To trust in judges. They know the rules better than anyone else, and it’s their job to judge fairly every skater. This is what a lot of people say. Usually these things are said by the fans of some skaters aided by unfair judgments, that they don’t see any problem and that they are proud of not knowing the rules. Why do fans need to know the rules? It’s the judges’ job, not the fans’ job. The fans should only cheer for all skaters.

Unfortunately I have some doubts about the impartiality of the judges. I’m not saying there aren’t any fair judges, but among the fair ones, there are a lot of biased ones, too. And this statement is not something I write because I’m biased too. For thirty years I have watched competitions without questioning the results. I was not always happy, skaters I cheered for had not always obtained the result they hoped for, but sport is like this, sometimes things are good, sometimes they are not. I accepted the result without second thoughts, even though I had already read some of the books I mentioned in this blog. That was until the Saitama World Championships. After that competition I saw many people contesting the results, and I decided to learn something about it. I studied the rules, which before I knew very little about. I watched the videos attentively. I read comments of many people. Some of them were interesting, others sounded nonsense, and seeing opposing opinions also helps to understand certain scoring mechanisms, or certain psychological mechanisms. Studying the rules, I have read a large number of documents published by the ISU, and have seen that the ISU has suspended several judges for misconduct of various kinds. This means that the ISU himself know that sometimes the judges are biased. My post is in Italian, but contains screenshots of part of some official ISU documents, and in some cases there is a link to the entire document. This post is the latest in a series of 14 that I published in October 2020 dedicated to a whole series of unpleasant situations (almost all related to incorrectly evaluated competitions, but there were several other problems) that have occurred in the long history of figure skating. The posts are in Italian, many of the quotes they contain are in English.

It is enough to know just a little of the history of figure skating to know that there are problems, so I checked on national bias, on the tendency of judges to give higher marks to their compatriots. You can find an explanation (in English) of the type of calculations I did, with links to some posts that add some extra informations to the topic, here.

With these premises, can we trust judges?

I may sound a bit alarming, but no, I don’t trust them, not without double checking their work. I don’t trust them just because they are judges. Maybe they are fair and correct, but before saying that they are right I better check myself, because they do not always judge fairly. As for knowing the rules better than me… are we sure that this applies to everyone?

Let’s look at this judge:

From the number of competitions judged, both nationally and internationally, we can undoubtedly say that Joseph L. Inman (sometimes referred to as Joe Inman) is an experienced judge. In the United States they also dedicated a skating competition to him, the Inman Cup, because

He is a Judge at the National level and previously judged at the World and Olympic level and has been a Technical Controller, Referee and on the OAC (Official Assessment Committee) in singles and pairs.

Joe was very involved in developing the components in the IJS.

Inman, let’s remember, is one of the experts who contributed to making a video in which they explained to the judges how the components should be evaluated, criticizing Evgeni Plushenko, and it was he who wrote to about sixty judges, just before the 2010 Olympics, to tell them that Plushenko’s transitions were poor. I wrote about the whole story, with links to the sources, here. Therefore, according to the principle that judges are more experienced than me, and Inman is undoubtedly an experienced judge, I should trust their claims. Every time, right?

Some time ago, Inman wrote on Jackie Wong’s Twitter page to correct the identification of an ice dance element. If you correct someone you should be sure of what you say is correct, right? Otherwise better remain silent. This is the screenshot:

I did a screenshot, but in Wong’s tweet there is a gif, we can see the whole element:

I can’t get over the coolness of this lift pic.twitter.com/swpn2y17Tx

— Jackie Wong (@rockerskating) November 17, 2021

This is the Stationary Lift with which Marjorie Lajoie/Zachary Lagha started their Free Dance at the NHK Trophy 2021. When some people pointed out to him the enormity of the nonsense he had written, Inman tried to justify himself by stating

Sorry. That is dance. I was thinking pairs.

and, a little later,

Boy you are so critical for no reason. I was not speaking of dance. I was thinking pairs and I don’t know why I replied. Yikes.

He does not distinguish the two disciplines, he doesn’t know why he wrote and in any case he has forgotten that in spins skaters have at least one foot on the ice, but he is the expert, not me, so I should trust him. Of course, as he pointed out in another tweet, he is no longer a judge. I hope that at the time he judged the competitions he remembered the rules better and knew which buttons he was pressing to award the marks. Perhaps we should ask it to him, just to be sure.

