Recent Controversial Musings in the Press

While I’m taking a short break from slamming the International Judging System, I’d like to bring to your attention what others in the press, big and small, have had to say very recently about the subject. It looks like the cracks in the systems are beginning to give more and more people serious food for thought.

Click on each story headline for the full article.

Figure skating judging system still has flaws

By Bev Smith

Toronto Globe and Mail

The figure-skating judging scandal that rocked the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics gave birth to a complex scoring system that is sometimes as controversial as the one it replaced …

Has it actually stopped the deal making? The complexity of the current system was meant to make it more difficult to rig marks. But one of its weaknesses of the code of points is the anonymity in which judges now work. They are no longer accountable publicly, as they were in Salt Lake City.

Modern Skating is Ugly

Ria Novosti Russian News

Figure skating has lost its aesthetic appeal and places too much emphasis on complex but ugly moves, the newly crowned European champion pair of Tatyana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

Suppose They Held a Grand Prix and Nobody Came?

By George Rossano

Ice Skating International

To the handful of spectators at the recent Skate America competition in Ontario, CA it was painfully obvious. Spectator attendance was sparse, extremely sparse. Walking around the concourse and seeing so may familiar faces it seemed the attendance was mainly driven by the local skating community: skaters, parents, coaches, officials, and the occasional skating groupie. In a huge market like southern California, how could public interest be so low?

Figure Skating Under Rhetorical Questions

By Vladislav Luchianov

World Figure Skating

Major questions remain and until they have no conclusive answers, conclusive to all – figure skating, unfortunately, will have difficulties with regaining its popularity.

An ISU official speaks out

Translation on Figure Skating Universe of an op-ed in a Russian publication (PDF of original available at link above).

This is an interview of Alexander Lakernik, chairman of the ISU technical committee: "Going into details, we have gone too far."

This story is not a criticism of the system, but an insider's attempt to take a step back and seek some balance.