I had already written, before the start of the Olympic Games, that Anna Kantor should not be allowed to judge any figure skating competition. My check that day had been on the national bias, but obviously the national bias is not the only problem with Anna Kantor’s marks. The selective application of the rules, depending on who has just skated, is even more serious. This is Hanyu’s protocol in the Olympic Short Program:
Why so low marks in components? The impression is that she applied the cap, but in this case the cap should not have been applied. I’m not saying she could have awarded her marks without applying it, I’m saying there was impossible to apply the cap according to the rules. What was Hanyu’s only mistake? I’m not going to get into what really happened at that moment. What was the only flaw in that program that could be perceived by those who watched it? The opening salchow, which instead of being quadruple was single. A popped jump. Anyone is able to find a popped jump in this list? In the first part, but also in the second, which is linked to the GOE and not to the PCS.
A quadruple salchow is missing from Hanyu’s program. Between base value and GOE he lost about 14.00 points, an enormous amount but fully justified by what he did on the ice. But the loss of him had to stop there, not affect any other element of the score. Instead Kantor started with a low score, 9.25 in all items, and she made a deduction that she could not apply by rules. Because? If the ISU disciplinary committee did his job, Kantor should be suspended immediately. Now, not at the end of the competition or maybe never. Also because her way of applying her cap is extremely selective. Just the day before giving Hanyu such severe marks, she had given these marks to Mishina/Galliamov:
Should I assume that in her opinion a pop is more serious than a double fall? And Kantor wasn’t the only one to give absurd marks. Anthony Leroy also awarded an 8.75 in performance. The marks to look at would be many more, for almost all the judges, but I’ll stop here. 8.75 in performance? The same mark that Leroy gave to Kvitelashvili and Grassl? Let’s clarify one point. Performance doesn’t mean high marks if you do a lot of quadruples and don’t fall. Performance according to the ISU rules that all judges should know means something else:
To say that in Hanyu’s program there is the same physical, emotional and intellectual involvement that in Kvitelashvili and Grassl’s programs means not having watched the programs, or not being able to understand what the various skaters present on the ice. Considering the marks of Kvitelashvili and Grassl, and the 8.25 that Leroy assigned to Vasiljevs – also for him only one mistake, a jump that from triple planned became double, then another jump popped in an element that is still valid – I have some suspicion, but it is the ISU that should deal with the competence of the judges and the fairness of the competitions.
I don’t even look at the other marks, some low, some, for certain skaters, absurdly high that have been awarded. I just ask why Hanyu’s 4T+3T combination did not receive a unanimous +5. A wrong element has nothing to do with the other elements. The TES is different from the PCS. In the TES every element must be evaluated separately from the others. A skater can miss all six of the first elements of his short program, fall five times, spin only for one and a half turns, stand still for two minutes in the center of the rink… he will have a very low score because that is what he deserves. But if the last element satisfies all the bullets, for that element he must get +5. So why did as many as six judges, including Kantor and Leroy, take the liberty of giving that combination a mark other than +5?
