By the numbers, Alissa Czisny's short program adds up to excellence

In the for-what-it's-worth department, a few points of reference about the personal-best score reigning U.S. champion Alissa Czisny racked up in today's short program at Skate Canada in Kitchener:

1. Skate Canada is the last of the six regular-season Grand Prix events, and Czisny's short-program total, 63.52, has been topped by just two other women on the circuit this season: Yuna Kim of South Korea (76.08 in Paris, 76.28 in Lake Placid) and Joannie Rochette of Canada (70.0 today to beat Czisny.)

2. It bettered Czisny's previous personal best, which came in 2005, by a whopping 5.98 points.

3. And although Czisny's artistry is considered her strength, her technical score, 36.60, has been topped this season by just Kim (43.80 and 44), Rochette (38.40) and Mirai Nagasu of the U.S. (37.40 in China).

What does that mean?

Despite the effort to create a system that seeks to standardize scores, each judging panel looks at things differently, so comparisons are tricky.

But the good thing is the Skate Canada judging did not appear overly generous (except for Rochette, the homie), so Czisny's scores seem a fair measure of her performance.

The bad thing is Czisny previously has been unable to do back-to-back strong performances (for evidence, check the 2009 U.S. Championships), so there will be a lot of breath held during Saturday's four-minute free skate -- especially because Czisny always seems to lose it at just about the point (2 3/4 minutes) a short program would have ended.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Alissa Czisny reacts to her high scores in the short program at Skate Canada. Credit: Paul Chiasson / Associated Press)

Belbin looks like an Olympic medalist. But we say the winner is . . .

(Judge for yourself whether ice dancer Tanith Belbin gets style points for this.  Photo courtesy Men's Health magazine.)

A few figure skating observations as the Grand Prix series heads into its last event before the Dec. 4-5 final in Tokyo:

*Over dinner Sunday night in Lake Placid, five reporters who will be covering figure skating at the 2010 Olympics agreed to hazard predictions on the Winter Games medals.

I decided to come up with an aggregate of our picks by assigning five points for a prediction of gold, three for silver, one for bronze.

I know the whole thing is very unscientific, but the point here is simply to have some fun.

The results showed: no man getting votes from all five of us; Yuna Kim of South Korea being unanimous for gold; wide difference of opinion on the other women's medals; and compelling unpredictability in three of the four disciplines.

In ice dance, we liked reigning world champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin of Russia even though they have not competed this season because of his knee injury, and a couple of us thought Isabelle Delobel would come back so strong from giving birth to a son Oct. 2, and that she and Olivier Schoenfelder, the 2008 world champions from France, could make the Olympic podium.

(Our panel was Juliet Macur and Jere Longman of the New York Times; Christine Brennan and Kelly Whiteside of USA Today; and me.  FYI: Groups of us have done this in the past, and although the predictions have been lost to the mists of history, it should be noted Longman was the only one among a previous panel to pick Tara Lipinski as 1998 Olympic champion.)

In listing the 2010 predictions, I will give total points and votes by place.  So, for example, in ice dance, Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto of the United States had 17 (2-2-1), which means 17 points on 2 firsts, 2 seconds and a third.

Without further ado, the envelope, please:

WOMEN:  Yuna Kim, South Korea, 25 (5-0-0); Rachael Flatt, U.S., 6: (0-2-0); Joannie Rochette, Canada, 4 (0-1-1); Mao Asada, Japan, 3 (0-0-3); Miki Ando, Japan, 3 (0-1-0); Akiko Suzuki, Japan, 3 (0-1-0); Julia Sebestyen, Hungary, 1 (0-0-1).

MEN: Evgeny Plushenko, Russia, 16 (2-2-0); Evan Lysacek, U.S., 12 (1-2-1); Patrick Chan, Canada, 7 (1-0-2); Nobunari Oda, Japan, 6 (1-0-1); Brian Joubert, France, 4 (0-1-1).

