Save Skating

Artistic Heart of Skating Torn Out, Skaters Say

2012-01-08T13:34:00.000-08:00

In a recently televised interview, Canadian skating star Toller Cranston stated that he's embarrassed to be part of the sport, and blasted the new system for judging figure skating with his renowned candor. “The way it's judged now, the more you can do the more points you get, so everything is overproduced and generic,” said the 1976 Olympic medalist. He was no kinder to the medalists at the 2010

Rewarding Failure Diminishes Sport

2011-12-10T23:56:00.000-08:00

ShareIf you tuned into the men’s competition at the Grand Prix Final you must have felt like Alice in Wonderland, watching a totally different event from the one ranked by the judges. The worst part is that there was nothing peculiar about this competition. This pattern of madness repeats itself event after event. Little wonder the sport is losing its last shred of credibility. Blatant

Dead Poets and the Battle for the Soul of Figure Skating

2010-05-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

ShareI'd like to invite Mr. Cinquanta and the ISU Technical Committee to watch my favorite movie — Dead Poets Society. No, I'm not losing my mind. What could figure skating have to do with movie about poetry and a boys' academy? Everything! In case you ever watched this wonderful movie, you may remember one of the most powerful scenes in the beginning when the teacher, Mr.

Addendum to Last Post: More Officials Speak Out

2010-04-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

ShareThe March 15 entry of Save Skating entitled “Top Officials Say Judging System Seriously Flawed" addressed serious allegations made against the new judging system by high-level officials in the sport: Olympic figure skating judge Patrick Ibens and former referee and long-time ISU official Sonia Bianchetti. Since then, more top-level ISU officials have followed up with

Top Officials Say Judging System Seriously Flawed

2010-03-15T19:00:00.000-07:00

Share“I don’t think that the components are judged fairly … [in order] to stay in that stupid corridor of average marks.” — Patrick Ibens, judge “The [program component] marks do not reflect the skating but rather the starting order and the reputation of the skaters.” — Sonia Bianchetti, former referee and chair of the ISU Technical Committee And we all turn a blind

Let the Complaining Begin!

2010-03-02T09:02:00.000-08:00

When Evgeni Plushnko vented his anger over his Olympic defeat he quickly became the laughing stock of the skating public on this continent. Granted, he fueled the flames of ridicule by awarding himself a platinum medal. The surreal atmosphere was only compounded by the Russian propaganda machine which amplified his complaints. Even Vladimir Putin chimed in with outrage. Plushenko quickly became a

Was Plushenko Defeated by an Email Controversy?

2010-02-24T20:10:00.000-08:00

Share"The judges used to have one mark to monkey around with. Now they have five,” columnist E.M. Swift recently wrote in Sports Illustrated. Truer words have never been spoken about figure skating and its mystifying component marks. Just consider the men's competition in Vancouver and the newfound obsession with one of the elements that make up these intangible marks: transitions. As

Performance of the Night Buried in Politics and Component Scores

2010-02-19T16:14:00.000-08:00

ShareWhile the U.S. celebrates its first men’s figure skating gold medal in decades and the rest of the skating world engages in a war of words over the merits of the victor and the value of a quad, the real highway robbery at this Olympics is flying under the radar screen, largely ignored or shrugged off. Maybe it’s the fault of a moronic judging system that’s only capable of dissecting edges

Remembering the Champions: Olympic and Otherwise

2010-02-09T22:16:00.000-08:00

ShareAs the Olympic torch completes its journey to Vancouver, we are increasingly reminded of the glory of past Olympic champions and the indelible mark so many of them left on the sport of figure skating. There are many of them indeed, and it's on their shoulders that new champions rise to greatness. But by focusing so narrowly on Olympic gold medalists to the exclusion of all others, we do a

Olympic Podium Predictions

2010-02-09T16:15:00.001-08:00

Since everyone's playing the game, here are my not-so-daring medal predictions for Vancouver. All my attempts at anticipating the Big Surprise are eluding me, but I can feel it in my bones that it's just around the corner.I'll only comment briefly on the most hotly-contested men's event ever. With at least eight amazing athletes in serious contention — not just for medals but for the Olympic

Skating Needs a Presentation Mark Again

2010-01-27T10:42:00.000-08:00

ShareMuch of the Monday morning quarterbacking after the ladies final at the National Figure Skating Championships revolved around the nit-picky deductions that dropped Mirai Nagasu to second place behind Rachael Flatt. The more well-rounded Nagasu seemed to have outperformed her rivals with a jump-packed program that also had superior polish and maturity. The judges, however, marked her down for

