2021 US Nationals: Men's FS - Thoughts and Observations

[el henry]

Well, this system was tailored for a skater like him. Pianot could have jumped 5 quads overall that he wouldn't have beaten him probably, or it would have been close. And this is apparently a "more balanced" scoring system than the previous one.

Are you talking about 6.0 or IJS?

under 6.0 Jason probably would have thrived, and he may have scored higher under the previous IJS as well.

to my mind, this current system is balanced *against* skaters like Jason. It rewards the extra revolution in the air to a greater degree than elements which are just as difficult in a different way, blade work, centered fast spins (exceedingly difficult to do) and of course performance and interpretative skills.

if all that was needed to win was to put the most revolutions in the air, we could eliminate music, transitions, spins, footwork and every other element of figure skating.

To me the current system favors the revolutions. But thank God not completely, at least for me, so that we still have the sport of figure skating and not ice jumping

 

[divan]

You can also add that Paniot was the first European skater to land a 4F in International Competition at the 2017 US Classic...I was there! See timeline under

Thank you. All titles and texts on that profile page are generated programmatically based on the competition results in our database, so it only contains events Yaroslav (or "Yarik" as a short variant) skated while representing Ukraine. As we have all elements performed by all skaters since 2006, we can do pretty sick statistics breakdown, for example "first known element execution in competition" timeline: https://skateukraine.org/competitors/yaroslav_paniot/stats/

Also, just for general understanding, transfers of Ukrainian skaters to other countries are not uncommon – in fact, we have stats on this too: https://skateukraine.org/competitors/transfers/
It seems like US is the top country for our talents to find themselves after fleeing our dysfunctional soviet federation.

 

[figureskatingandrainbows]

Maybe it's just me, but I felt like Nathan has seemed really detached from his skating lately. He's fine text-book wise, but there's no spark. In that regard, I loved seeing the other skaters. Paniot was incredible, Jimmy was adorable, and Naumov certainly made a name for himself, but they were all so much fun to watch. My favorite skater here was Jason, because he was so good and had so much life and energy in his skating. Nathan and Vincent just weren't standouts to me.

 

[lariko]

Well, this system was tailored for a skater like him. Pianot could have jumped 5 quads overall that he wouldn't have beaten him probably, or it would have been close. And this is apparently a "more balanced" scoring system than the previous one.

The biggest scoring difference came from the short program, because Brown is the only skater who can win a competition with a short program, despite the old adage. It is a far more balanced system, so at least you are not left completely in the dark, like by the old horror-show of 6.0 stuff, but it leaves room for manipulation in GoE and PCS.

the system is not tailored for Brown per se, it is tailored for adjusting the ranking so the numbers match the desired outcome when things are close, or for other considerations. Brown is just the extreme case of min-maxing to please the home crowd, because American fans do not like newcomers, they want someone to skate for many years, no matter how contrary it is to the nature of extreme agility-based sports.

But even under those rules, the US judges chose to ignore that his PCS should have been capped at 8.75 due to fall and pop, and gave the scores starting at 9.25. This is not the scores for the body of work, those are scores for this specific free program.

On his 3Lo, his GoE vary from -1 to 5, on his combo, from 2 to 5, his 3A combo also was 3 to 5... so the judges themselves have no consistency in how they view the quality of his jumps, indicative of softness of his jumping performance. So, people who say that his jumps are outstanding disagree with even the most benignly aligned possible judging panel. His jumps are not outstanding. They do not have exceptional height, span or speed of rotation. They are... okay for triples (not surprisingly, because big airy triples is a foreshadow of a quad).

He would still have won if they appropriately penalized PCS in free, because of the said short, but at least it wouldn’t have looked this bias and unfair. Yes, the rule does not stipulate fall and pop as performance distribution specifically, but come on... those and the skipped position on the spins (overall, Brown’s spins are obviously his best feature) are noticeable. They should be penalized.

lol, I feel so much better now.

 

[yume]

The biggest scoring difference came from the short program, because Brown is the only skater who can win a competition with a short program, despite the old adage. It is a far more balanced system, so at least you are not left completely in the dark, like by the old horror-show of 6.0 stuff, but it leaves room for manipulation in GoE and PCS.

I was talking about CoP with +3 GOEs VS SoV +5 GOEs.

 

[1111bm]

Yes, the rule does not stipulate fall and pop as performance distribution specifically, but come on... those and the skipped position on the spins are noticeable. They should be penalized.

