Day one of the Olympic Games, first programs of the Team Event. Some results in line with expectations, some surprising, some puzzling marks. Now some names of judges have been matched to the different disciplines. In some cases we had no doubts, when a nation sent only one judge qualified to judge a particular event, it is obvious that it would be the judge.

I do not know the rules, I am not entirely sure that if a judge has judged a discipline in the Team Event, then, if his country has been drawn to designate a judge, he will also surely judge that discipline in the individual competition, but I am quite certain that it is like this. So, for example, Zanna Kulik judged the Men’s competition in the Team Event, so we will find her judging the Men’s competition. Estonia has two judges and, as I doubt that Kadi Zvirik has been sent do Beijing for a holiday, Zvirik will be part of the panel of Women’s competitions.

With information in three out of four disciplines, I have updated my table. In bold I have highlighted the judges who judged the individual disciplines of the Team Event, and I have crossed out their names with a red line in the other disciplines if their country has sent at least one other judge. We must also remember that there can be some changes at any moment, if a judge will result positive to a covid test.

I had already posted the list of their national bias here. I realized that I forgot Zsuzsanna Vikarne-Homolya, I publish her data now.

Not a judge I trust very much, especially in the short program.

What do these competitions tell us? The Men’s one tells us that Nathan Chen has not yet learned how to do sit spins, but that for the technical panel this is not a problem, since his spins are never called no value, as it should happen if the rules were respected. And that the judges, automatically, assign high marks in the GOE and in the components to those skaters who are able to remain standing on the quadruple considered most difficult, lutz and flip.

For the spin you can read these tweet (and even if for me the red line isn’t totally correct, the point stands):

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Let's talk about Nathan Chen's sit spin from the Team SP — called as FSSp4 (Flying Sit Spin 4), but I think it could've/should've been invalidated as zero points.

Both Nathan (and Vincent) tend to have a problem where they often fail to reach a true sit position (thread) pic.twitter.com/LvWgY3aFLh

— The Skating Protocol (@SkatingProtocol) February 4, 2022

For the PCS, I refer you to this other thread, in which the comments are about a skater who has not yet skated in Beijing, Alexandra Trusova, but the explanation is still valid also in the Men’s competition:

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please enjoy my commentary https://t.co/YUB83s0Gep pic.twitter.com/L6IEEfI9b6

— honda/miyake (@andthewaltz) February 2, 2022

In case the tweet, or video, were to disappear, I took some screenshots. The speaker is a speaker at a training seminar for judges, and this is what he says about Trusova’s transition:

Orange band? I don’t remember if there is a more updated version, but the bands have been the same for years:

Those who have held the seminar indicate as correct mark a mark between 3.00 and 4.75. How is it that Trusova’s lowest mark at the 2021 World Championship was 7.00? And two judges, Dan Chen from Hong Kong and Danish Helle Lyngberg awarded her 8.75, in a program that contains two falls and which therefore had as the maximum score not 10.00 but 9.25.

If a skater just wants to do crossovers or simple steps to be able to make quadruples… fine, that’s his choice. The rules allows it and, rightly so, his base value is high. However, the quadruples do not give the right to have higher marks in components. If there are no transitions, the marks must be low. Judges should always remember this, and not award high marks in skating skills or transitions just because a skater has performed a quadruple lutz.

As for the rest of the marks… keeping looking at the protocols is tiring, especially on a nervous level. This time I will limit myself to a short thing (hours later, rereading the text before hitting the publish button, I laugh at my own words), and without going into the details of the competition, also because I struggle to judge Pairs and even more Ice Dance. It’s not for nothing that most of my comments have always been about individual competitions.

I just note a few marks. I remember that in 2018 Feng Huang was suspended for national bias after Pairs’ competition in the PyeongChang Olympic Games. Feng Huang holds the role of Technical Controller in the Men’s competition in Beijing, it does not seem to me that the ISU is particularly strict with the biased judges. However, his national bias, calculated with the system I explained here, on that occasion was just under 9.00 points in the sum of the two programs. In practice we can divide the total in 3.00 points in the short program, 6.00 points in the free skate. These values ​​indicate the difference between the damaged and the aided skater, whether they are correct marks for one skater and too high for his opponent by 3.00 points in the short program, or too low for one of 1.50 points and too high for the other by. 1.50 points. The total is always 3.00. For this reason in my stats I highlight all the deviations higher than 1.50 points in the short program, and 3.00 in the free skate. By themselves they may not be so significant differences, combined with that of that skater’s rival they often become. In the table that I publish below, the numbers in red highlighten how the judges behaved with their compatriots. I have highlighted with green most of the marks that are more than 1.50 points away from the final mark actually received by the skater. For the few others…