Okay, Inman is no longer a judge, he doesn’t know the rules of dance and he was wrong, but this was just an unfortunate episode. It happens. We should always trust the judges because they are the experts, not us. The experts all agree, even on the marks in components.

Can we say that Kaitlyn Weaver is able to recognize the qualities of a skater when she sees a program? Weaver, I remember, together with Andrew Poje won a silver and two bronzes at the World Championship, two golds, one silver and two bronzes at the Four Continents Championship and two golds at the Grand Prix final, just to stop at the most important medals. She was a dancer, and although we may not be sure if she remembers the bullets related to the jumps because in her programs there weren’t jumps, I suspect that she is able to understand the difficulty of the steps or the depth of the edges.

Can we say that Meagan Duhamel is an expert? She, along with Eric Radford, won an Olympic bronze (plus a gold and a silver in the Team Event) in Pairs, two gold and two world bronzes, two golds and two silvers at the Four Continents Championship (plus a bronze with Craig Buntin), a gold, one silver and two bronzes at the Grand Prix final.

This is what they wrote after seeing the marks assigned to Satoko Miyahara in Turin:

Apparently the skating skills, transitions, performance quality and composition that happens on the ice doesnt matter when entering PCS scores

— Meagan Duhamel (@mhjd_85) November 6, 2021

Even those who should know figure skating well are perplexed. The judges aren’t infallible, and their marks can be perplexing. So ignoring the doubts raised by fans just because the fans are not the judges is wrong. Fans can write, and sometimes write, nonsense, but before anyone can say a statement is nonsense, he need to make sure it really is.

Some time ago I came across an interview to Alexander Lakernik, ISU Vice President for Figure Skating. We are talking about a man who knows figure skating well. And even using an automatic translator it seems to me that his statements are interesting.

The interview is old, it dates back to the 2019 Universiade, but what Lakernik says is important even now. Let’s start with the last statement, the fact that a judge who exit from the corridor deemed acceptable is subjected to a trial.

This is not always the case. Salome Chigogidze was suspended for national bias after the 2021 World Championship, but for referee Philippe Meriguet her marks were correct. And if her marks had been checked earlier, Chigogidze could have been suspended earlier. In the end Chigogidze was suspended anyway despite Meriguet’s inertia? True, but not suspending her earlier allowed her to distort the results of competitions that she should not have been able to judge, and if the referee doesn’t do anything, sometimes the suspension doesn’t come at all.

Watch the case of Michela Cesaro, who gave strange marks in at least two competitions. In the first, her marks were signaled too late, so the ISU had to drop the investigation. In the second according to the ISU Cesaro’s marks were biased, but previously she has never received a warning, she said she didn’t give too high marks to the Italians on purpose, and everything ended there. So I am not at all sure that the ISU monitors its judges carefully.

Considering what happened with Cesaro, I’m not sure that her marks were discussed after the competition. However, many discussions are needed, these are just some of the most striking cases I have noticed in the last period. This is Satoko Miyahara’s free skate protocol at GP of Italy:

If according to Lakernik a difference between -1 and +4 is too great, I guess it’s too big between -4 and +1, right? And even the one between -4 and 0 seems a bit high to me. Judge 8 is the Italian Virginia De Agostini. Eunsoo Lim’s free skate must have created some doubts in the judges’ minds, her second jump element, a triple flip, received a 0 from De Agostini, but according to the Japanese judge Miwako Ando the jump deserved a -4. Even on the calls of the technical panel (the Technical Controller was the Australian Susan Lynch, the Technical Specialist the American Terry Kubicka, the Assistant Technical Specialist the Italian Gilberto Viadana) I have some doubts. I wanted to check the flip, saw the replay of the opening combination (3Lz+3T), and I have serious doubts about the rotation of the jump that ended in a fall, the triple toe loop.

This is Junhwan Cha’s free skate protocol at the NHK Trophy 2021:

Something tells me that at least one judge didn’t give the correct mark. Who? Cha did two mistakes in one element, the triple lutz had a flat edge and the triple loop was underrotated. According to the communication 2334, if there are multiple errors in any element (e.g. in a jump element both “!” and “<”, the starting GOE for the evaluation cannot be higher than +2). The rule say clearly any element, not any jump, and mention clearly exactly the mistakes done by Cha.

