ISU defends Olympic ice dance scoring amid French controversy

MILAN — The International Skating Union says it stands by the ice dance judging at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, where the scores from the French judge earlier this week played a big role in the French couple of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron beating the American team of Madison Chock and Evan Bates.

The judge, Jezabel Dabouis, favored Beaudry and Cizeron by nearly eight points over the three-time world champions in the free dance, a margin so large that if her score were removed from the equation, Chock and Bates would have won gold.

“It is normal for there to be a range of scores given by different judges in any panel and a number of mechanisms are used to mitigate these variations,” the ISU said, adding it has “full confidence in the scores given and remains completely committed to fairness.”

There is little recourse for the U.S. team if the global governing body is unwilling to investigate the scoring discrepancy.

This is not the first time Dabouis has turned in questionable scores for Beaudry and Cizeron. At the Grand Prix Final in December, when Chock and Bates beat them in their only other head-to-head matchup, the judge had the Americans narrowly ahead in the free dance despite two deductions, including an egregious fall. The French team wound up with a silver medal.

Dabouis also had a wide margin favoring the French couple in the Olympic rhythm dance, when they also beat the U.S. team.

“Any time the public is confused by results, it does a disservice to our sport,” said Chock, who along with Bates won a second straight team gold medal earlier in the Games. “I think it’s hard to retain fans when it’s difficult to understand what is happening on the ice.

“People need to understand what they’re cheering for and be able to feel confident in the sport that they’re supporting.”

The most famous judging controversy in Olympic figure skating also involved a French judge.

During the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia won gold over the Canadian pair of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. But allegations of vote-swapping and selling of votes by French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne led to an investigation by the ISU and the International Olympic Committee, and she was ultimately found guilty of misconduct and suspended.

Sale and Pelletier ultimately were elevated to gold while the Russian pair was allowed to keep their medals.

Two years later, the ISU eliminated its 6.0 judging system because of its inherent subjectivity. The replacement system, which has been tweaked over the years, features two scores added together: one where each element is graded off a base value to establish a technical score and another where judges provide a component score for overall skating skill and performance.

Many critics have called the system overly confusing and still too subjective, and more than 14,000 people had signed a Change.org petition by Friday asking the ISU and IOC to investigate the latest scoring controversy.

“We did speak to our coach, and we did talk to each other, and we know how we felt on center ice after we skated,” Bates said. “We felt like we delivered our absolute best performance that we could have. It was our Olympic moment. It felt like a winning skate to us, and that’s what we’re going to hold on to.”