Skating avoids controversy

I tuned in to CBC's coverage of the Pairs Figure Skating. Rest assured there will be no repeat of last year's controversy where the French judge was allegedly told to vote for the Russians in exchange for the Russian judge's vote for the French Dance Team, initially denying Jamie Sale and David Pelletier the gold.

This year, rather than the scores being out of 6 and listed by judge country at the bottom of your screen, the scores are totalled for us -- Technical Elements + Program Components - Deductions = Total

For those of us who have watched figure skating and despised the politics so evident with the judging, at least it will no longer be evident. Instead, political or personal bias will be hidden. This does nothing to assure that vote-buying is not a factor. In fact, it's simply a way for us to be kept out of the loop.

I don't know what real efforts have been made to clean up the judging, but it would seem this superficial change will only aggravate viewers who liked making the comparisons between individual judge's scores, for each skate.

Well, not giving us all of the information is a way to avoid scandal, but it does nothing to ensure that judging irregularities will be noticed or prevented.

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