Philippe Meriguet was one of the first judges I noticed when I started looking at the protocols of the competitions. How could I not have noticed him? The first competitions I watched were the most important, and with Meriguet’s marks at the Olympic Games we have this detail:

Only one judge thought that Matteo Rizzo’s short program was not one of the best 24, and would have excluded Rizzo from the free skate. I am a Rizzo’s fan from January 2016, when he participated for the first time at the European Championship, so when I started looking at the protocols I could not help but notice the detail. It may happen that the judges do not have the same opinion even in the case of important scores such as those relating to who can go to the free skate. Two judges, for example, would have stopped Paul Fentz. But there were two, not just one, and they would not have advanced one of their compatriote. The Latvian judge would have advanced a skater from Malaysia, Julian Zhi Jie Yee, the Uzbek judge would have advanced the Kazakh Denis Ten. Who deserved to goes to the free skate instead of Rizzo according to Meriguet? The French Chafik Besseghier, and this is a curious detail also because Meriguet was the only one for whom Besseghier deserved to skate in the free skate. A coincidence?

I noticed the detail and moved on. There are many details that I notice and on which I do not dwell, or I stop only for a short time, due to lack of time. Sometimes the details remain a personal thought, sometimes I manage to come back to it.

A few months later thanks to SkatingScores I did a check on the national bias, and I discovered that for Meriguet the habit of raising the marks of his compatriots and/or lowering those of their rivals is an established habit. That may be the reason why when Salome Chigogidze helped Morisi Kvitelashvili at the 2021 World Championship, Meriguet, who was the referee, did not report her marks as national bias to the ISU Disciplinary Commission. For him it is normal to assign higher marks to his compatriots, and even if Chigogidze assigns even more patriotic marks than his, how can he condemn an attitude in which he recognizes himself?

What made me understand that I absolutely had to go back to Meriguet was the +3 he assigned to the quadruple toe loop-triple toe loop combination executed by Yuzuru Hanyu in the short program of the World Team Trophy 2021. That day, of the seven marks he assigned to Hanyu six are wrong, but since in four cases at least one other judge gave the same wrong mark, it was the combination that angered me the most. With the emotional thrust of that mark, I did a quick check and wrote a post in which I noticed some odd marks assigned by Meriguet. It was a work done in little time, I didn’t dig into the marks that much. The data of one competition, the Challenge Cup 2021, are missing, because for some strange reason it does not appear in the detailed list of competitions judged by Meriguet published by SkatingScores but only in the synthetic list below, and at that time I had not noticed it.

Meriguet could be one of the French judges at the next Olympic Games, the choice is between him, Anthony Leroy, Elisabeth Louesdon, Florence Vuylsteker, who are also qualified to be the referee, and Francis Betsch, Helene Cucuphat and Veronique Verrue. The ISU already knows who has been chosen by the French federation, we do not know. One of these judges will judge the Men’s competition in Beijing, and even if I have not looked at the behavior of the others I really hope it is not Meriguet.

If according to Meriguet that combination did not deserve the +5, nor the initial quadruple salchow deserved it, or the three spins and the sequence of steps, to which elements does Meriguet assign the highest mark?

To see these marks one would say that Meriguet is a severe judge. I have heard many times that as long as the criteria of judgement are the same for all skaters it is not a problem, because the difference between the skaters remains the same. It’s not true. Let’s stay on the World Team Trophy. Hanyu’s quadruple salchow would have deserved +5, that’s 4.85 points from GOE. Meriguet awarded only 3.88. The combination would have deserved +5, that’s 4.75 points. Meriguet awarded 2.85. In those elements Meriguet made Hanyu lose 2.87 points. Let’s forget that the marks then enter the average, both because I have already noticed how even a single judge who assigns absurd marks can distort the results, and because sometimes it is not a single judge who assigns incorrect marks. In these two elements the wrong marks were seven out of fourteen, for a net loss of 0.96 points. All judges have to give the correct marks, always, and in this case Meriguet has given to Hanyu two wrong marks, with a really low mark for an element that hit all the six bullets. Did he does the same thing with everyone? I don’t know if all the other marks awarded by Meriguet are correct or not, I should go back and watch the programs with the protocols in hand, and I don’t have the time to do it. Let’s pretend he give his marks correctly and he lowered almost all the marks. Almost, here is the problem, because none can lower all the marks.

Shoma Uno fell on the quadruple toe loop and couldn’t do the second jump of the combination. According to the rule, he received a unanimous -5. On that element Meriguet could not assign a lower mark, -6 or -7, because he was strict with Hanyu. Hanyu should have had a greater advantage over Uno than what he actually had. Same thing with Daniel Grassl, who fell on both the quadruple lutz and the triple axel, or with Nam Nguyen, who fell on the quadruple salchow. In this case an almost perfect Hanyu has made a completely different competition than Uno, Grassl or Nguyen with their programs full of mistakes, and in the World Team Trophy it’s important each of the programs, not their sum, but it could happen that a result is linked to some too low marks awarded to a skater combined with marks that cannot be lowered to another skater. A mark too low for an element can change the final result.

