Skating Officials Make New Scoring System to Prevent Same Mistakes from Happening Again

Irina Nechkina of Azerbaijan was demoted after receiving several warnings. Nechkina can't appeal and will be replaced by Rolf Pipoh of Germany for the Olympic ice-dance competition starting Friday in Turin, Italy. This was a result of figure skating officials trying to fix the impurities on the sport. Nechkina met with the ISU's ice-dance technical committee in Turin to discuss the decision. The ISU changed its scoring system shortly after the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics a French judge admitted voting under pressure for Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze instead of Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier in the pairs final, this resulted on the Russian's victory for one vote. Sale and Pelletier ended up receiving duplicate gold medals. This was the first time in Olympic history that a judge's decision in overturned. The judge involved, Marie-Reine Le Gougne, was suspended for three years. The new system that was implemented includes a committee evaluating the performance of judges after competitions. The old system is gone, replaced by a points-based method where individual judges' marks remain anonymous.