World's Judges | Golden Skate

World's Judges

cotillion

Rinkside
Joined
Aug 17, 2007
While I was checking for judges for the Olys I came across comm. 1595 judges for worlds, I'm not sure this an error but Canada has absolutely no judges for any of the events at worlds ! Can the ISU do this ? I think completely omitting a country like Canada from an event with such importance is shady to say the least! It's not only Canada but France, Great Britain, Italy amongst others who have no judges placed for dance,These countries have the top teams in dance and should have representation. The only thing I can think why this might have been done , is because of the low amount of skaters qualifying for each event , regardless of the fact Canada won a medal in every event except for pairs last year, Canada will still be shunned!:confused:
 

chuckm

Record Breaker
Joined
Aug 31, 2003
Country
United-States
Why is it that Russia has a seat on the panel for every discipline, and is the only country to have that much representation?
In addition, AZE and UZB have judges "loaned" from Russia, and they each have a seat on a panel.

Here are the stats:
Judges representing former SSRs: 11 seats
Eastern European judges: 14 seats
Western European judges: 12 seats
Far Eastern judges (CHN, TPE, JPN, KOR): 7 seats
North America (USA, MEX): 4 seats
Other (AUS, RSA): 5

So there are a total of 37 European judges, and only 16 from other areas.
 

cotillion

Rinkside
Joined
Aug 17, 2007
I can't find any reasonable answer to why Canada has no judges, I am still shocked by what seems to be a boycott of somekind against Skate Canada, and I wonder if even SC knows? Maybe I should e-mail SC, ugh ! don't know what to do I am so frustrated I could spit!!! Actually I don't care that Italy doesn't have a judge in dance after what Massimo said about V&M , they can fight their way through like everyone else , I used to adore F&S but I can't believe that cheap shot, and how unsportsman like he was! And why oh why is it that only Russia has a judge in every discipline?
 

chuckm

Record Breaker
Joined
Aug 31, 2003
Country
United-States
I don't think having competitive skaters/dancers has anything to do with the judges being picked.
After all, AZE has no home-grown skaters, but seems to import all their "talent". UZB's top skater is Gimazetdinova, who will turn 30 in May and whose top performance at Worlds was 19th in 2007.

Yet AZE and UZB seem to get judging assignments in ISU Championships, as well as the GP and the JGP.
 

euroskate

Final Flight
Joined
Jan 25, 2010
please look up the ISU rules before complaining.:mad::mad:
There are RULES how the judges are picked. Since there are more countries entered then judges can sit there, it is a DRAW in the beginning of the season.
AND it´s not like one contry is more important then the other. Bigger countries are not more important then smal countries AND THAT´S A GOOD THING

http://isu.sportcentric.net/db//files/serve.php?id=1635
 

MagicFairy

On the Ice
Joined
Dec 31, 2008
please look up the ISU rules before complaining.:mad::mad:
There are RULES how the judges are picked. Since there are more countries entered then judges can sit there, it is a DRAW in the beginning of the season.
AND it´s not like one contry is more important then the other. Bigger countries are not more important then smal countries AND THAT´S A GOOD THING

http://isu.sportcentric.net/db//files/serve.php?id=1635

I agree! :)

Figure Skating does not only exist of USA and Canada!
 
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cotillion

Rinkside
Joined
Aug 17, 2007
Hey complaining is what we figure skating lovers do best! Thanks for the info Euroskate, but I still find it odd that Canada has no , ZERO, notta representation at such a major event , just saying!!!
 

colleen o'neill

Medalist
Joined
Nov 3, 2006
:think: Yes , well ,the draw...The trouble is, that the draw has not always worked fairly, historically..and for years and years , NA was at a supreme disadvantage , so you can't blame NA fans for being a bit apprehensive..they have so often seen the system work against their skaters.

The hope is, that it will work more fairly now and increasingly into the future, and there is a lot of effort being put in by a lot of people to try to ensure this. One of the problems has been that many of the smaller countries , or should I say, countries where Figure skating is a relatively new sport, that now send skaters ( adopted or not),have not had qualified judges, so you've had the borrowing of judges from other countries ,which has not always been ideal , or sometimes , judges who really didn't have the necessary degree of knowledge or experience still judging at the world level.