Leaving Hanyu aside for a moment, in this competition between Grassl and Nguyen there is less than half a point. Grassl fell twice, Nguyen only once. Who tells us that, if Meriguet had been less strict with everyone, the ranking would have remained the same as we know? Maybe in this competition Nguyen deserved a higher score than Grassl. If we look at the scores, for four judges (the Canadian Karen Butcher, Meriguet, the Korean Jung Sue Lee and the Russian Olga Kozhemyakina) Grassl deserved the tenth place and Nguyen the eleventh, for three (the Japanese Sakae Yamamoto, the Italian Walter Toigo and the American Lorrie Parker) the positions are the opposite. Meriguet, with strict marks, influenced the final rank? We may never know, but since it is not possible to lower (or raise) all the marks, for me it’s not okay to say “if a judge is severe with everyone, or generous with everyone, that’s fine”. No, all marks must be awarded for what the skaters have done, no more, no less.

Ok, let’s go back to Meriguet. For Meriguet the perfect elements are very few. Has he always been of this opinion? These are the international competition he judged (as judge, not as referee) from the 2016-2017 season onwards:

+5/-5	skaters	+3/-3	skaters
2018 IdF M, SP	11	2016 AND OPN L, SP	8
2018 IdF M, FS	10	2016 AND OPN L, FS	8
2019 WC M, SP	24	2016 AND OPN JM, SP	5
2019 WC M, FS	35	2016 AND OPN JM, FS	5
2019 JGP CRO M, SP	24	2016 AND OPN JL, SP	15
2019 JGP CRO M, FS	24	2016 AND OPN JL, FS	15
2019 IdF M, SP	11	2016 CoR M, SP	12
2019 IdF M, FS	11	2016 CoR M, FS	12
2021 CHA CUP M, SP	17	2016 CoR P, SP	8
2021 CHA CUP M, FS	17	2016 CoR P, FS	8
2021 CHA CUP P, SP	11	2016 JGPF M, SP	6
2021 CHA CUP P, FS	10	2016 JGPF M, FS	6
2021 WTT M, SP	11	2016 GPF M, SP	6
2021 WTT M, FS	11	2016 GPF M, FS	6
2021 WTT P, SP	6	2017 SC M, SP	12
2021 WTT P, FS	6	2017 SC M, FS	12
2021 LOM TRO M, SP	23	2017 SC P, SP	8
2021 LOM TRO M, FS	23	2017 SC P, FS	8
2021 LOM TRO W, SP	32	2018 OG M, SP	30
2021 LOM TRO W, FS	31
tot programs	348		190

In the two periods he judged the same number of competitions, with the +3/-3 code of points there is one less program because at the Olympic Games he judged only the short program. They are mostly senior competitions, in both periods there are some junior competition. Most of the competitions are important, when he judged the less important competition (Andorra Open 2016, with no skaters really strong, no mark higher than +1 awarded by Meriguet and no mark higher than +2 awarded by any judge) the code of points used was still the +3/-3. The number of programs judged, however, changes a lot, the most recent competitions had a greater number of participants. So if Meriguet has always been strict with the maximum score, the +3 should be very few, right?

Ehm…

So once Meriguet pressed the button to assign the +3 without too much trouble, and did it even if the element was a jump. In the case of pairs, I highlighted both side by side jumps and throw jumps, not the twists, and if with the + 5/-5 system the jumps worthy of the maximum mark were 8% of the elements that received that mark, with the system +3/-3 the jumps were the 21%. As for skaters able of performing perfect elements, there were 16. But maybe it is not Meriguet who has become more severe, it is the good skaters who have retired. Let’s see who got at least a +5, or a +3:

+5/-5	+3/-3
Aymoz
	Balde
Brown	Brown
	Cha
	Chan
Chen	Chen
	Fernandez
	Hanyu
	Hendrickx
	Jin
Kolyada	Kolyada
	Messing
	Rippon
	Savchenko/Massot
Tarasova/Morozov
	Ten
Uno	Uno
	Vasiljevs

I have highlighted in bold the skaters who are still competing. This means that Junhwan Cha, Yuzuru Hanyu, Boyang Jin, Keegan Messing and Deniss Vasiljevs, who had previously been given some +3, never received a +5. Have they all gotten worse? Looking at the video of Hanyu’s quadruple salchow and combination I would say no, it is Meriguet who, with a few exceptions, seems to use the + 3/-5 scoring code of points.

Since according to some I’m just a hater with too much free time, I also checked the +2 until the 2017-2018 season, and the +4 in the following seasons. The two marks are not exactly comparable, a +2 corresponded to 67% of the maximum GOE, a +4 corresponds to 80%, but it is also true that now the GOE weighs much more on the final score and that now assigning the correct mark is even more important than in the past.

