By Sandra Loosemore
SportsLine Sports Writer

It seems as if after every major televised skating competition, there's invariably a chorus of howls from fans:

So-and-so was "robbed!"

And somebody else was unfairly "held up" by the judges!

In the case of the World Figure Skating Championships last week, the skaters thought to have been "robbed" were the Chinese pair team of Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao, and the villains supposedly "held up" over them were Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze.

Such controversies typically erupt because most skating fans don't really understand the details of the rules and judging. In particular, casual fans tend to greatly overestimate the penalties for an isolated mistake on a jump or other element, while undervaluing the weight that judges put on quality in-between skating.

Pair skating seems especially prone to attracting controversy because even the judging of the technical elements is not as well-understood by the public as in singles skating.

HERE'S JUST ONE EXAMPLE: HOW MANY people know that, in a twist lift, the lady must use a pick-assisted jump takeoff and achieve a split position in the air before rotating, and both partners must exit on one foot? How many actually remember to look for these things during the split-second of a performance?

Instead, most fans tend only to be impressed by spectacular height on the twist, or to fixate on more obvious flaws such as a sloppy catch.

At a broader level, how many fans who whine about unfair pairs judging know that a lasso lift is considered more difficult than a hip lift or hand-to-hand press lift, which are in turn more difficult than a waist loop lift, or can even identify the different lifts? How many of them are familiar with the requirements for a well-balanced free skating program?

In comparing the World Championships free skating program of Shen and Zhao with that of Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze, we can see they were very similar in terms of their technical elements. Both pairs did side-by-side triple toe loops; a triple twist lift, a lasso lift, a hip lift, and a back press lift; a side-by-side spin combination and a pair spin combination; a throw triple loop and a throw triple salchow; a straight-line footwork sequence, a death spiral and a pivot move.

Shen and Zhao also landed two sets of side-by-side double axels, one in series with double toe loops. Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze, on the other hand, did not complete a jump series because of her fall on an attempted double axel.

THIS WAS THE ONLY GLARINGLY OBVIOUS error made by either team, and it is a serious error not because of the fall in and of itself -- there are no required deductions for falls in the free skating -- but because a jump series is one of the elements specified in the rulebook as being necessary for a well-balanced program.

Anton Sikharulidze, shown performing with Elena Berezhnaya, showed better form on lifts than Hongbo Zhao.(AP)

As for less obvious errors, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze also had a slightly "crashy" catch on their twist lift. On the other hand, Zhao exited the twist lift as well as both the lasso and hip lifts while skating on two feet instead of one, and the set-down on the hip lift was also slightly abrupt.

In the throw jumps, while one's attention is more naturally drawn to the woman, when one compares what the men were doing instead it is clear that Sikharulidze has superior technique. In addition, Zhao again skated on two feet as he exited the throws, while Sikharulidze did not. Shen and Zhao showed faults in unison, in particular mismatched leg extensions, as they transitioned out of several of the elements in their programs.

In other words, while Shen and Zhao did not have any major mistakes in their program, and they skated very well overall, their technique was slightly flawed on some of the elements. On balance, it seems they deserved slightly higher technical merit marks than Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze -- and this is exactly what the judges gave them.

At the same time, the judges gave Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze slightly higher presentation marks. Since presentation is the tie-breaker, this meant that they also won overall.

SOME FANS JUMPED TO THE CONCLUSION that the judges were simply using the presentation mark to "hold up" Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze because they were the defending champions, or because they are Russian, or for some similar reason that had nothing to do with their skating. But there is actually a single sentence in Rule 321 of the ISU Regulations that explains exactly why their presentation marks were fully deserved:

"Special attention must be given to choreography, unison, expression, interpretation of the music and intricate footwork, with a variety of partner positions using dance holds."

The language about "dance holds" is especially critical. Between the "tricks" in their program, Shen and Zhao relied primarily on crossovers that were either skated in a hand-to-hand position or without touching one another at all. In most of the instances where they did anything that might be described as "intricate footwork," they were not only not touching, but also skating quite far apart from one another on the ice. In addition to not satisfying the requirement for dance holds, being that far apart makes it more difficult for the skaters to give the appearance of unison.

Meanwhile, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze did far more of their in-between skating in close hand-to-body holds and far less while not touching at all. One particularly notable feature of their program was that, in between nearly all of the "tricks," they used intertwining spiral and spread eagle steps as connecting elements, using their bodies together as a unit to make complex shapes.

As well as adding technical difficulty to the program, these steps and positions were a unifying leitmotif running through the entire program, much like the identical starting and ending poses. In fact, this use of choreography provides a superb example of exactly what the judges are looking for in evaluating the "harmonious composition of the program as a whole," as Rule 322 describes one of the main criteria for the presentation mark.

IF BEREZHNAYA AND SIKHARULIDZE WERE "HELD UP" at all, they were "held up" by the rules that reward the quality of their choreography and unison, not by arbitrary favoritism. In any case, it is certainly inaccurate to claim that Shen and Zhao were "robbed" of the title; both teams are good and gave excellent performances, although with slightly different strengths and weaknesses, and the decision between them might legitimately have gone either way without any great injustice being done.

It is also wrong to assume that Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze could only win this competition as a result of the apparent judging scandal that took place in this event. Two judges, Alfred Korytek of Ukraine and Sviatoslav Babenko of Russia, have been suspended by the ISU for appearing to have signaled one another about their marking of the competition, instead of judging independently. But since Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze had a 7-2 majority of the nine judges, they would still have won even if the suspended judges had voted for Shen and Zhao instead.

When fans complain so loudly about the judging, especially complaints of this uneducated "so-and-so was robbed!" variety, it distracts from truly serious judging problems -- not just the incident of apparent corruption involving Korytek and Babenko, but more isolated instances of national bias or incompetence.

For the most part, the judges do get it right at these events, and fans ought to save their wrath for the cases where something really is amiss.