Nice, France-In figure skating, they can loop the loops, put a spin on the proceedings, split technical hairs. It's called judging. It is subjective by definition, demanding and occasionally arcane, another part of the Wallenda high-wire act in a sport always on the edge of a pratfall. Like the ice itself, judging is hard and slippery, and the skater's job is to deal with it.
So Great Neck North High School freshman Sarah Hughes, after a boffo performance in the women's short program of the World Championships on Friday, could be delighted over the skating panel's decision to settle her into fourth place going into Saturday night's long-program final. After a nifty competition that took the sting out of a sloppy men's show here Thursday night, only three international veterans are ahead of the 14-year-old Hughes - defending champion Maria Butyrskaya of Russia, three-time European champ Irina Slutskaya of Russia and two-time world champ Michelle Kwan of California.
On the other hand: Hughes would be exhibiting normal human behavior to wonder -as her coach, Robin Wagner put it -"Why did I get 5.0?" Two of the nine judges, Adriana Ordeanu of Romania and Bjorg Rosto Jensen of Norway, recorded 5.0s for Hughes' required elements grade, among a string of 5.4s, one 5.5 and one 5.2. That, after Hughes performed as cleanly as any of the contenders in a sport that puts cleanliness next to godliness.
It seems a cautionary tale, and not new. Judges must have time to learn what the younger skaters can do. Younger skaters must learn to skate and leave the judging to others. "I spun fast, I jumped high, I do what I put out there and that's all I can ask," Hughes said, already learning the game. "You know, this is better than a year ago, when I skated the best I could in the short and wound up ninth. I'm fourth." Wagner reminded, with all good reason, "It's really a matter of where they place you among the other skaters, more than the score." But there always are edges to be maintained in figure skating, and Wagner intended to discuss the 5.0s with Hughes before the final. "She takes that personally. She needs to feel good about herself after the way she skated," Wagner said. "It was good.
Solid, clean, relaxed. It had lightness, beauty and grace." It was so good, said veteran skating follower Christine Brennan, who has written two books on the sport, that only the traditional allowance for veteran reputations got in the way. "If you put bags on all the skaters' heads," Brennan said, "that's a winning program that Sarah skated." Then again, Jirina Ribbens, for years an assistant to promoter/commentator Dick Button on the international tour, said she was sitting with "my crazy skating-expert friends, French and Polish people who follow skating all over the world, and they were screaming 'Flutz!' when Sarah was skating." A "flutz" is the disparaging term aficionados use for a Lutz jump in which the skater takes off on the wrong edge of the blade, like a flip jump. For such a take-off, judges are known to exercise their right to be picky with scores.
Not that there were shouts of "foul" from anyone Friday. There was no pointing to the site of these developments and recalling the description once used for the French Riviera, as a place "of sunny weather and shady characters." Even Kwan's mild complaint that she "wasn't really happy with the marks" was tempered with, "Seeing the other skaters and the way they skated, I'm glad to be in the top three." Butyrskaya sailed along with no wobbles or shakes, though without any specific grabber of a move. Slutskaya meandered a bit on her first combination jump but otherwise did her work well. Kwan, looking businesslike except for her soaring birdlike spirals, wasn't quite up to par on her second triple jump.
Hughes was steady-going-onto-dandy.
She was skating to theme music from a German film that Wagner stumbled into during a desperate trip to Tower Records, when she "bought about 20 CDs and this popped up on about No. 18," Wagner said. "It's very light; Sarah is supposed to be a flower in springtime," Wagner said.
So the flower began with a slick double Axel, zipped through a flying spin, triple Lutz-double toe combination jump. Then a triple flip that left her face in a lit-up smile on the way through footwork and some particularly showy spins.
As the music stopped and the crowd rose to applaud, Hughes clapped her hands once and hopped toward center ice to take her bows. And maybe that little unscripted demonstration of content described the whole day better than any judge could do with mere numbers.