The Math of Olympic Figure Skating

  Growing up in Hawaii, I never got the hang of how they score figure skating.  I learned to ooohhh when the announcers said to and I groaned when they did but I never actually learned much about it.  I actually did my first ice skating in Tucson Arizona at the combination bowling alley and skating rink.  I managed to stay up but my mother fell, dislocating her shoulder. 

So how do they score the ice skaters who perform at the Olympics.  Its more complex than I ever anticipated especially as they changed the system after a scandal in 2002.  Prior to this they used a scoring system based on a 6.0 being perfect but now, its way different. Are you ready for it?  I am.

The first step in scoring ice skaters is when the judges look for six moves, the Axle, flip, loop, Lutz, Salchow, and the toe loop that must be in every performance.  These jumps are looked at for technical and for overall performance and skaters receive two scores, one for each.

The technical award is done by two groups of people.  One is a nine judge panel who look at the quality of execution while the other is a five judge panel who looks specifically at the technical aspects of each jump.   Every move has a predetermined score such as the triple axle is worth 8.5 points for its base.

 If you perform a move with a higher difficulty rating, you get more points.  Sometimes just attempting a more difficult move, even if you don't make it, will give a higher score than performing a simpler one.  Furthermore, it is possible to get extra points by performing certain moves during the second half of the program when an athlete is more tired.

In addition, the nine member panel, they give a grade of execution from -3 to + 3 for every move.  This number is added to a predetermined base score for the move, but the highest and lowest scores are dropped so the average of the remaining seven scores makes up the technical score.

Furthermore, judges can award 1/4th to 10 points based on the five different components of skating skills, transitions, performance, composition, and interpretation.  The judges scores are averaged and then multiplied by 1.6 for the long program or .8 for the short program.  Finally, there is a referee who monitors the whole process

That is how they come up with the scores for ice skating at the Olympics.