Why are people in figure skating so concerned about perception?

I haven't subjected myself yet to the interview where Tessa Virtue wishes people would not focus on the scandal, the better to bring credibility to the sport.

Tessa Virtue, ladies and gentlemen.

You know what would bring credibility to the sport, Tessa? If the sport had credibility.

The language used when skaters talk about how the public sees figure skating is always so sketchy and WTF.There was Sinead Kerr jumping onto twitter complaining that VM interrupting their 4CC's Carmen hurt the "perception" of the sport.

What actually hurts the perception of the sport, and will continue to hurt the perception of the sport, is that it's fucked up and corrupt, secretive and shady, and lacks all accountability.

What hurts the perception of the sport are communiques as dead honest and earnest as this one, from South Korea:

"We had to be extremely careful with our action because filing a complaint may adversely affect our relationships with the ISU and international figure skating judges, which could put our athletes at a disadvantage at future competitions," the statement read. "However, after deliberating over what would be the best course of action for our people, we decided to appeal with the ISU."
The ISU Constitution and General Regulations state that "no protests against evaluations by referees, judges and the technical panel of skaters' performances are allowed." The ISU also states that protests against results "are permitted only in the case of incorrect mathematical calculation."
However, under Article 24 of the ISU Constitution and General Regulations, complaints may be filed with the ISU's Disciplinary Commission "within 60 days of learning of the facts or events which constitute a disciplinary or ethical offense." The KSU and the KOC said they believe the composition of the panel in Sochi was in violation of the ISU's ethical rules.

What? WHAT? Is South Korea saying that if its complaint is taken amiss, the ISU may see to it that South Korean figure skaters skating according to the rules of CoP will have their scores fucked with in retaliation? South Korean skaters' levels and GOE and components  - the stuff that quantifies what a skater did on the ice, and nothing more or less - will instead actually reflect the ISU's displeasure with South Korea filing a complaint?

Tell me more, South Korea! How does the ISU get this done, exactly? You file a complaint, suddenly your skaters aren't making the final flights. Who issues the directive? It's not "The ISU". It's not a whole bunch of judges individually reacting as one to this complaint and individually deciding to jack your skaters' scores. It's a person. Somebody has to tell them to do it. Who?

Why are the public faces of the sport - the skaters -  more concerned with how the sport is perceived rather than how it is? Why are they eager for a disconnect between perception and reality?

Perception: Tessa and Scott interrupted their program and were allowed to go back and finish! How is that fair?
Reality: Tessa and Scott interrupted per the ISU's own rules.

Why wasn't THAT explained instead of all the oh oh oh oh oh oh hurting the perception! The ISU has/had a rule. Tessa and Scott were within that rule. Instead of the incredibly shady shade thrown left and right immediately suggesting Scott and Tessa were faking, how about explaining that they acted according to the ISU's rules on interruptions?

Why so assbackwards, skaters who threw shade? A little quick-triggered and oversensitive, are we?

Desired Perception: Judging is fair, DW brought it and skating is a wonderful, legitimate sport.
Reality: The results in ice dance have been predetermined for at least the past two seasons (and probably more). Any comparison between what DW did on the ice and what the ISU rules say they ought to have done on the ice in order to get the scores they received demonstrates that without a doubt. The sport is corrupt.

If figure skating were a real sport, staffed by officials who didn't use the mafia as their role models, someone like David Dore would register a strong objection/protest to South Korea's suggestion that the ISU would ever ever retaliate against a Federation's skaters for that Federation filing a complaint about a competitive result. But I bet it doesn't bug them. I bet nobody in the media who followed DW/VM and Slotnikova/Yuna Kim is going to go - wow, a whole entire Fed just announced, humbly, that the governing body of this terribly legitimate sport will possibly retaliate against the Federation's athletes on the score sheet if it doesn't like that the Federation filed this complaint.

They'll just let that statement sit there, and continue to tell us how on point DW's scores were versus VM. Scores that have no relationship to what was skated only happen when Russians are on the ice or on the judging panel.The ISU itself is A-Okay.

Obvious relational associations and logical implications are disregarded in the media coverage of these events. Just leave em there on the ground.

