By Sandra Loosemore
SportsLine Sports Writer

SALT LAKE CITY -- It is especially frustrating for skating fans and others involved in the sport when bad judging is on display at an important televised competition.

Not only is it sad to see medals awarded to the wrong skaters, but such public displays of bad judging -- whether due to incompetence or political manipulation of the results -- make it difficult to defend the integrity of the judging system and the legitimacy of the sport as a whole, even though such incidents are the exception rather than the rule.

At last week's U.S. Figure Skating Championships, some of the judging was at least odd and at worst incomprehensible, including judging at the junior and novice levels. But the one instance that was especially disturbing occurred in the senior men's free skate, and it involved excessively generous marks given to Timothy Goebel.

GOEBEL IS AN EXTREMELY TALENTED and ambitious young skater with a reputation as a prodigious jumper. He is credited with being the world's first skater to land a quadruple salchow in competition -- a feat he accomplished at the ISU Junior Series Final last spring -- and he remains the only U.S. skater to have landed a quadruple jump of any variety in competition.

Unfortunately, Goebel has neglected the other aspects of his skating, and his presentation skills are still relatively weak. In fact, in some ways he has actually regressed in this area compared to four or five years ago, when he was a young novice or junior competitor.

As he has matured physically, Goebel has developed dismally bad posture and carriage of his upper body, with hunched, lurching shoulders. He has similarly poor positions of his back and free leg in his spins.

On top of that, Goebel showed up last week with dreadfully hackneyed programs set to two of the most unimaginative and unoriginal musical selections possible for skating -- Zorba the Greek and Malaguena -- with choreography that consisted mostly of disconnected hand motions and posing in place in between stroking around to set up the jumps. And in the free skating, Goebel appeared somewhat hesitant throughout his entire program with the presentation aspect further marred by two disruptive falls.

CONTRAST THIS TO RYAN JAHNKE. ALTHOUGH Jahnke has not yet mastered the most difficult jumps he would need to be in contention for a medal (he finished ninth overall at this competition), he had the best presentation of any man in the long program at this year's nationals.

Timothy Goebel must improve his presentation to succeed on the international level. (Allsport)

He showed exquisite posture, extension, and body line; gorgeous spin positions; an ability to use his entire body to interpret the rhythm and phrasing of his music; soft knees that give him an effortless carriage and flow across the ice; and two pleasant and thoughtfully constructed programs.

Jahnke's long program, in particular, was beautifully delivered, with a radiant, joyful quality to the skating that made it a sheer delight to watch. It is inconceivable that anyone who understands skating could see these two skaters on the same ice and pick Goebel as having the superior presentation of the two -- and yet all nine judges did so.

It is an utter disgrace to the sport that mediocrity should be so rewarded while excellence is disregarded, and the judges responsible should be ashamed of themselves. One particularly wonders what planet judge Janet McLeod was on during this competition because she actually gave her highest presentation mark of the entire event to Goebel.

Judges who gave Goebel high presentation marks he did not deserve were not doing him any favors. In fact, this was just as unfair to him as it was to the other competitors.

SIMILAR EVENTS TAKE PLACE ON a smaller scale at the club level, where some clubs and coaches have "tame" judges who are lax about standards at test sessions and who will pass skaters who have not really reached the required level of ability. This does skaters absolutely no good once they go to compete, because skaters from other clubs who have tested to the same level will all be better than they are.

In Goebel's case, he might be able to get away with sloppy presentation at the national level because right now the U.S. men's field is comparatively weak. But when he goes to compete internationally at the senior world level, he simply will not be competitive with many skaters from Russia, Canada, Japan and other countries who can complete difficult jumps and have well-developed presentation skills.

One has to look only at China's Zhengxin Guo -- who has yet to crack the top 10 at Worlds in spite of putting multiple quadruple jumps in his long program -- to see what happens to skaters who can jump but do absolutely nothing else. Goebel's poor international results this season already indicate that he has little to fall back upon in his skating when his jumps fail him.

In addition, Goebel's technical skills and jumping consistency would probably also improve if he started to pay more attention to controlling his shoulders and upper body. In practices at nationals, for example, it was apparent that he was having a great deal of trouble with his triple lutz jump (including "flutzing," or taking off the wrong edge) at least in part because his shoulders and arms were not in a proper position on the entrance.

IN THE PAST, IT HAS TYPICALLY BEEN quite unusual for judges to give presentation marks more than a few tenths higher or lower than the technical merit marks in the free skating. To some extent this makes sense because skaters who are technically deficient often do not have the body control to present themselves well or execute complex choreography, either.

On the other hand, it is wrong for judges to assign the two marks in lock step as a matter of course. In fact, recently the International Skating Union has been formally encouraging judges to assign the two marks independently, and holding educational seminars for judges about the proper use of the presentation mark. It's a pity that the judges at U.S. Nationals didn't get the message.

The real victim in this travesty of judging was Matt Savoie, who missed a spot on the World Championships team by finishing fourth, behind Goebel. While last season Savoie's carriage and other presentation skills were just as execrable as Goebel's, he has made a tremendous improvement in that area in just the past year -- unlike Goebel.

Savoie's long program, a holdover from last season, did not show him to the best advantage, but it was impressive to see him working with his coaches on improving choreography as late as Friday -- in a practice session the day before the final.

Moreover, Savoie actually completed significantly more technical content in his free-skating program than Goebel -- including two triple/triple combinations, while Goebel had no combinations at all. It therefore seems strange that four of the judges gave Savoie and Goebel identical marks for technical merit. Combined with his inflated presentation marks, these technical-merit marks were enough to put Goebel ahead of Savoie.

Many informed skating fans in attendance felt Savoie should have placed second or third instead of fourth. It's unfortunate bad judging denied this deserving skater a chance to compete at the World Championships, because at the rate he is improving it is quite likely that Savoie, not Goebel, will be pushing Michael Weiss for the U.S. title over the next few years.