Replay Lounge 2026 Olympics | Ice Dance

[Mathman]

By the way, the "trimmed mean" is a very troublesome statistic, verging over into the weed-infested field of "non-parametric staistics." Except in cases where certain smoothing conditions obtain (notably symmetry), the trimmed mean does not follow any well understood distribution of values, and various "bootstrap" methods are often called upon.

If you try to talk about standard deviations, for instance, you have to use the full n=9 for sample size, even though only 7 scores contribute to the "mean."

 

[Mathman]

Madison Chock says ice dance judges should "be vetted and reviewed" after France's controversial win at Winter Olympics

Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates, considered the favorites, placed second in the 2026 Winter Olympics. France's Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron took home gold.

www.cbsnews.com

I think the main problem -- why public perception of incompetence and skulduggery in ice dance judging will never go away no matter what -- is that the general public. and even fans with a lot of practice in watching figure skating competitions, have no idea what is being scored. So quite naturally when one team wins and another doesn't, it's like, "Huh? -- I liked the other team better."

As opposed, for instance to men. Even the most casual observer can see that this guy fell down more times than that guy, and, with the help of commentary, can understanding that some jumps are harder than others so they get more points.

 

[NanaPat]

Thank you! I did not know this.

as noted in aove posts, it is outdated/no longer true.

Look on skating scores, and click a little box that says something like "details" and it will show you which marks were not included (top and bottom on each element). Sometimes the particular judge whose mark is cast out is random, but the value is not.

For example, if an element gets two -1's, four 0's and three +1's, it will put a line through one of the -1's and one of the +1's leaving one -1, four 0's and two +1's. Those are the marks that are averaged. It is arbitrary which of the two -1's and which of the three +1's are crossed out. But you get the same average no matter what choice you make for the / marks.

 

[NanaPat]

So Chock says that they skated the best they ever had, worked hard, and didn't make any mistakes ("skated flawlessly"), implying that therefore they should have won. The same thing applies to Piper and Paul and many of the lower-ranked teams. In fact, many teams "skated flawlessly". I'd have to go through the protocols to identify all of them, but in my recollection there were quite a few in the dance event. "Skating flawlessly" (ie absence of mistakes) does not guarantee a win.

To my recollection, in the men's free Stephen Gogolev and Matteo Rizzo were the skaters who came closest to "skating flawlessly". Does that mean Gogolev should have come ahead of Shaidorov and Rizzo should have come ahead of everyone but Gogolev? Of course not.

 

[4everchan]

So Chock says that they skated the best they ever had, worked hard, and didn't make any mistakes ("skated flawlessly"), implying that therefore they should have won. The same thing applies to Piper and Paul and many of the lower-ranked teams. In fact, many teams "skated flawlessly". I'd have to go through the protocols to identify all of them, but in my recollection there were quite a few in the dance event. "Skating flawlessly" (ie absence of mistakes) does not guarantee a win.

Yup... And some people, including them, have won with mistakes before. I don't understand their point of view. I thought the French were better, even with the mistakes.. and so did some of the judges

To my recollection, in the men's free Stephen Gogolev and Matteo Rizzo were the skaters who came closest to "skating flawlessly". Does that mean Gogolev should have come ahead of Shaidorov and Rizzo should have come ahead of everyone but Gogolev? Of course not.

I am still in the middle of watching... Rizzo popped his quad..

 

[NanaPat]

Yup... And some people, including them, have won with mistakes before. I don't understand their point of view. I thought the French were better, even with the mistakes.. and so did some of the judges

I am still in the middle of watching... Rizzo popped his quad..

I was looking at GOE's. Only Gogolev and Rizzo had only one small negative GOE. Every other man had multiple minuses or one large one.

 

[Arigato]

On what basis?

Sour grapes.

Btw, the ISU weighed in already:

https://www.cbssports.com/olympics/news/2026-winter-olympics-ice-dancing-controversy-evan-bates-madison-chock-french-judge/

 

[Skater Boy]

I know nothing about ice dance scoring, but on the twizzle sequence Cizeron quite visibly hit his blade against his leg and that threw him off for a second. Otherwise, as far as I can see, they did fine. Maybe not Gillis and Poirier fine, but fine.

Chock and Bates did fine, too.

To me, that's sports. Somebody wins, somebody comes in second. Partisan fans are left to feel (in the words of @TontoK ) either smug or outraged. Fans of other skaters feel elated (Gillis and Poirier fans) or disappointed (Fear and Gibson fans) at the performances of their faves, never mind the placement. I was rooting for Chock and Bates, but overall I have no issues with the scoring.

