The Skunks of Calgary

By Ellie McGrath

Only a loving relative of Debi Thomas' could insist that the judges treated her unfairly Saturday night, but that was not quite the case two days earlier. As Thomas finished her short program, she clapped her hands together in triumph. Then came the scores and the boos. Thomas' marks for technical merit were high, but her grades for artistic presentation were much lower than those for Katarina Witt. Alex McGowan, Thomas' coach, held his nose in disgust. Later, McGowan seemed to accuse the three judges from East bloc countries -- Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Witt's native East Germany -- of protecting Thomas' rival. "We don't want this political nonsense," he said. "We just want the best skater to win."

Those who agreed with McGowan's charge pointed out that the Czech judge had given Thomas her lowest mark and that the East German and Soviet judges had given Witt her highest marks. Yet Witt's coach could also find reason to decry the skating rink's cold war: the U.S. judge gave Witt her lowest score, Thomas her highest. Anyone looking to prove that the voting always split along East- West lines, however, would run into uncomfortable details, such as the fact that Britain scored Witt higher than Thomas.

If the criticism bothers the judges, they don't show it. They seem to accept their role as the skunks of the Winter Olympics. They stay aloof at practices and are banned from talking to the press until after the competition. Most are former skaters and instructors who work their way up from judging regional competitions to the world championships and Olympics. They are unpaid and unloved, doing, as former Gold Medalist Peggy Fleming notes, a "thankless job."

It is also terribly complicated. When the French ice dancers the Duchesnays got relatively low technical-merit marks after their thrilling free program, the spectators howled. They did not understand that the judges must deduct points if the dancers execute a forbidden move. In ice dancing, for example, the prohibitions included lifting the woman above the man's shoulders and knee slides. In the pairs and singles short programs, skaters lose at least .4 of a point if they land their combination jump on two feet; a fanny fall calls for a .5-point reduction.

The judges can be much more subjective when it comes to artistic presentation. A skater's outfit, carriage, music and even facial expressions all are grist for evaluation. Thomas' low artistic marks in the short program may have been due to her choice of music. The high-energy selection, recorded by a group called Dead or Alive, was definitely not a lullaby of Broadway.

Now comes the part that even an INF negotiator might find confusing. All those 5.4s and 5.8s are not simply totted up to determine the winner. Instead, each skater gets a technical and an artistic score from each judge. These marks are added together and indicate whether a particular judge rates a particular skater first, second or, say, tenth. If a judge is notably stingy, never giving a grade higher than 5.5, the lucky skater who gets that 5.5 would almost certainly win that judge's nod. If two skaters tie on a judge's card, the skater with the higher technical score wins the judge.

There are limits. Blatant partisanship can lead to a written warning or suspension. But as long as judges assess competitors from their own countries, using their own perspectives, a completely fair judge will be as difficult to find as a 6.0 skater. Or an unbiased spectator.