From the ashes of the scandal that incinerated figure skating's credibility came massive reforms to a judging system that had been laughably easy to corrupt.
Change was needed long before Marie-Reine LeGougne, a French judge assigned to the Salt Lake City Olympic pairs competition, said she had been pressured by her national federation to vote for a Russian duo in exchange for Russia's vote for a French ice dance team. Although she recanted, she and the federation president, Didier Gailhaguet, were suspended for three years and barred from judging at the Turin Games.
Scolded by the International Olympic Committee and scorned by a global audience, the International Skating Union rapidly overhauled its judging and scoring procedures. The system that will crown the Turin champions was introduced in September 2003 and was gradually phased in to widespread use.
The familiar 6.0 standard has been replaced by cumulative scores derived from prescribed values for each jump and spin. Judges' names are no longer linked to their marks at international competitions, and a computer randomly chooses nine scores from every 12-judge panel in calculating scores.
Instead of a mark for technical merit and a mark for artistry, judges consider an array of criteria in compiling a total element score for jumps and spins and a program component score, which encompasses skating skills, transitions, performance/execution, choreography and interpretation.
For fans, calculators are a must. So are translators: The detailed result sheet from the long program Sasha Cohen performed to win her first U.S. championship last month shows that she did a CCoSp4, an LSp4 and a CCoSp3. Runner-up Kimmie Meissner's routine included an SpSt3 and a 1A. (See accompanying story and chart.)
Poetic, it's not. An improvement, it is, though it has some flaws.
"It's a mixture of good and bad," said John Nicks, who coaches Cohen and is preparing for his 13th Olympics as a skater or coach since 1948.
"It does reward a skating routine that has difficulty placed in it. It challenges skaters to be better and have better edge control and turn control. But I think there's a lack of understanding and a lack of some enjoyment on the part of the general public. People always knew what a 5.5 or a 5.9 meant. They don't yet understand what a 123.7 means."
