Does Carolina Kostner receive inflated marks? | Page 2 | Golden Skate

Does Carolina Kostner receive inflated marks?

dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
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Carolina's tech marks are pretty accurate, I think.

The odd thing is the PCS marks, and as others have said, the problem is not limited to Carolina.

It seems to me that so often the judges are awarding the PCS marks in a peculiar way, and it is a way that is well illustrated by Carolina's marks.

Carolina is an amazingly fast skater. And she has deep edges. This would logically lead to a high skating skills value, as defined by the rules.

The PCS marks, as awarded by judges, seem to index off the Skating Skills component. That is, they only vary 0.25 to 0.50 from it. So if a skater is getting 8.0 in skating skils, for example, they will get no lower than 7.5 for transitions or choreography, despite the presence or absence of transitions and choreography in the program. The best example of this is Plushenko's Olympic program which had relatively few transitions.

Because Carolina, like Plushenko, has good skating skills, she ends up with high PCS marks across the board.

What needs fixing is how Transitions, Performance, Choreography and Execution are graded. If they are going to only index off skating skills, there's no point keeping track of 4 other marks.
 

Bennett

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 20, 2007
Carolina's tech marks are pretty accurate, I think.

The odd thing is the PCS marks, and as others have said, the problem is not limited to Carolina.

It seems to me that so often the judges are awarding the PCS marks in a peculiar way, and it is a way that is well illustrated by Carolina's marks.

Carolina is an amazingly fast skater. And she has deep edges. This would logically lead to a high skating skills value, as defined by the rules.

The PCS marks, as awarded by judges, seem to index off the Skating Skills component. That is, they only vary 0.25 to 0.50 from it. So if a skater is getting 8.0 in skating skils, for example, they will get no lower than 7.5 for transitions or choreography, despite the presence or absence of transitions and choreography in the program. The best example of this is Plushenko's Olympic program which had relatively few transitions.

Because Carolina, like Plushenko, has good skating skills, she ends up with high PCS marks across the board.

What needs fixing is how Transitions, Performance, Choreography and Execution are graded. If they are going to only index off skating skills, there's no point keeping track of 4 other marks.

I forgot where it was, but perhaps the ladies event at SA? There was/were (a) judge(s) who gave very different marks across the criteria. It was cool.
 

Buttercup

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 25, 2008
I forgot where it was, but perhaps the ladies event at SA? There was/were (a) judge(s) who gave very different marks across the criteria. It was cool.
It was either SA or SC, and the funny thing was that people have so gotten used to similar PCS across the board that there was actually some confusion about it...
 
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Kinga

Medalist
Joined
Feb 15, 2008
Carolina's tech marks are pretty accurate, I think.

Well, they are, according to CoP. But otherwise, I find it quite wrong that a person who often falls, double-foot many jumps, has many step outs, hands down, wobbly landings can be still be rewarded with high tech marks. Just because she rotates her jumps (well, IMO some of her jumps that were 2-footed were URed although they got full credit), it does not mean that her jumps technically were executed properly. This is also something that an ordinary FS fan does not understand, and, as discussed on many occasions here, should be changed somehow. Not only PCS marks are the current problem of FS.
 

dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
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:laugh: Yes, but it is not the judges' fault that they are correctly applying COP!

A jump has three phases: entrance/takeoff, air position/rotation, and landing. The problems come when a skater is really good at two out of three. Carolina enters the jump on the right edge, jumps very high, rotates the jump fully, and then whatever happens, happens on the landing, sort of at random. Carolina has a landing problem.

At this point, COP has clear and serious penalties for bad entrance (edge calls), and for the part in the air (under rotation). However, the only place to take off for a bad landing is in the overall GOE for the jump, if the skater doesn't completely fall. And if the first two phases of the jump are excellent and the last not, leading to maybe 0, maybe -1. Perhaps the -1 for falling penalty isn't enough. Perhaps we need explicit penalties, like the ones for falling for one hand down or two footed?

The telegraphing is a PCS issue at this time.
 

Kinga

Medalist
Joined
Feb 15, 2008
:laugh: Yes, but it is not the judges' fault that they are correctly applying COP!

