It's just the way of the skating world...I wrote this for my sports and society class...


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I once skated the pants off of a novice-level short program at the North Atlantic Regional Championships. When I got off the ice, I knew I had blown away the field. I nailed my required double axel, double-double jump combo, the double flip and had just the right level of panache to solidify my artistic marks. The other skaters slipped up, fell on required moves and skated like robots in chiffon.

But somehow, I was plopped in fifth place going into the long program. Though technically not a bad position to be in at that point—the top four after the final standings advance to the Eastern Sectionals—something did not seem right about those results.

My coach and I were not the only ones who had that sense. My mother, my friends and my fellow competitors got the impression as well. And when my very irritated coach confronted his friend on the judging panel, he found out that the judges thought so too.

“She without a doubt had the best double axel in the bunch,” the judge gushed. “I wanted to put her first, but we had to hold up [Little Miss Sit Spin]. You know how it goes.”

Little Miss Sit Spin skated for the hottest skating club in the state and took lessons from a coach who had trained world champion skaters in the 1980s. She qualified for Sectionals the previous two years at my level—with cheated jumps and an automaton-like artistry that is characteristic of pre-pubescent female skaters.

I was hardly surprised the following year when I started winning competitions with programs full of slip-ups and falls. I accepted my gold medals with a certain amount of pride—but that pride came less from my athletic achievements, and more from the fact that I had nudged my way into favor with the judges.

That was when my first love, my favorite sport, started breaking my heart. I always knew how it was. That was just the first time I had ever looked at it from an outsider’s perspective.

After the Salt Lake Olympic figure skating judging scandal broke, outsiders to the figure skating world were astounded to discover treachery and deception behind the “Shirley Temple” of sports. Fans were outraged, disgusted that they were duped by the innocent façade concealing a cold, cruel black heart of ice.

But those in the kill-or-be-killed biosphere of competitive figure skating only rolled their eyes and groaned at the prospect of having to revamp the judging system.

After the universe saw the Canadian figure skating pair of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier finally get their truly deserved gold medals, the negative outside attention that befell the International Skating Union pressured it to change its ways.

Indeed, the judging scandal of the Salt Lake Olympics was the impetus for what was beefed as an “entirely new system” of evaluating the sport. It was more complex, requiring judges to practically take a magnifying glass to every skater and break down a judgment to the last flare of the blade.

Reality check: it doesn’t matter how you cut the scores, the very fact that the sport is a judged sport means nothing changes. The only way figure skating could ever eliminate that nasty subjectivism that leads to back-room judging deals is to eliminate competitions entirely.

Competitive figure skating has thrived for over one hundred years. Millions of little girls and boys sign on for lessons at the local rink every year. The sport flourishes, despite the reality of a sordid double-dealing underbelly. In fact, that’s what fuels the competition.

The skater is not so much an innocent victim as it seems. Skaters, coaches and clubs feed the corrupt judging mill by catering to it with every stroke of the blade. And it works for them.

Figure skaters experience it so often that they have come to expect it. You can skate your heart out and still lose to the frou-frou in the tutu with the under-rotated jumps.

And you chalk it all up to the fact that you were not skating for the right skating club, or your coach was not famous, or you were a no-name. Athletic ability? Barely an afterthought.

It just was not in the score cards for you. The supreme beings of figure skating—the chic-looking Eskimo-clad arbiters perched by the side of the rink—did not foresee you atop the medal podium.

Ironically, this is where “for the love of the skate” should come in. It ain’t fair, but the ice princess takes it like a champ, knowing that she was the better skater. Cue the theme song from Ice Castles.

In the real world of figure skating, that is rarely the case. After the results are posted, Little Miss Sit-Spin stomps her feet and throws a tantrum in the dressing room, and a week later she has a million-dollar smile on her face, a new coach and skates for a more prestigious figure skating club.

…And premieres at the next competition to see if the improved image is good enough for the judges.

From an objective standpoint it all seems ridiculously immoral. And it is. It was enough to drive a gap between someone like me and my dreams of figure skating glory. But that’s the nature of this competitive sport.

The back-room dealings of the judges have always been far from hush-hush during my days as a skater. Judges are known to openly discuss the bargains they strike back in the judges’ lounge at lower level competitions. While sipping hot chocolate and munching on croissants, they decide exactly who will win and who will lose long before the skaters take the ice to warm up. Again, a new system of tallying the numerical scores is not going to filibuster any of that.

What will the future bring for this new scoring system? It will shut up the disillusioned fans and that is about it. To reorganize the competitive sport to rid it of back-room judging deals would be to rip out its innards. We might as well then just put on feathered hats and boas, lace up our skates and put on a show for the world to ooh and ahh at us.