Sonia Bianchetti Garbato was a top figure skating official with the International Skating Union (ISU). She began her career with the ISU in 1963 and served until 1992. She continues to be involved in international figure skating and writes about the sport. In this article, she gives some of her thoughts on the state of the International Judging System.
Five years have gone by since the code of points system, the so called International Judging System (IJS), has been adopted and it is still a work in progress.


A work in progress constantly to the worse. A simple view of the skating situation today should alarm anyone about the sport. Gone is the art, gone are the skaters, vanished is the audience. Without art, skating dies.

The new system, which was introduced to eliminate the cheating and secret deals among the judges after the Salt Lake City scandal, turned out to be so modern that the results are now obscure and incomprehensible to the audience in the arena and in TV and often not at all related to the skating. And, with secret judging, nobody is responsible!

Besides, during these years the quality of skating has been constantly declining. Flawless or even relatively clean programs are impossible nowadays. The sport has turned into a combination of acrobatic movements more suitable to a circus than a skating arena. The idea of quantifying technical parts of the performance, which had some merit at the beginning , has now reached the peak of absurdity.

The poor skaters are just rushing from one place to another trying to squeeze into their programs as much as possible to score points while repeating the same few contortions required by the new judging system, with their main objective being to stay upright.

No time to prepare for the jumps, no time even to breathe. All this is physically too demanding. The human body can only endure so much.

The number of falls has increased exponentially, as well as the number of severe injuries that all too often require important orthopaedic surgery usually reserved for persons over 60.

Why all this? According to the coaches, the reason lies in the fact that the requirements imposed by the rules in free programs to get high marks are much too demanding. Too many jump combinations, overly long spins and overly complicated step sequences.

The bottom line was attained at the European Championships , held last week in Helsinki. There was no variety in spins, the step sequences were painfully slow and the technical standard as well as the quality of the skating, especially in single events , was the lowest I can remember.

Many feel that a comprehensive review is needed, identifying the good and the bad, and coming up with a complete solution that reworks the whole system. It is in fact totally useless to adopt minor little changes here and there. The bit by bit approach does not work, because all the parts of IJS are interrelated.

Of course this can only be done after the Olympics, but, since it is a long and complicated process that cannot be done overnight, it is advisable that the new project start to be discussed right now.

However, no change or amelioration to the present deplorable state of figure skating can happen unless certain changes are adopted at the top decision level. It is therefore essential that a review committee be appointed by the ISU as soon as possible. And here lies the problem.

Some ISU top leaders, apparently, are afraid that this would be perceived as weakness. In my opinion, it would rather show intelligence! Luckily it really seems that some high ISU officeholders have now realized that there are problems and are determined to do something. Every company, some time after instituting a new policy, does an internal audit or review and nothing is wrong with that. A glimpse of hope?