To conclude, let's note that the Korean Skating Federation has just told us that the ISU is perfectly capable of controlling/directing the international judging community to score a skater and event per an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with the skater's performance on the ice (retaliation, or say, directing a particular team towards a gold medal at the Olympics). Not at one event, but systematically, going forward. However did South Korea receive the impression this was possible?

I can understand why a liar like Tessa would be reality averse, valuing perception over truth but I don't think she should be doing psa's about it on Strombo.

__________________
P.S. I found this 2011 article: David Dore and figure skating that quotes both David Dore and Christine Brennan. David Dore is described thusly: "One of the smartest and most profound international officials in figure skating today."

Gee I wonder what THAT pre-interview was like.

The topic is the International Judging System.

"Everybody has an agenda and you have to play your own game."  explained Dore.

"The new system is still undecipherable for civilians" said Christine Brennan.

Let me ask you Christine. Did you ever make a first-hand attempt to understand the new system or did the word "factored' pull you up short. Did you ever give yourself a boost by learning anything about blade work, steps and turns? Or did you look at it and go shit, that's a lot of decimal points and small type, nobody's going to understand it cause I don't!

"These are really difficult times for figure skating in terms of the sports media," said Brennan. "[Coaches and officials] need to think about ways to make it [more] interesting."

The thing with Brennan is she gets all her stuff from the people whose perspective is overcooked from being inside the sport too long. She doesn't act like a journalist and get that bird's eye view.

Does the "Ice Challenge Competition" discussed in this article actually happen?  It seems to be a competition for former champions and medalists, like the old pro comps.

Like any community, the inner workings of the ISU are complex and sometimes challenging, but it can work if you know how to work with it.  "The culture and concept of the ISU is that it’s a team," said Dore, who urged coaches to be smart, innovative and creative in terms of utilizing the IJS.

Uh huh. I don't exactly understand what is being said in this paragraph.

Okay, I figured out why that last paragraph is a WTF. This article isn't making sense. It's not explaining, connecting, or linking the supposed issues it's addressing into a coherent statement.

Let's look:

1. As I understand this article, it's saying the "new" judging system is a marketing challenge because the general public doesn't understand it and it takes longer for the scores to pop up when skaters are in the kiss'n'cry.

Okay, I see. But then there's this:

2. "Everybody has their own agenda and you have to play your own game."

What does that have to do with the UJS. Agenda in what respect? Agenda about what? Play your own game about what?

and let's look at this:

3. "Like any community, the inner workings of the ISU are complex and sometimes challenging, but it can work if you know how to work with it."

Yeah, no. That's not "like any community." Furthermore, complex generally means there are multiple components, not that nobody knows what the fuck is going on. How come this author (and Dore) aren't laying out what the "inner workings" are, what is so complex about them, and telling explicitly what the challenges are? How does one learn to "know how to work with it." What are examples of people who have successfully worked with it? What did they do? What challenges were presented? What is the wrong way?

I understand that might be a tough challenge when nobody's telling us what "it" is.

IOW, bullshit bullshit bullshit. They're telling us nothing here.

P.S. I also suspect it's likely that the Letter of Inquiry the ISU sent after Virtue Moir interrupted Carmen at the 4CC's was the ISU simply capitalizing on the event to throw shade on VM and enable the DW narrative. If the DW trajectory weren't the agenda, no letter of inquiry would have been sent.

This Thing of Ours

Two of these things are not like the other three.

BTW - I am going to put up waltzflower's video(s) later tonight or tomorrow.

This post, though, looks once more at the secrecy with which figure skating operates, not just behind the judges' panel but within the organization itself. And more than secrecy, the vague. And how this vague is accepted not just within the sport, but by the media that covers the sport, that legitimizes figure skating as a sport.

Law enforcement and the media call traditionally structured crime organizations of Italian origin the "mafia," or "national crime syndicate," but these organizations historically called themselves "cosa nostra" - "our thing".

I've also been thinking about David Dore:

David Dore is the ISU vice president. He's a figure skater. The ISU president, Ottavia Cinquanta, is a speed skater. Cinquanta doesn't know figure skating, nor know, from what takes place on the ice, if a figure skating event is judged fairly or unfairly. Cinquanta's more like Lynn Rutherford: "The protocols did the same thing before, which means the protocols this time are fair. So shut up."

