IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Scoring Without Scandal?

Welcome to figure skating's brave new world. You won't understand the new scoring system. But trust me. You really didn't understand the old one either.
The routines haven't changed much, but the scoring has. The Chinese (left) and Russian pairs took the silver and gold, respectively.
The routines haven't changed much, but the scoring has. The Chinese (left) and Russian pairs took the silver and gold, respectively.Photos by Dave Black for Newsweek
/ Source: Newsweek

Michelle Kwan's departure from Torino marked a sorrowful end to her Olympic dream and a huge disappointment for her legion fans. But it was also a metaphorical break with an era, the Kwan Dynasty. Kwan was unrivalled under the old figure skating scoring scheme, having tallied more perfect 6.0s than any skater in history.

But now the sport moves on—without Michelle and with a complex new scoring formula that will baffle those who are just tuning in for their quadrennial figs fix.

The discarding of the old system has been gradual—the 2005 world championships were the first competed under the new system—but the change was a result of the sport's embarrassing judging scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. In truth, that scandal wasn't really a byproduct of the system, but the result of an out-and-out fix—a pledge by the French judge to favor the Russians over the Canadians in the pairs competition in return for favorable treatment of the French ice dancer by a Russian judge.

It might never have been discovered had the Canadians not skated flawlessly and the French lady judge succumbed to a paroxysm of guilt. After all, figure skating thrived on controversial decisions; at the 1994 Lillehammer Games, many observers felt all four silver medalists deserved to win gold, including Nancy Kerrigan over Oksana Baiul and Elvis Stoyko over Alexei Urmanov. But it was always easy to attribute such matters to judgment calls. Scoring was so impressionistic, so undefined, that it was hard to prove that a performance merited a 5.9 rather than a 5.8. And when Eastern bloc skaters seemed to get the benefit of the doubt more often, well that was attributed to a bias in taste, a preference for a classical Soviet style rather than the skaters of any nation.

Still, casual fans will miss the old system because at least they thought they understood it. Trust me, they didn't. Few did. You saw all those 5.7s, 5.8s, 5.9s and 6.0s pop up on the screen. But nobody actually added those scores up. They were just television props to guide fans. The final results were determined by a complex formula that took into account placement rather than actual scores. If judge A gave Michelle Kwan first place with a 5.4 and Irina Slutskaya second with 5.3 while judge B gave Kwan first place with a 6.0 and Slutskaya second with a 5.3, those two judgments were functionally identical. Score meant nothing, only placement. Go figure!

But really, don't bother. The most important effect of the old system was that it brought life-and-death drama (only in the sports sense) to the short program. If a skater didn't finish among the top three in the short, he or she had almost no chance to win the gold. Of course, there was one notable exception—, who leaped to gold from fourth place. But it required a very lucky parlay of judging decisions. If the American judge had scored Kwan, who skated poorly, ahead of Slutskaya, who also skated poorly, Hughes' great effort would have gone for naught, or at least for silver. And Kwan would have won an Olympic gold. Who knows what might have happened had the competition not followed in the wake of the pairs scandal. Kwan didn't deserve the gold that day. But she might also have been the first skater to lose a gold because her country's judge was all of a sudden reluctant to show bias.

There's an irony for the ages.

But enough about the old. Bring on the new, which is both very easy to understand and, at the same time, impossible to comprehend. Or as three-time U.S. men's champ Johnny Weir put it: "People don't understand the scoring in our sport. All they know is if someone falls, he loses. But then somebody falls and wins. The fans are totally lost." If you are not lost now, rest assured that you will be after you read this.

There are still two marks for each performance and, while they carry longer names, they essentially remain a technical mark and an artistic mark. For the technical score, each jump, spin, step, move of any kind now carries with it a specific assigned value. A technical panel identifies the moves performed and logs them into a computer. (They are familiar with the program both from watching practices and from written presentations of what the skater or skaters plan to perform.) The 12 judges, a separate group from the techies, then score each move on a scale that runs from -3 to + 3. The marks of nine judges are randomly—and anonymously—selected and averaged. So for example, a triple axel would net a skater the assigned score of 7.5 for the jump plus, say, 1.78, from the judging panel for a score of 9.28. His final technical mark is an accumulation of all the scores from all his moves.

His second mark results from judges scoring the program in five categories—skating skills, transitions, performance/execution, choreography/composition and interpretation/timing. Each of the five marks can range from .25 to 10 and then ... well I'm not going to bore you with how some are discarded and all are multiplied by a competition factor to produce a total. The two marks—technical and artistic, or performance if you will—are added together, mandatory deductions (like one point for a fall) are subtracted and voila, you have a final score. At least you do for the short program. Then the whole thing is repeated for the free skate. The total from the short program is added to the total from the long program—the totals tend to run toward 200 points—and you have a winner.

You might have a couple of questions now. For example, given figure skating's scandal-ridden past, you might wonder why the anonymous judging. The scores of the judge, however, are only anonymous as far as the public is concerned. Skating's governing body knows who judged what and, at least in theory, can ensure accountability. And since other folks don't know whose scores count or which scores come from which judge, it is, at least in theory, much harder to target individual judges for underhanded deals.

The best part of the new system, again at least in theory, is that you can win from any place in the standings. Let's consider Monday night's pairs competition. The Russians Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin won with a breathtaking rendition of "Romeo and Juliet." They beat the Chinese runners-up Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao, who bounced up and back from what looked a devastating fall on an attempted first-ever throw quad, by almost 15 full points. Though Monday's competition was a runaway, it also gave an example of the potential of the new scoring system. Imagine now that the wining Russian pair had performed disastrously in the short program, but then rallied to deliver the same stunning free skate. They actually could have gone into the final evening in 11th place and still have won the competition. That never could have happened under the old system.

So you are now primed and ready—there will be a quiz—to watch Tuesday's men's pairs, when a couple of talented Americans, three-time U.S. champ Weir and Evan Lysacek, chase Russia's Evgeny Plushenko, a three-time world champion and silver medalist in Salt Lake City. Even if our lads don't win, you will have the consolation of understanding exactly how and why they lost.

Sort of, kind of, maybe just a little.

Quiz
1. What's the highest a skater can score?
6.0
200
Nobody knows

2. How many marks does each performer get?
One
Two
Eight

3. After the short program, what skaters benefit the most under the new system?
The leader
The second- and third-place skaters
The skaters close behind, but not in medal position

4. Does ice dancing scoring work exactly the same way?
Yes
No

5. Why not identify the judges whose scores are used?
To protect the International Skating Union from another scandal
To make the judges less susceptible to bribes or pressure
To annoy fans and the figure-skating press
All of the above

1. Answer: Nobody knows. The sky is the limit. But for guidance, a short program that tallies more than 65 or a long program that tops 130 is pretty spectacular and the Russian pairs final total of 204.48 sets an enviable standard for the men's and ladies' competitions.

2. Answer: Technically eight: a technical mark. And then five different presentation marks that make a whole presentation score—and, of course, the final mark that combines the technical and presentation.

3. Answer: Those not in medal position.. It used to be impossible to win gold from back in the pack. That is no longer true.

4. Answer: No. Don't ask.

5. Answer: All of the above