If you were in charge of creating a perfect judging system...

[icedancer]

I agree with Agnes on the anonymity.  If it helps with the death threats then I say keep it.

I don't think that the general public should be privy to the videos that the tech panel sees or the discussions of the tech panels.  I think this would make the problem of "all these so-called experts" worse - because even though they have tried to make the judging objective, there is still a subjective element to it -

And if people want to become technical specialists, etc., then they can go through the proper channels to do those (largely volunteer) jobs.

And Agnes is also right in how pervasive the internet is - much more than in 2002, 2004 etc. - now we have "cyber-stalking" etc., etc., - could get worse...

[fsk8r]

The problem with ISU is it has been run for speed skating by speed skaters since 1980. It historically has not dealt with investigations of figure skating malfeasance with any dispatch-- or at all. Ottavio Cinqatta doesn't know about figure skating, and given his lack of response personally, or the ISU's inability to respond to accusations in a speedy manner,  he doesn't care to bother. ISU uses figure skating to fund speed skating.

Speed skating has it's own problems. The skaters can't appeal any referee Penalty decisions. And there's no consistency between what referees consider infringements. Two different referees can call the same situation differently and the skater has to live with it.

As for the ISU not commenting. I don't see why they should comment when there's an outcry from the fans. There's outcrys in soccer every day of the week and I rarely hear the FA, FIFA and UEFA commenting.

[Query]

I'm not sure how anonymous figure skating judges really are. Perhaps It is conceivable that some countries use cameras and/or telescopes to covertly record what each judge decides. I'm surprised that no one has done so as part of an exposé.

I bet referees, umpires, etc., in other sports get nasty comments and perhaps death threats too, at least at the highest levels of play, yet they aren't anonymous. It comes with the territory.

One difference is that referees for some sports leagues are full time paid professionals, and are trained by and responsible to a single unaffiliated organization. Ideally, they are unaffiliated with the individual teams, though that isn't universal for inter-league or International play: e.g., in Olympic hockey, the referees come from other countries than the teams.

Making all high level figure skating judges full time professionals, entirely trained by and responsible to an organization that is in turn responsible to the ISU rules committee alone, might help. But that would be expensive. I wonder how much money the International Olympic Committee gets for television rights.

Of course conspiracies could still exist. Besides, there is simply too much emotion, too much subjectivity, and too many variant standards, to eliminate all problems.

[Doubletoe]

Well, a threat via Twitter is much less likely to result in an actual murder attempt than a threat via mail or phone call (seeing as Twitter threats don't require that you know where the person lives).  I agree that the governing body of the figure skating world should not be run by speed skaters, though.  Especially not that one.

[AgnesNitt]

Two podcasts from the Manley Woman podcast that have historical info regarding IJS and judging.


Near the end, the first discusses  the early days of iJS and how the IOC told the ISU to fix judging or skating was out of the Olympics.

The second is from a judge (who retired when IJS came in) who talks about judge training.

[jbruced]

The comment about bar codes on the skates was very interesting. Also was enlightening to me to understand the technical judging panel. Hopefully this is all an improving work in progress.