Figure Skating's Three Jumping Errors and Penalties

skatingbc said:

Underrotation, imo, is one of the biggest errors a skater can make. In your opinion, what makes two-footing a landing, hand down on landing worse than an UR? Because the latter is less obvious?

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No, because two footing or not controlling the landing show a lack of skating skills (by definition those deal with what happens when the blade is on the ice). Many UR calls are far very slight UR where the skater checks out correctly and controls the landing with nice flow and speed. What is served by hammering those skaters?

Now at lower club or local competitions I fully understand UR might be a bigger deal and indicate real problems in technique that need to be addressed and harsh judging is a good way of doing that (it gets the skater's attention when nothing else will).
But a lot of the the UR calls hitting top 10 skaters is just too picky. And frankly I don't trust the technical specialist's ability to call underrotation accurately or fairly in real time even with replays (as the angle of the camera can be deceiving) and it's not at all clear where they're beginning the call (which has an effect on how the end of the jump is called).
I'm fine with punishing clear and obvious underrotation (like Sarah Hughes' candy cane shaped tracings) to some extent (though not as harshly as it's being punished now). And I'm fine with being picky when it comes to certifying a jump for the first time (ever or a particular skater at a particular event) but after that, I'm all in favor of giving the skater the benefit of a doubt when the jump is landed with nice flow out and speed.
But far too many UR calls seem arbitrary and quite frankly I fail to see how the jump would be better had the skater spent another two inches in the air. Especially when almost no observers can reliably see that difference.

Mafke said:

No, because two footing or not controlling the landing show a lack of skating skills (by definition those deal with what happens when the blade is on the ice). Many UR calls are far very slight UR where the skater checks out correctly and controls the landing with nice flow and speed. What is served by hammering those skaters?

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How does underrotating a jump show more skating skills than two footing?
I don't think the IJS means to "hammer" skaters, but aims to encourage good technique and discourage bad. Sorry, but underrotating jumps is bad technique. Period.

And out of curiosity, what do you think of Yukari's triple axels in this clip?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QcTPXS39XVQ

skatingbc said:

How does underrotating a jump show more skating skills than two footing?
I don't think the IJS means to "hammer" skaters, but aims to encourage good technique and discourage bad. Sorry, but underrotating jumps is bad technique. Period.
And out of curiosity, what do you think of Yukari's triple axels in this clip?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QcTPXS39XVQ

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Jumps are supposed to be landing on one foot on a back outside edge. A second foot touching down kind of ruins that (as it's not 'one foot') slight UR doesn't necessarily ruin that.

Nakano's second 3ax looks better than the first, I'm not going to be too picky about her 3ax since ..... how many other ladies are doing it?

Speaking of Nakano, how was skating as a sport or discipline served by the results here?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_HgpDdoi3qQ

...especially in comparison with the Asadas's presentation destroying face plant and Kostner's fully rotated awkwardness? speaking of which, Button has some good comments on Kostner's technical problems that CoP doesn't notice or care about. (paraphrasing : she may have gotten around on that jump but there wasn't any landing)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_WhSY6kdDmk

It reminds me a little of the 1971's ladies final (in an alternate dimension where the ISU was very satisfied with the results).

^^^
I think what we are discussing is the nitpicking arguments we had in the 6.0 system after a big competition. For example: she fell twice but she won anyway; she didn't complete the element properly; she flutzed; her presentation scores were over marked to keep her on the podium, her spins were weak, her performance was nothing special, etc, etc.

I believe the CoP tried to address all this, but then went into accepting flaws in jumping as only partially wrong, and issued unclear rationales for Flutzing, Underrotations and Falls.

IMO, If a skater completes a jump by definition, that skater deserves full base value. If the skater did that same jump with some sort of flair, then that should be noted in the PC scores (it will anyway). No need for plus GoEs. The skaters are doing what the Sport calls for. For example: everyone did a double axel...so what? If they did a Curry double axel, then that's another story, and still be scored in the PC.

Minus GoEs do have a place in scoring, imo. The three major errors in figure skating which we are discussing, imo, should all have the same automatic deduction in the Technical scoring. They are all examples of bad jumping technique. Forget the partial credit. It's the discredit that is important.

Other jumping errors can be scored by judges as they deem fit.

Mafke said:

Jumps are supposed to be landing on one foot on a back outside edge. A second foot touching down kind of ruins that (as it's not 'one foot') slight UR doesn't necessarily ruin that.

Nakano's second 3ax looks better than the first, I'm not going to be too picky about her 3ax since ..... how many other ladies are doing it?

Speaking of Nakano, how was skating as a sport or discipline served by the results here?
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_HgpDdoi3qQ

...especially in comparison with the Asadas's presentation destroying face plant and Kostner's fully rotated awkwardness? speaking of which, Button has some good comments on Kostner's technical problems that CoP doesn't notice or care about. (paraphrasing : she may have gotten around on that jump but there wasn't any landing)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_WhSY6kdDmk

It reminds me a little of the 1971's ladies final (in an alternate dimension where the ISU was very satisfied with the results).

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After watching both performances, I would say there are clearly mistakes in both programs.

Yukari's "triple" axel is, to me anyway, fairly obviously underrotated, and her air position is frequently not fantastic.

Sure, Carolina made a few mistakes. Her speed is just unbelievable and I think that some of her awkwardness can come from being so tall.

Looking at the base technical marks of their programs, they had about the same (If you upgrade, Yukari's axel and flip which were downgraded). Carolina got -GOE or 0 on all jump passes except on the first one which got +1 and ended up being worth 12 points. That combo was textbook and there is no way you can say it wasn't. I think that the marking was fair overall. Even, as was posted previously, Yukari had gotten credit for a double for the jumps that were downgraded but instead of -GOE, she was given 0, Carolina would still have beaten her.

