Judges Can Find Relief Under Veil of Secrecy

Battered by allegations of corrupt judging at the 2002 Winter Olympics and FBI charges against a reputed Russian organized crime figure for trying to fix those Olympic results, figure skating officials have given the sport’s judging process a makeover that could be called the invisibility look.

Or maybe the emperor’s new clothes.

“This is not a cover-up,” insisted Ottavio Cinquanta, president of the International Skating Union.

But its basic principles can be boiled down to:

What you don’t see is what you will get.

What you don’t know will help you.

And if you don’t like this judging system, wait a few months and it will change.

Skating’s leaders know they must weather the bewilderment that will occur in a season when two scoring systems are being used and a third, the system of the future, is being tested at several events.

At Skate America, which opened the Grand Prix skating series Thursday in Spokane, Wash., results will be determined by an interim system that keeps the old idea of deducting from a perfect 6.0 but does not identify which judges gave which scores.

That system also will be used at the other senior Grand Prix events, the world championships, European championships, Junior Grand Prix Final and Four Continents Championship.

The U.S. Championships, nearly all other national championships and the Junior Grand Prix series events will keep for at least this season the 6.0 system used for 67 years in which every judge’s mark counts, and the judges are identified.

The interim system, like the revolutionary one Cinquanta said should be ready for next year’s Grand Prix season, relies on secrecy designed to remove pressure from judges.

French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne, at the center of the Winter Olympic controversy that spurred the changes in judging, claimed she had experienced such pressure from her national federation, although she later recanted.

The specter of organized crime added urgency to the calls for reform.

But the lack of transparency is an issue among U.S. skating judges and administrators.

“We’re not comfortable with such secrecy here, but it does help remove pressure on judges from some national federations,” said Phyllis Howard, U.S. Figure Skating Assn. president and an ISU council member.

The innovations in the interim system:

From a pool of 10 to 14 judges, seven will be randomly chosen by computer to have their marks count in all phases of an event. Only the computer will know which judges were selected.

All the marks, including those that do not count, will be displayed in ascending order, with no reference to the judge who gave them.

The scores that count will, as in the past, place skaters relative to one another -- for example, a skater placed first by four of the seven will win. The individual placements will not be revealed.

At the judges’ event review meeting -- one of the occasions when Le Gougne said she had felt pressure -- the judges no longer will discuss or defend particular marks, only the general level of skating.

Joe Inman of the United States judged under the interim system at an international event last month and felt the anonymity led to a “sense of disconnection. I still concentrated very hard, but I didn’t have that edge-of-the-seat feeling I used to get from seeing how my marks compared to my peers.”

The Cinquanta system, approved as a project last June by the ISU Congress but already included in the 2002-04 general regulations, completely changes the way skaters are evaluated.

It gives every jump, spin or other technical element a value and a grade of execution. Another grade will be given for presentation qualities. Those grades will make up a cumulative score.

Computer analysis of judges’ marks over the season will look for anomalies that call for further investigation.

In an Oct. 1 letter to ISU officials, Cinquanta issued a retort to criticisms of the efforts toward a new judging system.

He cited remarks by Alexei Yagudin of Russia, reigning men’s Olympic and world champion.

Cinquanta wrote, “Consideration should be given to the concerns expressed, even if, I repeat, it is impossible to accept such criticism.”

Yagudin, competing at Skate America, did not back away from his earlier stance about the future judging system.

“I know [Cinquanta] wasn’t that happy, but I am not going to change my opinion,” Yagudin said. “They should leave the old system. If judges make mistakes, give them a penalty.

“We always wanted to get a 6.0. With the new system, there is the possibility of an unlimited score, but not the fun of a 6.0.”

In the aftermath of the charges filed July 31 against alleged fixer Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, Cinquanta also responded strongly to those who suggested the ISU was overlooking evidence of a “fix deal.”

Cinquanta’s Aug. 9 letter to ISU members, office holders and advisors threatened public castigation of critics “if they fail to produce the evidence they claim exists.”

Cinquanta said his reactions were not threats.

“It is one thing to say, ‘I don’t agree with something,’ and another to try to attack and provoke or try to create weakness in the ISU,” Cinquanta said.

“You have to put yourself in my position. Since last summer, we have been constantly subjected to criticism. This makes it more difficult to work for a solution.”