Every week, UPH will look at one confusing thing in sports, and figure it out.  It will then become Stuff We Didn’t Used to Get.  If you’ve got something you want us to investigate, drop us a line.

All the talk about Nicole Bobek made us think about the weirdness of the new scoring system in figure skating.  We wanted to be sure we understood exactly what was going on with it before the hype to the Olympics–with all the qualifying competition coverage–begins.  So, here goes. What’s up with it?

The current system, called the ISU system, replaced the previous system, the 6.0-is-the-highest that most of us remember from Dorothy Hamil times.  It is used to judge all Olympic skating, including ice dance, which is another thing we don’t get, but that’s another week’s column.  It was created after the 2002 scandal, in which the wrong team seemed to have won the pairs medal    Here’s info if you forgot  that one.

The system is based on required elements–different numbers for different competitions and programs (long, short, etc.).   If an element is in the second half of the program, it is worth more points. Falls and problems are certain automatic deductions.

There is serious criticism that the higher marks given for certain sorts of spins, spiral sequences, etc. make every program look alike, and penalize creativity that might lead to innovation, because without certain elements at certain times, a program has an automatically lower highest-possible score.

We understand how subjective the scoring for artistic sport endeavors is…this is why nobody scores ballet…and we’re in favor of the fact that marks are no longer anonymous, and are published with explanation.  It all seems awfully technical to us, though.  We’d like to see something that  encouraged innovation.

Still, now we get it.