These are the deductions:

Starting from +2, the maximum possible according to the rules, we must assign at least a -1 for unclear edge (but also a -2 is correct) and -2 (but we can also assign a -3) for underrotated. Total: -1. To the utmost. And that’s not counting the -1 for the lutz landed on the quarter. How did American judge Deborah Currie assign a 0? As an aside, I re-watched the combination before writing these phrases, and considering the flow and the way in which the combination was executed, a -4 and a -5 are too strict.

The 0 assigned by Currie makes me suspect that sometimes the judges forget the rules. I know, judging is difficult. I have never judged a skating competition, at most I have judged a few tennis matches, which is a little simpler. It was a tournament of no importance, with players I didn’t know and didn’t care about. This means that I was not influenced by personal sympathies, but also that there were no line judges or television. The tournament was played on hardcourt, so there was no possibility of controlling the mark that the ball left on clay. I had to see well, even the distant balls, and if I had a doubt I still had to make a decision, by myself. As you can imagine, it would have been a lot easier if I could have compared my opinions to someone else’s, or if I could have watched a replay. Here, the replay, the technology, would have allowed me to judge those matches better. I am sure I have judged honestly, I am not sure, and will never be, that I have correctly judged all the balls.

A figure skating judge have to evaluate a lot of things in a short time, and just to make the job of the judges easier and get the most correct results of the competitions, the ISU should implement the technology and modify the computer system. The doubts of the judges, and therefore their mistakes, must be reduced as much as possible, also because these competitions are a bit more important than the tournament I judged.

Let’s see some clarification made by the ISU in the same communication:

In Short Program, the final GOE must be -5 if the Jump Element is not according to requirements. This means for example that the Jump Element has wrong number of revolutions, jump is repeated or jump combination has only one jump and the sign +COMBO.

ISU’s words, not mine.

This is Matteo Rizzo’s short program at the same NHK Trophy:

Judge 4 was the Canadian Deborah Islam, judge 8 again Deborah Currie. Both gave Rizzo a mark that does not respect the rules, and Islam’s mark entered in the final GOE for that element.

This is Kao Miura’s protocol:

Again Islam and Currie. I have the vague impression that judges sometimes make mistakes, and if judges make mistakes, I can point them out. Not because I dislike some skaters, as those who downplay criticism of judges’ work write by saying that fans lack the skills to comment on marks, and that criticizing judges is bullying some poor innocent skater. Reporting mistakes is a step towards convincing the ISU of the need to introduce better technologies and simplify the judges’ work.

Were they particularly unlucky with the judges at the NHK Trophy? This is the Internationaux de France. Jason Brown landing a quadruple on one foot and not missing a bit of rotation is a big news, so I went to look at the protocol. And before someone can get offended by my last statement, I remind you that among the active skaters Brown is my second favorite skater (and Rizzo, who I mentioned above, is not very lower in my preferences).

From -4 to +2 is a difference even bigger than that mentioned as wrong by Lakernik. So, how was Brown’s jump?

From the screenshots you can’t see it, but the jump is on the music and is preceded by a step, at least we have to start from +2. The starting position is not elegant, he loses immediately the very good position from take off to landing. Now let’s go back to looking at the deductions. Which one is there? In my opinion only the weak landing, and considering that it is not an excessive imbalance, I would stay on -1, therefore +1 final. Even to be strict, the step cannot be missed. Choosing not to consider the jump performed on the music and giving to Brown a higher deduction, a final mark of less than -2 does not respect the rules. This means that the -4 awarded by the Canadian judge Cynthia Benson is a mistake.

Shall we change competition again? I was actually interested in something else when I noticed Shoma Uno’s three-jump combination marks at the latest Skate America.

The marks range from 0 to -4. It’s correct? Judge 5 is the Russian Lolita Labunskaya, Judge 8 is the French Helene Cucuphat. In the protocol we see a q, so I watched the video. When Uno landed the triple flip, his left foot touched the ice. It was a light touch, but it was there and deserved a deduction. Yet from the video this was not the jump element that struck me the most, but the quadruple flip, a jump fully rotated according to the technical panel, with only a slightly negative evaluation. In the first line we can see the take off, in the second I put only one screenshot. Uno is already landed, we can see the little cloud of ice created by his blade. I ignore the rest of the landing, not disastrous but not effortless either, and meritorious of the deduction for weak landing.

