Since the 19th Century, the International Skating Union has governed the sport of figure skating and established rules for its skaters. In the 1930s, the ISU took the unprecedented step of making rules for the audience, too.
In the summer of 1937, at the ISU Congress in St. Moritz, Switzerland, delegates voted to adopt a proposal submitted by Herbert J. Clarke, the National Skating Association of Great Britain's delegate: "That the referee should suspend any International Championship or Competition if the behaviour of the public towards any judge or competitor is improper or unsatisfactory." The President of the ISU at the time that this rule was passed was Ulrich Salchow, the creator of many people's least favourite jump.
When this rule was introduced, it quickly earned the nickname "The Ban on Booing" - and it was quite controversial. Critics argued that if spectators were paying to attend a figure skating competition, they were perfectly entitled to voice their displeasure with the judges' marks.
At the time, the Open Marking System was brand spanking new, and the ISU had concerns about judges "being intimidated by the public".
Interestingly enough - after "The Ban on Booing" was instituted, audience behaviour got much worse, before it got better. There are many tales, from those first decades of the 6.0 System's existence, of audience members taking things one step further and throwing things at judges. Famously, at the 1956 Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, the audience was so incensed by the marks awarded to Carol Heiss that they hurled "bottles, cigarette cartons... tomatoes or what have you [onto] the ice, so that the judges had to take shelter. It held up the proceedings for about twenty minutes until order was restored and the ice cleared of rubbish," recalled Mildred Richardson, the wife of international judge and eminent British figure skating writer T.D. Richardson. In the pairs event at the same Olympics, the judges and referee were pelted with so many oranges that the ice had to be cleared three times.
Over the years, skating audiences have simmered, shifting their focus from flying produce to flying camels. For many, social media has provided a welcome outlet for people to complain.
Interestingly enough, the rule once dubbed "The Ban on Booing" never really went away. Even today, referees at ISU Championships still have the "duty and power" to suspend a competition "until the order is restored in case the public interrupts the competition or interferes with its orderly conduct."
So while the tomatoes may be packed away and the boos a little more subdued, the tension between audiences and judges will always simmer beneath the surface - proof that in figure skating, the drama isn't just on the ice.