2017_18 ISU Judging Anomalies

Sam-Skwantch said:

Unfortunately this thread is no longer focused on discussing individual judge’s marks for events during the 2017 season which was the whole intention and has now lead to a discussion on judging anomalies in general. Good or bad I was interested in discussing specific scoring of individual judges. See the first post. Now it’s just gone off the rails about generalizations and hypothetical anomalies in judging.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I've deleted my posts.

tars said:

I'm sorry, I've deleted my posts.

Click to expand...

Lol...no need for that. I think the point of the thread became lost when we lost focus on page one. That’s the internetz for ya. Definitely funny that the judge changed her tune in the FS though . I refuse to believe it had anything to do with my first post. Either Courtney got better or the judge looked at the protocols and saw a glaring discrepancy on their own. Who knows but I stand by my first post and think people shouldn’t be afraid to hold the judges accountable. No shame in that in my humble and misguided opinion

Random thought - lets make a team and run a judge analysis hackaton, including detailed data collection and analysis of all the judge pannel, both regular and tech.

Anyone in?

Too much work for me but I’d love to read the info. I’m content spotting the oddball scenarios. I actually believe most judges do a great job...I just thought this was particularly blatant. If you’ll notice from my first post I’m not assigning motive or intent but rather just studying the numbers and looking for consistency.

I don't think it's just the case of the "fake Australian" judge. The whole technical panel for ladies and men might have used a completely different set of ISU technical guidelines from the rest of the ISU as 95% of calls at this event were simply mind boggling.

I am talking to you Ms Yukiko Okabe, Mr Scott Davis, and Mr Fernand Fedronic. J'accuse......

If this thread is handle right, it should be beneficial (for example calling out the no.6 judge). I hope it will not become another thread to debate why this judge score my favorite .25 less than another skater from different events. Anyway, it is so funny to see many people who defend judging now are the one that complain how judge overscore Medvedeva last week .

whatif said:

I don't think it's just the case of the "fake Australian" judge. The whole technical panel for ladies and men might have used a completely different set of ISU technical guidelines from the rest of the ISU as 95% of calls at this event were simply mind boggling.

I am talking to you Ms Yukiko Okabe, Mr Scott Davis, and Mr Fernand Fedronic. J'accuse......

Click to expand...

At least we can say that they were consistent: they were incredibly strict, yes, but no-one escaped that: every even slightly underrotated jump was called, so it didn't affect the result itself that much (hopefully), it just affected the scores. Which are important, too, I know, but at least it did not favour anyone in particular...

Are Technical panels assigned, invited or done by randomised draw?

Which competitions/events had some of the most strictest/oddest technical panels?

Yesterday in the ladies really sticks out as outside the norm. Again... it goes to who benefits?

FSGMT said:

At least we can say that they were consistent: they were incredibly strict, yes, but no-one escaped that: every even slightly underrotated jump was called, so it didn't affect the result itself that much (hopefully), it just affected the scores. Which are important, too, I know, but at least it did not favour anyone in particular..

Click to expand...

It favored Osmond, hardcore. She rarely ever does a jump that deserves a < call, but instead falls or steps out or doubles jumps. Thus by using phantom underrotation calls on others who skate more cleanly, it ensures she wins the competition.

Going by their crazy calls though, Osmond herself did deserve < calls on her 3Flip+3Toe combos. She is always short on that combo (not enough to deserve a < call under normal circumstances, but short nonetheless) and should have been dinged if others were called for jumps that weren't absolutely perfect. Look at where her foot leaves the ice and where it lands - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K1LhYLBecQ&t=5m20s - she is 1/4 short and this is how she always does it.

Blades of Passion said:

It favored Osmond, hardcore. She rarely ever does a jump that deserves a < call, but instead falls or steps out or doubles jumps. Thus by using phantom underrotation calls on others who skate more cleanly, it ensures she wins the competition.

Going by their crazy calls though, Osmond herself did deserve < calls on her 3Flip+3Toe combos. She is always short on that combo (not enough to deserve a < call under normal circumstances, but short nonetheless) and should have been dinged if others were called for jumps that weren't absolutely perfect. Look at where her foot leaves the ice and where it lands - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K1LhYLBecQ&t=5m20s - she is 1/4 short and this is how she always does it.

Click to expand...

A case can be made for her 3T, yes, but it's so close that I wouldn't allow myself to judge (given how close many of the calls were: other "overlooked" examples could be Sotskova's loop and second lutz and Chen's lutzes, so it's not just Kaetlyn); however, I do not see any clear favoritism attitude towards Osmond: one can say that the strictness played in her favour since her mistakes are not usually in the under-rotation field, but that does not mean that the Technical Panel planned on favouring her. The one thing I was referring to was that there were no "notable exceptions" in their strictness, so that the calls were at least overall quite consistent.

