International Skating Union (ISU): Open Investigation into Judging Decisions of Women's Figure Skating and Demand Rejudgement at the Sochi Olympics

International Skating Union (ISU): Open Investigation into Judging Decisions of Women's Figure Skating and Demand Rejudgement at the Sochi Olympics

Started
February 20, 2014
Petition to
International Skating Union (ISU) (ISU Office: Chemin de Primerose 2, Lausanne, Switzerland)
Petition Closed
This petition had 2,039,493 supporters

Why this petition matters

Started by Jessica L

UPDATE: Okay, so I have been getting a lot of comments about this petition and want to clarify some things. 

1. Katrina Witt's twit: comments about her never twitting that quote has been given. So here's the video clip that is pretty much what her twit was about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV4sfY2ou_I

2. Superior technical points for Sotnikova: This is the MAIN opposition we are getting. But I am not concerned about the technical points; yes Adelina's program was composed of "more jumps (by 1) and more difficulty" I do NOT doubt that. What this WHOLE petition is concerned with, at least for my rationale for organizing it, is the GOE's (Grade of Execution) for both SHORT and FREE program which are grades given by judges to how the skater performed each jump/skill - I demand this SUBJECTIVITY to be TRANSPARENT and NOT ANONYMOUS ANYMORE!

And a surprising article also came out today and I am curious how this will be defended:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/brennan/2014/02/21/figure-skating-scandal-sochi-olympics-adelina-sotnikova-yuna-kim/5680717/

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The following public figures' twit will give you a good gist of what happened:

Bill Plaschke (American Sports Journalist) "Kim didn't win...unbelievable...scandal written all over this...Russian Sotnikova wins, fans going crazy, Kim disappears, wrong, wrong" 

Alex Goldberger (Olympics Researcher at NBC) "Adelina Sotnikova was excellent tonight, but Yuna Kim was robbed"

Terra Findlay (Canadian ice dancer) "I'm speechless. Yuna Kim, you are a queen"

NBC Olympics (Official Twitter) "Yuna Kim wins Silver. 17 year old Sotnikova wins Gold, and Kostner wins bronze. Do you agree with the results?"

ESPN Official Website News Article titled "Home Cooking", "Home-Ice Advantage" 

CBC Commentary: "That's a shock...Did you see that coming" (of Sotnikova winning) "Well I think I saw a medal coming, I'm just not sure we thought it was going to be that one" "As caught up in the moment as I was... I'm still stuck on quality of skating that Yuna Kim has, and the moments where you see jarring images during Sotnikova that she's not ready yet ...The judges have their job and I really look forward to looking at it again so I can see it with fresh eyes but yes I am sitting here a little stunned"

New York Times: "Comparing the Jumps of Sotnikova and Yu-na" included rating of Sotnikova's Triple Flip and Double axel as "Poor" in the free program and Yu-na's ratings consisted of Good only. 
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As you can probably tell, the world was keeping an eye on Yuna Kim who has set a World Record for the history of Women's Figure Skating, to defend her gold medalist title this Sochi Olympic 2014. The free skating event took place this morning and nobody denies the fact the Sotnikova did present to her potential. She did an amazing job and showed amazing performance. The one mistake she made was the stumbling after one of her jumps which was - although small - quite visible even to the public who do not know professional knowledge of figure skating. Nevertheless, she achieved her best score of 149.95 which was 0.11 away from Yu-na Kim's world record of 150.06 at the Vancouver Olympics. This comparison illustrates the home advantage already although I do admit that rules have changed since then but we are talking of quality of programme here. 

Next up was Yuna Kim, she skated and her performance can be shown through what the CBC commenters said "this woman has no equal". She did show tiny unstable landing in one of her jumps, but relative to the stumble shown by Sotnikova, it was not as visible and she carried on with superb acting performance. "If you were to write a textbook, that would be how to do it", "Nobody compares to the flow she takes as she jumps and on the landings, nobody" (CBC)

Even the night before in the short programme, an evaluation sheet from the judges were made public which showed 0 in one of Yuna's jumps - in the short program where she made no mistakes at all which already shocked the Korean people. This was the beginning of the scandal but with the free program left, I hoped for a change (foolish hope). As well as the fact that they put 4 Russian people as judges out of the 14, AND 4 judges out of 9 on the day of free program being from the former Soviet Bloc...really says something. But the score in the free program has added on to the unfairness of what's supposed to be the fairest of all competitions - the Olympics. The corruption needs to be made visible and needs to be corrected.

The above quotes are chosen because they are stated by well-known figures, however, the rest of the public is demanding justice. But of course, we, as just citizens, know that our voice is weak and we may not have a chance to change anything. But this is crucial. And this petition may help towards bringing fairness back into the Olympics that showed so much corruption ironically. Yuna does not care about the medal since Gold was not in her utmost desires but it is the unfairness being observed by EVERYONE in the world except Russia. I dearly wish to prevent this from happening to any other athletes in the future. They need to acknowledge that yes, Sotnikova wrote the history in Russia but HISTORY IS FULL OF BIAS THAT NEEDS TO BE CORRECTED. This is NOT for Yuna Kim, this is for the FAIR SPORTSMANSHIP THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE CENTRAL TO THE WORLD EVENT OF THE OLYMPICS. 

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Decision Makers

  • International Skating Union (ISU)ISU Office: Chemin de Primerose 2, Lausanne, Switzerland