Sally-Anne Stapleford to speak at SkateFAIR protest

[Louis]

For Immediate Release
Contact: Naomi Paiss
March 4, 2003
202-667-0901 x209

PLANNED SKATING FANS' PROTEST GROWS AS SKATEFAIR GATHERS INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT
Former ISU Official to Address Fans at World Championships Protest
in Washington, DC; Protest Date Now Friday, March 28 5:30 PM

Washington, DC. Skatefans for Accountability and ISU Reform (SkateFAIR) announced today that Sally-Anne Stapleford, OBE, former chair of the International Skating Union Figure Skating Technical Committee, will address the protest planned for Friday, March 28 at 5:30 PM, during the World Figure Skating Championship in Washington, DC. Ms. Stapleford, whose career with the ISU spanned 14 years, who served as an international judge and referee for 30 years, and who was an outspoken opponent of corruption during the Salt Lake City Olympics, lost her re-election for the Technical Committee chairmanship and many refereeing and seminar moderating assignments in the aftermath of the pairs and ice dance scandal. SkateFAIR has also invited Olympic-eligible and elite ineligible skaters to address the protest, as well as ISU President Ottavio Cinquanta.

"I am thrilled to see the fans organizing," said U.S. Figure Skating
Association International Committee chair and international referee Jon
Jackson, a SkateFAIR supporter. "The protests in Washington may well be the spark that ignites a revolution against corruption, deal-making, and anonymous judging." Founded spontaneously only six weeks ago as a public organization to oppose the International Skating Union's leadership and decisions, SkateFAIR now numbers hundreds of supporters, and has piqued the interest of the international skating community. The organization:

* Opposes current and planned anonymous judging systems that
are not accountable to skaters or to the public;

* Calls for lifetime bans on judges and officials who corrupt
competition results;

* Demands that the ISU leadership relinquish its autocratic
stranglehold on a sport whose credibility has been badly damaged by a
culture of deal-making.

SkateFAIR takes no position on the results of particular competitions; nor
does it represent any particular national interest. In the words of its
mission statement, SkateFAIR's goal is a fair and accountable system for
skaters from all countries, as well as for all judges and officials.
The SkateFAIR website, http://www.skatefair.org, went live on February 12. As with all the organization's work, the website is the product of dozens of hours of volunteer labor. The organization, by tacit acceptance of its members, has no president or board of directors; many individuals serve or contribute to the committees that are expanding the reach and strength of the organization. A retired Navy journalist in California sent money to buy protest materials; a CPA in Seattle founded the Finance committee and is now coming to Washington for the protest. A civil rights attorney in New York assists with protest logistics, while a military wife in Norfolk whose husband was recently deployed to the Persian Gulf contributes her technical and writing skills to the website. A Presbyterian minister in California helps with public relations; a D.C. communications specialist originally from Chechnya translates to Russian; a Boston statistician with a Harvard doctorate analyzes the proposed Code of Points judging system. Many SkateFAIR members will meet each other in person for the first time in Washington, D.C.

Throughout the week of the World Championships, SkateFAIR will reach out to other skating fans attending the event. Fact sheets, a petition, a brochure and pins and banners will be available to attendees. Attendance at the event is expected to be high, and SkateFAIR expects to bring together those who care about the integrity of the sport and wish to make a difference for all skaters to compete in a fair environment.

[Arsenette]

Wow.. this is getting very interesting.. I wonder who else will show up.. Please keep us posted - I can't go.. :oops:

[tollerfan]

Louis, I'm in full support of anything that will hold the ISU and the judges, in particular, completely accountable for their actions. NOTHING LESS THAN FULL DISCLOSURE is my mantra!

There is nothing more frustrating and demeaning than watching a skating event on television now, and not being able to see the judges' countries of origin, the link between the technical and presentation marks of each judge, and especially the ordinals. Although I was finally able to watch the 4CC on Canadian television, they were not showing the ordinals (if indeed they were available at all). I cannot think of any other sport where fans are subjected to this sort of treatment.

Is it possible for those of us who cannot attend at Washington to get a copy of the written information, or to buy an official pin to wear, both in support of the event itself, and afterwards in support of the organization to continue its fight against corruption in the sport we love?

[spiralsrfun]

This is getting interesting...thanks Louis.

[Rae]

Good for Sally. And Jon Jackson too. I really like how he is standing up and being counted. USA needs a strong voice.
The Skatefair group/organisation is a positive step for figure skating in general.
The USA is by far the most important federation in the world as far as opportunities go for skaters. It's time they stood up and were counted, and it appears to be the "fans" that have done so. Good for them.
Junior development throughout the world has gone to dust and no longer on the ISU agenda in any meaningful way. ie:junior development seminars in Scandinavia and Beijing over the past two years.... but all that's come to a halt. Citing budget I hear.

And all of it becomes a political nightmare. It's Time to fix it.

Everything I think starts with.... "It's time..."
That's about the crux of it, isn't it? We've all had enough. It's time.

[Emilieanne]

I've said this before but I will say it again...we need to also write to the sponsors of the USFSA to urge them to render whatever assistance they can toward getting the USFSA to step up to the plate and do what is required. We need to write the TV networks, whose contracts are coming due in the near future, to take a cue from John Hancock Financial Services and to include an ethics clause in their new contracts with the ISU the way John Hancock did with the USOC; there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why such a clause should not be in their contracts with the ISU...those contracts are worth millions of dollars to the ISU and are the source of well over half of the ISU's annual income.

