My last post was dedicated to the rule which specifies that, in case of serious errors, judges must assign marks in the lowest components. For most people this is a rule, apparently it isn’t for everyone.
At the Russian National Championship there was controversy because the judge 3, Alexei Dvoinikov (who, at the moment, has not judged international competitions), awarded 9.75 in the free skate to both Alexandra Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova, even though they both fell. As I explained, it is a widespread mistake, and the ISU must intervene to prevent this type of mistake from occurring, or cancel the rule if it cannot get the judges to judge correctly, but a statements by Alexander Lakernik, Vice President of the ISU, show that the problem is far worse than some judge who needs better training, or a suspension, or the possibility to use better technologies that make his job easier.
That the error is small and that it did not affect the result is true, but it is only a partial justification. This time the error did not affect the result, but in competitions where the difference is minimal even errors of this type can change the result. That the ISU works to eliminate or reduce these errors as much as possible is important. But the most worrying thing is another.
There is this provision in international rules, but this is not a rule, but an ISU communique, such an addition to the rules. In principle, it can be advisory in nature
Isn’t that a rule? And would this be an Olympic sport? Skaters have the right to be judged fairly and with criteria known to all. To say that lowering the scores in this way is just a suggestion that the judges can apply or not, it takes away all credibility from the competitions, because the judges can assign the marks they want regardless of what the skaters do. We already see too many absurd marks, but if the rules can be applied at the discretion of the judge this is no longer a sport, it is a farce. And that figure skating is turning into a farce has again been confirmed in the men’s short program of the American national championship.
I have not seen a single second of any of those programs, but in some cases there is no need to look at the programs, the protocols are enough. Let’s read these rules… or maybe I should write these advice to the judges.
Having seen in the past some program of both Nathan Chen and Vincent Zhou I have some doubts about the presence of several bullets needed for high GOEs, unless both have greatly improved, and from the comments I have read I do not think this has happened. However, if a jump receives a call, of any kind, it means that either the take-off or the landing is wrong, and therefore there is no bullet 2. The maximum possible starting mark is +3, provided they are present at least three bullets. Let’s pretend yes. A jump that receives a q cannot have a starting mark higher than +3, and a -2 must be subtracted from this mark for the error. The maximum possible GOE is +1.
These are the protocols of the first two classified in the short program, SkatingScores version, and if Chen didn’t get any calls, on one jump Zhou had some rotation problems.
Six out of nine judges did not respect the rule, but they probably weren’t obliged to do so because these are just advice…
These are the names of the judges:
J1: Jeffrey Charboennau
J2: Roger Glenn (possible judge in Women and Pairs in Beijing)
J3: Coco Gram Shean
J4: Jennifer Thompson
J5: Kevin Rosenstein (possible judge in Women and Pairs in Beijing)
J6: Todd Bromley (possible judge in Women and Pairs in Beijing)
J7: Jaclyn Helms
J8: Samuel Auxier (possible judge or referee in Women and Pairs in Beijing)
J9: Brett Drury (International judge)
The wrong marks were awarded by the judges I have outlined. A special mention goes to Samuel Auxier, who is (or was, I don’t know if he is still in office) the president of the American federation, and who already last year had managed to assign a +3 to Zhou on a jump marked with a q. Obviously, given that that mark passed without a warning, he this year decided to raise it, and several judges went after him. These are the consequences if the ISU choose of not sanctioning judges for wrong marks even in national competition.
There is a reason why I have given the names of all the judges and not just those of the six who gave wrong marks to that quadruple salchow. I refuse to watch the programs, I only notice how high the marks are in both GOE and components. For the components I do a quick check. Quick by my standards.
I checked which skaters received a mark equal to or higher than 47.50 (average score 9.50, in this case I did not check if there were any falls or errors, I transcribed the marks as they are written on the protocol) in the short program in all international competitions and, at least for those championships present on SkatingScores, in national championships. Canadian championships are almost all absent on SkatingScores, but for Patrick Chan I did a separate check that allowed me to add the 2016 score. National championship scores are marked with a yellow line. Note that, as the judges were all local, I included the Grand Prix competitions held in Autumn 2020 among the national championships.
