How does scoring work in figure skating at the Olympics? Here's how judges analyze the sport.
It’s the age-old question in figure skating: Is it sport? Or is it art? The answer is yes. It’s a little of both.
Back in the days of the beloved but controversial 6.0 judging system, the technical and artistic sides of the sport were represented by one score each: a 5.9, say, for technical merit and a 5.8, for instance, for artistic impression.
But that system ended in 2004, replaced by the International Judging System, a much more complex system of scores and points in which the judges grade every jump, spin and step sequence on a scale from -5 to +5 for a Grade of Execution (GOE), while the base value of each of those elements is identified by a technical panel.
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The artistic side of the sport is evaluated in five Program Component Scores: skating skills, transitions, composition, performance and interpretation. These components are marked on a scale from .25 to 10.
The scores of two of the nine judges are thrown out -- those with the highest and lowest marks -- and the remaining judges’ scores are added to form the mark.
Add up the scores for the elements (technical) and the program components (artistic), subtract one point for every fall, and that’s the skater’s total score.
Unlike the 6.0 system, which used ordinals to rank skaters, the IJS is about accumulating points on every element attempted across the ice in both the short and long programs that make up a competition. Figure skating at the Beijing Olympics begins Friday with the team event.
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