We also need to write the IOC and let them know that their help is needed as the ISU refuses to do the right thing voluntarily...the anti-doping measures were just enacted in Copenhagen in recent days...those measures call for one list of banned substances for all sports, two-year suspensions for first offenses and lifetime suspension for a second offense. Not only that, any federation that does not sign this anti-doping agreement will lose its Olympic eligibility; any subordinate national federation that refuses to sign will not be permitted to send any athletes or officials and any country that refuses to sign will be banned from hosting an Olympiad. This is long overdue. We need to impress upon the IOC that official malfeasance must be dealt with the same way that doping is being dealt with.

Since other things are going to be going on after Worlds at the end of this month, bear in mind that the 115th Session of the IOC is July 2-7 in Prague.

I do have snail-mail and fax information, but posting it now would make this post longer than it already is...I will post the information in another post. Although it is slower, fax and snail-mail will get the job done if e-mail is not available; however, flooding the fax machine and the mailbox would make quite an effective statement. If everyone of us on this board did this, I believe we can make some real change. Think about it.

P.S.--To any naysayers to this idea...instead of ridiculing this idea, I challenge you to come up with a better solution this problem that all of us can do.

[rjblue]

Originally posted by tollerfan
There is nothing more frustrating and demeaning than watching a skating event on television now, and not being able to see the judges' countries of origin, the link between the technical and presentation marks of each judge, and especially the ordinals. A thought just occured to me about the judges. It would be interesting if the ISU kept a database for the media to use recording judges preferences for skaters. I know in small competitions we know when we have a judge who "likes" us. It is the first thing we check when we go to a competition. The same way one umpire has a wider strike zone, some judges prefers the athletic style of skating in men, some like it balletic. If they were all ISU judges, and freed from inferences of national bias, preferences like that might become more apparent. I've never understood why the judges can't work their way up and get on the ISU list of judges and at that point become independant from their national federations.

I support your drive for more transparency in judging. I think it will take a huge burden off the judges. The rest of it I'm a bit iffy about.

I know you need to do this at worlds to get attention, but I'm expecting that it will be quite difficult to keep the message clear. And I'm going to be really pissed off if it leads to the canadian coverage being taken over by B/S and S/P stories again.;)

[Rae]

I have to say I'm mystified about the ISU Judges v nationality judges. This idea has been bandied about for some time now and makes not a lot of sense to me.
All judges come up through the ranks in their own country, starting at the lowest levels and working upwards. It's the only way to achieve a total judging education. In fact it's useful for top level judges to go back and judge primary and beginner levels.

Once a judge in his or her country performs satisfactorily at national level, they are again upgraded through the levels until they reach seniors. As far as I understand, and it's certainly the case in Australia, a number of years at Senior level is reached before that judge is nominated to be put onto International assignements. After that, the judge must attend a required number of seminars and once again perform satisfactorily before they are even permitted to sit for the World Championship exam, which is not a walk in the park and not everyone passes.

If the judge wants to be a referee, it becomes a whole other ball game and generally, referees do get apppointed, but getting an appointment to an event is difficult unless it's your country running the event or you have "friends" in other countries. This part I do not agree with.

However, looking back at the road to world Championship judging, it all comes through the home nation. What difference can it possibly make if suddenly that judge comes under the ISU? preferences for style of skating are already in place, no matter what sort of retraining may be undertaken by a panel of ISU experts.... and who would they be anyway?

The idea that a list of judges could be compiled by the ISU for use on international events and not be open to grevious errors of selection is mind boggling. Can you imagine the debate? Should it be geographical? And if it were geographical, doesn't that beg the question of why do it in the first place, unless the world is divided into Europe and the rest by virtue of the number of countries in Europe and why would anyone think that a British Judge and an Azerbaijan or Bulgarian judge think alike. Should it be by expertise? results? How do judges from small countries ever get appointed? Or is this whole thing a result of the Soviet Union break up in the early 90's and now all the chickens are coming home to roost?

I think the ISU has had quite enough to say recently. We've had enough thankyou very much. They've picked a particularly awful results system that can never be implemented at a local level. And I do mean never, unless the ISU wants to provide 14 or so computers plus programs to every rink in the world to run the system, because it can't happen manually.

[victorskid]

Bev Smith has reported on the planned SkateFAIR protest in her column in today's Globe & Mail.

Globe & Mail (http://tinyurl.com/6yr8)





---------------------------------
Speak out for accountability & ISU reform - join SkateFAIR (http://www.skatefair.org)

[rjblue]

I have to say I'm mystified about the ISU Judges v nationality judges. I agree with you that nationality doesn't have as much to do with judging as people think. But- as far as I know, individual federations submit their list of judges for the ISU to select from. Yes, they all have to go through the qualifying procedure, but they are always dependant on their federation to be sent to events. Once they qualify to be an ISU judge, they should be independant from their federation. They could still keep their national "tag" as far as making up the panels, if that was easier for the ISU, but their federation should no longer be able to prevent them from being on a panel.

I personally know an ISU level judge, who has left judging because the "good" canadian federation would no longer send her to the big events, because they were unhappy with how she placed "our" skaters.

[Rae]

rjblue
It may be more of an issue in the big skating nations than in the smaller ones. Events are spread around equally here. There may be the occasional squabble but never any real drama. Certainly no-one is "kept off" panels by the federation due to placements of any sort. We are grateful that they go at all.

[Greg D]

Stapleford has the British citizenship but lived in Canada for years....
She has been doing lobbying for Bourne&K, and Sale&P....everybody knows that she was promoting the canadian couples to other judges....

She is everything Skating does not need: a hypocrit who has been in the corrupted system for years....
Let's bring new faces like recently retired athletes..not Stapleford PLEASE