Stardate 20020219.2140

(Captain's log): While I was distracted, several people wrote in with additional links about the Ice Dancing judging in the Olympics. TJ Buttrick points to this article which says that a Canadian paper claimed that the top three positions in Ice Dancing had already been decided before the competition. Mark writes to tell me that he actually watched it and in his opinion the Russians were actually better than the French (and that the Russians didn't have any falls in their routine, either).

And now it's hit the fan. David Janes writes to say that the Lithuanian team, which came in fifth, have now lodged a protest. (Though the third and fourth place teams had falls, the Lithuanians didn't and probably should have at least gotten third place because of that.)

The total corruption of ice skating ligament is now exposed for all to see, and no-one trusts it anymore. The head of the ISU has proposed a different way to do the judging, but it's not as good a solution as he hopes. His idea is to have 14 judges and 7 of the 14 scores would be chosen at random to count, with the other 7 discarded. Also, each judge would submit a score in secret, and no-one would ever know whose scores were actually chosen or who was responsible for a given score. He thinks this would stop bloc voting. There's no reason to believe it would, though; why should it? It might attenuate their influence, but there's still an advantage to be had in making deals and in voting in blocs.

The only real solution is disinterested judges. There must not be a judge involved from any nation who has entered skaters in the contest. The head of the ISU originally rejected this idea because there were so many talented judges from those nations whose feelings would be hurt. Boo-hoo; this isn't being done for them; it's for the skaters and the audience.