I know, I’m paying a lot of attention to Salome Chigigidze. I have already published two posts about her, this and this. The reason is simple: when I started doing statistics on the national bias of judges – you can find an explanation of my method here – she stood out. She has judged many competitions, and almost always had a very high bias.

Now Chigigidze was suspended for national bias following incorrect marks awarded at the last World Championship. As I explained in the second post to which I added the link, according to referee Philippe Meriguet there was nothing strange in her way of voting, it was the ISU Disciplinary Commission that said that Chigogidze has a little exaggerated and suspended her. Her story leads me to two simple questions: could it have been noticed before that her marks were incorrect? If so, are there other judges who assign wrong marks and who should be stopped? I’ll answer the first question first.

Chigogidze had already received a Letter of Warning on April 30, 2020, due to the suspicion of National Bias in her marks at the European Figure Skating Championships (which I talked about in the first post I linked to) and the Youth Olympic Games 2020 (which I talked about in the second post). So at least in Spring 2020 the ISU knew that Chigogidze’s marks were biased, but despite this she was allowed to judge the 2021 World Championship. To suspend a judge takes a long time, and perhaps it would be appropriate to shorten this time, also because Chigogidze did not start assigning biased marks in 2020. The table I published for the first time before her suspension shows us her bias values, and as I could have calculated these values, the ISU could have calculated them as well. I am not saying that these numbers should automatically lead to the suspension, but they should push the Disciplinary Commission to do a thorough check. Now I did a more thorough check (not complete, that would take too long).

SkatingScores allows us to see all the competitions judged by each judge, which is very useful for my checks. The competitions judged by Chigogidze can be found here.

If we look at the rankings according to the judges, the strangest marks are highlighted by a different color, green for marks that are too high compared to the average of the other judges, red for those that are too low, so the oddities are also seen at a glance. For the Slovenian stage of the Junior Grand Prix circuit I limited myself to do some sums and to look at the rankings according to Chigogidze. We thus discover that, if she had been the only judge, the Georgian Nika Egadze would have finished the competition in tenth place and not in fourteenth.

Who knows if the referee Franco Benini pointed to the ISU that her marks were a bit strange. We have the best marks in the free skate for Performance. 4.68 in the official protocol, 6.00 for Chigogidze, 3.75 according to the Slovakian Edviga Fialkova. I don’t know how skated Egadze, I don’t know which mark is right (Fialkova’s mark was 0.93 points under the average, Chigogidze mark was 1.32 point over the average) but it’s acceptable a difference so wide?

In the 2017 Junior World Championship Chigogidze’s bias is limited to the short program due to the simple fact that Irakly Maysuradze, with his 35° place, did not qualify for the free skate. When you have a very low base value, the 45° among 45 skaters, you fell on the triple axel, your combination count nothing (1Lz+COMBO), you made a mistake on one of the spins and even the jump preceded by steps, only a double, was not so good, a friendly judge cannot do so much.

The Cup of Austria 2017 is even more fascinating.

In this case I have not highlighted anything, what SkatingScores tells us speaks for itself. In both programs, only two skaters received a lot of help from Chigogidze, the Georgian Nika Egadze and the Russian Evgeni Semenenko. Semenenko? I expected Egadze, but why Semenenko? To understand more, I went to look at who was the Russian judge, and found out that he was an old acquaintance of ours, Alla Shekhovtseva (or Shekhovtsova, transliterations of names from languages that use another writing method often create problems). How judged Shekhovtseva? In this way:

Only two skaters were helped in both programs: the Japanese Sena Miyake (Japan had no judges in this competition) and the Russian Semenenko. In the short program Shekhovtseva showed particular sympathy for Egadze and for the Danish Nikolai Molgaard Pedersen (with him in the free skate she remained quite in line with the other judges), while in the free her sympathies went to the French Luc Economides (but ih the short program she didn’t hepled him) and to Nik Folini (also helped in the short program, but not so much as to be highlighted by SkatingScores).

Sometimes a judge can help a skater he doesn’t care about to muddy things up, not make it clear that he is voting in a specific way. The highest marks for Semenenko are predictable, but remember that saying that certain marks are predictable is not the same as saying they are correct. Those for Miyake surprise me, I take note. Perhaps they mean nothing, perhaps not. Those for Egadze, even if they only arrived in the short program, make me think. Isn’t there a certain sympathy between the Russian and Georgian federations?

This is the short program protocol for Semenenko and Egadze. I pointed out when the two judges who gave the highest mark – and therefore one of the two mark entered in the score – were Shekhovtseva and Chigogidze. The ranking of Egadze has not changed, despite these marks, because the gap from the skaters who preceded him was great.