I found 383 +2 assigned until Spring 2018 to 48 different skaters or pairs, and not all of them are prominent skaters: Aaron, Aliev, Astakhova/Rogonov, Balde, Besseghier, Brezina, Brown, Bychenko, Cha, Chan, Chen, Dmitriev, Duhamel/Radford, Efimova/Korovin, Fentz, Fernandez, Ge, Gorshkov, Hanyu, Hendrickx, Ilyushechkina/Moscovitch, James/Cipres, Jin, Kerry, Kolyada, Kvitelashvili, A. Majorov, Marchei/Hotarek, Messing, Montoya Pulgarin, Mura, Nadeau, Peng/Jin, Rippon, Ruest/Wolfe, Samarin, Samohin, Savchenko/Massot, Savosin, Seguin/Bilodeau, Tanaka, Ten, Uno, Vasiljevs, Yan, Yee, Zabiiako/Enbert, Zhou.

As for +4, I found only 157, assigned to 29 skaters: Aliev, Aymoz, Brezina, Brown, Chen, Della Monica/Guarise, Frangipani, Hanyu, Hiwatashi, Jin, Knierim/Frazier, Kolyada, Kurakova, Kvitelashvili, Liu, Messing, Mishina/Galliamov, Miura/Kihara, Ponsart, Rizzo, Sadovsky, Samarin, Shmuratko, Siao Him Fa, Tarasova/Morozov, Torgashev, Uno, Vasiljevs and Zhou.

The current +4 is worth more than the old +2, and if on the one hand it can be understandable that Meriguet awardad a number of +4 lower than the number of the +2 with the old system, on the other hand with the difference between each mark that has dropped to 20%, the difference between a +3 and a +4 is small.

At first I had thought about publishing all the data, but I’m afraid it would just be a lot of confusion. I limit myself to a summary table. I have listed all the skaters who, with the +3/-3 system, have received at least a +3 from Meriguet (KS column). I didn’t included in my table the skaters or pair who received at least +2 from Meriguet: Max Aaron, Astakhova/Rogonov, Elladj Balde, Chafik Besseghier, Artur Dmitriev Jr., Duhamel/Radford, Efimova/Korovin, Misha Ge, Gordei Gorshkov, Ilyushechkina/Moscovitch, James/Cipres, Marchei/Hotarek, Montoya Pulgarin, Takahito Mura, Peng/Jin, Ruest/Wolfe, Roman Savosin, Seguin/Bilodeau, Han Yan and Zabiiako/Enbert. For the score code +5/-5 I included the skaters who have received a +5 (KV column) or a + 4 (KW column) or a +3 (KX column). In columns KR and KU I indicated the number of programs judged by Meriguet. In most cases there is an even number because Meriguet has judged both programs. Where there is an odd number, what is missing is the free skate, either because at the 2018 Olympic Games Meriguet only judged the short program, or because some of the skaters who skated the short program at the 2019 World Championship didn’t advanced to the free skate, or because in a couple of occasions a skater retired after skating the short program. I colored some lines gray. During that time Meriguet has never judged that skater.

As I previously wrote, the skaters who have been awarded some +3 by Meriguet, but who have never received a +5, are Junhwan Cha (3) Yuzuru Hanyu (11), Boyang Jin (3), Keegan Messing (6) and Deniss Vasiljevs (2). The most curious cases are those of Hanyu and Messing, who had received several +3 in the past. They must have really gotten worse.

Between the 2016 Grand Prix final and the 2018 Olympic Games, in two short programs and one free skate, Meriguet awarded Hanyu eleven +3, corresponding at the 40.74% of the twenty-seven marks he gave to him. And, next to +3, there were ten +2, the 37.04%. Note that the mark that Hanyu received the most is the highest mark. Between the 2019 World Championship and the 2021 World Team Trophy in 37 marks (one of Hanyu’s jump in the short program of the World Championship was a double so it had no value) Meriguet did not assign any +5 and awarded only thirteen +4, the 35.14%. Quite a worsening. Dominating are the +3, the 43.24%.

With Meriguet having awarded 499 +3 in recent years, those who perform elements of excellent quality are penalized by Meriguet’s way of judging. The quality of Hanyu’s elements is no longer recognized by Meriguet, and even in the few times Meriguet assigns to Hanyu a +4, the mark does not have the same value it had in the past. Let’s look, for example, at two triple axels in the short program of the 2019 World Championship, that of Jason Brown and that of Hanyu. Both jumps were performed on the music (bullet 6), both the skaters had landed without problems (bullet 2) and did a good transition at the exit.

Brown did the traditional preparation, for two seconds (three if we consider that my screenshot is on the passage from the inside edge to the outside edge, but already a second before, at the exit of the spread eagle, I had understood that he was about to do an axel) he did not interprets the program, because he is concentrated on the preparation of the jump. There are skaters who need more time, Brown’s preparation is not excessive, however it is clearly perceptible. In Hanyu’s screenshot I stopped just before the counter, when he is about to change curve and direction. At that moment he is not preparing the jump, he is executing what the ISU specifically refers to as a difficult step (bullet 4). A second later he does the take off. This is a jump that has no preparation. As for landing, the inclination of the back of both skaters and the position of the center of gravity clearly tell us which jump is effortless (bullet 3) and has a very good body position from take-off to landing (bullet 5) and which, despite being a good jump, is not. The last detail is width and height, two characteristics that must be very good for bullet 1, and I read really different numbers. Meriguet gave Brown a +3, Hanyu a +4, for a difference of 0.80 points. He was not the sole who saw such a small difference between these two jumps, three other judges (Miroslav Misurec, Antica Grubisic and Anny Hou) awarded the same marks as Meriguet, two (Bettina Meier and Saoia Sancho) managed to assign +4 to both.

