Will judging reforms steal skating?s drama?
True competiton could be, well, boring
COMMENTARY
SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 19 ? I haven?t had any nibbles to become a figure skating judge, and I thought sure I would, based on my demonstrable tendency to stress personal preference over actual performance, not to mention a quite legendary refusal to see both sides of any issue
MAYBE I JUST DON?T have the requisite, highly strung suggestibility, like the French chanteuse, Madame Le Gougne, who is so happily agreeable, always telling the last person she talks to whatever they want to hear. Madame has been suspended indefinitely by the International Skating Union for misconduct, but now she wants do-overs. She has recanted everything, she swears to L?Equipe that she voted her ?conscience and soul? for the Russians in the pairs event, and has reneged on her tearful statement that she was under ?enormous pressure? from her own federation, presumably in a vote-trading deal to give the French a medal in ice dancing.
Perhaps she is bipolar. Or maybe she has tri-polar disorder. First ever diagnosed case.
At any rate, the judging at these Olympic Games has been thoroughly compromised, and no revolutionary new scoring system proposed by Ottavio Cinquanta, president of the ISU, nor slow creeping secret investigation, can save it before the torch goes out. So the only thing to do is to keep your own scorecard. I myself decided to judge the ice dancing, using my own criteria. For instance:
Do they love each other?
Wait a moment. I think Wilbon is trying to signal me. He is using his necktie. If it?s skewed to the right, it means he wants me to mark the skaters down. If it?s skewed to the left, they get the gold.
Or is it the other way around?
Here come the Italians. I don?t like their footwear ? automatic deduction! The flesh-colored skates are so creepy; it looks like they have blades growing out of their feet. I am going to mark them down by three-tenths of a point for that.
Then there is the unfortunate fact of their performance in the 1999 Helsinki Grand Prix, where they committed that slight misstep in their straight-line footwork. Off with their heads.
A moment please. Wilbon is signaling me yet again. He is trying to catch my eye by walking on his hands across the table, scissor-kicking his legs. The Korean couple has taken the ice, and I think he finds their costuming truly unforgivable.
I must say, I do think their routine would be enlivened if the lions that shredded their clothes were released onto the ice. That would be a real contest: Can they maintain their composure and perform those fanciful moves while pursued by wild beasts?
Also, I do wonder why so many ice dancers have Dukes of Hazzard hair and such demonic makeup jobs ? there seem to be two levels: by the bucket, and by the barrel.
Now, some people might have a problem with a system of judging that deducts points based on hair and makeup. Figure skating?s subjective judging system has long been criticized because it leaves so much room for improprieties. There are those, like Cinquanta, who propose that deductions should only be taken for mistakes and missed elements, but what fun is it if you can?t mark skaters down based on your own rigid and narrow personal aesthetics? If you force the judges to judge less obscurely? Especially when the event is ice dancing, which, ever since they outlawed real creativity and popular appeal in the Torvill and Dean backlash, is hardly anything but an exercise in aesthetics?
If you reform the judging, then you let in sheer anarchy. As it is, things are neat and orderly. The skaters, coaches and judges can tell you before a major competition who has already won. And who hasn?t. They say things like: ?Well, the judges aren?t familiar with her? or ?He could do well in a few years after the judges get to know him? and so on. Everyone knows, going into a competition, which skaters are actually in position to win.
Reform the judging, and you take all the sordid, seamy drama out of the sport. Imagine figure skating, if it was no longer rigged. Why, it would be no different than the bobsled, plodding and uneventful, a slave to who actually finishes first, second and third. (I have a suggestion on how to improve that sport. Lower the rails.). There would be no room for petty vindictiveness, for clandestine deals, foot-tapping signals, mavenry, and ministering of personal taste.
You don?t have to know synchronization from a slap shot to know a crooked deal, and the ice skating in Salt Lake is bent. (Even short track speedskating is more honest than figs. In that sport, should you take a dislike to a fellow competitor, all you have to do is hook him with your skate and send him hurtling into the wall. It?s perfectly legal.)
So maybe the thing to do with the ice dancing, since it?s so compromised, is make them all skate at once. On a short track. Cross-checking is allowed.
Last couple standing, wins.