From these images I would say that the flip is a jump that take off on the forward edge and lands forward. If the rules are this, this is a good jump. I didn’t take screenshots of the rotations in the air. I counted three, but considering how difficult it is to land forward without killing yourself, this jump could deserves the bonus of an extra rotation, half before the take off, half after the landing. So this is a 4F, BV in the second half 12.10 points. Right?

I didn’t watch the men’s free skate at the NHK Trophy, when the competition took place I wasn’t at home and I didn’t look for the videos afterwards, but from what I read even in that competition Uno’s jumps deserve a closer look. This time I leave it alone. Maybe sooner or later I will watch them, not now.

Uno gave me serious doubts about how jumps must be performed. I looked for them on the official rules of the ISU but, beyond the indications on the rotations and those on the flip and lutz edges, I did not find any. So I turned to Youtube, and the official videos made by the ISU Center of Excellence. This is the one on the toe loop:

The explanations are made by Yuka Sato, world champion in 1994. Sato didn’t make the jump as she explained the movement, she just rotated on the ice, but the fact that she only uses the toe pick and not the full blade for the take-off couldn’t be more clear, and in the explanation she also pointed out that the take-off must occur while the skater is going backwards. This in an official video of the ISU.

At one point Sato also clearly states that the take off must be done while the skater is going backwards, otherwise what he does is a toe axel, a type of jump explicitly mentioned by the ISU in its rules as meritorious of deduction.

The salchow:

The salchow is explained by Ondrej Hotarek, bronze medalist at the 2013 European Championship in Pairs together with Stefania Berton and sixth at the 2018 Olympic Games together with Valentina Marchei.

Hotarek explanation is shorter (I cut all the explanations that aren’t necessary to understand the characteristics of the jump), but the positions of his feet, the take off from the blade, is clear.

The loop jump is explained by Franca Bianconi, 19th at the 1980 Olympic Games, now coach of Matteo Rizzo.

The flip jump is explained by Jason Dungjen, 4th at the 1998 Olympic Games in Pairs with Kyoko Ina.

In the video we can see several flip, always on the inside edge, something to which Dungjen talk two times. And the take-off is from the toe, not from the blade.

The toe in the ice, not the blade on the ice. We’re sure that Uno’s take-off is correct? Because to me it seems that Dungjen is saying something different.

The lutz is explained by Fang Dan, 18th at the 2003 World Championship.

Wait a moment…

According to Fabio Bianchetti, Chair of the ISU Technical Committee for figure skating, the technique and the preparation for the flip and the lutz is the same. But according to Dungjen’s and Dan’s explanation, the two jumps are really different. All of them are experts. So which expert should I believe? Dungjen+Dan, or Bianchetti? Someone might be offended if I don’t believe him, because he is the expert, not me. But… maybe I understand! These jumps were previously approved by Schrödinger’s cat. Therefore all jumps are correct if performed in the right environment, and all jumps are wrong if performed in the wrong environment. Or maybe from the wrong skater, I have yet to figure that out.

Two people explained the axel, Stéphane Lambiel and Angelo Dolfini. Lambiel was World Champion in 2005 and 2006, and Olympic silver in 2006, Dolfini was 26th at the 2002 Olympic Games.

Why did I focus on the jumps? Because, beside Uno’s take off, at the Rostelecom Cup I really found myself in difficulty. Every now and then I get distracted, especially if a particular skater doesn’t interest me, and I don’t know what he is doing anymore. I look at him, but I don’t see him. But if I really look, I recognize the jumps. Usually. Yet the other day I really found myself in difficulty. My doubt is: which jump/jumps I immortalized with my screenshots?

I didn’t take the same number of screenshots, I could not stop the video I was working on – yes, I could actually stop it, but the image became dark and therefore unusable – so I had to go through countless attempts by doing continuously restarting the video and hoping to seize the right moment for the screenshot. In both of the lines I would have liked to add a further screenshot between the penultimate and the last, but beyond this I think the work of the feet is clear. Are these two different jumps? Are the same jump? A technical panel that has to call the jumps, in this case what does call?

When I saw the second jump I thought “quadruple salchow? But he can’t do another quadruple salchow, he’s already done one in combination“. In a few seconds the call appeared on the screen: quadruple toe loop. At this point I thought “quadruple toe loop? How did I not see the toe pick?” I followed the rest of the program with the impatience of being able to watch the replays of the jumps. These screenshots come from the replays of the quadruple salchow (top row, this is the first jump of the combination) and the quadruple toe loop (bottom row) performed by Morisi Kvitelashvili in the short program of the Rostelecom Cup.