I had already noticed that in the Components the marks are often very creative, here we can see a certain commonality of judgment. Even where I didn’t do circles, Shekhovtseva and Chigogidze remained far above average, but a third judge anointed them in appreciating the skater. I also note that the Italian judge, Franco Benini, who at least in the short program did not help Nick Folini, still appreciated Semenenko very much, just as Shekhovtseva appreciated Folini.

Did referee Philippe Meriguet notice the strange marks? I don’t know, but I’m afraid not. This time I don’t do sums up and go ahead. But I started getting tired of reading Meriguet’s name as a referee.

Having noticed this detail, I took a step back and returned to the 2017 Junior World Championship, a competition that now i Think I was putting aside a little too quickly just because the Georgian skater had not skated well. Let’s see the scores Chigogidze awarded to the Russian skaters.

Chigogidze awarded to Alexander Samarin high marks in both programs, high marks in the short program and slightly low marks in the free skate to Dmitri Aliev, and low marks in both programs to the American Vincent Zhou. This is the final rank according to her:

Aliev remains second, but for Chigogidze Samarin would have deserved the gold, Zhou would have deserved only the bronze. Here it is difficult to talk about national bias because she is registered for the Georgian federation, the skaters for the Russian one, but some doubts arise. I am not saying that Chigogidze always helps the Russians, if the comparison is between a Russian and a Georgian she helps the Georgian, but if it is between a Russian and a skater from any other nation, perhaps it is good to look carefully at her marks. Junwan Cha, who finished fifth, not so far from the bronze, was also penalized by Chigogidze.

Cha was greatly helped by Korean judge Sung-Hee Koh, another who, it seems, needs a close check. Cha could count on the Korean judge. Zhou did not have a US judge. The Russian judge, Tatiana Sharkina, judged only the short program, and for her the best were the Russians. It’s national bias? I should check Sharkina, but the judges are becoming many and it is difficult to keep up with everyone. Since another name was very familiar to me I did another check.

I checked the ranking of the ten best skaters, at least according to the official result. The first list on the top left is the real ranking with the scores of the short program, the free skate and the total. Then there are the evaluations of the individual judges, grouped into two blocks, depending on whether they judged both programs (left) or only one (right). I highlighted in green the skaters to whom they would have assigned a better ranking, in red those to whom would have assigned a worse ranking.

Okay, according to Koh, Cha deserved the gold. I like Cha more than the other four skaters, but… really? Only two judges felt that Samarin deserved gold and Aliev silver, even the Korean placed Zhou ahead of the Russians. And, honestly, I’m not at all surprised by this discovery. Even before starting to do the math, I was sure that this would be the result. To believe that Samarin and Aliev were the best were Chigogidze and the Kazakh Yuri Guskov, and that the Kazakh judges help Russian skaters (and that Guskov is not the most impartial judge in the world) is something I have known for a while.

I really, really need to find time for Guskov. I checked the behavior of all the judges of all the nations in the Men’s competitions of the Olympic Games, World Championship (only senior), European Championship, Four Continents Championship and Grand Prix series (only senior) towards the best skaters of Canada, China, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain and United States from 2016-2017 season. I need to publish this data, but first I need to look at them closely.

Even without a closer look, these are the most blatant bias (over 10 competitions, bias above +4.00 points or under -4.00 points):

Chinese judges with Chinese skaters, an average of +11.58 point over the official score;
Spanish judges with Javier Fernandez (I watched only the most important skaters, and Spain is the only nation that had only one strong skater), +9.57;
Kazakh judges with Russian skaters, +6.84 points;
Russian judges with Russian skaters, +4.79 points;
American judges with American skaters, +4.60 points;
Italian judges with Italian skaters, +4.47 points;
Spanish judges with Japanese skaters, -4.26 points;
Georgian judges with French skaters, -5.61 points;
Kazakh judges with American skaters, -5.97 points.

There isn’t a bias of Georgian judges on Georgian skaters because I didn’t checked Georgian skaters, otherwise I’m sure that this would have been one of the higher number. I know that changing the names of the skaters I used for the maths the numbers will change, but this is a start for some other checks. For example, now I don’t trust in Kazakh judges.

Let’s not forget that the 2002 scandal is about a French judge who aided a Russian pair, and that in some cases, see Sviatoslav Babenko and Alfred Koritek, the judges have been caught talking each other. Agreements between judges or federations have always existed, so it is the duty of the ISU to question the judges and the regularlity of the competitions whenever the marks seems strange.

For now I watch the protocol of the free skate, a panel of judges in which there wasn’t a Russian judge but there were Chigogidze and Guskov.

