Officials hope changes remove stain of scandal

By the next Winter Olympics, figure skating expects to have regrouped so radically that scores will resemble those of veteran league bowlers. Skating's new framework proposes to ditch those strings of 5.8s in favor of a single, cumulative score, perhaps a 178.

And fans can forget blaming specific judges for outcomes. A computer will randomly choose which nine scores count from the 14-member judging panel, keeping even the judges in the dark as to whether they fired a blank.

A state of flux best describes international figure skating's condition since the sport's image nosedived at February's Salt Lake City Olympics. Beyond that, getting a handle on where skating stands is a slippery endeavor during a reconstruction era for the Winter Games' most visible sport.

Many members of skating's inner circle said they are suspending judgment on the sport's prognosis, considering the renovations in progress.

Scorched by scandal, skating strikes some as discredited beyond repair. Others contend that boom and doom can coexist in a sport as likely to be enlivened by controversies as busted for them. Exhibit A: Tonya vs. Nancy in 1994.

U.S. officials cite skating's unflagging athlete and sponsor support in the past year, despite the Olympic pairs judging scandal that resulted in the awarding of two sets of gold medals.

But as familiar judging and scoring systems bow to innovations, skating seeks a new center of balance. The new methodologies strive to curtail cheating and prevent another Salt Lake pairs-type debacle. Though well-intentioned, the proposed systems have revealed rough edges and some wacky, imponderable aspects during recent tests.

Most skaters, coaches and officials predicted the changes will not disfigure the sport, and skating will land on its feet. Others didn't sound so sure.

"Let's not set off flares," four-time world champion Kurt Browning of Canada said. "Don't call 9-1-1. The new system allows skaters to make more choices - like a football team coming up with a game plan." This season has featured an interim judging system and experiments with a proposed scoring method that would abolish the traditional 6.0 scale. The new systems are about 18 months from review and will require passage by the 2004 International Skating Union Congress.

"I don't think it will work," 1988 Olympic champion Brian Boitano said. "It's too complicated, especially for the American public."

At the U.S. Championships in Dallas starting Sunday, traditional judging and scoring will be used.

"This is a very confusing year for judging," said U.S. Figure Skating Association president Phyllis Howard, a veteran national judge and referee. "But the judging controversy shouldn't overshadow the efforts of the athletes. They really are splendid athletes."

Howard, a Washington, D.C.-area business owner, said the sport's growth remained consistent through 2002, with the USFSA's Learn to Skate program topping 100,000 members for the first time - an indication of grassroots support. She said the USFSA's key corporate sponsors remained committed.

The Olympic scandal and subsequent reform plans led to lots of conversation among recreational skaters but did not discourage their interest, said Patti Feeney, managing director of the Dallas-based Ice Skating Institute. The institute tracks the sport for rink owners and focuses on stimulating growth in recreational skating.

Stars abound

The sport's pros and cons weave a chaotic tapestry. Skating is the picture of robust health in magnetic stars, such as Olympic champion Sarah Hughes, who seeks her first U.S. championship at the Dallas Nationals. The fresh-faced Long Island teenager rallied on the decisive night in Salt Lake City, helping counteract the pairs judging calamity that had dominated the Games.

"It was all set up to explode," said Browning, who in 1988 became the first skater to land a quadruple jump in competition. "If that had happened anywhere else except on a U.S. stage, it wouldn't have had the Jay Leno and David Letterman treatment. What frustrates me the most is that a lot of the media think this sport can't be interesting without the element of Jerry Springer."

But figure skating always has been well-stocked with human interest and hardly imperiled by human fallibility.

Fueled by the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan knee-whacking fiasco, figure skating telecasts from the 1994 Games set Olympic ratings records, with the women's short program posting a 48.5 - sixth-highest on TV's all-time ratings list.

Salt Lake City had put behind it an Olympic bid-rigging and bribery scandal when along came "SkateGate."

Figure skating stole the Salt Lake show after revelations that a prearranged French-Russian vote swap had fixed the top medals in pairs and ice dancing.

Dallas native Paul Wylie, the 1992 Olympic silver medalist, said figure skating suffers from a problem common to amateur sports organizations.

"The major flaw is when the technical committee is a self-appointed board," Wylie said. "There's a lot that they kind of decide in a vacuum."

The ISU - figure skating's global governing body - recently created a restructuring commission that will consider ethical concerns and infractions.

