The Judging Controversy Thread

[jehan215]

He has been caught on the phone numerous times trying to bribe judges and fix placements. He was also caught on camera giving foot signals to other judges. How dare the powers that be let him continue to have a place in the sport, let alone bringing him out when it serves their agenda best. No other judged sport would allow something like that (well other than the one sport that is worse- rythmic farcetastics which allow Moms, Coaches, and Agents of the gymnasts to judge).

Yup, I found numerous details about him and his past (by the way, Cinquanta thought it was a "minor violation")

According to Sonia Garbato (Italian figure skating referee):
"In the last ten years we had several cases for which the integrity of the ISU and the credibility of the sport were really jeopardised by the misconduct of a few judges. Nevertheless, Yuri Balkov, recorded on tape while going through "planned" placements for the free dance at the Olympics in Nagano in 1998, and Sviastoslav Babenko and Alfred Korytek, caught on tape cheating by Canadian television at the 1999 World Championships in Helsinki, got very mild sanctions and are all back judging. The ISU never felt that they would discredit or jeopardise the credibility and the integrity of the ISU, even if this was really the case. LeGougne will be back judging next month, April 2005, if she wants to."

Sharon Begley (Senior correspondent at Reuters):
Until the Tonya-Nancy soap opera, however, the skating establishment was always pretty adept at deep-sixing its dirty laundry. Before the Nagano Games in 1998, Canada's Jean Senft pierced the Olympian wall of silence by accusing her fellow ice-dancing judges of vote trading. The ISU's response? Slapping her with a citation for pro-Canada bias in her scoring. But Senft hadn't spent years in the piranha-filled waters of international figure skating for nothing: she had taped phone conversations with the Ukrainian judge Yuri Balkov listing what order the ice dancers would finish--before it took place. Although suspended briefly, Balkov is here at Salt Lake City and again judging ice dancing. At the 1999 World Championships, the Russian and Ukrainian judges were videotaped sending signals to each other before recording their marks in the pairs final; a Russian team won and the results stand. And national chicanery was always easier to get away with than the international kind.

It's not a conspiracy. Nope. It's a fact.

 

[Ven]

Can I be so bold as to ask why you follow and comment on it then? Is this not a fair question? If so I apologize for being insensitive. I'm getting curious as to why no one is offering solutions like I've attempted here multiple times.

I like the sport and appreciate how amazing it is -- when clean.

The comments I posted were copied from people who laughed at the results.

The solution is to clean up the sport and stop the cheating. People would enjoy it then. Figure skating's problem is that it has a reputation of not being fair, and therefore not a real sport.

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

I like the sport and appreciate how amazing it is -- when clean.

The comments I posted were copied from people who laughed at the results.

The solution is to clean up the sport and stop the cheating. People would enjoy it then. Figure skating's problem is that it has a reputation of not being fair, and therefore not a real sport.

So why is there no dialogue like this which I posted twice on deaf ears.

I'm gonna try a fresh approach here and see what happens. It's obvious that the people at the top levels of each country's federations should possess some of the most knowledge when it comes to judging and skating in general...in most cases this should hold up. How about instead of making villains out of everyone we show some faith and fix the system at its root to promote fairness. How about at skate America we have primarily a Russian panel and no one from USFSA. Apply this across the board and maybe it will pressure the judges to be a little if not a lot more fair? So Americans will judge in CoR ,French at NRK, etc. I certainly agree the judges need to defend their scoring with more than simple 8's and 7.5's etc.on a score sheet and call it a day. Lets have them submit a report and field questions from the media or even just the coaches! with replays being allowed in said press conference. Lets not tear it down but let's build it up? Thoughts??

I'm not saying its right but if we work together toward a positive solution and present petitions to the ISU than maybe something could happen.

 

[usethis2]

In order to show that certain judges had a bias for Adelina vs Yuna, I looked at the average, standard deviations and z scores for their marks they received in the free skate. The z score is calculated by the sample-mean/standard deviation and is a measure for how far off the average a certain judge was. The first thing to note is that the standard deviation for Adelina is higher which is suspicious. The difficult in determining inflating scores is that judges are not identified. A judge should remain consistent throughout his or her judging and should not vary from one program; however, inherently certain judges are tougher judges and some are easier. If we assume that Yuna was judged fairly we can establish a baseline z-score to determine how "tough" a judge is relative to the other judges. If the judges were fair and remained consistent they should relative to other judges remain just as "tough". If a judge has a low z score that demonstrates the judge is just a more difficult judge, not necessarily that he was penalizing a certain skater. However, when one calculates the Z scores for Adeline, there five judges that were significantly less tough on Adelina, one judge in particular showed a 604% jump. Four judges demonstrated a 100% or higher increase while the other five were relatively consistent. The total sum of increase for Adelina was 1078% in terms of "ease of judging". It is in fact interesting that the judges who demonstrated the largest jumps were the judges who seemed to be right around the average. The fix was intelligent as they did not grade on either extreme. The numbers never lie.