I highlighted the highest marks in green, the two lowest marks in red. If three judges gave the same low mark I used orange. With Guskov and Chigogidze that often lined up on the lowest marks, obviously one of the two marks would be in the score. In the Components I highlighted two marks of the Austrian judge Ursula Stahl, but since the last line tells us that Stahl assigned Zhou the third position in the Components, she was strict with every skater. The only three strict with Zhou were the Kazakh, Georgian and Korean, and we know that the Korean rooted for Cha.

In the free skate Guskov aided Aliev in the GOE and in the PCS, Chigogidze only in the PCS, not in the total. Most interesting are Samarin’s scores, particularly in the PCS.

Also Masako Kubota, the Japanese judge, liked Samarin’s program, mostly on the GOE. But to me Guskov and Chigogidze deserves attention also in other competition, not only for their compatriote but also for the way in which they judged the Russian skaters and their rivals.

Agreements between judges are harmful not only because they bring absurd marks into the score, but also because if several judges give strange marks, these marks seems correct. For example, if we look at this SkatingScores scheme, Sharkina’s bias in the short program in favor of Russian skaters is high, 2.47 points, but not very high, it is still less than those 3.00 points that I think should lead to immediate control. The Korean, with 4.53 points (and another 8.70 in the free skate) is the absolute dominator, but also Chigogidze, with his 4.19 points, stands out, and they are not the only judges with high bias. But why is Sharkina’s one acceptable unless checked closely? I watch only Aliev’s short program.

I highlighted only the three (or four, when the third or the fouth mark are the same) highest marks in the somponents. Sharkina is only 1.03 points over the final PCS. Why? Because Guskov’s marks and Chigogidze’s marks raised the score.

For the moment I leave aside this competition and possible agreements between the judges and go back to Chigogidze alone. For the 2017 Minsk Arena Cup, a Junior Grand Prix competition, I limit myself to making two totals and noting that for Chigogidze the Georgian Maysuradze, and not the Russian Igor Efimchuk, deserved the bronze. Eleven points more to the Georgian, four less to the opponent, and for her the medal would have to change owners.

At the Challenger Series Minsk Arena-Ice Star Sergei Voronov scored 250.10 points, Morisi Kvitelashvili 227.31. Gold to Russian, silver to Georgian. Is a difference of 22.79 points too big to try to overturn the result? Well it depends. It depends on how convinced you are of your ideas and how the judges panel is composed. Let’s start with the referee, the Estonian Zanna Kulik. Kulik is one of those judges who at the Sochi Olympics judged the women’s free skate (but not the short program, she was added for the second segment of the competition), so she experienced the situation of being in a controversial judges panel.

The Russian judge is Igor Dolgushin, one who does not convince me too much. I have already done a quick check on him, but I have the feeling that I have looked at him a little too superficially. I’ll have to look at him more carefully. The German judge is Elke Treitz, who I suspect was a fan of Aljona Savchenko even more than I was, and I have been rooting for her since before she won her first European championship. But I don’t judge the competitions, Treitz does. The Ukrainian judge is Yury Balkov, and a book could probably be written about Balkov. There is at least one other name I will have to ponder, but not now. In fact, if there are many suspicious judges in a panel of judges, all take the votes of the others for good, because if a check starts, you don’t know where it can go.

So, how Chigogidze voted? So:

I only highlighted the marks assigned solely by Chigogidze, but also in the other cases with Voronov Chigogidze was on the strict side, with Kvitelashvili she was on the generous. Result? According to her, Voronov deserved 238.66 points, Kvitelashvili 242.40. A huge difference. Chigogidze should have been disqualified – not suspended, disqualified – as early as 2017.

What say to us Chigogidze’s story? That the ISU is very slow to detect biased judges and to suspend them. The ISU could have seen that Chigogidze is biased in 2017, they suspended her in 2021, 4 years later. 4 years. How many skaters were robbed of the result of their efforts by Chigogidze?

And there’s another problem. Chigogidze received a Letter of Warning in 2020. A judge isn’t suspended if he is guilty. A judge is suspended if he is guilty several times in a certain time. Why Chigogidze was suspended? Because she was recognised as biased in January 2020 and in March 2021. If after the letter of warning she didn’t judged any competition, she could not receive other complaints, her warning would have expired, and she would never be suspended. Chigogidze is only one of the two Georgian international judges. If a Georgian judge is selected for an important competition, the Georgian Federation send her (or Yulia Levshunova, another really biased judge). So if after a warning Chigogidze judges a competition her usual way, she can be suspended. But if a judge from a big federation receive a warning, the federation can send to the competition other judges. In some times, the warning expire, and at this point the judge, again innocent like an angel, can judge another competition.

