In his book The Secrets of Ice Alexei Mishin did an interesting consideration. It was something that already worried me, but to see tha someone who work in the figure skating world wrote

If earlier, five of the nine judges made up the majority of the panel and, by agreement, could ensure the victory of one or another athlete, now it is eunogh that two of three people sitting on the technical panel decide the outcome of the competition. […] In a singles competition, technical specialists can also consider that, say, a quad toe loop was rotated when they review it with bias or see an inside edge entrance to a Lutz and ignore it.

Of one elegant American figure skater, journalists wrote, “The farther she is from her homeland, the more under-rotations she receives.” And vice versa. (pag. 113)

is really worrying. When I’m worried, usually I do some check. Until now, the only programs I had watched of the men’s competition of the 2018 World Championship were those of Matteo Rizzo. How did the competition end?

We are used to thinking that only those who finished in the best positions fought for the title, or for a place on the podium, but what would have happened if the technical panel had made different calls? The Technical Controller was Yukiko Okabe, the Technical Specialist Olga Markova, the Assistant Technical Specialist Myriam Loriol-Oberwiler, and what they decided had a noticeable effect on the final result. I’m not criticizing their calls in the one program I watched on purpose to write this post, my impression is that their calls are correct. But what if their calls weren’t correct? I’m not accusing anyone of anything, mine is just a hypothesis to see what could happen if in a competition there is an incompetent or dishonest technical panel.

So, what if they didn’t do any call on a precise skater, Vincent Zhou? Zhou, as we can see, ended in 14th place. This is his protocol:

Seven underrotated and a flat edge. Obviously every call lowered his base value and his GOE. So I checked what would have been his score value without any call. I give to him the full base value for every jump, or, in two cases, for the jump fully rotated but with the call +REP. For the GOEs, in the +3/-3 system, for a jump marked with a <, or for a !, the deduction goes from -1 to -2.

To change the score as little as possible, I assumed that the judges always assigned the lowest deduction, -1, so I increased the real GOE by +1. In the case of the quadruple flip, there are two mistakes, so I assumed a -2. In three jumps, that I highlighted in bold, Zhou fell. For those jumps I left the real GOE. This is Zhou’s score, on the left what he actually received, on the right what he would have received without calls.

As we can see, his free skate score grows from 138.46 to 164.76 points, his final score from 235.24 to 261.54 points. Zhou would have finished fourth, not fourteenth. Off the podium, true, but much better than what happened in reality. And if it would have been Mikhail Kolyada who received two calls…

All hypothesis, I know, that need unfair judging on two skaters. Before watching another competition, I watch two other details. The first is on Zhou’s score, something I noticed looking at the calls.

At first the flip was called a triple, not a quadruple. If the jump would have been a triple, at the end Zhou would have broken the Zayak rule, we see that in the score there are the points only for the Lutz and the single loop. I don’t know if the Technical Panel suspected a mistake immediatly after the call or only when Zhou apparently broke the Zayak rule, but this is the proof that a Technical Panel can does mistakes and that the videos can aid them to do the right calls. And the better the technology, the better for the competitions.

The other detail is related to the time for evaluations. We saw the protocol, the technical panel called seven underrotations and one flat edge, it had to work a lot. He also had to rectify the call on the second jump. And then there were the falls. The first and last do not cause problems, Zhou did sit on the ice. But on both 4S Zhou got very unbalanced and had to get his hands on the ice. In one case the technical panel called a fall, in the other not. I suppose the technical panel needed to watch the jumps to decide how to make the calls. How long did it take him to make all these assessments?

In the first screenshot Zhou has just finished to skate, in the second he is coming off the rink, in the third the score has just been announced. A total of three minutes and 43 seconds pass from the first to the third screenshot, for a program that needed a lot of checks. When the judges takes longer to make their decisions, in my opinion it is a sign that something is wrong.

I stay on Zhou, for another competition that I have not watched. I have not even looked at it now, I have spared myself from this and I have watched only the protocol. This is the result of the Four Continents Championship 2019.

This time Zhou finished third. The Technical Controller was Deborah Noyes, the Technical Specialist Anett Potzsch, the Assistant Technical Specialist Shin Amano. This is Zhou’s protocol:

Having not watched Zhou’s program, I have no idea of the correctness of the calls. I just figured out what his score would have been without calls. In the 2018-2019 season, a jump marked with the sign < had to have the GOE lowered by a value between -2 and -3. I assumed that the judges always went in favor of the athlete and I calculated that they awarded a -2.

This time there were only three calls, the difference in terms of points is less, but it would have been enough for Zhou to win the silver instead of the bronze. And if Shoma Uno had received one call, that silver could have turned into gold.

So yes, only two people in the technical panel can determine the result of a competition. While on the one hand they should be given all the tools to work at their best, on the other their behavior should always be carefully monitored.