Grumbling about corrupt judges and politically motivated deal-making had been part of the sport's bedrock for decades. The ISU had started to scrutinize judging problems more than a year before the Salt Lake Olympics. At those Games, French pairs judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne said she had been pressured by her federation to vote "a certain way."

Her admission resulted in a second set of gold medals for Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, who became co-champions with Russia's Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze.

Le Gougne and French skating federation chief Didier Gailhaguet received three-year suspensions from the ISU, which also banned the two from the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. The saga spun further toward epic lunacy last summer, when a reputed Russian mobster, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, was arrested in Italy on U.S. charges of conspiracy to help fix the Salt Lake pairs and ice dance results. He is being held in a Venice prison, awaiting extradition to the United States.

In June, the ISU Congress had approved judging and scoring reform measures that are in the test stages at ISU Grand Prix events.

The temporary system uses a 10-judge panel, with seven marks counting and no one knowing which judges' scores were used.

"The process will become fairer," said Fredi Schmid, the ISU general secretary. "What happened at the Olympics certainly helped us accelerate this."

End of the 6.0 scale?

Before the 2006 Olympics, ISU officials intend to have in place a completely different scoring method from all previous Games. A points system, with preassigned values for each element of a skater's program, would replace the 6.0 scale in use for a century.

The point values for elements have not been finalized.

"I don't think it will change the outcome too much," said two-time U.S. silver medalist Sasha Cohen. "As skaters, it doesn't really change our part at all."

The new process would award points based on difficulty, with a quadruple jump naturally worth more than a triple jump.

A skater's final mark, calculated electronically, also would reflect technical proficiency and components of artistry. A sample score might be in the 170s.

The new system would allow skaters to set world records as high scorers. By putting a cap on jumps, the planners aim to prevent competitions from becoming artless leaping contests.

Designed to eliminate cheating, the methodology incorporates touch-screen computers and judges' anonymity. Nine of 14 judges' scores would count, with just totals made public. In theory, the system measures a skater, move by move, against a standard and not against other skaters. That shift reduces the chance for a judge to play favorites or to play politics.

"You add points instead of deducting points, which is a positive system," said Benoit Lavoie, an official with Skate Canada - that nation's governing body for figure skating. Lavoie was one of the judges of the Salt Lake Olympic pairs competition.

During Skate Canada, an ISU Grand Prix event on Oct. 30-Nov. 3 in Quebec City, the touch-screen part of the new scoring process was tested. Here's how it worked:

• A chief observer, or "element specialist," acted as sort of an expert witness, identifying a jump as it was performed.
• . That specialist then typed the jump name into a central computer.
• . The jump title appeared on each judge's screen.
• . Each judge decided the jump's execution and quality based on a scale of minus-3 to 3, with zero designating the jump performed as average in quality.
• . To record a score, each judge touched one of seven boxes - numbered from minus-3 through 3 - on the computer screen.

All of that is for one element of a program. Typed lists of a skater's elements are available ahead of time, but if a skater deviates from the program, the specialist will have to adjust in a flash.

"If it takes 20 or 30 seconds and the heads are still down looking at where to hit a computer button, they'd miss the skating," said John Nicks, who coached Olympic skaters including Cohen, fourth at the 2002 Games.

Browning said the element specialists will have a huge responsibility: "That's the one part I am concerned about," he said.

Skaters respond

As the proposed changes have gained exposure, skaters have tried to imagine various applications of the new systems.

"You have to write down your jumps in the order you'll perform them," said six-time U.S. champion Todd Eldredge, who retired from Olympic-style skating in February. "In golf, that would be like saying, 'Well, I plan on hitting this 400-yard drive.' Maybe you'd get a minus-3 if you completely shanked it."

The USFSA's Howard, a member of the ISU Council, emphasized that the systems being tested are not in final form.

"We need to be able to examine it thoroughly," she said. "We will continue to have input."

To lessen the chances of judges' being pressured, ISU officials made judges' anonymity a prominent facet of the innovations, along with more precise scoring guidelines.

Reigning world and Olympic champion Alexei Yagudin of Russia gave the interim judging system a thumbs down in October. He was quoted as saying it was a "huge mistake." ISU officials, however, said they have been pleased with the interim test stage, budgeted at $500,000.

"My concern is whether they have 14 judges who are really proficient," Boitano said. "The Olympics was a huge eye-opener for the public."

ISU consultant Ted Barton, who helped formulate the interim system and is observing the tests, predicted coaches and skaters will have more solid information to use in planning their programs.