Edward Estis:
One Has To Be Objective in the Subjective Sport of Figure Skating

He has had a fair share of skating, coaching, and judging. Edward Estis was a pair skater until the age of 22, then switched to coaching and fostered a whole team of talented skaters, which took part and won the highest places in major international competitions. He established and led an experimental pair skating group in the then Leningrad, which takes pride in such names as 1996 World Champions Marina Eltsova and Andrei Bushkov, 1981 World Champion Igor Lisovsky ( with Irina Vorobieva), and internationally renowned Larisa Selesnyova and Oleg Makarov. Edward has been an ISU-accredited judge since 1981.

-Edward, you started as a pair skater, after that you became a successful coach, and for almost twenty years you have been a figure skating judge. Surely you have amassed a fortune of impressions.
-Of course. My impressions are connected to all the three.
-What are the most vivid ones?
-The victory of my trainee Igor Lisovsky in the 1981 World Championships in Hartford. When your trainees win, it is simply unforgettable. I had a very emotional experience in the same place more than twenty years later – I saw the fall of Tatiana Totmianina during competition. Both impressions are very powerful, but the emotions are diametrically opposed.
-What is the major difference between coaching and judging?
-Both are psychologically charged processes. It is responsibility over others. When your trainees are on the ice, you are responsible for them. When a skater is on the ice, the judge is responsible for evaluating the performance. There is also empathy with the success or failure of the skater, whom the judge has to evaluate quantitatively.
-Empathy? Shouldn't a judge be impartially objective?
-Objectivity is impossible in a subjective sport. We measure very relatively such physical properties as speed, height, etc. And you simply can't measure the artistic impression.
-You have been using the new judging system for a few years. Has it added objectivity to the skating evaluation?
-Alongside greater objectivity, the anonymity of the judges has been introduced as part of the new system. I don' think it is a factor adding to its objectivity.
-What is  your favourite figure skating discipline?
-Pair skating.  It is the most difficult figure skating discipline – in terms of coordination, emotion, stamina. And the most daring one.
-What makes the beauty of figure skating for you?
-I will relate to pair skating. Pair skating reflects the entire gamut of the man-woman relationship via the aesthetics of movement and music.