(I know, I know. An ice dance fan who has no issues with the scoring? Is such a thing even possible? )

Congratulations to the top three teams - in my humble opinion there is good reason for all three to win gold and I wish they would just give three gold medals to the US, France and Canada. Judging is inherently flawed. Even if it was not national bias you have the fact that judges are taught to be in the range which is often based on pre slotting teams. While one ca say well the judges budged on Piper and Paul to get third from being pre slotted or destined for fourth or fifth even their own country would feel pressure to maeks sure they are in the range even though there were lots of reason they should have been second in the RD and won the FD. THe thing is you can make an error and lose a level but again the overall performance and tech elements could be enough to make up the bobbles. Though a different scoring system that's how Gordeeva and Grinkov could beat ARtur and his partner in 1994 likewise how the Russians could beat Canada in 2002 even with some bobbles overall the performance and other elements allowed the Russians to win. I don't know how IAM is dealing with all this conflict from Gabby to Nicolai to Chock and Bates and Laurence and Guillaume to the huge disappointment of Fear and Gibson and the Spanish team. All that tension. I honestly felt for all three podium teams.three worthy of gold. But there is a lot of noise in part because US is large, powerful, loud and lots of resources. And CB are amazing skaters who are popular. But all in that Iam camp can you imagine how horrible it must be. HOnestly I wish we could give al 3 teams the gold. It aes up for the horrible skating in the men's competition.

 

[4everchan]

Don't worry about the IAM camp. Some skaters will retire. Some skaters may move out, other move in.

 

[Skater Boy]

I was looking at GOE's. Only Gogolev and Rizzo had only one small negative GOE. Every other man had multiple minuses or one large one.

Hoenstly I would have given Gogo a bit higher score in the FS but that would have also, gulp, put him on the actual podiu mahead of sato. Can you imagine the uproar???

 

[NanaPat]

Hoenstly I would have given Gogo a bit higher score in the FS but that would have also, gulp, put him on the actual podiu mahead of sato. Can you imagine the uproar???

The same result would have happened if he'd skated his team SP in the individual event. I can imagine... heads would explode.

 

[throw_triple_flip]

Madison Chock says ice dance judges should "be vetted and reviewed" after France's controversial win at Winter Olympics

Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates, considered the favorites, placed second in the 2026 Winter Olympics. France's Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron took home gold.

www.cbsnews.com

I totally agree that judging should be scrutinised and all, but i think this is incredibly hypocritical of her.

Does she really care about fairness or only when it suits her?

 

[ladyjane]

I'm really in favour of @4everchan's suggestion to not let judges judge on their own country's participants (so you should have some back-up judges to use: when it's the turn of an ID or Pair couple or single skater from Canada, the Canadian judge would step back and one of the 'back-up judges would take his/her place, same with the US, GB, FR and the rest of them). If only because of the natural tendency to either score your own skater(s) too high, or - score them too strict because you don't want to be accused of bias. The putting down of competitive teams would also be impossible. Those chosen for back up get a lot of experience, even without permanently sitting on the panel.

Often judges have given feed back at the beginning of the season to skaters on their programmes, costumes and what not. That happens in many countries. That's pretty helpful to the skaters, but it also means skaters are known and perhaps even liked (or not) which won't make the judging easier. Most people would not like to judge a well known skater/couple too harshly.

This might help. The best thing actually would be to make it understandable for the viewer which it is not. But I think that would be impossible to achieve!

 

[peepsquick]

Watch 'The Skating Session' on the FD. It is enlightening. I think the people get caught up in their wishes/emotions to see 'their' skaters win but this has nothing to do with fairness imho. We'll always have outcries of disgruntled fans and I am getting annoyed at the ugliness of some of the reactions/comments. A silver medal at the OG is nothing to sneeze at and unfortunately, longevity in the sport doesn/t mean you'll eventually win. Sometimes it does but more often, it doesn't.

 

[4everchan]

I'm really in favour of @4everchan's suggestion to not let judges judge on their own country's participants (so you should have some back-up judges to use: when it's the turn of an ID or Pair couple or single skater from Canada, the Canadian judge would step back and one of the 'back-up judges would take his/her place, same with the US, GB, FR and the rest of them). If only because of the natural tendency to either score your own skater(s) too high, or - score them too strict because you don't want to be accused of bias. The putting down of competitive teams would also be impossible. Those chosen for back up get a lot of experience, even without permanently sitting on the panel.

Often judges have given feed back at the beginning of the season to skaters on their programmes, costumes and what not. That happens in many countries. That's pretty helpful to the skaters, but it also means skaters are known and perhaps even liked (or not) which won't make the judging easier. Most people would not like to judge a well known skater/couple too harshly.

This might help. The best thing actually would be to make it understandable for the viewer which it is not. But I think that would be impossible to achieve!

it could even been done simpler... no need to replace the judge. Just use the 8 scores remaining, remove the top and lowest score, you got 6 scores left which is enough to calculate an average.

ETA. by the way, they do this at the Chopin competition. A judge who has taught one of the pianists or knows them closely doesn't give them points.

 

[labgoat]

Want to know why the US got 2nd instead of 1st on the Rhythm Dance? Comes down to one step. Look at the linked video for Chock & Bates. Skip to 2:11 where they do a step where the guy is on two feet and the girl steps over the guy’s leg. It is step 29 from the pattern dance Tango Romantica.

Chock & Bates take this on a flat (straight line) instead of a deeply curved edge. Bates should have been leaning hard to his left. He wasn’t.