PAIRS: Savchenko-Szolkowy, Germany, 21 (3-2-0); Shen-Zhao, China, 16 (2-2-0); Pang-Tong, China, 5 (0-1-2); Zhangs, China, 2 (0-0-2); Mukhortova-Trankov, Russia, 1 (0-0-1).

DANCE: Domnina-Shabalin, Russia, 19 (3-1-1); Belbin-Agosto, U.S., 17 (2-2-1); Davis-White, U.S., 7 (0-2-1); Delobel and Schoenfelder, France, 2 (0-0-2)

*Surest sign the Olympics are approaching:  an attractive U.S. female athlete pictured in a state of undress for a magazine.

This time, it's ice dancer Tanith Belbin on the cover of Men's Health, where she is called, ``America's hottest Olympic athlete.''

The hottest stuff is nothing new for Belbin, 25 a naturalized U.S. citizen from Canada (and ex-girlfriend of reigning world champion Evan Lysacek).  Voters on ESPN.com had called Belbin ``the hottest female athlete,'' period, in 2006, when she won the Olympic silver medal with partner Benjamin Agosto, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs.

The Men's Health photo spread, titled "How to Woo a Tech Girl,'' said Belbin, "loves SIM cards more than the average 25-year-old woman does.''

Belbin's relatively modest poses, by comparison with those of Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard and high jumper Amy Acuff, who posed nude for Playboy, follow in a tradition of self-revelation that includes, among others, swimmer Jenny Thompson, volleyball player Logan Tom, soccer player Brandi Chastain and water polo player Amber Stachowski.

Maybe Belbin is hoping the judges will find her love for everything hi-tech so convincing they give her higher technical scores in a scoring system that relies on all manner of gadgetry.

If it is an all-male panel, she's as good as gold.

*Rachael Flatt's performance at Skate America had big mistakes [fall on the jump combination in the short program, botched combination spin in the free skate] but it still clearly established her as the favorite in January's U.S. Championships -- unless, of course, Alissa Czisny or Caroline Zhang or Mirai Nagasu blows the doors off in this weekend's Skate Canada.

Flatt, known for her consistency, had been consistently lackluster in her earlier Grand Prix event, Cup of China, finishing 5th in the short program and free skate.  Slow and steady can only take you so far. 

"This certainly gives me a lot of confidence heading into nationals,'' Flatt said after Skate America, when she hit seven triple jumps.  "I have been doing clean programs or close-to-clean programs in practice, so I'm glad to finally compete the way I've been practicing.''

Should Flatt win nationals, she would be the fifth different women's champion in the past five years.  That never has happened before under normal circumstances.

The only similar streaks occurred in the seven years from 1990 through 1996 and the five years from 1960 through 1964.

There were six different champions from 90-96 but the 1994 title, won by Tonya Harding, was vacated because of Harding's involvement in the attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan.  Harding also won in 1991.

There were five different champions from 1960 through 1964, but the elite of U.S. skating was wiped out in a 1961 crash of the plane taking the team to the world championships.

Flatt, 17, has been the runner-up at nationals the past two years.

*In the ships-passing-in-the-night dept., we have U.S. men Brandon Mroz and Ryan Bradley, who are both coached by Tom Zakrajsek in Colorado Springs.

Mroz had plenty of bravado after the short program at Skate America, telling reporters he had the same technical ammunition as Russia's Evgeny Plushenko, the 2006 Olympic champion, who has made an impressive return to competition after a three-season absence.

Then Mroz, 18, shot himself in the foot (feet?) over and over again at Skate America, in one of the worst performances I ever have seen an accomplished skater give.  It compared (unfavorably) with Carolina Kostner's mess at the 2009 worlds.

Against the weakest men's field in any of the first five Grand Prix events this season, Mroz finished 11th of 12 in the free skate.  His scorecard: one fall, only one decently executed triple jump, other triples repeatedly turned into doubles.

