The Olympic pairs figure-skating controversy has led the president of the sport’s world governing body to recommend a radical change in the sport’s judging and scoring systems in an attempt to reduce the chances for corruption through collusion or national bias.
The proposed system would be costly, complicated and potentially even more convoluted than the one that has been in place for several decades. None of those issues are as important right now as creating the impression that the sport wants to clean up the mess left by the decision in the pairs competition that ended Feb. 11.
“It is obvious something has to be done after this awful and distracting thing in the Olympic Games,” said Robin Wagner, coach of U.S. singles skater Sarah Hughes, whose event begins Tuesday. “We have known for some time the current system is archaic and far from perfect.”
At the news conference to announce a proposal he had been working on for several months, International Skating Union President Ottavio Cinquanta also said the investigation into allegations of improprieties surrounding the pairs event has not been completed.
An admission by French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne of being pressured to vote in a certain way touched off a series of events that led to the unprecedented award of a second pairs gold medal to Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier six days after a 5-4 judges’ decision had made Russians Elena Bereznaia and Anton Sikharulidze the winners.
The announcement of the new scoring system surprised many judges and even members of the ISU technical committee, which never had been consulted about any of its details.
“This is absolutely a diversion from the issue that there are corrupt people in our sport,” said a judge, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The first diversion was the double gold medal. Now the scoring system. [Cinquanta] says he is going to be tough, and he has the evidence to be tough, but he isn’t using it.”
Under the Cinquanta proposal, the scores of only half the judges on a panel increased from nine to 14 would count, and a computer would randomly select which seven.
“This will reduce to a minimum the possibility of bloc judging,” Cinquanta said.
He also thought it would increase the futility of trying to influence a particular judge to make a vote-swapping deal because one would not know if that judge were voting.
“I could say, `This is a beautiful month for you and your girlfriend in Hawaii,’ but the judge and his girl who go to Hawaii maybe didn’t vote for me,” Cinquanta said.
Cinquanta’s plan would place a large emphasis on degree of difficulty in a skater’s program. The scores no longer would be based on deducting from a perfect 6.0 for mistakes but on awarding points based on the difficulty of the jumps, spins and footwork a skater does and how well they are performed. A skater’s standing would be based on the total score of seven judges, and none of the individual scores would be announced.
“I think it might make the competition more interesting, but the general public will be more confused,” Hughes said Monday after learning rudiments of what Cinquanta called a “total revolution in the history of the International Skating Union.”
Cinquanta said the 11-member ISU Council voted unanimously to approve submitting the proposal to the organization’s next biennial congress June 3-7 in Kyoto, Japan. Because many particulars of the proposal are unlikely to be worked out by the normal submission deadline, it will require a four-fifths majority of the often fractious organization’s 72 member countries just to get it to the congress floor and then a two-thirds majority for passage. The ISU governs both speedskating and figure skating, giving some countries two votes.
“I compliment President Cinquanta for doing this,” said Ron Pfenning of Hyannis, Mass., referee of the pairs event, “but it is going to take substantial time, and I mean substantial time, for everyone to be comfortable with using it.”
ISU spokeswoman Aline Bussat said Monday it remains to be seen whether the new system, if approved, would apply only to major events like the Olympics, world and European championships or whether it would eventually be used at all levels of the sport.
“It is refreshing that these events at the Olympics have resulted in serious questions about the judging system and that an ISU president has come up with some different ideas,” said John Nicks, coach of U.S. Olympic skater Sasha Cohen. “It remains to be seen whether they are practical, affordable and pragmatic and not just a Band-Aid applied to the events we had here.
“I would also hope he has involved the coaching commission in these discussions and that he has asked for help from athletes and judges.”
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Bussat said Cinquanta had created the framework of the proposal on his own. Cinquanta said he would seek help from others in working out details, such as the relative difficulty of certain elements.
“Anything that is an attempt to discourage collusion is the right idea,” said Frank Carroll, coach of Olympic men’s bronze medalist Timothy Goebel. “Even if it falls short at first, it sounds like the ISU really wants to make it right.”
Cinquanta said the ISU is willing to bear the increased cost of bringing a larger number of judges to competitions. It was unclear whether that would be necessary inasmuch as judges become qualified to work singles and pairs, and the randomness of the new system may allow many to judge more than one event at a championship.
Figure skating’s scoring system long has appeared incomprehensible. It seems to be based on a hieroglyphic version of the Pythagorean theorem multiplied by Einstein’s theory of relativity divided by pi.
Cinquanta actually began lobbying for a change in 1995 out of a desire to ease the confusion for those who pay hundreds of dollars for a seat and have no clue why someone is ahead.
At that time, the U.S. Figure Skating Association proposed simply dropping the high and low scores of the nine judges, as is done in diving, and totaling the other seven. Had that been done, the Canadians would have won the decisive free skate 81.7-81.5.