Bold Considerations for an Aberrant System

Realizing that is useless to be nostalgic about the old judging system, and considering the deficiencies and structural faults of the new one, the necessary alternative would be: either to conceive and elaborate the structure of another judging system, or to restructure the present system keeping only rational criteria for evaluation of technical and artistic levels adapted to each specific discipline.

To be totally honest, it is necessary to evoke the reasons which led to the elaboration of the present judging system.

The "Salt Lake City scandal" was the last straw of a series of mini scandals which stemmed from pre-determined decisions due to ideological-political reasons more than the direct consequence of incompetent judging under an imperfect system. In spite of and considering all sides of the question, these "deals" or errors have never had a lasting or serious effect on the overall results and fairness in the competitive field. The commercial and hyper media coverage of the Salt Lake City "case" promoted the theory that this episode would endanger the possibility of figure skating participating in the Olympics – a totally hypocritical and unfounded story when one knows all the incredible turpitudes and compromises which occur in the sphere of the Olympic Committee – it then became necessary to set up a parade, "an ice parade", which would provide total guarantee and security against any possible deals or pre-judging decisions against the athletes. It was at this point that a fundamentally short-sighed narrow-minded fatal intellectual decision was committed.

This error which condemned in the long term the existing judging system is problematic in itself since the fundamental question was the security control in the judging system and not a problem related to the judging technique which needed to be redesigned to make it more pertinent and viable.

Clearly to keep figure skating in the Olympic sphere, one had simply reduced to zero the possibility and use of individual judgment. As if figure skating, an entertainment sport could be defined by using quantitative and arithmetic criteria, devoid of any aspect of quality which calls for reflected appreciation.

Since the quantitative creates the problem, let us isolate and analyze the parameters of it.

This dialectic jump from quantitative to qualitative which is used to bear out theories in the areas of genetics, chemistry or the changes in historic sociology becomes in this case complete loss of reason. The consequences of this deviation are overwhelming. The analysis of this is as follows:

Since it is necessary to eliminate rumors due to subjective judging interpretations which are by necessity divergent, thus a factor of "chaos", let us first limit the decision given by the subject, "the judge" by subjecting them to an electronic box where the decision will follow the orders of a supreme jury which sits to the right of "Truth" and which rules through successive prejudgments established during official training sessions and defines the value of the executed elements of each competitor based on the average of levels obtained in other competitions.

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