Adelina Sotnikova
Element Z Score Component Z Score Total Z Score
16 -1.235069563 44.25 -1.2836263 60.25 -1.298440577 Judge 8
15 -1.414353854 45.5 -0.523584412 60.5 -1.261692259 Judge 3
19 -0.697216689 45 -0.827601167 64 -0.747215804 Judge 9
22 -0.159363815 44.25 -1.2836263 66.25 -0.41648094 Judge 4
22 -0.159363815 48 0.996499364 70 0.134743834 Judge 1
26 0.557773351 47.75 0.844490987 72.25 0.465478698 Judge 5
26 0.557773351 46.5 0.084449099 72.5 0.502227016 Judge 6
29 1.095626225 47.75 0.844490987 76.75 1.126948426 Judge 2
31 1.454194808 48.25 1.148507742 79.25 1.494431608 Judge 7
Average 22.88888889 46.36111111 69.08333333
Standard Deviation 5.57773351 1.644646196 6.803032412

Yuna Kim
17 -1.067521025 42 -2.192964157 59 -1.664406808 Judge 2
17 -1.067521025 45.25 -0.558716983 62.25 -0.961390214 Judge 4
18 -0.747264718 46.75 0.195550944 64.75 -0.420608219 Judge 7
20 -0.106752103 46 -0.181583019 66 -0.150217221 Judge 8
20 -0.106752103 47 0.321262265 67 0.066095577 Judge 5
19 -0.42700841 48 0.82410755 67 0.066095577 Judge 9
22 0.533760513 45.75 -0.307294341 67.75 0.228330176 Judge 1
24 1.174273128 48.75 1.201241513 72.75 1.309894167 Judge 3
26 1.814785743 47.75 0.698396228 73.75 1.526206965 Judge 6
Average 20.33333333 46.36111111 66.69444444
Standard Deviation 3.122498999 1.988683261 4.622934974

% Change in Z Score
-0.219877874
0.312362286
0.776512609
1.772524597
1.038621027
6.042509003
1.199564792
-0.139664521
-0.020819822
Sum 10.78255192

Yeah the formatting isn't excel friendly, but all the numbers are there.

Thank you for the work. Your work confirms the suspicion with math. Math is a wonderful thing!

 

[usethis2]

Disregard Sam-Skwantch's posts. She is a liar with an agenda. Earlier she declared that she would leave this thread, only to sneak back in, and warned others that visiting Change.org might give you virus. She pretends hard to appear neutral something, but she is worse than biased.

Edit: Also, do not bite her bait. I noticed that it's her favorite tactic.

 

[Ven]

So why is there no dialogue like this which I posted twice on deaf ears.



I'm not saying its right but if we work together toward a positive solution and present petitions to the ISU than maybe something could happen.

If you asked me a question earlier and I didn't respond, I will just say the thread is 82 pages long and nobody can read every comment, I must have missed yours, sorry.
Or maybe you were asking everyone, and nobody replied?

As for your suggestion, I don't think there's an easy solution. There needs to be an ongoing dialogue and changes. Probably nobody on the board can list a set of rules that would fix everything just like that.

I would start however by opening the safe and revealing the results of this competition. This Olympics result has to be clean and made right, just as 2002 was made right.

Second, the judging must not be anonymous in the future.

Third, something has to be done to hold the tech panel more accountable, because the rules are not enforced properly or consistently.

Fourth, incestuous relationships and conflicts of interest must be eliminated. IJS told Hersh this weekend that it's better to have a good judge who has conflicts of interest, rather than a bad judge who is independent. As if those are the only two choices...Russia has 13(?) certified judges, I think chuckm said? Something like that ... yet the judge in question worked 3 of 6 grand prix events, grand prix final, four continents, euros, and olympics. Seems like a busy woman with not much work for the other 12.