Rather than asking myself how I did not see the toe pick, the question is: how did the technical panel manage to see it? The jump explained by Yuka Sato is quite another thing. The Technical Controller was Fabio Bianchetti, the expert according to which flip and lutz are the same. I suppose this also means that toe loop and salchow are the same. If so, why don’t we get rid of the Zayak rule? At least we are more honest. The Technical Specialist was Ricardo Olavarrieta, the Assistant Technical Specialist Julia Gor-Sebestyen. Both were skaters, he participated in the Olympic Games in 1988 and 1992, she participated in as many as four Olympics, and in 2004 she became European champion. For most of her career she competed with the old scoring system, I doubt at that time there were clear indications of the use of toe pick and full blade, but beyond this detail she knew very well what the correct movement of the legs is to perform a toe loop.

Kvitelashvili’s toelchow was not a mistake. In the free program he performed the toe pick, or rather the non-toe pick, in the same way. Before I had never really watched Kvitelashvili’s jumps, but after this competition I came across videos posted by several people, and the problem had been around for some time. Why is it not sanctioned? Why does this jump receive marks ranging from +1 (only one, from the Hungarian judge Attila Soos) to +3 in both the short and free programs?

Elisa made a beautiful analysis of Kvitelashvili’s jump:

-Morisi's 4T pic.twitter.com/tuS2UjkOts

— Elisa (@lunnarias) November 29, 2021

She too is a fan and not an expert? Let’s forget the fact that, if we talk about physics, Elisa could teach a lot of things to several people. A person that, I think, knows the jumps, in Yuzuru Hanyu. He did a very detailed analysis of some jump, proving that a full blade flip is no different than a loop. Hanyu compared flips and loops, but with this type of toe loop and salchow we have the same problem. Why doesn’t the ISU listen to an expert’s opinion? Why doesn’t the ISU ask to Waseda University a copy of Hanyu’s thesis to understand how to improve the judging system and make it more objective? If there are experts, and the technologies as well, not exploiting the knowledge of these people, or all the potential of technologies, is a very serious mistake.

We are not talking about details, in the short program the quadruple toe loop, executed in the second half of the program, brought Kvitelashvili 12.89 points, if he had performed a triple flip like the one with which he finished the jumps in the free skate he would have obtained 6.81 points. Just over half. And then there is the free skate, in which Kvitelashvili executed a quadruple salchow and two jumps that were called quadruple toe loops. Instead of one of the two toe loop he could have done a salchow, the short program says he can do it in combination. And instead of the other? In order not to break the Zayak rule, the alternatives would be a triple lutz, a jump that he hasn’t executed since the 2013-2014 season, or a double. Accepting as valid Kvitelashvili’s toe loop, without assigning him any penalty, means giving him enormous help, at the expense of all those who have a correct technique and who maybe perform only one type of quadruple, not two, precisely because they jump with the correct technique.

When in the American major leagues of baseball a very high number of batters began to hit home runs using metal bats, the federation intervened by issuing a rule according to which the bat shall be one piece of solid wood. The game, which was in danger of being distorted, with the disappearance of all defensive actions, was saved by the federation which promptly changed the rule. When something is wrong, the federation must realize it and must intervene as soon as possible, do not act like the ISU who, in the summer of 2021, said something as “since we agreed that we made a mistake when, three years ago, we assigned the sequence of jumps a lower base value than that of the same jumps performed alone, we will change the score. Immediately? No, we decided to wait another year, in spite of Mariah Bell, Artur Danielian, Ekaterina Kurakova, Eunsoo Lim, Matteo Rizzo, Evgeni Semenenko, Adam Siao Him Fa, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, Lindsay Von Zundert and anyone else who might have the unhealthy idea of doing a sequence”.

Let’s pretend that the technical panel has seen Kvitelashvili’s toe pick or that in doubt, not being sure of the rule (???) it went in favor of the skater. One of his duties is to control the rotation of the jumps. What should this jump be called?

I’m getting tired of pretending not to see things, but let’s pretend we don’t see Kvitelashvili’s prerotation. In which direction he is going when he lands? Why was this jump assigned the base value of a fully rotated quadruple? But obviously it is important not to disturb the minds and the hearth of the members of the technical panel, who did the calls of the jumps, and that of Kvitelashvili, who performed those jumps. Have any skaters been damaged by incorrect marks? He count nothing.

