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What is left of the art of Figure Skating?
by Sonia Bianchetti

January 2006

In less than one month, the 20022002-2006 Olympic cycle will be over. No doubt it was the most controversial
controversial and peculiar period
in the history of figure skating.
Nothing was missing:
a.
b.

c.

the biggest scandal ever in the history of figure skating and the Olympic Winter Games, which, like a tsunami, swept
away the credibility of the sport and of the International Skating Union (ISU);a new revolutionary judging and scoring system that was adopted to replace the centurycentury-old 6.0 system, which issupposed to solve all skating problems. Still, from what we have witnessed so far, the only sure result is that it has
killedkilled the originality, the creativity, the art and the beauty of the sport;
and on the top of all this, for the first time in the history of figure skating, the scandal resulted in a new hero tocelebrate: Marie Reine Le Gougne.

As everybody knows, Marie Reine
Reine Le Gougne was the French judge who in Salt Lake City awarded first place to the Russianpair, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, in an exchange of favours with the Russians, a deal for which she was banned
from skating for three years for corruption.
corruption.
Well, Marie Reine Le Gougne has now triumphantly come back on the skating scene and she feels vindicated by the
introduction of a marvellous new judging system for which she claims all credit. In a recent interview, just as the skating world
prepares forfor the Olympic Games in Torino, she spoke of her role in the judging scandal at the Salt Lake City games, saying it
was not in vain because it helped the sport to undergo a revolution. She declared, "People know that I paid for the system,"and that she was
was warmly received on her return from suspension last April by everyone including ISU president Ottavio
Cinquanta. Le Gougne credits herself for the new voting system brought in after the Salt Lake City Games because it is thanks
to her vote manipulation thatthat Cinquanta was forced to adopt a judging system which she considers "fabulous." "Even Ottavio
Cinquanta realised that it was time to change. It is only because of me that we have had this revolution. They can now say'thank you MarieMarie-Reine.'"
Isn't this incredible? Aren't we blessed to have such a "hero" who, with her magic touch, destroyed in one moment thecredibility of the sport, its beauty and its artistry, and is even proud of her achievements? Our world has gone crazy. What canpossibly happen next?
next?
In March 2005, I described the World Figure Skating Championships held in Moscow as a unique mixture of everything that noone would ever expect to see in a skating event.
One year later, after having watched the most dreadful and uninspiring skating at the European Championships held in Lyon, I
am wondering what is happening to our beautiful sport, what is left of the art of figure skating.
What I have feared, ever since the day the concepts on which the NJS system is based were announced, has come true, evensooner than I expected: the beauty, the artistry, the originality of the sport have been destroyed.
The programs, in all four disciplines, have been homogenized; they look exactly the same with the same step sequences, thesame spins and spin combinations;combinations; because the rules are constraining the routines, they have taken away the freedom of theskaters. The skaters have now to learn to count how long they hold a position in a lift or in a spiral sequence, or how manyturns they execute in each position in a spin. As the ice dancer Povilas Vanagas, bronze medallist in Lyon, commented, theskaters are going back to gradegrade-school arithmetic. This system is turning them back into children.