I don’t know anything, I just look at the protocols and ask myself questions. Look at the page I linked to when talking about Feng Huang. There are several documents, of national bias, but not only. Ukrainian Natalia Kruglova tried to convince other judges to help her compatriots. Russian Sviatoslav Babenko had the habit of chatting, or exchanging signals, with other judges, such as Ukrainian Alfred Koritek and Lithuanian Laimute Krauziene, and if Babenko and Koritek are not in Beijing, Krauziene is one of the judges of the Ice Dance competition. And the most serious scandal in figure skating occurred when a French judge confessed to having helped a Russian couple in Pairs. Why did she do it? Because in this way the Russian judge would have helped the French skaters in Ice Dance. The past of figure skating is not exactly crystal clear, but there are doubts about the present as well, as reported in this article. I take a small part of it with a screenshot.

The article is undoubtedly biased as it is the English translation of an article written in Russian in which it is explained that Russian skaters have been damaged by biased judgments. But, even bearing in mind the fact that the article sees things from the Russian point of view (not necessarily wrong, even if in this competition my support goes to Sui/Han), the doubt it raises is legitimate.

Let’s look at the screenshot I posted above. To the right are some details of the protocols in the SkatingScore version. In this case I did not take the entire protocol, only the overall scores assigned by the every judge. The American judge is the one who awarded the highest score (84.80 points) to Sui/Han, 1.97 points more than the final score (in the table on the left I have highlighted this difference with the yellow rectangle). At the same time she was the most severe with Mishina/Galliamov, 1.52 points less. The total difference is 3.49 points, higher than the 3.00 that led to the suspension of Feng Huang. If Peggy Graham were Chinese, there would be grounds for talking about national bias. In this case…

Who are the favorites in the Men’s competition? Americans and Japanese. Who are the favorites in Pairs? Chinese and Russians. There are no conflicts between China and the United States, each of the two nations can win one of the two golds, has no chance of winning the other. Now let’s look at the other two boxes that I highlighted in yellow. I’m in the Men’s competition, where there is no US judge. On the other hand, there is the Chinese judge, Yumin Wang, and the Chinese judge was the most generous to the American Nathan Chen and the most severe to the Japanese Shoma Uno. The total difference is very high, 4.73 points. Coincidences? I don’t know, if I were in the ISU I’d investigate. Now, before any of these judges can judge any other program. I would ask them for a precise explanation of why they assigned the marks they assigned.

I have highlighted a few other scores. As I said, they can be coincidences, and in several cases the judgment was not unanimous. Let’s look at the marks highlighted in light blue, starting with Ice Dance. The Italian judge Michela Cesaro was one of the six judges who considered the Americans Hubbell/Donohue better than the Russians Sinitsina/Katsalapov. Cesaro, I remember, is not a judge known for her impartiality. On the other hand, the American Jennifer Mast was one of the six judges who felt that Guignard/Fabbri deserved the third place. In this edition of the Olympic Games, Italy is not really fighting for any medals. And in the Team Event Italy is fighting to be able to qualify for the free skate, and even one position can make a difference. The United States is apparently fighting for gold in the Team Event, and also for a podium place in Ice Dance.

In Pairs, US judge Peggy Graham was the only one to believe that Della Monica/Guarise deserved sixth place. True, the Italian judge Marco Buttarelli did not raise Knierim/Frazier’s score, but the first two pair were objectively unreachable and Buttarelli was still one of the four who placed the Chinese pair ahead of the Japanese one, while five judges were of the opinion opposite. In this competition the Americans could not do more than this. However, there is another competition in which the Americans are aiming for gold and, even if there has not been here, on that occasion the Italian judge will be present.

The last scores I highlighted, in pink, are those of the French judge David Molina in Ice Dance. Barring sensational surprises, in the Ice Dance competition the fight for gold will take place between the French skaters and the Russian skaters, with the Americans expected to fight for the bronze. This rhythm dance causes some doubts, I believe that few expected Hubbell/Donohue ahead of Sinitsina/Katsalapov. France did not qualify for the Team Event, so we don’t know if any judges have a particular liking or dislike towards French skaters. But apparently the French judge likes American skaters more than Russian ones. The French are really only interested in the dance competition, for the Americans this is a secondary objective. It’s another the medal they’re aiming for, and I’m worried. Very worried.