One of the details we all noticed is that Kvitelashvili received the second highest marks in the PCS, lower only than Mikhail Kolyada’s. I was impressed that his marks are higher than those of Rizzo, Tomono, Sadovsky… but if we look closely, those marks are even more impressive. Why? Because Kvitelashvili, unlike Rizzo, fell. Rizzo’s only mistake was to do a triple instead of a quadruple as the first jump, something that doesn’t have the slightest influence on the artistic aspect of his program. However, if we look at the rules I posted above, if a program contains a serious error, the maximum scores are 9.75 for SS, TR and CO, 9.50 for PE and IN.

Serious errors are falls, interruptions during the program and technical mistakes that impact the integrity/continuity/fluidity of the composition and/or its relation to the music.

In no program there were interruptions, other technical mistakes can be difficult to evaluate, not all judges think the same way, and in any case these mistakes are generally ignored. Let’s focus on the falls. I recalculated the PCS in the free skate considering as the maximum value 10.00 for those who did not fall, and 9.75, or 9.50, for those who fell once, which means that to some skaters I added those 1.75 points that the judges must have subtracted for the fall (or 4.75 to the skaters that fell two times). I did the rank for the PCS, on the left the rank with the score that we all can see on the page of the competition, on the right the rank considering the cap for the PCS. This is what came out:

Maybe there is something wrong with both the way components are evaluated and the way the cap is applied. But maybe it’s just me who doesn’t understand why I’m not an expert. And then I rely on an expert, Mr. Lakernik. Yes, that very vice president of the ISU according to which there must not be those large variations in the evaluations between one judge and another that we see too often. According to him, if the score for one element is +1, then +2 is acceptable up, and 0 down is acceptable.

According to this principle, for an experiment I raised almost all Tomono’s marks in the free program by +1. The only mark I did not touch was the -5 for the fall, but I remember that in a free program it is possible to assign a mark higher than -5 even to jumps that ended in a fall.

My calculation is done by varying only the GOE, I kept the real components and the deduction for the fall. What would have happened to the final rank?

With these marks Tomono would have performed the second free skate, not the fifth, and would have won the gold, not the bronze. With this I am not saying that for me Tomono would have deserved the gold, because what I think in this case does not matter. What I’m saying is that a variation considered acceptable by Lakernik – moreover made only on Tomono’s score, but if I wanted to, I could have also played down with that of Kvitelashvili – changes the color of the medals. An incorrect mark, even by a +1 or a -1, is important. True, I have changed the mark on 11 of the 12 elements, but if a judge is prejudiced, whether he does it on purpose or not, he does not incorrectly assign only a single vote, he assigns them all wrong, or almost. And it would have taken less to give Tomono the victory. Would have been enough only an average GOE higher of +1 in the three jumping elements that had a positive GOE. 3.53 instead of 2.58 on the opening combination, 4.07 instead of 3.12 on the quadruple toe loop and 1.29 instead of 0.76 on the last combination. That’s 2.43 points of difference. Kvitelashvili defeated Tomono by 2.14 points. This means that every slightest difference can be fundamental, and that in order to define figure skating as a sport, the marks must be assigned as correctly as possible.

Although this is not the most important competition for figure skating – it is still the most important victory ever achieved by Kvitelashvili, and it would have been the most important victory ever achieved by Tomono if he had won – I remember that in 2018 there were only 1.31 points to separate Alina Zagitova from Evgenia Medvedeva, Olympic gold and silver, 0.79 points to separate Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir from Gabriella Papadakis/Guillaume Cizeron, 0.43 points to separate Aljona Savchenko/Bruno Massot from Wenjing Sui/Cong Han. Sometimes the difference between the skaters is big, sometimes even the Olympic medals are decided by a difference of few centesimal of points. And the calculation I did on the sole Tomono’s protocol clearly tells us that, if they wish, the judges can change the ratio of values between two strong skaters, who do more than three quadruples, by more than 15 points, only on the free skate.

The final GOE is awarded by several judges and not by only one? I know this, but I know also that can happen that all the judges give to a skater the wrong mark. You doesn’t trust me? No problem, you don’t have to do it. You can check for yourself.