sequences,s, lifts and throws one after the other, difficult step
The programs are filled up with jumps, jump combinations and sequence
sequences and transitions, too often slow and scratchy because of the number of twizzles, brackets, counters and rockers
they must include. In the spins there must be changes of foot, position, direction
direction and edge, the result of which is often
awkward looking. The skaters are compelled to perform all these difficult tricks to obtain the highest point values, but thequality of skating is definitely suffering; there is no time for the choreography.
We areare no longer seeing the skaters' passion, the skaters' joy during their performances; we are only seeing skaters sufferingand struggling to get to the end of overly demanding programs.
At the European Championships there was only one clean program in the ladies'ladies' event, Elena Sokolova's, and in the men's,none. Plushenko, although he skated an outstanding performance, doubled the triple Salchow and missed the quad/triple
combination at the start of the free program. Is this normal in a European Championships?
Championships? There must be some reasons behind
this disaster and I think the ISU leaders should start to reconsider the whole structure of this Code of Points system.
I will not go through the programs here; I suppose that those who have seen them have drawn their own
own personal conclusions.
As to mine, after what I am seeing on the ice these days, I have some difficulties in recognizing the reputedly extraordinary
port into a difficult,merits of the New Judging System, except that it has turned figure skating from a beautiful and artistic ssport
unattractive one. If this was the goal of Cinquanta, then he can be satisfied. But is this really good for the sport? Is this what
the world is looking for?
In pair skating, the couples are putting everything they can in their programs,programs, one lift or throw jump after another, sometimesof mediocre quality, but with the most unbelievable positions and dismounts, not always aesthetically pleasing, just to increase
their level of difficulty. The same applies to the pair spin combinations, where the lady is spinning upside down or both partners
are holding their free legs up to their noses in horrible positions. Is this something that deserves credit?
In the ladies we saw something like 50 or more spiral step sequences which were just photocopies
photocopies of one another, with exactly
the same positions of the free leg, the same holds, the same changes of edges -- not to mention the Biellmann spins, some ofwhich were really horrendous -- and the same scratchy straightstraight-line step sequences, the whole filled
filled with failures and falls injumps, jump combinations and sequences.
The same applies to ice dancing where again the couples are executing almost in an obsessive way the same number oftwizzles, the same steps and the same lifts and spins, very often in dreadful positions. The programs are boring and notattractive.
What concerns me the most is that the current opinion among ISU leaders is that now, at last, the competitions are indeed won
by skaters who can perform all the elements well, not only jumps, and can really skate using their feet and not just waving theirarms up and down as they used to do.
I am wondering whether I understand anything about figure skating anymore, since I miss those "miserable" skaters who could
only skate with their arms, andand linked their casual triple or quadruple jumps with nothing but magnificent connecting steps orsequences, perhaps only "Level 1," but who skated on deep edges, at great speed, almost floating on the ice, and could
transmit deep artistic emotions to the audienceaudience in the arena and at home -- skaters such as Katarina Witt, Brian Orser andBrian Boitano, Kurt Browning, Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen, Shizuka Arakawa, Alexei Yagudin, Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei
Grinkov, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier or Xue Chen and Hongbo Zhao, or in ice dancing Jayne Torvill and Christopher Deanand the Duchesnays, just to mention a few to whom some strange judges, including myself, awarded some 6.0 marks out of theblue!
As to judging, the ISU claims that now the competitions areare fairly judged and the skaters get the points and the places they
really deserve based on their skating and not what used to happen with the old 6.0 system until two years ago, when the judges,
nothing
ing to do with the actual skating, as if skating were a lottery.
like magicians, pulled marks out of their hats that had nothWell, again I can only totally dissent. First of all, at least until two years ago, the judges showed their marks and wereaccountable and held responsible for them. Now nobody knows who has given what and this may be comfortable for the judges
and beneficial for the ISU, but is definitely unfair to the skaters and wrong for the sport.
Second, the role of the judges is more or less reduced to that of a clerk or a counting machine. They are no longer identifying
and recognizing the jumps or the other elements. This is the responsibility of the Technical Specialist. The judges are only
supposed to mark the quality of the elements performed, but they have not been doing this at all. If you look at the detailed
results of the competitions, you notice that the elements of the competitors, from the first to the last one in the classification
list, are often given the same GOE: 0. Very seldom do the judges dare to give a +2 or +3.
In Lyon, Plushenko executed
executed two marvellous, breathtaking step sequences, very difficult, at great speed, perfectly in time withthe music. Well, in the circular step sequence, only three judges out of 12 gave +3, three gave +2 and six just +1. The same
applies to the straightstraight-line step sequence: two judges gave +3, three gave +2 and seven +1. What are the judges expectingfrom a skater to give +3?
And what to say about the assessment of the jumps? In the ladies. event, Sokolova skated the program of her life, with sevenhigh, clean,clean, strong triple jumps and a double Axel all perfectly rotated in the air and landed on firm edges. Well, believe it or not,the GOE was only rated 0 for practically all her elements. Her triple flip or her triple Salchow, for instance, were considered of
the same quality of those of Annette Dytrt of Germany or Tugba Karademir of Turkey, who placed 9th and 10th. With all
respect and appreciation for those two girls, this really makes no sense.
The consequence of this is that the quality of the elements executed
executed has practically no influence on the result. What counts isonly the level of difficulty of each element as determined by the Technical Specialist. The skaters need only to stand up. A
onehigh, long jump taken at full speed, provided it is landed on one foot after the required number of revolutions, is worth exactly
the same as one that is short, low, telegraphed and with wrapped legs.
The marks for the components are even more incomprehensible. Very often they do not reflect at all the performance on thetheice. The components marks for Slutskaya really come from out of the blue! And this has been going on for years. She is a goodskater, a sevenseven-time European champion, she has beautiful jumps and excellent spins, but as for the transitions, thechoreographychoreography or the interpretation of the music, it is another story. Still, the marks are all around 8. And this, in my opinion, isonly based on reputation. The judges, in order to be safely within the famous "corridor," just always award the same marks.
Furthermore,Furthermore, they all agree that to judge the five components properly is beyond human capacity
Another example of how these marks mean nothing and are just used to rank the skaters is the case of Stéphane
St phane Lambiel andBrian Joubert in the mens event. Lambiel received
received lower total marks than Joubert, and based on that night's performances,
this was really not correct unless the new system includes an added bonus for being French while skating in France!
And as the cherry on the cake, we had a scandal in ice dancing, forfor a change. As was the case at the European Championships
in Torino in 2005, the podium was wrong. New system, old system, nothing has changed.
Except for the ISU president, Ottavio Cinquanta, who declared that he is absolutely convinced that the ISU has done anexcellent job promoting and developing the new system and that he is confident things will go well in Torino with the new
judging system, others have some doubts whether the system can produce the correct results at the Olympics in a couple ofweeks.
weeks.
In Lyon, nobody could actually understand the first place to the Ukrainian couple in the compulsory dance, as well as the marks
for the French, the Israelis and the Lithuanians, who all performed wonderful and passionate free dances when compared to
the Russians and the Ukrainians.
TwoTwo-time world champions Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov of Russia earned their best score this season for a freedance and placed first even though they skated poorly. Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov of Ukraine performed
performed anuninspiring routine, but won the silver medal. Although they finished fourth in the free dance, the point difference was so
minimal that they held on to second place.
In addition, the Referee and the Technical Controller of the event were booed.
The New Judging System once again showed all its weaknesses.
First, and most disturbingly: it is destroying our beautiful sport.
Second: it has failed in its main purpose. It does not guarantee any objectivity in the judging. On the contrary! Besides having
thethe judges still judging in subjective ways, using the components marks to push up a favoured skater, we have the callers who
decide the level of far too many elements according to their personal views or interpretation of the rules. They have proven to
be inconsistent.
inconsistent. The levels of the same elements vary from competition to competition. The controllers can really have a sayin the determination of the order of the podium.
Was it worthwhile to spend all that money to develop this new system, to instruct all the judges, the technical specialists andthe technical controllers?
As we have said many times, the problem is not the system, it is the judges.
What will happen next? The Olympic Games in Torino start in two weeks. This is going to be very interesting.