FSGMT said:

At least we can say that they were consistent: they were incredibly strict, yes, but no-one escaped that: every even slightly underrotated jump was called, so it didn't affect the result itself that much (hopefully), it just affected the scores. Which are important, too, I know, but at least it did not favour anyone in particular...

Click to expand...

No one? really?

Judging by the Ladies' competition at Skate Canada, it seems like the judges heard us saying that the scores were at times too generous with not enough jumps being called out and the PCS being too big and thought "This is what they probably want" and came up with... whatever that was (because fair judging it was certainly not). I like a strict panel more that a very lenient one, but that wasn't strict, that was just wrong :disapp:

Continuing the discussion on Ms. Ryan’s scores.

So going back and reviewing the scores of Ms Ryan in both segments I am so confused. I’m going to focus on her marks between Courtney and Kaetlyn again because it seems rather unsettling upon just a basic inspection. I honestly don’t understand her reasoning. Starting with Courtney and without any factoring here are her PCS scores for two relatively similar performances.

SP- 5.75 5.00 5.50 5.25 5.25 total 26.25 Panel Average ~36
FS- 8.50 8.50 9.00 8.75 8.75 total 43.25 Panel Average ~38

So she is 10pts under the average in the SP and then 5pts over in the FS. What is weird to me is that ignoring the other judges marks and just looking at her marks she added 15pts to her marks for two realativly similar skates about 24hrs apart. It’s so bizarre and I can’t even invent a logical reason for such an anomaly.

Let’s look at Kaetlyn’s scores which are equally weird in a completely different way I think worthy of noting.

SP- 9.00 9.00 9.25 9.00 9.00 total 45.25 Panel Average ~44
FS- 9.50 9.50 9.50 9.75 9.75 total 48.00 Panel Average ~45

It’s less fascinating looking and Ryan’s marks compared to the panel although with Courtney it’s clear she is not in agreement. During the SP as Mathman said very well she was difficult to please. Everyone except Osmond was scored very low. Still focusing on Courtney though what prompted her increase in scores for a similarly executed performance? Let’s be absolutely clear here! A 15pt swing in components should be drastically noticeable on the ice. I’m talking your friend who knows nothing about skating should see it. Especially when discussing a trained judge and only looking at performances 24hrs apart. This isn’t a subjective thing here because 15pts out of a possible 50 is a significant difference.

Ok maybe the referee or someone from ISU saw this and spoke with her. Heck maybe she went home and saw on her own how unuasual her marks looked. Regardless of why she went thru this overnight metamorphosis on Courtney (Masha too ) what is it that happened in Osmonds FS to warrant an increase in her score? Osmond was flawless in the SP and Ms Ryan’s scores were appropriate compared to the other judges although we must ignore her scores on the rest of the field to say this IMO. But Osmond performed indisputably flawed in comparison to her SP. To what degree is disputable...I’m sure some could argue for somewhat similar scores reasonably. There were flaws and she did not perform as well in the FS as in the SP. I think that is reasonably accurate. So why then is the strictest judge on the panel who is giving out 6’s like candy to skaters of similar caliber as Kaetlyn suddenly swooned into giving out a 3pt increase for what was clearly a performance with errors? 15pts here, 3pts there. Something is really wrong with the way this judge is awarding numbers. I’m all for consistency....and if you remove Osmond's marks I’d just say she was a strict judge but once you insert Osmond’s scores things begin to look confusing.

Any thoughts? I’d love to hear a rational explanation as to why Osmond's FS marks went up with errors with the strictest judge on the panel.

Well, the judges sabotaged themselves right from the beginning with the underscore of Marin, then spent the rest of the competition trying to adjust on a relative basis. Then switch back to the prejudged default mode when it comes to Ashley and Kaetlyn's score.

One major thing I don't like about this system is it does not acknowledge its flaws and limitations and makes no attempts to calibrate in between competitions or within the same competition to control inflations or human error. This heavily penalises those who skate early without giving judges a chance to rectify their mistakes. And it prejudices (or suppose to) those who perform better early season vs later seasons (benefited from inflation).

Human errors and limitation are real, ignoring it and pretend it doesn't happen slants competitions and actually makes it an excuse for federation judges to easily to take out potential rivals if they skate early.


The Australian judge is obviously trying to make up for misjudging previous event, which is understandable to make up an average.

dorispulaski said:

We thought the "Shame" part of the title might not be a great idea. Tentatively, we retitled the thread:

"2017_18 ISU Judging Anomalies"

Does that work, do you think?

