Secrets and Lies: The ISU Turns Fiction Into Fact

Washington, D.C. The International Skating Union's first North American tests of the new Code of Points judging system will occur at the upcoming Skate America event in Reading, PA and Skate Canada in Mississauga, Ontario. SkateFAIR is providing this release to correct the disinformation being disseminated by officials of the ISU.

The ISU Says:

Secret, anonymous judging prevents cheating. It's better for the public not to know who the cheaters are; the referees know who gave what. The ISU will deal with cheaters internally.

Fact:

Expelling cheaters is a sure deterrent to end cheating. Secrecy undermines confidence in all the judges, most of whom are honest, and provides cover for the rest. Random selection of judges simply attempts to deflect their impact, but it does so in a random fashion. Some of the time, the cheaters marks will count for more, not less, than under the old system.

When the ISU was accountable to the public, we saw that they gave mere slaps on the wrist to convicted cheaters Yuri Balkov (Ukraine), Alfred Korytek (Israel, but Ukraine at the time that he cheated), and Sviatoslav Babenko (Russia). All three of them returned prominently to prestigious judging assignments almost immediately. Meanwhile, the ISU has a well-documented record of silencing or removing officials and judges who speak out against corruption, or even ask the ISU to enforce it's own regulations. There is no reason to believe that the ISU will behave any better when they are not accountable to the public and the press.

The ISU Says:

We want to clean up figure skating.

Fact:

The ISU found that the French federation colluded to fix the results of the 2002 Olympics. Yet they refused ever to investigate with whom the French federation colluded. This is not the mark of an organization that has the slightest interest in cleaning up corruption, only preserving its public relations image.

The ISU Says:

We have a "comprehensive" Code of Ethics that will help clean up skating.

Fact:

The Code is a piece of paper without any office, staff, procedures, or training to implement it. SkateFAIR's analysis shows that it is a paper tiger. It does not even require its own officials to report violations to the ISU, and never touches the sensitive subject about what to do if civil laws are broken.

The ISU Says:

Code of Points has been tested.

Fact:

The current version has never been tested. A few tests were performed last season on significantly different versions, and those test results were not even made public to the skaters. Code of Points is even now being continually changed, while the season is actually underway, so that the Code of Points being used at Skate America is not even the same one used at Nebelhorn Trophy last month. Skaters have been asked to develop their programs under constantly changing criteria, the results of which will affect their ranking in the ISU, as well as their earnings.

In essence, the ISU is running a "live test" with skaters as the guinea pigs in its rush to ram the system through before the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Ottavio Cinquanta's home country, Italy.

SkateFAIR's website contains a fuller explanation of the issues related to both the continuation of secret, random judging with the Code of Points system, and an analysis of the recently issued ISU Code of Ethics: www.skatefair.org

SkateFAIR, as an organization, will keep an open mind about the Code of Points. In our view, any judging system - whether based on the traditional 6.0 or the cumulative totals of various elements is suspect if the marks and conduct of the individual judges are not accessible to the skaters, coaches, media and fans. In our view, the ISU remains autocratic and beholden to no-one except the interests of a small coterie of insiders, insiders who panicked two years ago in Salt Lake City, and who have devised everything from new software to shallow ethics codes to prevent confrontation with the real issues. Those issues, which comprise corrupt judging, national bias, dealmaking and the refusal to overhaul a failed system of governance, will not go away no matter how many complex formulas are produced to rate a camel spin or quad salchow. And, since those issues have not gone away, neither will SkateFAIR.

We look forward to discussing these issues with other fans, with the media and with representatives of the ISU and USFSA at Skate America and Skate Canada.