No, absolutely, I thought that I made myself clear that I don't blame judges for that :)


:
At this point, COP has clear and serious penalties for bad entrance (edge calls), and for the part in the air (under rotation). However, the only place to take off for a bad landing is in the overall GOE for the jump, if the skater doesn't completely fall. And if the first two phases of the jump are excellent and the last not, leading to maybe 0, maybe -1. Perhaps the -1 for falling penalty isn't enough. Perhaps we need explicit penalties, like the ones for falling for one hand down or two footed?

Exactly, this is what I was trying to point out. Bad landings (if it is not UR) are not penalized harsh enough and therefore the the poor quality of jumps is not reflected in the final marks (in contrary to poor takes off and URs). If it was so, Carolina would not have won silver in 2008 WC, which I thought was given to a VERY messy peformance. It was not only her PCS that held her up, but also huge base value for her jumps (messed up jumps).
I much prefer that a clean program with nice 3F-2T combo and few clean jumps wins over the program with 3-3 messed up combo, 2 two-footed lutzes, hands down etc. (assuming that the quality of other elements like spins and skating skills is similar).
 

antmanb

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 5, 2004
:laugh: Yes, but it is not the judges' fault that they are correctly applying COP!

A jump has three phases: entrance/takeoff, air position/rotation, and landing. The problems come when a skater is really good at two out of three. Carolina enters the jump on the right edge, jumps very high, rotates the jump fully, and then whatever happens, happens on the landing, sort of at random. Carolina has a landing problem.

At this point, COP has clear and serious penalties for bad entrance (edge calls), and for the part in the air (under rotation). However, the only place to take off for a bad landing is in the overall GOE for the jump, if the skater doesn't completely fall. And if the first two phases of the jump are excellent and the last not, leading to maybe 0, maybe -1. Perhaps the -1 for falling penalty isn't enough. Perhaps we need explicit penalties, like the ones for falling for one hand down or two footed?

The telegraphing is a PCS issue at this time.

I could have sworn that all the official documentation from the ISU says that there are four phases to a jump - the three you mention above and also preparation. That was one of the reasons why it didn't really make sense to have a GOE scale of -3 to +3. If there are four phases to the jump then it would make more sense to have a scale of -4 to +4 to grade each part. Anyway i'm digressing!

I was under the impression that the GOE commentary includes preparation that's why jumps with no preparation time at all, or that are preceded by steps/difficult entrances can be rewarded with +GOE. Equally i'm almost certain that telegraphing a jump is listed (i'm sure the wording is written along the lines of "long set up to a jump (telegraphing)") as a -GOE bullet.

To my mind disrupting falls, stumbles, telegraphing of elements etc should not only reduce the technical score but also the PCS on the basis that the overall performance has been marred.

Ant
 

dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
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Ant, I'm sure you're right about telegraphing being mentioned in GOE definitions. I'll check whether they say 3 or 4 phases. I could swear they mentioned approach, but as part of a approach/takeoff group. (but I haven't read the jump GOEs for a couple years, so it could well have been changed, plus my memory is not the best) As you say, it makes little sense to have 4 phases and only 3 marks in GOE to ding the skater with, given you can only give GOE in +/- 1,2,3 or 0.
 
Joined
Jul 11, 2003
I think too, the judges should be aware that in the cases of Flips and Lutzes, if there is a wrong edge take off, then the skater can do the 3 air rotations much easier than he/she could if the Flips and Lutzes' take offs were done properly.

A -1 for the wrong edge takeoff, and a -1 for the ease of 3 air rotations.
 

Mafke

Medalist
Joined
Mar 22, 2004
One of the things I keep saying is that however good or bad the -3 to +3 range is for spins and footwork, it doesn't make much sense with the reality of jumps.

Basically much more can go wrong with a jump than right. And the things that can go wrong are of different kinds,

a) things that are wrong but which don't necessarily impede completion of the jump like telegraphing and wrong edge takeoffs, leg wrap, slight underrotation, landing on the wrong edge etc.

a) things that are wrong and do impede completion of the jump like not having enough speed, falling going into the jump, going too far off axis in the air, catastrophic underrotation or overrotation, not checking out, losing balance on the landing etc

I think it would reflect reality better if the range of jumps went from something like +1 (maybe +2) to -5 with 0 GOE (meaning Nothing Went Wrong) being reward enough.

