Epilogue - Wrapping up Coverage of the 2003 World Figure Skating Championships

March 28, 2003

Report and Photos by Marie L. Hughes

There was a revolution in downtown Washington, D.C. this past week.

Of course, if you count Evgeny Plushenko's Quad Toe-Triple Toe-Double Loop, there were a lot of them. But this one was different.

This week the figure skating community rose up almost as one and proclaimed their dissatisfaction with the interim judging system - with any system that prizes anonymity over accountability.

Skating officials announced the ISU could not be reformed and started up a rival group, the World Skating Federation. SkateFAIR members rallied the fans with our buttons and pins and brochures and got over 200 of them to march outside the MCI Center on Friday. Finally, on Saturday, the skaters spoke. They formed the International Athletes Commission and voted on a platform that includes a strong vote of no confidence to anonymous judging.

As Ladies Competitor Jennifer Robinson said to CBC News: "the fans are fed up, my parents are fed up, everybody's fed up"

You might not realize this if you read the Washington Post. They were too busy prematurely anointing Michael Weiss as World Champion and embarrassing Sarah Hughes for having the nerve to fall down to do more than token reporting, buried within other stories whenever possible.

Our protest and the formation of the WSF were barely mentioned as part of ABC's Worlds coverage as well. Perhaps they felt constrained by the fact that one of their commentators had come out in support of the fledgling WSF and decided no coverage was better than the wrong coverage.

But the rest of the world was listening and knows what happened here as there was coverage on TV, radio and newspapers from all over the country and the rest of the world.

When SkateFAIR came together slightly over nine weeks ago to mull over plans to stage a protest against the anonymous judging system outside the MCI Center, we had no idea how wild a ride this week would be. I'm not even sure how many of us thought we could make much of a difference.

We were just fed up. The talk of deals and corrupt judging has gone on for years and to some extent you get immune to it. It's always just talk and when you look into it, the rumors dissipate and you are left with nothing but juicy gossip and no proof. But then two officials were caught on tape sending signals during Pairs Long at the 1999 World Championships and Marie-Reine Le Gougne admitted she voted under pressure from her federation president, Didier Gailhaguet, at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

All of these officials should have been banned for life and the ISU should have investigated whom the French had made their deals with. House cleaning should have occurred from top to bottom and checks and balances put into place to avoid further corruption.

Instead, the ISU gave them all a slap on the wrist so meaningful that the Russian Federation issued Didier Gailhaguet a formal invitation to this year's Cup of Russia so he could get a Visa. On top of that, the ISU decided to make the judges marks anonymous and to randomly pick some of the judges to count. Supposedly this was going to fix everything.

It doesn't seem to have. Instead, there is a 1% to 30% chance in a close contest that the skater the majority of judges selected as better loses to a skater who go the minority of votes. Instead, we have competitor's families complaining in the Women's room that the judging in ice dance is "worse than ever" and that their competitor was told what their placement would be before the competition had even started.

In some ways, SkateFAIR and No Secret Judging has been an easy cause to support because the issue is so clear-cut. As a friend said to me on Friday while taking a button, the place to be in Washington, D.C. is protesting something that has nothing to do with politics.

But don't underestimate the courage it took to do what we did. There is always something to lose when you take a stand publicly even if it's just having everyone find out you're younger or older than they thought when you get quoted in the press with your age attached. Some SkateFAIR members belong to skating clubs and worry about being given a hard time by their fellow club members for causing trouble or if they are now doomed never to get a judging appointment. Some of us are a little worried about the state of our jobs which we've been neglecting a bit in favor of SkateFAIR business.

Not that what we have to lose is anywhere close to what the athletes could lose by speaking out. That is why many of us are so excited by this new athlete's commission. Amber Corwin was quoted in an article about the commission as saying that they think the commission is a good thing and the ISU shouldn't be afraid of them. I heartily agree with both sentiments.

Anyway, it's Monday and I'm waiting to go to the airport and back to my real life. My mom has just come in the door from work and tells me that at the President's Council meeting this morning, the president of the university my mom works at was telling everyone about being at the MCI Center on Saturday watching the skating. He told them there were signs in many different languages saying No Secret Judging and then explained "they couldn't get rid of the crooks so they hid them behind masks of anonymity."

It's nice to see people getting the message.

Next steps? Hard to say but we're already talking about what we'll do at Skate America in October and putting pressure on the IOC to really look at what the ISU is doing is another possibility. One thing, I do know: we aren't going away any time soon.