Figure Skating Is Now Judging the Judging
Scoring System Takes Spotlight in Debut at Nationals

By Amy Shipley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 8, 2006

In figure skating's old scoring system, a simple 6.0 score signified the pinnacle of the sport, absolute perfection. Except for the times it suggested bias or flat-out cheating. No one could ever know for sure.

For years, nearly every major competition featured a handful of marks from individual judges that defied reality and common sense while hinting at backroom deals or chits for reputation.

"Before, spectators would sit back and watch a competition and see a mark of 5.7 or 5.8 and have no idea where that was coming from," said McLean's Michael Weiss, who will be trying to make his third Olympic team this week. "It was pulled out of the sky."

No more. After a judging debacle and the resulting international outcry at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City that led to the awarding of two gold medals in the pairs competition, the International Skating Union replaced its easily manipulated scoring system with a computerized, push-button process in which skaters are evaluated element-by-element and receive lump-sum scores.

Though the system has been used at major events and revised and refined for three years, this week's U.S. Figure Skating Championships in St. Louis -- at which the U.S. Olympic figure skating team will be selected -- and the 2006 Winter Games in Turin in February will mark its debuts at both events.

As a result, the sport's new arbiter, which so far has avoided major glitches while succumbing to a handful of minor ones, will find itself in a bit of a role reversal as the world's attention turns to the Olympics. It will be judged on how it judges.

Competitors will be forced to contend with its complexities, growing pains and, perhaps, as-yet-unknown defects as figure skating moves onto its biggest stage. In a sport that seems to attract controversy, the scoring system offers the biggest target. Casual fans will have to make sense of numbers for which they have no point of reference. Though the landslide of 6.0s awarded at last year's U.S. championships -- a record 28 -- suggested that judges got a bit carried away at the farewell event for the old system, at least the value of the marks immediately registered. At the recent International Skating Union Grand Prix Final, Japan's Mao Asada won with 189.62 points, edging Russia's Irina Slutskaya, who received 181.48.

"They're going to be lost," said Todd Eldredge, a six-time U.S. champion now with the pro tour Stars on Ice. The first time "I sat there and watched the new system, I went, 'One-hundred and thirty seven . . . is that good?' . . . It's hard to explain. We've all dealt with the old system for so long."

Commentators, meantime, will attempt to put into plain language an approach whose tweaks and clarifications this season alone required 73 pages of documentation. And skaters, coaches and Olympic officials will have to determine whether the new system can justify its existence by eliminating cheating and corruption from judging -- which is ultimately what it was designed to do.

"It's a work in progress, but the pros are obviously way over the cons in this system," said Canadian skater David Pelletier, a member of the pairs team that finished second at the 2002 Winter Games but received a gold medal after a judge in the competition admitted cheating. Pelletier and partner Jamie Sale have since turned pro and will not compete in Turin. "I would like to compete under it."

If the previous system was so simplistic that it all but accommodated cheating, this one is so complicated it requires extensive study to understand its nuances, or, skaters say, to achieve success with it. Every maneuver in every discipline has been assigned a base value whose worth can be increased or decreased by each member of the judging panel depending on the quality of execution. At the end of a program, skaters are also given grades in more general categories, including skating skills and choreography.

Even those like Pelletier, who appreciate the system overall, say it has swung judging from a broad-stroke approach to one that is so specific and all-encompassing that it has brought about a certain sameness to programs, as skaters try to stock their choreography with the tricks that merit the most points.

"With this quest for points . . . it's really hard to open your program to two or two and a half minutes of 'Flight of the Bumblebee' and pull off two quads and a triple axel," said Scott Hamilton, the former world and Olympic singles champion who is now an Olympic commentator for NBC. "A lot of people are building their programs to accommodate what they have to do."

But the very demanding nature of the system, some skaters and officials say, has encouraged the refinement of skills such as spinning and footwork that were often overlooked in the past as skaters strove merely to overload their programs with difficult jumps. A case in point is American Tim Goebel, who won the bronze medal at the 2002 Games after landing a record three quadruple jumps in his long program. At the time, Goebel was known as the Quad King but was considered artistically behind many of his rivals. Now, hampered by injuries, he limits his quads to one attempt per program and has worked to improve his artistry under Audrey Weisiger, with whom he trains in Fairfax.

"It's sort of shifted the focus away from jumping to different aspects of skating," Goebel said. "There's a lot more detail and intricacy in most programs across the board. I think it's good. It's taken skating in a different direction."

It's also presented the possibility of technical glitches, two of which showed up at last year's world championships in Moscow. A human input error placed U.S. champion Johnny Weir seventh instead of sixth after the qualifying rounds (the mistake was discovered before the next round). A software error also deprived China's Li Chengjiang of the correct point total for a spin during the qualifying rounds. That, too, was corrected and the software was modified.

Skaters' opinions about the system tend to be shaped by personal experience. Five-time world champion Michelle Kwan, who received more than 50 6.0s in her career and is petitioning for a waiver onto the Olympic team because of a groin injury suffered in December, has expressed ambivalence, saying the new system has forced her to be guided by numerical values rather than unfettered artistic expression when she choreographs. Sasha Cohen, meantime, who has finished second to Kwan in four national championships, raves about the way the new system tends to brush reputation out of the way, rewarding performance.

The U.S. ice dance team of Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto are among the most visible beneficiaries, having climbed from 13th at the world championships four years ago to second last year. Such a leap would have been unheard of under the old system, in which young skaters, particularly in dance, were expected to tolerate low marks for years until they were deemed experienced enough to deserve high placements.

The new system also allows for more movement in the standings. In the past, skaters who finished in fourth place or lower after the short program, worth 33 percent of the score, were considered all but out of the running for first even before the start of the long program, worth 67 percent. But the new system's straightforward method of point accrual means nearly anything can happen after a great skate.

"The only thing the skaters miss about the 6.0 system is just the immediate comprehension of what a score means," Cohen said. "I definitely love the system because it just creates possibility. . . . There's nothing like [the old reputation factor], 'Wait two years and you will get your scores.' That's just so fair and so fresh in the new system. . . . I'm very glad this was introduced."

Though the new system has reduced the emphasis on flat-out jumping, it hasn't lessened the physical toll on skaters' bodies. Several, in fact, complained at Skate America in Atlantic City in October that they have been forced to practice longer hours to master a wide range of skills and, as a consequence, are wearing their bodies out. Goebel attributed some of his recent injuries to the fact he trains 25 to 30 percent more than in the past because he has so much ground to cover daily.

The system was designed, of course, not to please every skater but to ensure that the outcome of skating events would not be determined by bloc judging or deals between countries, as happened in Salt Lake City. During a meeting after the pairs competition at those Games, the French judge Marie Reine Le Gougne broke down in tears and admitted being pressured to vote for the Russian gold medal winners as part of a deal originally intended to reward the French ice dance team of Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat.

Anissina and Peizerat won the ice dance competition later in those Games.

"When they . . . went out to receive their gold medal, Gwendal looked at me and said, 'Did we really win?' " said U.S. ice dance judge Charlie Cyr, who has been instrumental in the development of the new system. "That's pretty sad."

To prevent manipulation, the system requires that the highest and lowest scores from the judging panel are tossed out. Several skaters said they were not convinced the new approach would eliminate cheating, despite that and other safeguards, but most agreed it was an improvement.

"I'm not going to say it's impossible" to cheat, Cyr said. "If you want to crack a safe, you can crack a safe. It's not fail-safe. But it sure is better than it was before. . . . I think everyone's on board that this is the way."