 

[Ven]

Oh yeah, the other thing is there needs to be a widespread purge in competitive figure skating. The cheating is obviously systemic. For a lot of people, it's become routine and a part of the sport. People who have that mindset engrained into them must be eliminated from the sport, without exception. Whether they were former skaters, commentators, federation officials, coaches, judges, whoever, they all have to be purged.

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

CRACK THAT VAULT!!!

The worst question is an unanswered one!

 

[Ven]

CRACK THAT VAULT!!!

The worst question is an unanswered one!

You can't move on from a scandal as long as it's still a scandal. That's definitely the first step to rehabilitating this sport.

 

[hurrah]

Most parents don't get their children into sports because they think they'll end up as Olympic gold medalists and make millions of dollars. They encourage them to get involved in sports to learn about working hard, striving, dreaming, gaining a sense of fair play, etc.

And they would be right to have these goals because most of their children won't ever even get to go to the Olympics. So by making figure skating Olympic competitions corrupt, you've lost 99.999999999999999% of your potential customers who might otherwise take up the sports. The soccer moms would rather spend their time shuttling their children to a sporting activity through which involvement their children will gain a sense of self-worth and cultivate a sense of decency and respect for their peers, despite not ever even making it to the Olympics.

 

[calmqueen]

WAS SCORING FOR THE LADIES' FIGURE SKATING ACCEPTABLE?

The answer is NO.
And here's the evidence.


http://www.feverskating.com/fevers/64956111

 

[Anna K.]

Future Skating with no Judges

I got so tired of scandalous judging and getting into details of figure skating technique - and then forum pundits in this amazing thread http://www.goldenskate.com/forum/sh...ing-explanation-in-ladies-event-for-beginners
admitted that fast movements of the footwork are impossible to capture by human eye to judge them correctly anyway. Frustrated, I fell asleep but then I had a sci-fi dream!

There were no judges in figure skating event! You see, the skate has to touch the ice to do all the wonders so there were inbuilt sensors in skates. There were two big screens; on one of them there were displayed the marks left on ice. Colored lines marked edge change. On the second screen was the table of points where the points were added just as the skater did the move. Somebody – probably Joubert – did the footwork, the hundreds of points were running up and the crowd was wowing “Ooooooh!” There was also the upper body sensor – I guess a normal movement sensor we often have at home that for safety reasons, just smarter - it brought deductions after fast pose change in spin and falling out of sync and then the crowd did “Ooooooh!” again.
Well, then I woke up and I realized it might be actually the future in decades from now. Of course, there are still aspects of skating that are not technical, like choreography, aesthetics of move, or integrity of execution so judges have to be kept in the business. But they should award no points! Why should they if that’s subjective anyway? They should only approve skaters’ routines in a pre-season round and then follow if they stick to the chosen routine. That’s all.
What a revelation can be brought by good night sleep!

Now tell me what you think about reality. Could the development of figure skating ever take this turn? Should it?

 

[gkelly]

I got so tired of scandalous judging and getting into details of figure skating technique - and then forum pundits in this amazing thread http://www.goldenskate.com/forum/sh...ing-explanation-in-ladies-event-for-beginners
admitted that fast movements of the footwork are impossible to capture by human eye to judge them correctly anyway.

Just to clarify, what I meant was that it is impossible for an untrained eye, even someone who knows what all the turns are but hasn't spent years doing them herself, to identify all the turns by name in real time. The specialists can do it.

Also, it's not possible for one person to count the turns and simultaneously also count the amount of time spent turning both directions and doing upper body movement (especially in pairs when there are two sets of feet to watch). That's why the panel splits the duties.

The judges have a different job -- to evaluate the quality of the step sequences, including how well they go with the music. They'll notice more or less how difficult the steps are, but it's not their job to determine the level.

There were no judges in figure skating event! You see, the skate has to touch the ice to do all the wonders so there were inbuilt sensors in skates. There were two big screens; on one of them there were displayed the marks left on ice. Colored lines marked edge change. On the second screen was the table of points where the points were added just as the skater did the move. Somebody – probably Joubert – did the footwork, the hundreds of points were running up and the crowd was wowing “Ooooooh!” There was also the upper body sensor – I guess a normal movement sensor we often have at home that for safety reasons, just smarter - it brought deductions after fast pose change in spin and falling out of sinc and then the crowd did “Ooooooh!” again.
Well, then I woke up and I realized it might be actually the future in decades from now.