Hanyu’s triple axel, the highest and widest jump, without preparation, with the most difficult take off and exit, and effortless, according to Meriguet deserved the same mark as the jumps of Nathan Chen, Shoma Uno and Mikhail Kolyada, and a mark just higher than the jumps of Jason Brown, Matteo Rizzo, Boyang Jin, Andrei Lazukin, Vladimir Litvintsev and Keiji Tanaka. I am not going to look in detail at these jumps or at the many strange marks (and at all of the elements) of that competition, in fact the relative ease with which Meriguet assigns +3 and the almost total absence of +5 in his marks penalizes the skaters able of performing quality elements. But when this scoring system was created, hadn’t the ISU said it would have rewarded quality?

I don’t show you the whole file, there are several columns and I doubt that seeing all the numbers is interesting. Among the things I asked myself are the question of whether Meriguet judges every skater in the same way and whether, despite the change in the judging system, he has not changed his way of judging the skaters. I mean, if the +5 are few, has he gotten stricter?

I watched all the programs judged by Meriguet. Column K is the competition. L the skater, each skater has a line. For my convenience in collecting data, the order in which the skaters are listed corresponds to the ranking of the short program. Column M is the nationality of the skaters. column P is the score that Meriguet assigned to that skater in the short program. Column O is the real score obtained by the skater in the short program. Column P is the difference between the score awarded by Meriguet and that awarded to the skater by all the judges. I remember that I don’t do the calculations, you see the numbers but I wrote once the formula for the operation and then I pasted it in all the boxes where I needed it, so the calculations are all done by the computer. If I have not made a mistake in entering the data, the final numbers are right. In the columns Q-S I did the same for the free skate.

After each competition there is a line in bold that contains only the name of the competition itself and two numbers. Those numbers are the average of the numbers just above. In the short program Meriguet awarded to Shoma Uno 1.76 points more than the final score, to Javier Fernandez 0.85 points more, to Mikhail Kolyada 4.68 points less… The average of these numbers is the 1.54 that is in bold.

At this point I took all the lines in bold, Meriguet’s behavior, severe or generous, in all competitions. I did not consider the Open d’Andorra 2016, a second level competition in which Meriguet judged Ladies, Junior Men and Junior Ladies. In the Ladies Meriguet was severe, overall his average was 1.03 points less than the marks assigned by the other judges. I didn’t check the junior competitions because the protocol aren’t analyzed by SkatingScores and I should do all the calculations myself. Here I focus only on the most important competitions. I divided them into two groups, with the scoring system +3/-3 and with the scoring system +5/-5. In column O I have indicated the competition, in column P the average of the difference between Meriguet’s marks in the short program and the marks of the other judges, in column Q the average of his difference in the free program. In the box with a black outline, the first line is the sum of the averages above, the second the number of programs judged by Meriguet, the third the average. In the box on the right I wrote the sum of the averages of all short programs and all free programs judged by Meriguet.

Until the end of the 2017-2018 season, Meriguet was more generous than the other judges by 0.59 points. After that, he became more generous by 0.96 points. The figure has grown. Considering that Meriguet has almost stopped giving the highest mark, it means that he has raised the lower marks. For him, the difference between the best and the worst elements has narrowed. This way of judging favors skaters who put less quality into their elements.

Now I went back to the individual programs. The K-S columns are those of the penultimate screenshot, now I’ll show you a slightly larger area of the file.

In the U-Y columns there are three lines for each skater. In the first three columns I repeated the data of the K-M columns. Column X is dedicated to the short program. In box X2 I entered Meriguet’s judgment on that skater, the 1.76 who was previously in box P2. Below, in bold, there is the average difference in judgment between Meriguet and the entire panel of judges, the 1.54 that was previously in box P14. For each skater the top number is different, linked to the single skater, the second number is repeated, because it is the average of the competition. The third number, on a yellow background, is the difference between the two values. If in this competition Meriguet was a little more generous than the totality of the judges, assigning 1.54 points more, with Uno he was not very generous, he awarded him only 0.22 points more, with Fernndez he was on the severe side, 0.69 points less, with Kolyada he was really severe, 6.22 points less. The one with whom he was most generous, who knows why, was a Frenchman, Chafik Besseghier. Column Y, structured in the same way, is dedicated to the free program.

At this point I went back to having only one line per skater, keeping the data that, in columns X and Y of the previous screenshot, were in yellow. What I have kept is Meriguet’s strict or generous behavior towards each skater in each program. I added another column, the AR. It contains the sum of Meriguet’s judgment in the short program (AP) and in the free skate (AR). At the bottom some boxes are in gray. In that case Meriguet did not judged the program, either because he was not among the judges, as in the free skate of the 2018 Olympic Games, or because a specific skater did not compete in the free skate, or because he did not qualify or because he retired.