I don't recall a program where a popped jump was treated as a serious error and led to a capped PCS, this usually applies only to falls and severe step outs (i.e. pretty much tumbling out of a jump, see Nathan's 4Lz), and maybe also a hand down?

I mean, sure, it might depend on what that pop looks like, some can be quite disruptive in a program, but many also kinda blend in, especially when a skater continues without losing the flow of the program. How 'severe' it feels may also depend on whether a triple or quad is popped into a single, double or triple, and if it's the first jump or the 2nd in a combo (popping a +3T into a +2T or +1T isn't that noticeable when the first jump was fine).

Ultimately it's the judges' decision, since 'being disruptive' is pretty subjective in the case of pops, compared to other errors, such as I mentioned above.

And Jason did get penalised for his spin and footwork errors by losing levels.

 

[lariko]

Ultimately it's the judges' decision, since 'being disruptive' is very debatable in the case of pops, compared to other errors, such as I mentioned above.

It’s a skater’s leg flying to the side at that weird angle. I mean, it’s pretty noticeable ???

 

[lariko]

I was talking about CoP with +3 GOEs VS SoV +5 GOEs.

Well, at least in Paniot’s case it’s academic....

 

[1111bm]

It’s a skater’s leg flying to the side at that weird angle. I mean, it’s pretty noticeable ???

Again, that depends, not every popped jump looks the same. And fwiw Jason didn't have that 'typical' flying leg in this program.

 

[el henry]

. Brown is just the extreme case of min-maxing to please the home crowd, because American fans do not like newcomers, they want someone to skate for many years, no matter how contrary it is to the nature of extreme agility-based sports.

....

How do you explain that Jason gets similar ranking and judging from international judges, and not just the "home crowd"?


ETA: Anyone can prefer whatever kind of skating they prefer, of course. But, based on the scores of the comps I have watched, and of course interacting with his fans from around the world, it is simply untrue to infer that Jason only gets these scores or reactions from Americans.

 

[kan01]

El Henry, you're so right. I remember fans being upset when Aliev (another fav of mine) was behind Jason at '19 SA, upset when Kagiyama was behind Jason at '20 4CC, so def not a local thing. Almost everytime Jason is on a podium I come across comments by people being upset saying their fav should have been on the podium instead because... quads. And I'm sure there are more examples.

 

[el henry]

El Henry, you're so right. I remember fans being upset when Aliev (another fav of mine) was behind Jason at '19 SA, upset when Kagiyama was behind Jason at '20 4CC, so def not a local thing. Almost everytime Jason is on a podium I come across comments by people being upset saying their fav should have been on the podium instead because... quads. And I'm sure there are more examples.

I don't blame folks for being upset when their fav doesn't podium, of course they're bummed. And I understand that some fans love quads, cool

But if Jason were just some home-cooked favorite, he wouldn't be outscoring the quadsters in International comps and bumming out fans of other skaters.

And Jason's Japanese fan club, for example, is pretty darn active, so he has his International supporters too.

 

[Myr]

But even under those rules, the US judges chose to ignore that his PCS should have been capped at 8.75 due to fall and pop, and gave the scores starting at 9.25. This is not the scores for the body of work, those are scores for this specific free program.

On his 3Lo, his GoE vary from -1 to 5, on his combo, from 2 to 5, his 3A combo also was 3 to 5... so the judges themselves have no consistency in how they view the quality of his jumps, indicative of softness of his jumping performance. So, people who say that his jumps are outstanding disagree with even the most benignly aligned possible judging panel. His jumps are not outstanding. They do not have exceptional height, span or speed of rotation.

He would still have won if they appropriately penalized PCS in free, because of the said short, but at least it wouldn’t have looked this bias and unfair.

There is a bias towards top skaters. Nathan, Jason and Vincent all profit from this, relative to them Jason was not overscored. I took a closer look at the judges scores and Nathan received scores between 0 and 4 for his 4t-3t, on his final spin it ranged from 1 to 5, Vincents scores show less range but still one element scored between 0 and 4. This is mostly because judge 4 seems to be stricter relative to the others and judge 7 more lenient.

The same can be said about the pcs. Vincent Zhou, received 89.6 despite a pop and a fall, Nathan received 94 with an almost fall/both hands down. Jasons program is the more intricate and complicated among them and he preforms throughout the entire program. So no, singling him out among the top three and capping him off and thus giving both Vincent and Nathan more PCS for their, likewise flawed FPs would not be fair in any way.