Theoretically possible. Sensors in the skates -- especially if they could be attached to skates during competitions and removed for practice -- would be more feasible, more affordable, than putting sensors in the ice. I'll leave it to engineers to figure out the details, but it wouldn't surprise me if someday there could be sensors that identify steps and turns, and also jumps including takeoff edges and amount of rotation, and also number of revolutions and speed and centering in spins.

You might need only one official whose job is more like the data entry operator now to make sure the data coming from the sensors is properly translated to the computer through the correct rules for what's allowed in each kind of program, what adds points in each kind of element.

So essentially this would replace the current technical panel, and maybe add some information about quality, Skating Skills, Transitions, that is currently evaluated by judges.

Maybe timing for the pattern dance part of the short dance, or other such compulsory sequences, if those still exist by whatever decade such technology would be ready for adoption.

Of course, there are still aspects of skating that are not technical, like choreography, aesthetics of move, or integrity of execution so judges have to be kept in the business. But they should award no points! Why should they if that’s subjective anyway?

Essentially, removing subjective judgment from the scoring would mean that pretty much nothing that is currently evaluated under Performance/Execution, Choreography, or Interpretation would have any value in determining the results.

I don't think upper body sensors would be able to determine the beauty or "clarity" of a position, and certainly not whether there is any emotional connection, or whether the skating matches the music, etc.

So there would be no reason for skaters to work on those areas.

The results would be much more objective and indisputable, as long as we trust the technology. But would audiences be interested in the kinds of skating that would result?

They should only approve skaters’ routines in a pre-season round and then follow if they stick to the chosen routine. That’s all.

This is not feasible. Even just looking at junior and senior level, there are thousands of skaters around the world. They compete locally, and the best ones in larger countries move on to national events (in smaller countries these are the same thing), and then the best of those compete internationally. There are different sets of judges. A skater who has never competed internationally before might not be on the radar to have a routine pre-approved by international judges, but then if she does well at her nationals, she's on her way to ISU an championship later in the season.

Skaters have always had the right to change their programs over the course of a season, or even to make changes on the fly during a performance. They're evaluated on what they actually do during the competition. Skaters have never been judged on how closely they stick to a preapproved plan.

They are evaluated on how well they fulfill the requirements/rules/restrictions for that kind of program. The potential danger in deviating from a plan is in violating rules -- the short program requirements and Zayak rule under 6.0, and in IJS also the requirements/limits on types of spins, number of jump attempts, etc. Determining what does or doesn't get credit is currently a job for the tech panel, not the judges.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting the judges would do at all? If they're not going to evaluate the quality of performance on the actual day of performance, then quality doesn't matter and judges are not needed at all.

 

[kslr0816]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/deal-w...-beat-yuna-kim-fair-and-square-152619212.html

this article... wow.. just wow

 

[Icey]

Carolina is the rightful winner of the OGM at Sochi!
Yuna was clean enough but she lacked the power of her peak years. Carolina was at her best!

Carolina wasn't at her best in technical content.

 

[fay]

IOC deserting duty with failure to act on skating scandal

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/...ilure-to-act-on-skating-scandal/#.UwtVi87W5Wg

 

[Icey]

Possibly FS needs to be taken out of the competitive realm and offered as theatrical entertainments. In this awards obsessed society, each year "oscar" type awards can be given out to the best as judged by their peers.

 

[vegarin]

It still would've been less controversial if Caro won over Yuna on PCS. Likely Yuna would've scored higher on TES with GOE, but many said Caro was the cleanest she's been in a long time, and it wouldn't have been a problem for her to score really high on PCS. Except of course she was actually behind after Adelina in PCS.

You know, I think they really weren't counting on Caro being clean, or Mao being able to land all triples, or Yuna being able to go clean skating last. If any of them has made mistakes, the judging would've looked better. But all of them went clean and showed they really are the skaters that have what it takes. And now the judging just looks so much worse.

 

[kslr0816]

Is there anything being done about this as of today? How long and how much will it take for the IOC to finally recognize this?

 

[kslr0816]

It still would've been less controversial if Caro won over Yuna on PCS. Likely Yuna would've scored higher on TES with GOE, but many said Caro was the cleanest she's been in a long time, and it wouldn't have been a problem for her to score really high on PCS. Except of course she was actually behind after Adelina in PCS.

You know, I think they really weren't counting on Caro being clean, or Mao being able to land all triples, or Yuna being able to go clean skating last. If any of them has made mistakes, the judging would've looked better. But all of them went clean and showed they really are the skaters that have what it takes. And now the judging just looks so much worse.

doesn't the point gap also mean adelina could have fallen and still won gold?