Let’s imagine a little. What could happen if a judge from a major federation received a warning for absurd marks in PyeongChang? His federation could have kept him (or her) at rest, assigning him (her) only a few local competitions, in order to send again him (her) at the most iimportant competitions when the warning expired. Does anyone come to mind?

The big federations can play on this mechanism. The warning should be given not only to the judge but also to his federation, it should be given more quickly, and it should not be expire, at least the one for the federation. Is a certain number of judges biased? All judges of that federation should be suspended. Otherwise, the strongest federations keep doing what they like.

Several months ago I calculated the national bias of all the judges from the 2016-2017 to the 2019-2020 season in the Olympic Games, World Championship (junior and senior), European Championship, Four Continents Championship, Grand Prix competition (Final included, junior and senior), Challenger Series and World Team Trophy. I put the data here. The text is in Italian, but if you scroll you’ll find all the names in two columns. On the left the names are in alphabetical order, on the right they are ordered from the highest to the lowest bias. There are some small mistekes on the way in which some name is written, when I found them I corrected them.

The list is a starting point for a more accurate control, preferably on the judges who have judged many competitions and who have a high bias. Indeed Chigogidze in this list is at the top, in the first screenshot. In the second there are Philippe Meriguet and Elke Treitz, whom I mentioned in this post, and they are all ahead of Weiguang Chen, suspended after the PyeongChan Olympics. ISU, wouldn’t it be worth doing some checks? Feng Huang, also suspended after PyeongChang, is in the seventh screenshot. Wouldn’t it be worth checking all the judges who have a higher bias than him? To make things easier, I quote their names here:

Helen Beale, AUS

Sarah Hanrahan, GBR

Lee Tae Ri, KOR

Akos Pethes, HUN

Francesca Mineo, ITA

Silaoglu Tanay Ozkan, TUR

Bing Han, CHN

Larry Mondschein, USA

Elena Lisova, RUS

Allan Bohem, SVK

Jia Yao, CHN

Corinna Gundlach, GER

Philippe Meriguet, Fra

Natalia Khakimova, UZB

Anna Kantor, ISR

Hui Liu, CHN

Hea-Kyung Kim, KOR

Guona Zhao, CHN

Elke Treitz, GER

Weiguang Chen, CHN

Zhanna Shemet, BLR

Guangying Qin, CHN

Ece Esen, TUR

Clement Perrigouard, FRA

(Sharon Rogers, USA, retired)

Jeff Lukasik, CAN

Valery Maksaev, UKR

Adriana Domanska, SVK

Danuta Dubrowko, POL

Xixia Liu, CHN

Kari-Anne Olsen, NOR

Malgorzata Sobkow, POL

Attila Soos, HUN

Anastassia Makarova, UKR

Natalia Bogush, RUS

Valeria Rosa, ITA

Yuolia Levshunova, (BLR) GEO

Alexandere Gorojdanov, BLR (already suspended and retired, if nothing has changed from my last information)

Sissy Krick, GER

Alexei Beletski, ISR

Ekaterina Zabolotnaya, GER

Malgorzata Grajcar, POL

Limin Jao, CHN

Sylvain Guibord, CAN

Isabella Micheli, ITA

Eric Hampton, USA

Georg Krummenacher, SUI

Michela Cesaro, ITA

Larissa Shuljateva, EST

Rengin Gunaydin, TUR

Erica Topolski, CAN

Anna Chatziathanassiou, GRE

Virpi Kunnas-Helminen, FIN

Daniel Delfa, ESP

Kuo-Chih Chen, TPE

Karol Pescosta, ITA

Kathaleen Cutone, USA

Leslie Keen, CAN

Marina Souchkova, RUS

Hans-Ulrich Luethi, SUI

Katarzyna Zakowska, POL

Irina Medvedeva, AZE/UKR

Yoon Kyung Lee, KOR

Lorrie Parker, USA

Zoia Yordanova, BUL

Ludmila Mikhailovskaya, UKR

Eva Szilagyi, HUN

Gloria Morandi, ITA

Janis Engel, USA

Feng Huang, CHN.

I stopped to a judge that was suspended and that had an average bias of 8.90 points. All the judges that I named deserves a serious check, and also some judge that isn’t among them. I don’t have enough time do check them all, so I will check the judges who inspires me the most. But the ISU should check them all, and also the others. Guskov’s bias is only of 6.00 points, but I don’t trust in him. And he isn’t the only one. Also crossed checks must be done. For now I only do the link at some data that I’ve already published.

In the last post that I linked you can find the average bias of every judge. But if you want to know from which competitions come my numbers, I published all the data in 7 posts. The judges are listed in alphabetical order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.