ISU Suspends Pair of Officials

Two officials receive six-month bans for misconduct during September Challenger event; third gets off with a reprimand.

Held back in September in Bratislava, the 2016 Ondrej Nepala Memorial was one of the fall’s smaller Challenger events. The pairs competition had only seven entries. The three Russian ones swept the podium, a result that seemed fair enough, considering the abilities of all seven teams and what they had done. Except that at the judges’ stand, likely unnoticed by the rest of the arena, two judges and the referee actually weren’t behaving as they ought.

Five months later, the ISU handed down judgment on them. All three were provisionally suspended back in January when the ISU Technical Committee Single & Pair Skating formally filed a complaint against them. Now, the ISU Disciplinary Committee has suspended the referee, Alexandre Gorojdanov of Belarus, and one of the two judges, Sviatoslav Babenko of Russia, for six months, retroactively effective from the start of the provisional bans, meaning they’ll expire in June. The other judge, Laimute Krauziene of Lithuania, they chose to only reprimand.

Three Broke Rules About Talking, Referee Lied About It

The penalties are light, probably because no one directly accused them of trying to rig anything. They did, however, break a rule in place for very good reasons. When judges are actually in the process of judging a competition, though they’re seated next to each other, they’re not supposed to communicate. This is supposed to prevent them from colluding to rig the results. But Babenko and Krauziene did, quite a lot, according to the other judges. That they and then Gorojdanov spoke to each other in a language other than English, meaning the other judges couldn’t understand what they were saying, further raised the question of what they were doing. They claimed they were talking about malfunctioning equipment, but there would have been some evidence of that to present if it was true.

That Gorojdanov joined in their conversation rather than stopping it was bad enough. But that Gorojdanov refused to address to matter during the post-competition Round Table Discussion, and then lied and said nothing untoward had happened in his report to the ISU afterward makes the whole affair even worse. As the one with more authority, he certainly could’ve been in for a bigger penalty.

That Babenko would receive a higher penalty than Krauziene also makes sense. In fact, it is rather aggravating that he only received sixth months. Or, in fact, that he is still on a judging panel at all after multiple cases of this.

Babenko Previously Involved in This Kind of Misconduct

Back in the ’90s, Babenko had no less than three incidents of this exact kind of misconduct. After incidents in 1995 and 1997, he did it at a competition with a controversial result: the pairs competition at the 1999 World Championships. Fans cried outrage when defending champions Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze repeated over crowd favorites and clean-skating Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao, despite a fall from Berezhnaya. This was also when controversies over ice dance results, one at the same competition, were rocking the sport.

It was in that situation that Babenko did just what he would later do in Bratislava. Video footage demonstrated him engaging in communication, largely nonverbal, with Ukrainian judge Alfred Kortyek. Their behavior might not have actually affected the results since Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze got seven first-place votes. But at last the ISU came down hard, suspending Kortyek for two years and Babenko for three. They reduced both suspensions, though, when Babenko threatened to take them to court.

When two doping offenses will get an athlete a lifetime ban, one wonders how many offenses a judge can committee before he gets the same. When a judge can do this again and again and keep coming back to do it yet again, and now isn’t even bothering with nonverbal communication, or lies that can’t be easily discovered, or even, apparently, keeping his voice down, one must say there is a problem. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the ISU will do much over it.

Practical Results

No one is sure exactly why these two judges and this referee with them were talking to each other. This wasn’t even a competition where very much was at stake, or they likely changed the results any. Fortunately, ISU regulations against even the talking meant they didn’t have to figure out what they were doing in order to at least penalize them somewhat.

The suspension actually affects Gorojdanov more than Babenko, as he is Belarus’ only judge qualified to do ISU Championships. The ISU Championships’ Judges Draw back in October would have put him on seven panels over these three months. Her provisional suspension also kept Krauziene, Lithuania’s only Championships-qualified judge, off the pairs judging panel at the European Championships, though she’ll now be on it at Worlds. Babenko is far from Russia’s only judge; he lost less.

Next: Russia Less Dominant Than Usual at Junior Worlds

Indeed, it feels too much like Sviatoslav Babenko has escaped any real penalty again. One wonders what will happen if he again shows up on the panel at a competition with higher stakes.