Liberty Bell

At the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics of 2002, a collaboration between the French and Russian judges sparked the controversy that put the skating world in an uproar. As many as six Olympic figure skating judges may have been contacted by a reputed Russian mobster charged with fixing two events at Salt Lake City. Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov was accused of scheming to get a French judge to vote for the Russian pairs team, and a Russian judge to vote in turn for the French ice dancing team, according to a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court. Both teams won their events.

The Salt Lake judging scandal, the biggest in Olympics history, resulted in a duplicate set of gold medals being awarded to the Canadian team that finished second to the Russians.

Since then the scoring system has been changed to avoid further cheating. Instead of the old 6.0 system, values are assigned to every jump, spin, and footwork sequence, allows judges to add and subtract for execution. It also adopted a randomized selection of marks from a greater number of judges, whose identities are now undisclosed. In the past, the scores of all nine judges counted. Now, a computer chooses nine of 12 and drops the highest and lowest marks. Since only seven then count, it’s possible that skaters picked by a minority of the panel can end up on the award stand.

The new scoring has caused some confusion among skaters and the spectators. The difference between a 5.8 and a 6.0 was easily understood - but how do you compare 225.34 to 224.47?

The ISU isn’t trying to confuse. They are trying to avoid another scandal by radically changing the scoring system. But you have to wonder at a system that allows the results to be changed up until 24 hours after the event in case of a math mistake.

I’m pleased to say so far no scoring scandal has come up in this year’s Olympics. While Russia has three gold figure skating medals from these Games (men’s free skating, ice dancing, and pairs) they were won by skill.