As somebody whose first love is motorsports, I find it frankly scandalous that protests against the results of other competitors are not allowed. Protests are a whole part of the game in motorsports.
And it can have important implications. In the British Superstock Championship, an English rider won the championship from an Irish rider. But, the Irish rider's team noticed illegal parts on the English rider's bike in parc fermé after the race, and put in a protest. And a month later the English rider got disqualified from that meeting's races, and the Irish rider was declared Champion.
Yes, it can take time to investigate. But, for me it is more important to get the right result than it is to get a quick result.
Normally, a protest can be investigated and a decision reached on the same day or the next day. In the example I gave, the reason that it took so long to investigate is that proper post-race procedures were not followed in parc fermé on that occasion. And that in itself was a major problem. Because it was the last race of the championship, when the riders rolled into parc fermé, they were greeted by lots of people celebrating. Frankly, these people should not have been allowed into parc fermé in the first place. It's not called "parc fermé" for nothing! Nobody is supposed to get near the bike (or the rider, for that matter) in case they tamper with it. Also, the bike was mistakingly released to the team without the scrutineers first checking over it.
Figure skating is different, as the only equipment that they use are the skates. And I would imagine that checking them over to make sure they are legal is something that only takes a minute or two. But in a sport where so much is subjective, it is vital to have the ability to protest.
Reading through the rules being quoted in this thread, I was gobsmacked by how antiquated they are.
I can't remember whether they were talking about the Technical Panel or the Judges or both, but the British Eurosport guys frequently told us while we were watching the highlights after a programme that the officials don't get slow-motion replays like we do, and have to make decisions based on full-speed replays. And I could never understand that, because surely they could assess things better and more accurately if they could see them in slow motion. It always seemed really odd to me that people just watching at home are able to see things better and in more detail than the people actually assessing them.
It also seems really odd that the Judges are not allowed to question what the Technical Panel are calling. At the end of the day, everybody is human. And it is only human to make a mistake. So, the officials should be able to help each other out and point out mistakes so that they can be corrected. It should not have to be done in a round-about way by the Judges adjusting their marks to balance out an incorrect call by the Technical Panel.
For the sport to be taken seriously, the Protocols need to accurately show what happened. They should not be full of fudges to compensate for mistakes. (Maybe "full of" is a bit too strong, but you know what I mean).
Even in snooker, the marker (the person recording the scores, who is another trained referee) is able to help the referee if they are unsure about something. Showing them replays, or directing where the balls were positioned if they have to be replaced after a foul. And for quite a few years now, there has also been technology to help with the replacing of the balls (the technology used at the Chinese tournaments was the most advanced when I was last watching snooker regularly a few years ago).
That said, some of the older referees were set in their ways and refused to use any of the help that was available to them. But, that may no longer be the case. They may have retired, or may have seen the light (whether by themselves, or being forced to by the powers that be).
The ISU needs to get into the 20th Century (yes, that was deliberate). Even before this current wave of Artificial Intelligence came around, other sports have been using technology for years to help the officials and make the results more accurate.
Although there was a lot of resistence that delayed it's usage for many years, football now uses technology to detect when a ball has gone sufficiently over the line for it to be out of play or (if it is between the posts) for it to be a goal. In motorsports, GPS is used to track where the cars / bikes / trucks are on the track in real time (as opposed to only recording gaps between them at the timing posts). In snooker, Hawkeye (a technology system, not Dr. Pierce from "MASH") is used in the TV coverage to show whether a shot is on.
And on the subject of technology being used in the TV coverage, we have seen what the Ice Scope technology is capable of in the coverage of Japanese figure skating competitions. If it is not already capable of making calls (and I would not be surprised if it can already do this), I'm sure it could be developed to do so with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
In summary, protests should be allowed. And so should slow motion replays for the officials. And so should technology to assist in making calls.
And if all this was implemented, I bet there wouldn't be many (if any) protests, because the results and the contents of Protocols would be more accurate as they would be determined by a combination of technological and human input.
Finally, I have been working on this post since yesterday, so apologies if anything I have written has been covered already.
CaroLiza_fan
Thank you for elaborating further, I always like learning more.
