The Men’s competition is started. A little before the first skaters goes on the ice, the name of the judges were published. The ISU don’t write their nationality, for them it’s not an important thing. I don’t think as them, so add the information. They are
Referee Mr. Philippe MERIGUET (FRA)
Technical Controller Ms. Leena LAAKSONEN (FIN)
Technical Specialist Mr. Konstantin KOSTIN (RUS)
Assistant Technical Specialist Mr. Filip STILLER BOROWICZ (SWE)
Judge No.1 Ms. Lisa DAVIDSON (GBR)
Judge No.2 Ms. Ursula STAHL (AUT)
Judge No.3 Ms. Iryna MEDVEDIEVA (UKR – before she was AZE)
Judge No.4 Ms. Pia ALHONEN (FIN)
Judge No.5 Ms. Salome CHIGOGIDZE (GEO)
Judge No.6 Ms. Inger ANDERSSON (SWE)
Judge No.7 Ms. Christiane MILES (SUI)
Judge No.8 Mr. Sviatoslav BABENKO (RUS)
Judge No.9 Mr. Miroslav MISUREC (CZE)
The first name that I’ve noticed is Sviatoslav Babenko. What? He is still around? Why the skaters must be judged by him? If you don’t remember his name, I’ve written a lot about him.
Mr. Babenko rose to prominence in 1999, when he and the Ukrainian Alfred Koritek agreed to establish the result of a World Championship. I’ve written about this episode here. My words are in Italian, but there’s a long quote in English and also a nice video.
What we can learn from this episode? First, I don’t trust either Babenko or Koritek. Koritek don’t judge anymore, Babenko is in Stockholm now, and I don’t understand why. Second, the camera are really important. I would like that in the most important competitions there is a camera to film the judges throughout the competition and that the video remains visible forever on the ISU channels. Hardly anyone will look at it, but it would help to see if any judge are behaving not quite right. Third, after a complain of the Russian federation the suspension was reduced, demonstrating that the complain of a powerful federation is most important that fairness towards the skaters.
Here I’ve written in Italian something about the competition judged by Babenko in the last four years. The official document of the Babenko’s second suspension: https://www.isu.org/inside-isu/legal/disciplinary-decisions/559-case-2017-02-mr-babenko/file.
The second name that I’ve noticed is Salome Chigogidze. Ms. Chigogidze is one of the most biased judge, and in some competition I’ve noticed that she hasn’t aided only the Georgian skater, but also the Russian. This is the national bias of all the judges:
This is the national bias, but I really need to start to do cross-checks. The problem is that I need a lot of time. So for now I do some stats. Who was the better in the PCS?
It seems Hanyu, but we’re really sure? I remember an important rule:
So I’ve put a 10.00 (column E) as the best mark that can receive a skater if he didn’t fall, a 9.75 or 9.50, according to the component, if there’s a fall (column D), a 9.25 or 8.75 if there’s two fall. The column F is the percentage that the skater has earned in relation to what, for him, was the highest possible mark. The column G is the average of the percentage of the five components. I put here two screenshot with all the data, under I put the summary table with the rankings.
For the summary I look only the data in the column G. I’ve done two ranking. First (column I-J) there are the marks really accorded by the judges, in order from the higher to the lower. After (columns L-N), beside the real marks I’ve put the percentage of the marks based on the higher score that every skater can reach. The order is from the higher to the lower. There are several differences, I’ve highlighted in bold the skaters that, by percentage, received marks better that one can think at first glance.
So… Nathan Chen first. By percentage, he has received marks in components better than Hanyu. Eh? And we want talk of the fifth place of Vincent Zhou? Vincent Zhou? Better than Mikhail Kolyada, Kevin Aymoz and Keegan Messing? And not only them, I could write a lot of names here.
[edit: thanks to Fan Yiyi who have signalled to me a typo in Messing’s SS. If you see typos, feel free to say to me and I’ll correct the mistake].
I must be a little masochist, so I’ve watched closer Hanyu’s and Chen’s protocol. I’ve highlighted in red if a skater received the best possible mark according to what he did on the ice, 10.00 for Hanyu, 9.75 in SS, TR and CO and 9.50 in PE and IN for Chen. Hanyu received two 10.00, it’s easy to see. How much 10.00 (or equivalent vote) received Chen? Here… are you sure to want to watch? You could faint.
For Chen there are 12 marks equivalent to a 10.00, and also a mark equivalent to 10.25 given by Iryna Medvedieva. For Salome Chigogidze Chen deserved only 10.00, but also Christiane Miles and Sviatoslav Babenko liked a lot Chen’s program.
I must write also about the jumps, but I’ll do another post, for now I’ll go to get some fresh air. I need it.
Your table contains a typo for Keegan Messing’s scores. He scored an 8.71 average in skating skills, not a 9.71. Otherwise, interesting analysis
Thanks for the segnalation, I’ll correct the number in some minutes.
Iryna MEDVEDIEVA is now representing Ukraine. She switched ISU member a few years ago
Thanks. For who know why, in the table I’d put both her nationalities, in writing my post I’d written only the first. Now I’ve fixed it.
As a newbie to watching figure skating, I’ve heard it thrown around that judging wasn’t always fair, but I thought was in relation to close things that could have gone either way, or people who didn’t really understand figure skating. Reading this article has put things in a whole new light. Thank you so much for sharing!
I watch Figure Skating from 1989, so it’s a lot of years. I too have heard about suspicious and questionable decisions. For a lot of time I’ve ignored them. I loved what the skaters does on the ice, so I didn’t wanted something that can ruin my love for the sport. I’ve seen some scandals as they were developed, but for me they were scandals of that days, non something rooted in the sport. In… 2013? I’ve started to read books about figure skating, and I’ve discovered that in the past there were much more scandals that I imagined.
After the 2019 World Championship I’ve read a lot of outcry done by the fans against the results. So I’ve done something that I’ve never did before: I’ve started to study both the techniques and the rules. And less than a year ago I’ve decided to put some maths in the scores. I’m a fan, my impression can be biased, but if I use the numbers, I can see interesting things. The maths can’t be used for all, but when we can use it, maths say a lot of things, usually bad against this judging system.
ISU seriously need reforms. Now.
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