For reference, look at my own performance of the pattern dance Tango Romantica at 1996 US Nationals. (Link below) Skip to 1:32 and 2:23. We did it twice back in the day, making it a pattern. Note how I am leaning HARD to my left to make it curve rather than go straight.

This seems to be the point and the step that made a half point difference between 1st and 2nd on the Rhythm Dance and possibly the difference between Gold and Silver. Don’t get me wrong. Chock & Bates are the better dancers and it would have been an easy fix. The real question should be why didn’t their coaches see this earlier? Why did the judges wait until the end of the season to take issue with this? Chock & Bates did what they trained. Did they train with a Silver medal performance in mind. Don’t think so.

Chock & Bates Olympic Rhythm Dance (2:11)
https://youtu.be/4M-FW8rTNJ8?si=dCdGj75C0wf_pd7z

Kuchiki & Smull 96 US Nationals (1:32 & 2:23)
https://youtu.be/wPJIZPmkMtg?si=cuoAfWzDmFy_GWg8

Why don’t we know this? Because most of the commentators for the Ice Dance event are Singles skaters that haven’t skated with a partner longer than a hug. It’s like having the World Wrestling Federation comment on a Ballet except the wrestlers would have done more partner work.

Thank you Neal for giving us a fact based point to review. It is very much appreciated by me. I wish we had more of this. Also I remember watching both you and Tamara skate and thought you were both very good and very enjoyable, thank you for posting.

 

[Diana Delafield]

Watch 'The Skating Session' on the FD. It is enlightening. I think the people get caught up in their wishes/emotions to see 'their' skaters win but this has nothing to do with fairness imho. We'll always have outcries of disgruntled fans and I am getting annoyed at the ugliness of some of the reactions/comments. A silver medal at the OG is nothing to sneeze at and unfortunately, longevity in the sport doesn/t mean you'll eventually win. Sometimes it does but more often, it doesn't.

Fortunately there wasn't social media in 1980 at Lake Placid, when world champion Linda Fratianne was supposedly guaranteed the gold. Her mother had a fashion designer make her a dazzling gold dress for the gala. And then Annet Poetsch of East Germany won the gold and Linda went home with the silver. Linda and her fans complained about biased judging by Eastern-bloc judges, but she herself, although known to be weak in figures, had been third there and first in the SP. Skating writers (the non-American ones) at the time said if anyone had been boosted it was Fratianne in the figures mark.

Today's complaints and complainers are just louder and reach a wider audience. Working hard your whole life towards a specific gold medal doesn't mean you'll automatically then be handed it as The Ultimate Participation Prize.

 

[Mathman]

Scott Hamilton under fire for reaction to C/B

NBC analyst facing backlash for reaction to Madison Chock, Evan Bates scandal

NBC figure skating analyst Scott Hamilton is under fire for his reaction to the Madison Chock, Evan Bates controversy.

www.newsweek.com

This is a bad article. Scoptt Hamilton did everything he could throughout the event to present unbiased and informative comments. When he was asked, after the short dance, why Chock and Bates lost a level the only thing he would say is that in ice dance every little edge counts even when it cannot be seen by fans ands audience.

When asked to predict who was going to win the free dance he hemmed and hawed and bit his tongue and said basically the same thing. Finally the TV host prodded him into saying that he was rooting for Chock and Bates, mentioning what good friends their two mothers were of each other.

Now Newsweek thinks it's a news story that some Tik-tok and X users are on his case for not lashing out at the judges? This is bad journalism, if you ask me.

 

[Mathman]

Why would that be dropped?

It was dropped because, in terms of statistical inference, it was silly and irrelevant. Having a "random draw" to choose 9 judges from a field of a hundred candidates, then another random draw to select 7 counting judges out of nine, is exactly the same as chosing 7 out of 100 from the get-go.

The procedure also had other drawbacks -- it reinforced the public perception that the ISU's main motivation is to pull the wool over people's eyes as much as possible for the sake of preserving "plausible deniability" when controversies arise. Plus the judges were (I conjecture) not happy about sitting through a competition working hard and doing their best, only to be told later -- "The jokes' on you, sucker -- you weren't a judge at all. Your role was just to be a decoy dummy while the real judges did the heavy lifting."

And... it was never established, either theoretically or in practice, that any of this would discourage cheaters from cheating, collaborators from collaborating, bad actors from acting bad.

 

[thatdarncat]

I think the main problem -- why public perception of incompetence and skulduggery in ice dance judging will never go away no matter what -- is that the general public. and even fans with a lot of practice in watching figure skating competitions, have no idea what is being scored. So quite naturally when one team wins and another doesn't, it's like, "Huh? -- I liked the other team better."

As opposed, for instance to men. Even the most casual observer can see that this guy fell down more times than that guy, and, with the help of commentary, can understanding that some jumps are harder than others so they get more points.

This is why I prefer singles and pairs, its easier to understand and there is more movement in the placings. Ice dance seems predetermined and placings don't move around much.