This is not to say that there is no reputation scoring going on, there definitely is, we see that the consistency in the scoring of the elements improves when we look at the scores received by the lower ranked skaters whilst the PCS goes down rapidly. However this is a figure skating problem not a Jason Brown problem.

 

[demarinis5]

^^^^AMEN!

 

[TontoK]

There is a bias towards top skaters. Nathan, Jason and Vincent all profit from this, relative to them Jason was not overscored. I took a closer look at the judges scores and Nathan received scores between 0 and 4 for his 4t-3t, on his final spin it ranged from 1 to 5, Vincents scores show less range but still one element scored between 0 and 4. This is mostly because judge 4 seems to be stricter relative to the others and judge 7 more lenient.

I don't necessarily have a problem with this, so long as both judges are consistent for all skaters.

In a perfect world, there would be complete uniformity. But there's not, so I can live with a situation in which one judge might score a combination spin higher or lower than the average, so long as an analysis indicates that trend is the same for all skaters.

I don't know the tech callers for this event, but it appeared to me that there were plenty of L2 and L3 elements in all events. But you know what? It was the same for the favorites as for the lower ranked skaters. It was a tough tech team, but they were tough on everyone. I'm OK with that.

 

[AlimaAsh]

I just realised that a couple of weeks ago there was a discussion whether there could be a surprise medalist in US. I remember doubting anyone can really do that in the US. I take that back!

Yaro Paniot seemed just so ‘on’, especially in the FS where he was just excellent. I am very happy that he was able to skate his way to a pewter medal. I remember his name from the Olympics 2018 and I am happy for him. He totally delivered here and is my standout in this competition.

I just started following Maxim as a skater from maybe a week ago, when I saw his interview in Russian with Ilia Malinin and Andrew Torgashev about their Russian heritage. After the interview, I watched his Skate America performances and was impressed by his spins. So coming into this competition, I really rooted for him to do well. And he totally did! I wish him to keep improving and skating up to his potential.

I was impressed at how both of them were able to pull out their best performances at nationals, which is a stressful competition. Talk about good nerves!

 

[lariko]

Zhou received marks for the most part close to 8.75, though imo, he should have been capped at 8.75, and, yes, I love Zhou to bits. Chen had only made one visible error, his first near fall, so there is no question there.

Paniot PCS were below 7 (!) and he didn’t skate with obvious goal of only making his jumping passes, like, say Ignatov did during his nationals FS. That would have been a skate where I wouldn’t have questioned marks on components. But when visually the skates are close, but there is so much difference in PCS, it’s just weird

 

[kolyadafan2002]

Are you talking about 6.0 or IJS?

under 6.0 Jason probably would have thrived, and he may have scored higher under the previous IJS as well.

to my mind, this current system is balanced *against* skaters like Jason. It rewards the extra revolution in the air to a greater degree than elements which are just as difficult in a different way, blade work, centered fast spins (exceedingly difficult to do) and of course performance and interpretative skills.

if all that was needed to win was to put the most revolutions in the air, we could eliminate music, transitions, spins, footwork and every other element of figure skating.

To me the current system favors the revolutions. But thank God not completely, at least for me, so that we still have the sport of figure skating and not ice jumping

When this system was first introduced there were two step sequences in both programs, and an extra spin in the long program and I feel like having only 1 affects the balance a lot. In 2005-2010 and thereabouts I feel Jason would have been able to accomplish a world championship

 

[Seven Sisters]

I just realised that a couple of weeks ago there was a discussion whether there could be a surprise medalist in US. I remember doubting anyone can really do that in the US. I take that back!

Yes, I started that thread, and this is what I posted there yesterday:

We have a winner, folks! i present to you the come-out-of-nowhere king of US Nationals, Mr. Yaroslav Paniot!
Paniot shimmied his way to a pewter medal in Las Vegas dressed as an Elvis impersonator, which seems entirely appropriate.

 

[Dawn825]

Just in general I think this scoring system is a bust. You often have 4 point GOE spreads that make no sense, the same elements receiving both positive and negative GOEs, there is no possible way to distinguish what deserves a 9.25 from a 9.5, etc.
Also, while I do think Jason needs to be justly rewarded for his PCS, I don't think he needs to beat skaters with multiple well executed quads. It is first and foremost a sport. I just really wish professional skating was still a viable career in the US, if only for his sake.