Proposal for Ongoing Fan Protest of Anonymous Judging

Mathman said:

^ That first quote really took the wind out of my sails as a fan.

Ron, Ron, say it ain't so, Ron!

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Mathman said:

I think it is time to let all that go.

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The OP opened their post with mention of the Sochi Olympic results. Why aren't they being told to "move on"?

gkelly said:

There was a protest against anonymous judging at 2003 Worlds, organized by a group of fans going by the name SkateFAIR.

Much of the attention to this group was diluted by the announcement of the World Skating Federation -- a group of officials trying to start a figure skating-only federation to replace the ISU's governance of figure skating, which ultimately did not succeed.

So it's hard to say how much attention the protest would have attracted on its own.

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/20...gure-skating-skating-fans-skating-competition

http://www.iceskatingintnl.com/archive/results_worlds/worlds03.htm

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/mar/27/sports/sp-pucin27

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Thank you for posting this. This all happened around the time I stopped paying for cable television, so for a few years there I became a proverbial "casual fan" of the sport until the internet caught up and began providing links to live feeds of competitions.

Well I suppose the most obvious step is to research what SkateFair did--and did not do--and see what can be learned from it.

The case of Ron Pfenning points out the greatest single problem associated with judging in the sport: nationalism. Unfortunately it would take a complete overhaul of the sport and how it is structured as a competitive event to address that problem, which we know ain't gonna happen.

Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't better off as a casual fan. And it was nice to save all that cable moolah every month. Still is.