If a skater has passed 47.50 only in a national championship (at least in one national championship), I did a specific check on him, adding all his best scores up to the highest score he received in an international competition. For example Jason Brown enters my stats because in the last national championship he received 49.15, but also in the three previous national championships he had obtained a mark higher than 47.50. The check on him allowed me to verify that his fifth best score, 47.29, was also obtained in a national championship, only the sixth is from an international competition. So it is obvious that with Brown the US federation inflates the score.
After I finished checking the skaters who got the highest scores, I checked all the skaters who have won at least one World Championship medal. For them I wrote down the highest score they got in an international competition and, if they had got better scores in one or more national championships, I added those scores too. For Jeffrey Buttle I did a specific check on national championships, for Javier Fernandez, Stephane Lambiel and Denis Ten no, looking for all the national championships is challenging.
The last thing I added was the value of the components in programs with which whoever executed them set the world record. These programs are highlighted in bold.
The scores are listed twice. On the left they are from highest to lowest, regardless of the skater. I highlighted in red if a score was obtained at this year’s national championship. On the right they are in alphabetical order by skater, from highest to lowest score.
It is clear that some skaters receive very inflated scores in the National Championship, because their best international scores are lower than several scores they received in national competitions. And this is a problem.
In a graph that I have already published in the previous post, it is clearly visible how the scores obtained by Chen in international competitions after the 2019 National Championship are much higher than those he had received before.
Back in October 2020 I had checked Chen’s marks before and after the National Championship in the 2016-2017 season, his first senior season, and it is clear that after the national championship he received higher marks.
And, last November, in two posts, one with preliminary explanations and control on some skaters from various nations, one with control on the most important skaters of recent years for Russia, Japan and the United States, I had taken a look at the effect that certain marks have on international judges.
Both Chen and Zhou better than Shoma Uno and Mikahil Kolyada, but also of skaters of the past as Patrick Chan (only one national score higher than Chen’s score), Javier Fernandez, Daisuke Takahashi, Jeffery Buttle, Stephane Lambiel and Johnny Weir? Even when they win a World Championship, or fixed a World record? No, if the ISU allows judges to award marks like these, without a sanction to the federation and knowing that these marks will skew the results of international competitions, figure skating can no longer be taken seriously.
I started writing this post yesterday, but I couldn’t finish it before the US championship free skate. I haven’t looked at it, again I just looked at the protocols. I have read comments about uncalled underrotations, and maybe sooner or later I will check, now I just look at some marks, the clearly wrong ones even without watching the programs. This is Chen’s protocol:
Let’s try to apply the rule on the maximum possible mark in components, and see what was awarded to Chen:
Four judges came close to the maximum possible score, two awarded the equivalent of a perfect 100.00, proof that they learned the rules by heart because they did not want to receive penalties, and three judges (one of them can judge the Olympic Games!) went beyond the maximum mark.
One of the judges who memorized the maximum possible scores in the presence of falls forgot to study the rules on the choreographic sequence. Do you really have to learn them? And who can ever go wrong on a choreographic sequence?
I also checked the bullets, highlighting the three that are missing for sure, even for the most generous judge, but that those three bullets are missing that counts for little. Are there at least two? Let’s say there are 1 and 4, because I struggle to say that 2 is present since at some point Chen did something that was not in the least related to the music. Or should I think the fall was intentional? Okay, with a fall the starting mark cannot be higher than +2. A fall must receive a -5. There is no discretion, no one can give, let’s say, from -3 to -5. It’s -5, period. I don’t have a degree in mathematics, but in my house 2-5=-3. How did two judges award higher marks?
While I’m at it, I look at another protocol, that of Jason Brown.
In this case there was only one fall, the maximum mark allowed on the components is higher, but it doesn’t seem to me that everyone has respected it.
This time Helms did not exaggerate, she limited herself to giving the maximum possible, on the other hand Auxier, another judge who could be present in Beijing, also as referee, exaggerated. If I were in the ISU I would suspend the entire panel of judges of the Men’s competition for at least a couple of years, from what I have read I would take a look at the rotation of the jumps, because perhaps the technical panel deserves a suspension too, and I would warn the american federation. Too bad I’m not the ISU. This is not sport, it is a farce.