Click to expand...

The only thing I don’t like is how broad it is. I was looking to start a continuing discussion and evaluation of specific judges and their specific marks. Now we’ve opened the discussion up to anything a poster perceives as an anomaly. I honestly don’t care much but as soon as we started ignoring the OP and changing the discussion to the word shame and ignoring the intent of the thread it was intended for it derailed. Not mad or anything and I’m hardly surprised it’s gone off course from its intention. Just wanted to drop some feedback. Thanks for listening.

FSGMT said:

A case can be made for her 3T, yes, but it's so close that I wouldn't allow myself to judge (given how close many of the calls were: other "overlooked" examples could be Sotskova's loop and second lutz and Chen's lutzes, so it's not just Kaetlyn); however, I do not see any clear favoritism attitude towards Osmond: one can say that the strictness played in her favour since her mistakes are not usually in the under-rotation field, but that does not mean that the Technical Panel planned on favouring her. The one thing I was referring to was that there were no "notable exceptions" in their strictness, so that the calls were at least overall quite consistent.

Click to expand...

The thing is: nobody, NOBODY, on that event got the benefit of doubt except her. If it was not her, but some other skater, shw would get at least 1 carrot in each program, and maybe some edge/unclear calls too.

moriel said:

The thing is: nobody, NOBODY, on that event got the benefit of doubt except her. If it was not her, but some other skater, shw would get at least 1 carrot in each program, and maybe some edge/unclear calls too.

Click to expand...

Jesus, people understand that Osmond is one of favourities to medal on Olympics... Like Medviedeva- her mistakes are ignored all the time, even not only in Russia.Osmond competed in Canada so? What do you expect? Zhenia in Russia lately got over 150 points with a fall and she got 10s and 9.75. Satoko as well

Sam-Skwantch said:

Ok maybe the referee or someone from ISU saw this and spoke with her. Heck maybe she went home and saw on her own how unuasual her marks looked. Regardless of why she went thru this overnight metamorphosis on Courtney (Masha too ) what is it that happened in Osmonds FS to warrant an increase in her score?

Click to expand...

For individual Garnd Prix events the ISU sends two members of the OAC (Officials Assessment Committee) to observe and prepare reports on the marks given by individual judges. There are a lot of rules about this (such as, that the OAC members should attend only one practice session so that they can recognize the skater, but no more as that might influence their own marking of the event.)

As far as I can tell, the OAC members do not communicate with the judges and technical panel between segments, but prepare their reports after the whole competition is over. There is an exception to this, if the OAC member observes any improper behavior by the judges, such as a judge communicating with another judge or consulting notes about previous competitions; then the referee is to be contacted immediately.

There are well-defined rules about how far out of the "corridor" a judge can be without receiving an "assessment" by the OAC. Three "assessments" and you get an "anomaly," or something like that, and then you get in trouble with the ISU at the end of the season. (About 15 or so judges each year are sanctioned by the ISU -- mostly in ice dance -- and punished in various ways (such as, you can't judge an ISU championship event for a year, or something.)

In this particular case I think it likely that the judge did look at the protocols after the Short Program (just like us) and acted accordingly. I agree that giving Osmond higher PCS in the long program than in the short is impossible tp justify. Still, comparing Osmond to Hicks, the judge may have simply felt that Courtney lacks grace and presented weak choreography throughout while Osmond was superb in the short program and even with mistakes in the long, was still better than everyone else. If the judge determined to raise her scores in line with the rest of the panel, then she had to raise Osmond's, too.

Purv said:

Jesus, people understand that Osmond is one of favourities to medal on Olympics... Like Medviedeva- her mistakes are ignored all the time, even not only in Russia.Osmond competed in Canada so? What do you expect? Zhenia in Russia lately got over 150 points with a fall and she got 10s and 9.75.

Click to expand...

That’s not what this thread is about. I’d love to see how the judges that gave Zhenia high PCS scored the rest of the field. Show me the anomaly and some specific marks for comparison please

Sam-Skwantch said:

The only thing I don’t like is how broad it is. I was looking to start a continuing discussion and evaluation of specific judges and their specific marks. Now we’ve opened the discussion up to anything a poster perceives as an anomaly. I honestly don’t care much but as soon as we started ignoring the OP and changing the discussion to the word shame and ignoring the intent of the thread it was intended for. Not mad or anything and I’m hardly surprised it’s gone off course from its intention. Just wanted to drop some feedback. Thanks for listening.

Click to expand...

People being people, I think that the original title invited posters to go to banshee mode in calling an individual judge crooked, incompetent, boil her in oil,Canada cheats, etc. The new title is a little more bland. (I know, you are not looking for blandness here.)