal for skating?
The level did not have your normal score reporting just a rating system

 

[Diana Delafield]

I witnessed a competition recently where a skater did jumps not allowed + more jumps than allowed in that level yet still won first place. They also fell out of their spins and, just in general, had a difficult time (even crashing into the wall). I don't see how this is allowed. Is this like normal for skating?
The level did not have your normal score reporting just a rating system

Where was this, specifically, and at what level?

 

[Mathematician]

I think 2024 is a bit too late for people to continue allowing themselves surprise over poor sports arbiters

 

[TallyT]

Is this like normal for skating?

Pretty much these days, probably.

 

[Diana Delafield]

I think 2024 is a bit too late for people to continue allowing themselves surprise over poor sports arbiters

My assumption was that, without the usual marking system (according to the OP), this was not an ISU competition and thus didn't need to follow their rules. It sounds like a local club or rink competition and the volunteer judges simply ranked the skaters they saw in order, with the others performing even less proficiently. Whoever came first didn't need to be a good skater, just the best that happened to be on the ice that day. I may be wrong, but it was why I questioned the locality (could have been in any country) and the level (could have been beginners having an informal "competition" at the end of their series of group lessons). I'm reserving judgement until the OP responds with some more specific facts.

 

[theflaminskater]

My assumption was that, without the usual marking system (according to the OP), this was not an ISU competition and thus didn't need to follow their rules. It sounds like a local club or rink competition and the volunteer judges simply ranked the skaters they saw in order, with the others performing even less proficiently. Whoever came first didn't need to be a good skater, just the best that happened to be on the ice that day. I may be wrong, but it was why I questioned the locality (could have been in any country) and the level (could have been beginners having an informal "competition" at the end of their series of group lessons). I'm reserving judgement until the OP responds with some more specific facts.

I’m not for sure I know it was an Adult high beginner level and it was in Texas and a full competition (all levels there for kids and also adult bronze etc ) they did normal calculated scoring for every other level but this one

 

[Diana Delafield]

I’m not for sure I know it was an Adult high beginner level and it was in Texas and a full competition (all levels there for kids and also adult bronze etc ) they did normal calculated scoring for every other level but this one

There's your explanation then. Many small non-qualifying competitions include a mixed bag of classes, to make up enough skaters to fill a day or part of a day. Not all classes are in the track that uses the kind of ISU rules you were thinking of (or it may have been an ISI competition, which is a different organization with their own tests and competitions but not leading to the ISU national and international ones). Adult Beginners would just be a fun class for those skaters who'd been taking group Learn to Skate lessons, to get a taste of performing whatever they'd bean attempting so far, out on the ice alone with "judges" watching. The other classes for the kids may have been more serious, but that class wasn't. What you saw was fine. The skater who was deemed the best was being rewarded for attempting the most variety of elements and almost-sort-of completing them .

If you look at some videos on youtube of adult competitions, you'll see a very wide range of skill levels. Personally, I would admire any adult beginner who would be happy to perform their limited skills solo for spectators! Their friends in the audience and the judges would cut them a lot of slack. Marks for brave attempts . (I started skating at 5 and competed up to the national senior level in my country. I can't imagine trying jumps and spins for the first time as an adult. Good for them!)

 

[gkelly]

Did this competition also include Basic Skills or Aspire events for kids? Those events would also have been judged using the 6.0 judging system and not IJS. It is entirely within the rules to use the 6.0 system at these levels, as well as Adult Beginner and Adult High Beginner.

(For Adult Bronze and even Pre-Bronze, and for Pre-Preliminary, Preliminary, and Pre-Juvenile well-balanced and Excel tracks for kids, some competitions use 6.0 and some use IJS. It's up to the host club and the chief referee which judging system to use for those levels, depending on the amount of ice time and officials available. 6.0 events are much cheaper to run and therefore usually have lower entry fees.

There are some Excel levels that must use IJS if they are part of the Excel Series, which is in progress this time of year so chances are a recent competition was part of the series.)

The rules for 6.0 judging are much more flexible than for IJS. Basically the judges should look at the quality of the skating first, then at the difficulty and quality of the elements attempted, and then take deductions for falls, time violations, and elements not allowed at that level. If a skater started out with higher scores before any such deductions, they might still end up ahead of other skaters even after the deduction.

The problem with 6.0 scoring from a spectator's (or skater's/coach's) perspective is that the details of the judges' thought processes don't get reported in the scoring -- usually all that's posted is the ordinals. So there's no way to know what each judge gave credit for or what deductions they took.

As an Adult Bronze skater, I was frustrated that I had to give up freestyle competition before it became common to offer IJS at that level, so I never got that detailed feedback.

Also, judges assigned to those competitions are often less experienced than judges assigned to IJS events. It's part of the process of learning how to judge.

If you are a USFS member and you are over 16, perhaps you would like to get started on that process yourself. In which case you would start by judging low levels using the 6.0 judging system.

 

[noskates]

This is an annual thread - only the title changes from year to year. For my opinion, as long as humans are responsible for judging other humans, they will always be subject to criticism. It happens in just about every sport that isn't timed. I think it's a very, very tough task to do and decisions have to be made very quickly. Stuff happens.

 

[TallyT]

This is an annual thread - only the title changes from year to year. For my opinion, as long as humans are responsible for judging other humans, they will always be subject to criticism. It happens in just about every sport that isn't timed. I think it's a very, very tough task to do and decisions have to be made very quickly. Stuff happens.

It does depend on how much stuff and how often...

But from the posts above, it seems this was a minor affair.