Bradley had several performances similar to Mroz's disaster since finishing second at the 2007 U.S. Championships.  One was at the Paris Grand Prix this season, where he finished 10th of 12 in a free skate he amazingly opened with a successful quad jump.  Bradley was 8th overall there.

Bradley, who turned 26 Tuesday, was headed for the abyss again at Skate America after botching his first two jumps and finishing eighth in the short program.  Then he rallied to finish second in the long program -- and overall -- with solid skating in a delightfully whimsical interpretation of a program called ``Chamber Music,'' which includes snippets of Albinoni, Mozart and others.

Bradley's scores were a long way from those of winner Lysacek -- but also a long way from where he had been.

``I didn't put myself on the Olympic team today, but I didn't take myself out of the running, either,'' Bradley said.  ``There is a light at the end of the tunnel.  It was looking a little dark for a while.''

*Frank Carroll, paraphrasing a quip he had heard another coach say, delivered the best line ever about most skaters' lack of relationship to the sounds they are skating to.  Said the coach of a skater after a particularly tone-deaf effort:  ``The music never bothered her.''

-- Philip Hersh

Absurd is the word for skating, swimming

    Ten things I know, and you should:

    1.  Stats that say it all: Retired Russian swimmer Alexander Popov began 2008 as world record-holder in the 50-meter freestyle with a mark (21.64 seconds) that had stood since 2000.  As of Wednesday, that had become No. 21 on the all-time list.  Same is true of Holland's Pieter van den Hoogenband in the 100 -- his world record (47.84)  from 2000 through 2007 now ranks 22nd.  And it's only going to become statistically sillier unless swimming officials get their heads out of the water.  Why?  See Item 6.
    2.  Beverley Smith of the Toronto Globe & Mail, author of many scoops about the International Skating Union's shenanigans, did it again this week when she reported the ISU Council had decided covertly to reduce the size of Olympic figure-skating judging panels from 12 to nine (just as it had done for the world championships) for money-saving reasons.
     So much for another underpinning of the New Judging System designed to end potential corruption in the sport when it was implemented in the wake of the Salt Lake City pairs judging dust-up.
     When the ISU first reformed judging in June 2002, it included having 14 judges, with the scores of nine counting as randomly selected by a computer. Then it was dropped to 12 judges, with nine selected but high and low then dropped.  Now it is down to nine, with seven randomly selected and high and low dropped.  That means only five scores will count, which 1) makes it mathematically more likely that one anomalous score from a (bribed?) judge could determine the outcome or 2) the judges will be even more inclined to give component scores in a ridiculously narrow range rather than use the system as it was designed so that their scores won't look anomalous.
     The whole idea behind the new system was to have enough scores selected randomly that the chance for corruption or mathematical absurdity was minimized.  No more: The reductions have turned the whole exercise into a reductio ad absurdum or, if you like, the classic catch-22:  to save a system that costs too much, the pooh-bahs are killing the system by lowering costs.
    3.  Just how little influence the United States now has in the ISU is evident in both the judging change and the decision by ISU Grand Pooh-bah Ottavio Cinquanta to deny U.S. Figure Skating financial support for Skate America operations because U.S. television networks no longer want to buy broadcast rights for the Grand Prix series, in which Skate America is among the six events.  (Why would anyone pay for the mess the new judging system has made of the sport?)
     In his USFS president's report circulated before the organization's upcoming annual meeting, Ron Hershberger noted the financial issue and said USFS had "objected strenuously'' to the reduction in the number of judges.  The ISU council member from the United States, Phyllis Howard, has been characteristically silent.  Howard never has backed her own country by publicly challenging the ISU -- even when she was USFS president -- or having the spine to take any position that might jeopardize her council sinecure.
     Hershberger met with Cinquanta last weekend, and USFS still hopes the Skate America financial issue will be resolved.
    4.  If you told me the stuff in Items 2 and 3 was the equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, I wouldn't disagree.  Figure skating is on life support in North America.