The AT-AY columns contain the same data with the skaters grouped by nationality. At the end of the competitions for each single nation there is a rectangle, three lines high, which summarizes the average behavior of Meriguet towards the skaters of that nation. The system I used to calculate whether Meriguet was strict with skaters from a single nation is the same one I used to figure out whether his marks were strict or generous with the two different scoring system. Let’s look for example at Australia. Meriguet judged three Brendan Kerry’s short programs. The first time he was strict, 1.17 points below average, the other two times he was generous. In the sum of the three competitions he was generous of 3.98 points, box AW9. The programs judges by him are three, box AW10. On average Meriguet was generous by 1.33 points, box AW11. This number, added to that of the free skate (box AX11), say how strict or generous Meriguet was with the skaters of each nation. I remember that I sum the averages because, as in this case, sometimes a judge judges a number of short programs different from the number of free skate.

In the next table I have gathered only the data relating to the countries for which Meriguet has judged at least four programs. These are only the final data, those present in the rectangles of the AV-AY columns of the previous screenshot. The order is by sympathy, from the nations to which Meriguet awarded the highest marks to those to which he assigned the lowest marks.

I have not done thorough checks on this data, maybe I will or maybe not. That Meriguet likes the French skaters is not surprising, but why also the Chinese? Until proven otherwise, that some marks are higher and some marks are lower is normal. I have no evidence, so I’m not saying that there is something wrong with these competitions, I just remember historical facts and notice some coincidence.

Among the few nations helped, even if slightly, by Meriguet, there is the United States. I did not dwell on Turkey, Korea and Georgia.

The most important competition judged by Meriguet is the 2018 Olympic Games. Are Meriguet’s marks in line with those of the other judges? Here you can find the summary table of SkatingScore, I took the data that I had already transcribed and I made a new table.

The first three columns are obvious, the real ranking, the names of the skaters and their nationality. In the fourth I indicated how much Meriguet has deviated from his average. Even if I publish only the final data, the calculation system is the same as I explained above with Meriguet’s difference from the final score for each skater, average of the differences that tells us if Meriguet was severe or generous on the whole competition, and application of this average on each skater to understand how he judged each of them. Meriguet awarded an average of 1.59 points more to each skater, so while he gave Hanyu 0.18 points more than his real score, he was more severe with him than he was with the others by 1.41 points. I wrote in red for a severity between -0.01 and -1-49 points, I colored the boxes in light red for a severity between -1.50 and -2.99 points, and in red the boxes for a severity higher than -3.00 points. On the other hand, light green is for marks higher for a value between +1.50 and +2.99, intense green for marks above +3.00.

Meriguet has been particularly generous with Shoma Uno, Jorik Hendrickx, Vincent Zhou, Junhwan Cha, Brendan Kerry and Nathan Chen, generous with Boyang Jin, Adam Rippon, Alexei Bychenko, Chafik Besseghier and Denis Ten. I don’t look at some skaters, I’m only interested, beside of obvious presence in the list of the French skater, in the presence of Uno (one of the few skaters to whom Meriguet has assigned a +5 when the scoring System changed, and to whom I will return later), Jin (who was fighting for a medal), and of all three US skaters, with the bigger help for the two who were potentially more likely to get on the podium.

The penultimate column is the ranking of the short program based only on Meriguet’s marks. In the last column I indicated the variations, how many places each skater would have gained or lost. In cases where there would have been no changes I have not written anything. The boxes of the skaters who would have earned two places are colored in light green, the boxes of the skaters who would have earned three or more places in intense green. The numbers in red indicate the skaters who would have lost a place, the boxes in light red the skaters who would have lost two places, the boxes in red the skaters who would have lost three or more places.

At the Olympic Games Meriguet only judged this program. What happened in the other competitions? Where did France have hopes for a medal? In Ice Dance. Who were the rivals of the French? A Canadian team.

The short dance was judged, among others, by the French judge, who was not Meriguet but Christine Hurt, and by the American judge Sharon Rogers, a recently retired judge who can compete with Meriguet in terms of love for their respective country.

Hurt and Rogers were the only ones who preferred Papadakis/Cizeron to Virtue/Moir in the short dance, assigning to Virtue/Moir the lowest scores in the entire panel od judges. Hurt did not judge the free dance, on the other hand the Chinese judge Tianyi Zhang entered the panel.

In this case five judges preferred Papadakis/Cizeron, for one the score was the same and only three preferred Virtue/Moir. However, for the Spanish judge the difference was 0.40 points and for the Italian one it was 1.30 points, with the difference accumulated in the short dance (1.74 points), Virtue/Moir would have remained in the first position. For the US judge the difference was 3.90 points, for the Chinese one 5.30 and for the Turkish one Tanya Ozkan 5.90, for them Papadakis/Cizeron deserved the gold. US, China and Turkey, a nation generally appreciated by Meriguet, but it must be a coincidence.

In the pairs competition the fight was quite open, the favorites were the Canadians, the Chinese, the Germans and the Russians. The chances of the French James/Cipres getting on the podium were quite low, too many stronger pairs should have been skating badly. The Chinese judge was Feng Huang, who was later suspended by the ISU for national bias for his marks in this competition. The French judge was Anthony Leroy. This is the short program:

Curiously, neither the Chinese nor the French judge liked Savchenko/Massot, their score is really low. How did the free skate go?