Sasha Cohen Brings Star Power Back to Skating

2010-01-20T17:07:00.000-08:00

ShareSasha confirms she’ll be at Nationals. Sasha’s in town. Sasha has a new website. Sasha has posted a journal. Sasha will practice in four hours. In three. In two. Sasha is on the ice. Wow, the speed. Sasha is running through her program. She looks like the old Sasha. She only missed the flip in practice. Sasha is back. Watch video of her practice at … And so it goes,

The Quad: The Big Loser at Nationals

2010-01-18T19:37:00.001-08:00

ShareMocking most predictions of its supremacy in the sport, the almighty quad proved itself once again to be if not irrelevant, certainly the most overrated trick in figure skatingIn the men’s short program at the National Championships all skaters who tried it — successfully or not — kissed their Olympic dreams goodbye. The top five, including the entire U.S. men’s Olympic

Controversy and Rumblings Galore as Nationals, Canadians Get Underway

2010-01-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

Share As skaters worldwide step into the most intense pre-Olympic spotlight at the U.S. Nationals, Canadian Nationals and European Championships, few people are paying attention to a high-level public conflagration about the way these competitions and the upcoming Olympics are being judged. "If the scoring is anonymous, there is no accountability," Dick Pound of the International Olympic

Cinquanta’s Power Play Shows Disdain for Skaters and Sport

2010-01-10T12:34:00.000-08:00

Share When Ottavio Cinquanta brought the full weight of the ISU to bear on 19-year-old Yu-Na Kim, pressuring her to compete at the Four Continents Championships just three weeks before the 2010 Olympics, the skating world gasped with indignation. This was not merely a misguided request to Kim personally. The top official of the International Skating Union openly threatened sanctions against

Absolute Judging Is Absolute Hypocrisy

2010-01-02T09:19:00.000-08:00

Share At the Russian Nationals this month Olympic champion Evgeni Plushenko scored a jaw-dropping 100 points in the short program, besting his own record by some 10 points. A brilliant performance? A very good one, for sure, but not without flaw. In fact, the program was remarkably similar to the one he skated at the Rostelecom Cup just a couple months ago, with misses on the triple lutz at both

Top Contenders Injured: Sport or Battlefield?

2009-12-24T19:00:00.000-08:00

Share With less than two months to go till the 2010 Winter Olympics, two of the male skaters considered to be among the top contenders for the title — Evgeni Plushenko and Brian Joubert — are sidelined with injuries. World silver medalist Patrick Chan is having a rough season after recovering from a serious injury of his own. Two-time world champion Stephane Lambiel's comback is in doubt in

Mr. President, You Don’t Understand Our Sport

2009-12-09T15:49:00.000-08:00

Share Ottavio Cinquanta's vendetta against artistry in figure skating is nothing new. With every action the president of the ISU has ever taken he’s dragged the balance between sport and art increasingly away from the beauty that has captured the hearts of audiences worldwide for nearly a century. But by actually claiming in a recent interview that the sport has become "too hard" to create

Shrinking Judging Panels: A Bane for Figure Skating

2009-11-25T11:06:00.000-08:00

Share What sports other than figure skating can you think of in which a working judge or key official could go missing smack in the middle of a major international competition without any kind of public announcement or explanation? And that only three short months before the 2010 Olympic Games! Just five years ago such an incident could not have happened in our sport. With nine judges posting

Bring Back 6.0 Judging, for the Love of Skating

2009-03-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

Share Facebook Group Asks for a Return to 6.0 If the International Skating Union were a corporation, it would have filed for bankruptcy by now. If it were a government, it would have been voted out of office. But as a private association with no accountability to anyone, it can preside over the most devastating decline in the popularity of the sport in recent memory — and refuse to do anything

Art, Not Math: There’s No "Component Skating"

2009-01-08T12:24:00.000-08:00

Share The biggest cliché in our sport used to be that skating is a sport as well as an art. Today, that's the biggest myth. Skating is increasingly a sport masquerading as art, and even that merely due to the requirement that the endless series of jumps are to be executed as part of a routine set to music. Many of the competitive programs today have more in common with those of male gymnasts

Kiss & Cry Drama is Dead

2008-12-30T08:28:00.000-08:00

Share So who cares, right? The system used to judge figure skating is coming under heavy scrutiny for its very ability to fairly and accurately assess competitive skill and performance, and some silly fans worry about the emotional drama that unfolds in the Kiss & Cry — or rather the lack thereof,nowadays. That’s none of the ISU’s official business, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. With audiences