Dore does know figure skating. I think he's more influential about how figure skating is judged on a grass roots, skater-by-skater basis, than Cinquanta.

About Dore, wikipedia says (yes, I know, but one must start somewhere), first, that he was a Canadian skater, then an international skating judge (seven World championships and the 1984 Olympics), then in 1972 he was "a director" of the Canadian Figure Skating Association (now Skate Canada) and then its president from 1980-1984. He's got a long long long history with Skate Canada.

From wikepedia:

"Dore was at times a controversial leader, known for promoting policies whereby CFSA's national team athletes and coaches were expected to work directly under the control of the central organization. He has also been criticized for failing to support Canadian judge Jean Senft when she acquired evidence of judging corruption at the 1998 Winter Olympics."

"Dore resigned from his paid position at Skate Canada in early 2002 in order to become eligible for an elected position with the ISU. He was elected the Vice President for figure skating at the 2002 ISU Congress and was re-elected in 2006. He has become known as a strong supporter of Ottavio ("Speedy") Cinquanta's policies, such as the adoption of the ISU Judging System and keeping the identity of figure skating judges secret."

I know many people are more familiar with the ISU structure and history than I am, but it's not as if the ISU makes it a simple matter of search and click to get the lowdown on who's who, how it's structured, and who the players are below the very top. For instance, it's easy to find the ISU president, not so easily members of the governing councils. There's more transparency in the actual cosa nostra, actually. Just google. With the ISU, not so, especially when it comes to what the skaters "hear" and who decides what it is skaters should "hear". The who, what, when, where, why and how about that is impenetrable.

This somewhat older article (2012):

Lame Duck

mentions that at the time the article was written, Cinquanta is a lame duck, and that, while Dore is his logical successor, Dore is getting on in years (me: you'd think that would make him a shoo-in with the ISU), he's eligible for the presidency in 2014 only, and not if the elections are delayed until 2016, which is what some people apparently wanted, for the express purpose of preventing him from becoming president.

I'll amend this post as I acquire a clearer picture of things, but the above article (again - 2012) also mentions that former Skate Canada president Benoit Lavoie and French Fed member Didier Gailhaguet are among the aspirants for the presidency. Lavoie himself not long ago resigned Skate Canada in order to throw himself into the embrace of the ISU. We can be sure he made that decision only after devoting himself 1,000% to the best interests of Skate Canada and its figure skaters during his tenure at president, and never once let himself be influenced by a desire to curry favor with the ISU, where his future lay.

Here, let's observe that, for quite some time now, and for all of Scott Moir's public support, Mike Slipchuk has sounded cavalier in almost all of his public commentary. The results of a given competition hardly engage his interest. He was near-dismissive about what happened at the Olympics to Scott and Tessa, didn't seem especially fussed by Patrick Chan's disappointing skates, and I don't think uttered a peep of complaint about the GPF either. He's not pressed about anything. He's been super laid back for a long time, even though he's not the one getting fucked.

It's only cheating if they're Russian, and looking at figure skating journalism

Christine Brennan, who after two decades still doesn't know all that much about figure skating at blade level, who looked away when Virtue and Moir won the ice dance competition on the ice, but the judges gave the gold to Davis and White instead, has no problem with that outcome.

She's mad because, in ladies, the judges gave ladies gold to the Russian instead of the Korean.

There is actually a case to be made for Adelina Slotnikova versus Yuna Kim (she has a triple loop, for one), and there is none for Davis White versus Virtue Moir.

So of course North America is taking up the Yuna's cause, because blaming Russia never gets old. All of North America will never get over the butt hurt that Russian skaters were the better skaters for a number of decades. Being better at an expensive sport that one must begin in early childhood tends to happen when the sport is underwritten by the state and the state proactively seeks out talent all over the country, and nurtures that talent, giving it every opportunity to succeed. That's how it tends to work everywhere with any sport. It's not something that should keep you up at night for Christ's sake. In those days Russia prioritized skating. N.A. did not.

What IS North America's issue with Russia in skating, an issue they don't seem to have with skaters from other countries?

The media has managed to unearth all kinds of things about the tech controller and the judges in the ladies free, but nobody thinks to explore the scoring patterns of competitions where VM lose to DW despite outskating DW. It's all a freaking mystery.

When Americans win, deals and cheating is okay.