Do you see that butt outside in the fourth screenshot? Not exactly a very elegant position. Why is Nathan Chen in this position? Because in the middle of the choreographic sequence he stumbled. If for you the screenshots aren’t clear enough, you can always check the video on youtube. What are the rules for the choreo sequence?

My screenshot is a montage of the parts that interest me. I have not changed the meaning of anything, for brevity I have only deleted the rules for jumps, spins and the step sequences.

Chen has stumbled, there cannot be bullets 2, 3, 5 and 6. Let’s say there are 1 and 4 and start with +2. Regardless of which deduction we apply, whether it is Loss of control while executing the sequence or Stumble, either of these deductions apply, even if you are generous you must apply a -1. The final mark cannot be higher than +1 (but can be lower).

These images come from the Grand Prix Final 2019. Japanese Mami Maeda and Canadian Deborah Islam awarded a +4, French Anthony Leroy, Chinese Wei Shi, Austrian Elisabeth Binder, Russian Olga Kozhemyakina, Italian Walter Toigo , American Wendy Enzmann and Georgian Salome Chigogidze awarded a +5. Nine out of nine judges awarded the wrong mark. And they didn’t do a mistake of +1 (or -1), but at least of +3. So yes, it can happen that all judges assign to a skater a different mark than he deserves.

Unseen stumbles aren’t the only type of mistake made by the judges. It may happen that a large number of judges assign to an element a lower mark than it deserved. The 4T+3T combination of the short program skated by Hanyu at the World Team Trophy 2021 was awarded a +3 by the French judge Philippe Meriguet, while the Canadian Karen Butcher, the Japanese Sakae Yamamoto and the Italian Walter Toigo – yes, one of those who gave +5 to Chen’s choreography sequence with a stumble – gave +4. Now go and look at the combination and explain to me which bullets – you need at least two – are missing so as not to give +5. Explain it to me, because I’m not a judge and I don’t understand it. Just before that combination Hanyu had landed a quadruple salchow that deserved a +4 according to Meriguet, Toigo and the Russian Kozhemyakina, another who assigned +5 to Chen’s step sequence. What bullets are missing? Is a stumble a bullet? Since a Chen’s element with stumble received +5, and a Hanyu’s element without stumble did not, probably it’s time that I start to ask myself questions.

7 of the 14 marks received by Hanyu in two perfect elements are wrong, and the mistakes of the judges resulted in a loss of 0.96 points. And I’m not looking at the other elements, all with a lot of wrong marks.

If judging a competition is difficult, the work of judges must be made as simple as possible, in order to reduce the risk of mistakes. The computer program must be modified so that judges cannot give marks that do not respect the rules. Marks like those awarded by Islam and Currie in the NHK Trophy short program to Rizzo and Cha, or as the +2 awarded (when there was the +3/-3 scoring system, so the maximum GOE was +3) to Mikhail Kolyada from the Finnish Tarja Ristanen at the 2018 World Championship for this quadruple toe loop:

There must be an artificial intelligence system that check the rotation of the jumps as well as the correctness of the take off, whether it is the full blade highlighted by Hanyu in his thesis, but also visible with a camera put at the right angle, the prerotation, or the edge of flip and lutz. The rotation can be observed by watching the movement of the skate at the landing, but also the mark left by the blade on the ice.

The screenshot came from this video:

For the prerotation, the ISU should explain the logic with which they penalize a jump if there is 90° missing on landing (assuming that the technical panel notice the mistake) and not sanction a toe jump in which 180° or more is missing in the take off. The prerotation is a problem of the rules not so clear, of that rules updated with such timeliness by the ISU, but the judges can give anyway a deduction for poor take off. In the rule about the flip and lutz edges there is no ambiguity and, as I have already pointed out comparing two triple lutz of Yuma Kagiyama and Mikhail Kolyada at the Grand Prix of Italy, the wrong no call on Kagiyama’s lutz and the incorrect marks awarded by the judges meant that the worst jump received a higher score.

The third bullet for the jumps is very good height and very good length. There is written and, both the height and the length must be very good, something that can be measured. If the ISU measured all jumps and established precise measurements for each type of jump, it could be the computer that decides whether to assign this bullet, not the judges. I remind that for a mark higher than +3 this bullet must necessarily be present.

Of the short program of the 2019 World Championship, I have the measurements of all the triple axels. I have sorted the jumps according to their height or their width, and I have highlighted in light yellow when a skater has received at least one mark higher than +3, the intense yellow when he has received at least three.