Let’s be honest: Leroy didn’t give first place to Sui/Han, he gave it to Savchenko/Massot. For 0.10 points. Considering the difference of point of the short program I just can’t imagine who would have won gold with these marks, I guess I’ll have to do some calculations…

Probably a check on the national bias, which is simple to do but too often the ISU does not do, it is not enough, we have to do cross-checks, even if they are difficult. My numbers aren’t a proof, but if I were the ISU, I know that I would carefully watch everything the judges do.

Ok, let’s put this competition aside and go back to Meriguet’s marks. I don’t publish all the screenshots due to the length of the file, however in the +3/-3 system on 283 occasions when Meriguet awarded a +2 he helped to raise the skater’s GOE, on 33 occasions he was perfectly in line with the marks of the other judges and on 66 occasions his +2 lowered the GOE of the skater. These are the cases in which his +2 has lowered the final GOE:

I also looked at some lower marks, with a good elements judged with severity. These are all the elements in which the majority of the judges assigned a +2 or a +3, and in which Meriguet assigned a +1. Those treated worst were Savchenko/Massot at the start of the Olympic season. Curious.

In this screenshot the same data appears twice, ordered from the lowest to the highest average in the HZ-IG columns and by skater in the II-IP columns.

In the 156 elements in which Meriguet awarded a +4, 109 times he helped to raise the GOE, 15 times he remained in line with the other judges, 32 times he lowered the GOE. This time I publish a selection of the +4 assigned by Meriguet to some specific male skaters: all the French, three Americans (Jason Brown, Nathan Chen and Vincent Zhou) and two Japanese (Yuzuru Hanyu and Shoma Uno). In the last column I indicated the average marks of all judges. If the mark is lower than 4.00, Meriguet has raised the final GOE, if it is 4.00 Meriget has remained in line with the other judges, if it is higher than 4.00 Meriget has lowered the final GOE.

Curiously, with Chen Meriguet was balanced, he lowered his GOE 11 times, he raised it 10 times. With Hanyu twice he stayed on the line with the other judges, 8 times he lowered the GOE, he raised it only 2 times. With Uno he raised the GOE all 10 times, and on one occasion the average mark for Uno was lower than +3.

I also checked the elements in which Meriguet awarded a mark lower than +3 (two +2, thirtifive +3) when most judges thought that that element deserved a +4 or a +5. Again I wrote the lines twice, on the left (GN-GV) the order is from the lowest average grade to the highest. If Meriguet’s mark (GV) is lower than the average mark (GU), Meriguet lowered the final GOE, if his mark is higher, he raised the final GOE. On the right (GX-HF) the elements are grouped by skater.

These tables gave me a doubt. Earlier I explained that I calculated whether Meriguet awarded marks higher or lower than average to the skaters of each nation. It is something that, for the most important Men’s senior competitions, I did with the marks of each judge referring to each skater here for the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons and here for the seasons to 2018-2019 to 2020-2021. However, even if the general trend can provide us with interesting information, and on some of them it might be appropriate to investigate, we must not forget to look at specific cases as well. In the sum of the two programs, Meriguet awarded US skaters marks slightly higher than the average, +0.37 points, a figure so low that it cannot be criticized. With the Japanese skaters he was severe, -1.23 points, and this figure is not so low as to suggest that Meriguet is biased against Japanese skaters. But… are these figures valid for everyone, or are there some difference between skater and skater?

These are the figures for Japanese and US skaters judged by Meriguet in one competition (top) or two (bottom). Meriguet was particularly strict with the American Daniel Martynov and especially with the Japanese Takahito Mura, but a single competition is too little to say that it is a habit. The competitions should be watched carefully and I don’t have the time to do it. Same goes with the Americans Max Aaron and Andrei Torgashev and with the Japanese Shun Sato. I notice the detail and move on. Meriguet judged two competitions for three US skaters, Tomoki Hiwatashi, Adam Rippon and Vincent Zhou, and was generous to all three.

The Japanese or American skaters judged most often by Meriguet were Brown, Hanyu and Keiji Tanaka, in four competitions, Chen, in six, and Uno, in seven.

Apparently Meriguet does not like Brown, with whom he is always very strict, and Tanaka, to whom in two competitions he has assigned really absurd marks (marks in components at the Rostelecom Cup 2016 between 5.00 and 5.75, from the other judges he received a 6.50, two 6.75, all the other marks were 7.00 or higher). Who he likes, and a lot, is Shoma Uno, to whom he has always raised the final score. After all, we had already seen it at the Olympic Games and with the +4: if Meriguet assign a +4 to Hanyu, he lowers the GOE, if Meriguet assign a +4 to Uno, he raises the GOE. I should probably look closely at Meriguet’s marks for Uno. What is certain is that Meriguet is not indistinctly prejudiced against Japanese skaters, indeed, he is good at distinguishing one from the other.

