Is the New Judging System Killing the Quad?

As you may know, the figure skating season has begun. As my wife is a former competitive skater and now coaches on occasion, I know more about figure skating than any heterosexual male rightfully should. I have been interested to watch the implementation of a radical new judging system that attempts to make the sport less fraught with scandal. This article, which argues that the new system isn’t scandal-proof either, has a succint description:

In the old system, judges scribbled a few notes as they watched a skater for four minutes, then said to themselves, “That’s 5.7, 5.8.” In the new system, judges continually touch a computer screen to evaluate every jump, every spin, every spiral. The Olympic judge showing me the new system, Joe Inman, announced 50 different items as we watched a four-minute program.

There are more judges, they’re anonymous, and the best and worst scores are thrown out. Importantly, there’s an agreed-upon difficulty level for each element, and the execution is compared against that level. In short, way more data points and far less opportunity for block (or is that bloc?) judging.

Before this new ‘code of points’ system, skating was quickly becoming a jumping competition. Skaters were pushed to defy physics with quads, quad-triples and other combinations. Now, the system gives as much weight to, say, spins or choreography as it does to jumps.

As a result, skaters now must dedicate their time equally to all of the aspects of their program, instead of emphasizing the jumps. The jumps they were working on were at the very edge of possibility, so skaters may not have time to push that envelope anymore.

Additionally, under the new system, if you fail to execute a planned element, you get zero points for it. I’m not exactly sure of the particulars, but I think I heard that a quad is worth 13 points, while a triple-triple combination (a considerably easier jump) is worth 10. If you bail on either, you get zero. Particularly in the short program, why not play it safe, land the triple-triple and get your 10 points.

In short, we’re unlikely to see the jumping envelope pushed further any time soon. At Skate America last week, only four people attempted a quad in the short program, and only one landed it. The quad may become as rare as it was back in the mid nineties.