Yuzuru Hanyu and Keegan Messing are the only two skaters who are at the top of both rankings. Beyond the other characteristics of the jump, they are the only skaters who could have received marks higher than +3, yet several other skaters have had at least one, some at least three. All marks that do not respect the rules.

Why does a fan spend his time criticizing the judges when others aren’t complaining? I can’t speak for the others, but perhaps the journalists who work with the ISU don’t criticize the judges because they risk losing their jobs. In the ’90, after she published Inside Edge, for some time Christine Brennan was unable to attend the competitions held by the US Figure Skating federation because she was refused a pass to access the events. Some journalist doesn’t know the rules, so they can say nothing. Some journalist criticize the judges, but the ISU and a lot of fan aren’t interested in what they say. And perhaps those who are benefited by the wrong application of the rules – and there are those who are systematically benefited – have no interest in criticizing a system that favors them. As for those directly involved, skaters and coaches, they cannot criticize the system.

As I have already noted, skaters cannot contest almost anything about the score assigned to them.

I understand the desire of the ISU not to undermine the credibility of the sport, but preventing any protest does not seem to me the best system. Perhaps, if there were better technologies, we would all feel less need to protest. What the ISU achieves, with these rules, is to give the judges as much freedom to assign the score as they like, so the skaters and coaches can’t do anything about it. They have to accept any abuse and that’s it. Nor can they claim to be the victim of an injustice, even if it was committed in good faith.

Before I wrote that I was looking for a clear definition of the jumps. Where did I look for it? In official documents published by the ISU over the years. I only read a small part of it, but what I read was enough for me. The latest version of the rules can be found on the ISU website.

This is a screenshot from

SPECIAL REGULATIONS
& TECHNICAL RULES
SINGLE & PAIR SKATING
and
ICE DANCE
2021
as accepted by an online vote
June 2021

I have highlighted three details. I’m looking at page 9 of a 150-page document. The document begins with rule 300. The preceding pages contain only the ISU congress list and the index of the document. Why do the rules start from 300 and censor many others? Rules between 301 and 334 are referred to as reserved. Why? What do those rules say that we don’t have to know? There are hundreds of hidden rules, not only the first 299 but also many others throughout the course of the document.

When someone hides something from me, I get suspicious. I can’t help it, it’s one of my flaw. You publish incomplete documents, and instead of being grateful for what I have, I immediately start wondering what is missing. I am a bad person. I am also a stubborn person. I don’t always find what I’m looking for, also because sometimes I don’t even know what I’m looking for, but sometimes I discover things that surprise me. For example, in the

SPECIAL REGULATIONS
& TECHNICAL RULES
SINGLE & PAIR SKATING
and
ICE DANCE
2018
as accepted by the 57th Ordinary Congress
June 2018

I found this:

Whenever the ISU changes something in the regulation, the change is underlined. What is written in Rule 368 so terrible to push the ISU to made it secret in 2018? Well, I don’t have all the regulations, but I have the 2008-2009 one. Let’s make a comparison.

Do we agree that more or less these are the same rules? The one on the protocol really changes only in the details, in the other there are major changes and the reference to another rule, but for better or worse the subject is the method of judgment with possible innovations.

In 2008, rule 368 was this:

No official participating, so no judges, referees, journalists, skaters, coaches, doctors, … no official participating, in any capacity, can make any negative comment.

So whoever says that if a skater don’t like the marks he can always complain, and that if he don’t do it, it means that the competitions have been judged correctly (when, according to the rules, it’s clear that the marks are wrong), he is not protecting some skater unfairly bullied by fans angry for the results. He is further bullying the skater who has been unfairly penalized by the judges.

It’s probably time for me to finish writing a post that I started in May, a post dedicated to someone, judges, athletes or coaches who have tried to speak in the past. It is not a coherent text, just a series of episodes juxtaposed to each other, but they are disturbing episodes. In the past someone, too few, tried to say something, now a rule expressly forbids it. Do you really think that a person who has dedicated his life to figure skating can afford to openly criticize what is wrong, knowing that he will be thrown out of that world that is so important to him? The only certain thing is that I don’t trust the judges, not anymore. If the ISU was trying to get someone who has followed him for over thirty years away from skating… well, he almost succeeded. If, on the other hand, the goal is to increase the number of fans, perhaps he should really ask himself what can be improved.