    5. And they better have EMTs on call throughout South Korea during the Olympics, to judge by the hyperventilating e-mails I am getting from Korean fans convinced there is a Japanese-funded conspiracy to buy off judges so Japan's Mao Asada will beat Korean heroine Yu-na Kim, the new world champion, in the 2010 Winter Games.  As in: "Nowadays there seems like some referees are suspected of getting money from Japan.''  And, from a different e-mailer:  "I wonder if Japan buys all judges?  Or is there some judge who has (a) conscience?''
    6.  Speaking of absurdity, we have the latest high-tech swimsuit, from the Italian company, Jaked, which threatens to make the sport's world records even more ridiculous and meaningless than they became when 108 (!!!) were set last year in other companies' suits.  The Jaked suit's polyurethane layer makes it so buoyant the swimmer loses no speed from the effort to stay high in the water.   The international swimming federation continues to sit idly by while manufacturers put everything but inboard motors in the suits.  Is there any need to explain why it often is said that the only amateurs left in Olympic sports are the people running them?
   7.  Until recently, it had escaped my attention that international hockey officials had devalued the 2010 Olympic tournament by allowing Vancouver organizers to have the event on the NHL-sized rink at GM Place (85 feet wide by 200 feet long) rather than spend a lot of money to expand it to the Olympic size (100 by 200).   That obviously made financial sense (the decision came before the global economic downturn), but it spoils what for me was the beauty of Olympic hockey: having more room for these great players to maneuver and show off their incredible skating and stick-handling skills.
   8.  I don't know whether to feel sad or disgusted about cyclist Tyler Hamilton, who has retired from the sport after testing positive for a steroid in an herbal medicine Hamilton said he was taking for depression.  Hamilton admitted he knew the medicine contained the banned substance, DHEA -- which is more than he has admitted about his links to the Operation Puerto doping scandal and the irregularities in his blood samples that should have cost him the Olympic time trial gold medal in 2004 had the Greek lab not screwed up handling of the "B'' sample.  A similar irregularity in his sample at the Tour of Spain a month later led to a two-year suspension.  The recently divorced Hamilton continues to claim innocence in both those cases, but suffice it to say that cycling's dirty history does not encourage giving any of its practitioners the benefit of the doubt.  I just can't help thinking that it might help Hamilton get on with a clearly troubled life if he decided to open up about the past rather than keep dragging it behind him.
   9.  One 2008 Olympic star, swimmer Michael Phelps of the United States, is photographed sucking on a bong, and there is an uproar.  Another, sprinter Usain Bolt of Jamaica, admits to smoking marijuana as a child, and everyone shrugs.  (Phelps never has said what was in the bong, generally an implement for marijuana use.)  Is that because ganjaseems a part of Jamaican culture, even if marijuana use also is illegal there?  Or that Phelps' offense came after he had become a multimillionaire from his Olympic exploits, and that it followed his drunk driving conviction of four years earlier?  Or that, as Joe Marchilena wrote in the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, "We don't really care much about stuff that doesn't involve ... our citizens.  Maybe the next time he wants to light up, Phelps should plan a trip out of the country.''  Bolt, like Phelps, was obligated to apologize for his behavior.
   10.  Will Spain's opposition -- some might say intransigence -- toward doping rules and investigations hurt Madrid's Olympic bid?  Spain's government has approved a royal decree allowing Spanish athletes to refuse doping controls on Spanish soil from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m., which is a direct challenge to World Anti-Doping Agency rules.  And a Spanish judge recently ruled that Italy cannot take anti-doping action against Spanish cyclist Alejandro Valverde based on DNA evidence from blood samples seized in the Operation Puerto investigation.

 -- Philip Hersh

Photos, from top: Six members of a figure-skating judging panel at the 2006 European Championships.  Only the scores of five will count at the 2010 Olympics. Credit: Franck Fife / Getty Images. Federica Pellegrini of Italy wore the controversial new Jaked suit to set a 200-meter freestyle world record at a minor meet March 8. Credit: Giorgio Scala / Associated Press