The marks that I took a closer look at were Chen’s and Hanyu’s. With Hanyu he seems to have been generous in the 2016 Grand Prix final, severe in the next two competitions, even if the value of the 2019 World Championship seems within the limits of the acceptable, and really strict only at the World Team Trophy 2021, the competition from which I started my checks. But at the World Team Trophy Meriguet was also very strict with Chen, albeit to a lesser extent. So is everything regular? I don’t know, I only look at some detail…

This is a transcript of the protocols of the part relating to the technical elements. I did it for all the competitions judged by Meriguet in which both Chen and Hanyu were present. 2016 Grand Prix Final:

The content of most of the columns is obvious. I highlighted Meriguet’s marks with a black outline. In the penultimate column on the right I indicated the average of the marks – not the GOE, the average of the marks – of the other eight judges. In the last column I indicated how Meriguet behaved with respect to the other judges. To get a better glance, I also used colors. If the line is in deep green, Meriguet was more generous than the other judges. If the line is in light green, Meriguet was in line with the other judges. If the line is blank, Meriguet was more severe than the other judges.

In the short program Meriguet awarded both skaters six marks above average, one perfectly on average. In the free program he was sometimes below average. Overall he was a little more generous to Hanyu than to Chen, but it’s also true that that panel of judges was a bit peculiar, with a Spanish judge (Marta Olozagarre, and one of the title contenders was Javier Fernandez from Spain), an American judge (Lorrie Parker, a decidedly biased judge) and a Canadian judge (Beth Crane, with Patrick Chan fighting for the podium, and while it is true that Crane did not help Chan too much, it is also true that the Canadian judges have a tendency to be strict with Hanyu. In 20 marks, with Hanyu Crane was under the average 19 times, only when Hanyu received a -3 she was on the average. With Chen, beside the -3, two Crane’s marks were over the average, three on the average). Of course, there was also a Japanese judge, Ayumi Kozuka. If we look at the table of the national bias, the most partisan judge was Olozagarre, followed by Parker. So Meriguet was generous with Hanyu, and a little less with Chen, in a strange panel.

2018 Olympic Games:

Apparently according to Meriguet Chen made three mistakes, but on two occasions it wasn’t so disastrous. Okay, Chen only fell once, and there is the -3. On the triple axel Meriguet was the only judge who awarded a -2. As for Hanyu, he was good, but according to Meriguet some elements could have been done better. The combination for example… well, I would like Meriguet to explain what was missing from that combination. Overall Meriguet was mildly generous to Chen, mildly severe to Hanyu.

2019 World Championship:

In the short program Meriguet raised Chen’s score to 5 out of 7 elements, while he always lowered Hanyu’s score. All normal? Among other things, for the umpteenth time I would like to know what Hanyu’s combination was missing to the point of deserving only a +2. It’s not like missing the opening salchow automatically lowers the next elements’ mark. By mistaking that element, Hanyu has rightly lost about 14 points between the base value and the GOE that he could have obtained. But the mistake ends there, the rest of the program was perfect and the elements (and the PCS, because the mistake made by Hanyu is one of those mistakes that inexperienced people do not notice, so it does not disturb the harmony of the program) should have been evaluated solely for their quality.
In the free skate Meriguet was slightly more severe with Chen than with Hanyu, overall he was more severe with Hanyu. Acceptable swings? The last competition was the World Team Trophy 2021:

Oh … in the short program Meriguet has almost always lowered the GOEs, and the only one she has slightly raised was that of Hanyu’s triple axel. So he slightly helped Hanyu? Not really. As I have already explained, the triple axel was wide (bullet 1), it was preceded by a counter (bullet 4) and it was on the music (bullet 6). Starting mark +3. The deduction for weak landing is between -1 and -3, which means that that jump deserved a score between +2 and 0, and whoever assigned -1 did not respect the rules. As for the too low marks Hanyu received in both programs from all the judges, I have written about it here.

I notice, among other things, a +2 for the beautiful triple loop that Hanyu did immediately after a the combination 3A+2T in the free skate. A jump taken out of nowhere and totally effortless deserves only a +2? Rules in hand, I would like Meriguet to explain to me which bullets were missing. In doing this check I read quite a few marks, and one that I noticed, while I was thinking about that +2, was the +2 received by Davide Lewton Brain in the short program of the Lombardia Trophy 2021 (marks 2, 0, 0, 2, 1, 1, 2). Go see that short program, and then tell me Lewton Brain’s jump is the same as Hanyu’s, if you dare. And I’m not saying Lewton Brain didn’t deserve his +2. Sure, Karen Butcher managed to give a +1 to Hanyu’s 3Lo but, as I already written, the Canadian judges have a bad habit of being strict with Hanyu.

In the end I took the data of all the competitions and summarized them in a table, so that I could have an overview. What I look at is always the average mark, not the GOE.

I look at the columns with the numbers first. In the left column I wrote the average of the marks awarded by Meriguet to each program, the numbers that in the previous screenshots had a black outline. In the column in the center I wrote the average of all the marks awarded by all the other judges. In the right column I have calculated the difference. In practice, in the short program of the 2016 Grand Prix final, the average mark assigned by Meriguet in the seven elements performed by Chen was 0.47 points. Overall, for the other eight judges, the average mark was 0.09 points. Meriguet awarded Chen an additional 0.34 points per element. Calculating the averages in the same way, it can be seen that Meriguet awarded Hanyu 0.57 points more than the other judges. For this reason I have highlighted Hanyu’s name in yellow. In each program I highlighted the name of the skater to whom Meriguet, compared to the other judges, awarded better marks.