I'd also say that ideally jump height and smoothness of landing should be balanced. I like Slutskaya but I thought she got too much credit for the height of her jumps and judges ignored the lack of speed on her landings. Reward extra height only if the landing is controlled.
 

Bennett

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 20, 2007
Wow thank you everyone for wonderful insights. I really enjoy reading them.

Among the four phases you mentioned (preparation, entrance/takeoff, air position/rotation, and landing), landing may be the most decisive phase for an average fan to determine the overall impression of the jump.
 
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dizzydi7

On the Ice
Joined
Oct 31, 2004
This question is simple for me to answer simply because I do not like Carolina Kostner's skating. The judges seem to just love her speed and jumps. Using that criteria, both she and Miki Ando get good scores unless they fall.

My ideal figure skater is one who is musical, graceful and presents his or her self with elegance. Otherwise it's just trick skating.

If I were judging both Kostner and Ando would never make it to the podium simply because they show no grace on the ice.

Dizzy
 

Medusa

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 6, 2007
If I were judging both Kostner and Ando would never make it to the podium simply because they show no grace on the ice.
Does every lady have to be graceful?

In the men's discipline (yes, I am a broken record) we appreciate tons of different styles, from graceful-lyrical to temperamental-dancer, from balletic to hip-hop and techno, from comical-mimic to dramatic-theatrical, from conventional-masculine to flamboyant-flirtatious. That's what makes it my favourite discipline!

Why isn't it that way among the ladies? Why can't they be powerful, why can't they show spunky skating, why can't they be bold and brash? I think that what Kostner is, she is a bold skater, with lots of power!

Miki Ando is a different matter because of her posture, which is probably the worst among all the top men and women, including Préaubert. But if I delete those parts where you really see her hunched posture - she is another powerful skater, who just needs more self-confidence, she looks scared every time she takes the ice...
 

Mafke

Medalist
Joined
Mar 22, 2004
I think there are different kinds of gracefulness.

Ito and Harding at their best were IMHO extremely graceful, not in a fairy pwincess kind of a way but in a clean power kind of way (Ito's style was less effective in 92 because she was trying to be 'artistic' which made her, ironically, less artistic).

Kostner has the speed and power but it's sloppy, she needs to work on basic technique and work on creating clean lines instead of whatever it is she thinks she's doing.
 

Mafke

Medalist
Joined
Mar 22, 2004
I wonder about the relationship between speed and telegraphing. Intuitively a really fast skater will look more like they're telegraphing because they cover more ice.

I think it would be interesting to compare (in stopwatch terms) the time spent setting up a jump vs the distance. I have no idea what that would show.
 

Bennett

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 20, 2007
I wonder about the relationship between speed and telegraphing. Intuitively a really fast skater will look more like they're telegraphing because they cover more ice.

I think it would be interesting to compare (in stopwatch terms) the time spent setting up a jump vs the distance. I have no idea what that would show.


Interesting! I've always thought that she needed to telegraph (longer in both time and distance) because she had to control or slow down her speed a bit. But you put it the other way around and it also makes sense. How about comparing to men who are as fast as Caro?
 

antmanb

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 5, 2004
I wonder about the relationship between speed and telegraphing. Intuitively a really fast skater will look more like they're telegraphing because they cover more ice.

I think it would be interesting to compare (in stopwatch terms) the time spent setting up a jump vs the distance. I have no idea what that would show.

I suppose that does make sense if you think about it - a slower skater who takes two seconds to set up a jump will not travel as far across the ice as a much faster skater who takes the same two second to set up the jump.

The problem for me, though, is not the distance taken to set up the jump (it's harder to tell on the TV anyway) it's the fact that some of Kostner's jumps - the Flip combo and Lutz in particular take a long time to set up.

Just thinking about really fast skaters - Kulik is a very fast skater and he throws jumps out with barely any prep - especially axels. Though looking back competitively he did have the typical Russian set up to his quad - two footed skating starting at one end of the rink, a turn to back outside edge glide step to RFO three turn which takes up the length of the rink - pushing the jump into a corner.

Ant
 
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