So now you have a concerted effort being made to educate judges from these countries, through ISU seminars , etc. to try to foster better judging and more fair representation. These things take time..so we'll what happens at World's . Like anonymous judging , I think a large imbalance in representation either way is not a good thing .
 
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dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Country
United-States
Nice to see US has 2 judge seats in dance--at last year's worlds, there was no US ice dance judge.
 

colleen o'neill

Medalist
Joined
Nov 3, 2006
Doris..one hopes that their marks will be counted. Aren't they still doing the random selection of judges marks ?
 

euroskate

Final Flight
Joined
Jan 25, 2010
:think: Yes , well ,the draw...The trouble is, that the draw has not always worked fairly, historically...

judges who really didn't have the necessary degree of knowledge or experience still judging at the world level...

.

I also heard those stories about the draw not beeing fairly, but well there isn´t really something you can do about, expect for hoping the people in charge execute their duties in a fair way.

"Borrowed judges" are kind of a problem, I agree.
But I don´t think that judges who are serving at ISU Championships are not well educated. There might be some "bad" ones for sure, but in general it is really hard to become an ISU Championship judge. First you have to qualifiy at the national level and then do good work internationally before you even can attend the examination to become ISU judge.
 

dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Country
United-States
Well, most of the Olympic judging was pretty good. There were a couple of exceptions, but on the whole pretty good. So I am hoping worlds will be judged well.

Johnny Weir would be one of the exceptions. I think the judging of Weir was just wrong.
 

cotillion

Rinkside
Joined
Aug 17, 2007
Doris the USA has only one judge in dance for the OD & FD ( the 2 represents which portion of the event to be judged) Canada, Italy, Great Britain, and France amongst others have no judges in Dance at all, makes you wonder if these countries were even put in the hat!!!
 

colleen o'neill

Medalist
Joined
Nov 3, 2006
euroskate...in my previous post, I meant the important word to be historically..I remember , some years back, there being concern about the way judges were assigned since new skating countries were fairly entitled to have judges, but didn't have the judges to fill the spots, so you might have a judge who just met only minimal requirements at quite important events. I'm sure progress has been made in the meantime and certainly didn't mean to imply that any old person could be accredited.
Anonymity doesn't help to assuage doubts.

To my less-than-expert eyes , the Olympic judging was pretty good, but I'll be really interested to see what happens at world's. Leaving aside any Olympic tendency to inflate, if there's a big difference in how marks are awarded , I might be skeptical , at least of how the draw is conducted.
 
Joined
Jul 11, 2003
please look up the ISU rules before complaining.:mad::mad:
There are RULES how the judges are picked. Since there are more countries entered then judges can sit there, it is a DRAW in the beginning of the season.
AND it´s not like one contry is more important then the other. Bigger countries are not more important then smal countries AND THAT´S A GOOD THING
http://isu.sportcentric.net/db//files/serve.php?id=1635
it does say draw at the Hilton in Zuruck but who does the actualy drawing? The Judges? or the Council?

Now if they just mentioned how the judges' names show up in the protocols (I believe that is random also) it would make me very happy to conclude that there is no cheating in judging figure skating.
 

npavel

On the Ice
Joined
Nov 3, 2008
Other countries occurs not to have judges like Italy had no judge in Ladies neighter at Euros, Olys nor at Worlds. That can happen when judges were drawn, fast it does not happen that often, and this year it hadn't changed very much as Caro was the best at Euros and a mess at Olys
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
So there are a total of 37 European judges, and only 16 from other areas.

This alone, however, is not evidence that the draw is being tampered with. 37 judges out of a total of 53 is 69.8%. The total membership of the ISU has something like 44 European countries out of 65 (67.7%).

So this is about what we would expect, in the long run, in a random draw. (Plus several of the the non-European federations to not have any ISU championship qualified judges.)
 
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