If we look at the yellow boxes we see that, beyond the first competition, on four out of five programs Meriguet was more generous (or less severe) with Chen. Sure, it can be a coincidence. The green boxes indicate, with the old scoring code, when a skater has received a very high average mark, higher than +2. Meriguet awarded Hanyu very high marks on two out of three occasions, the other judges did so only once, but the Grand Prix final panel included too many judges who in their careers awarded at least suspicious marks. Chen never received very high marks, but it was only later that Nathan found notable consistency.

In the most recent competitions I have highlighted in green the average marks higher than +3. The new +3 is worth less than the old +2, yet Hanyu received an average mark above +3 on one occasion, in the short program of the 2019 World Championship. Does this mean that the other programs were mediocre? That Hanyu is no longer able to perform quality elements? On the other hand, only on one occasion, the last, Chen did not receive at least +3.

Meriguet struggles to give high marks and is therefore more strict with both? Something tells me that with Hanyu he struggle more to assign high marks. I counted the number of +4 or +5 received by Chen and Hanyu in the four programs in which they both participated, first those received by all the judges and then those that the two skaters received from Meriguet alone (with him it is almost only +4: Meriguet has never assigned a +5 to Hanyu, he has awarded three +5 to Chen, but only one in one of these programs). Once I counted the marks, I did the percentages, by program and in total.

Chen received 10% of his highest marks from Meriguet, Hanyu 8.43%, and for once in asking me if Meriguet was not too strict with Hanyu I do not watch a jump but a spin, the sit spin of the short program. The two entries are different, as well as the way the two skaters changed feet, both spins were judged level four. Meriguet give a +3 to both spins. Chen received five +3 and two +4 (one from the American judge Lorrie Parker). Hanyu received five +4 and two +3, the one from Meriguet and another from the Italian judge Walter Toigo, a judge in the past suspended by the ISU and that, at the Grand Prix Final 2019, awarded really strange marks. The first screenshot shows Chen’s rotations on the first foot. Between one frame and the next, Chen did a rotation.

The images range from entering the spin to changing the foot, the first image of the next screenshot is the same as the screenshot above.

This time the frames are spaced half a rotation, and here comes a question: how long does Chen stay in the correct position, with his butt no higher than the knee he is skating on? The call is not made by Meriguet but the technical panel, and I wonder why the Technical Controller Anna Sierocka, the Technical Specialist Olga Markova and the Assistant Technical Specialist Masako Kawai have not assigned a no value to this spin.

There is no variation in position on either the first or second foot. There were many more rotations on the first foot than on the second, which makes me suspect that Chen struggle to turn on that foot. Also for Hanyu on the first foot the frames are separated by a rotation.

In this case there is a variation of position, and if you watch the video you can see that it happens on the music. For the second foot I did again one frame every half rotation. With both the first foot and the second I never had the doubt that Hanyu had not held the correct position for at least two rotations.

For the number of rotations there is almost a perfect balance between first and second foot, again there is a change of position made on the music – and the hands also move following the rhythm of the music – and the positions are more difficult than the position held by Chen. Do these spins really deserve the same mark? In reality, everyone was wrong, the technical panel on the call for Chen, all the judges because none of them gave Hanyu the +5 that this spin would have deserved.

Granted that with GOE Meriguet is much more severe with Hanyu than with Chen, how does it behave with components? In this case the rules haven’t changed, so there shouldn’t be a big difference between when there was the +3/-3 system and now, right? I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be any changes, but the judges’ way of voting should be the same. To understand Meriguet’s behavior I looked at the marks in the components assigned by Meriguet and those assigned by all the other judges. I decided to make the short program and free program marks comparable, so I took every mark assigned in the five components, added them together and divided the total by five. In this way we know the average mark assigned by Meriguet and the average mark assigned by the others. With these numbers I created three graphs, one dedicated to Chen only, one dedicated to Hanyu only, one dedicated to both.

Chen:

For now I limit myself to noting that at times Meriguet is more generous than the other judges (and when he wants to be he knows how to be really generous) and at times he is more severe.

Hanyu:

With Hanyu Meriguet has almost always been more generous than the other judges, only in the free skate of the World Team Trophy does he seem to have been rather strict. Now let’s see what happens when we put all the data together. I changed the type of graph, and to have solid lines I didn’t consider the competition in which Hanyu was not present.

The previous graphs had to be looked at carefully to notice the detail. Chen’s scores have risen dramatically, Hanyu’s have dropped, and I would like the judges to explain to me what Hanyu got worse at, because I didn’t notice any deterioration in any detail of his skating. I didn’t even notice that Chen growth so much, so that now has a better skating skills than Hanyu, I’m really distracted! What I noticed is that if for the other judges the difference is small, 0.09 points on each of the five PCS, for Meriguet it is much larger, 0.30.

I am not in Meriguet’s head and I don’t know why he assigns the marks as he assigns them, what I do know is that I hope not to see him again in a panel of judges.