I think one aim of CoP is to attempt to judge skaters on what they did, rather than compare them to other skaters. Whether this is well executed is another story.

gkelly said:

Whole post.

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You make some really interesting points about the role of pro skating and the responsibilities involved. I just wanted to pick up on one of those - namely the skating with the stars programs.

Here in the UK the program is called Dancing on Ice - Torvill and Dean host it and skate at least one "new" number in the program. On the TV version the ice is much smaller than a real rink which i supopse makes it easier for the "celebrities" who are learning to skate. I feel really torn about these programs for a number of reasons, i'll start with the negative because i think overall they negatives probably are beaten by the positives in the end.

The sad thing about these programs it that it perpetuates the myth that skating isn't a real sport and that it is easy, hammy and just about the make up and costumes. The recipe is simple - take a bunch of has-been celebrities, mix in some current soap stars and a couple of ex sports stars. Couple them up with, speaking frankly, unheard of skaters either nationally or internationally. Fool the audience into thinking that they can actually skate by covering up all of their flaws and having the male pros pulling, pushing and lifting their partners most of the time such that it's really only the male celebs who have to really learn to skate quickly to keep up with the female celebs. Putting them on a much smaller ice surface and having Torvill and Dean screaming aboslute crap after the performances like "that was a real olympic level performance" does not help.

In addition to this in the last series there was a soap star called Chris Fountain who had skated before and was head and shoulders above the rest. I think it was hockey he did but he had no problem adjusting to figure boots and was a competent basic skater who was confirmtable skating on one foot - something most of the celebrities do not achieve at all. He was happily landing jumps up to flip from the get go and there a big hype about him attempting an axel in one of the programs where a jump was a required move. There was a big fanfare about his "landing" of an axel and being the first celeb to do so on the program when he barely made one rotation - landed forwards and on two feet but stood it up. A valiant effort, especially given the short time he'd been skating, but an axel it was not. Imagine the looks on all the kids faces at home who bust a gut to learn the move and have that touted as "landed" on TV?

The more shocking thing is that the Dancing on Ice program then goes on tour for a number of months across arenas in the UK. The ticket prices are the same or higher as proper professional shows that come to the UK once in a blue moon. To my mind i'm not willing to pay the best part of £50 (US$70-80) to see a bunch of celebrities who still can't skate being pushed around the ice with a few interludes from Torvill and Dean. Some of these celebrities (Kieren Bracken i'm thinknig of here - an ex rugby player) is more famous as a skater right now than any of our national squad. There's got to be something wrong when a celebrity who can barely do a clean three turn and land a single toe-loop can earn a good living from arena tours, when national squad skaters are giving up because of lack of funding and have nowhere to go with their skating except coaching which is hardly a lucrative career here.

Having laid into it, the counter arguments seem fairly strong. The interest the program creates in skating is enormous. When the program starts and during it's run - the learn to skate coruses become over-run, especailly the adult learn to skate courses. This is great for the sport and for the coaches who struggle to make ends meet. Fine not all the adult skaters who try stick with it, but everysingel year i have seen from a group of 50 odd adult skaters, at least 5 and as many as 10 buy their own skates and make the investment. Those will often then go on to suplpment their adult class with private lessons. Great for all concerned.

As regards the Arena tour, my anger that celebrities who cannot skate being able to make money out of the arena tours is probably easily countered by the fact that their professional partners get to earn their living skating too. Without the hype and exposure on TV they would not be able to get on such a successful tour and earn good money for at least half the year both on the tv and on the tour. My suspicions though are that the celebrities get paid more than the pro skaters and that really is a travesty.

Wow - what a rant! I'll pipe down now

Ant

gkelly said:

In other words, the current scoring system, or the old system including school figures, or any technically based scoring is fine for skating as sport.

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I think so.

Most of the general public may not be interested in skating as sport.

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This seems to be the case at the moment, at least in the U.S. This is quite baffling to me. Why is the general public interested in golf? Why are they interested in Nascar? Why aren't they interested in archery?

There's more of an audience for skating as performing art. But for some reason many of those viewers seem to take it more seriously if the performances are structured in the form of a competition...

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This seems to be true, too. Look how popular Dancing with the Stars is, because of the "competition" format. Or even American Idol.

If you just put some bad singers up on stage and then said, that's our show, folks, thanks for tuning in, American Idol would get booed off the air. But call it a competition, and voila! it's red hot.

I love the "thrill of victory, agony of defeat" thing when Michelle Kwan lands that seventh triple -- take that Irina Slutskaya fans! Like Texas coming back in the final seconds against Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl yesterday.

I guess the bottom line is, I don't know what I think.

The ISU is in the business of regulating the technical sport of skating at the international level, ...

Some of [their] decisions have included trying to entertain audiences, although that's not their primary mission...

It's up to other organizations to produce skating events that are focused on entertaining audiences and on earning profits....

Would it be better for the ISU to set up a separate branch devoted to skating as entertainment?

Or better to leave it to others to follow the varying market trends around the world and to take the financial risks by relaxing eligibility restrictions on participation in non-ISU skating projects?

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If the money were there, all of the above would be cool. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

The ISU came in for a lot of criticism a few years back, when skating was doing well, for trying to take over all skating, including especially the pros. They also used both sticks and carrots to keep all skaters under ISU control.

Maybe one thing they could do is to lighten up on the rules that say that ISU skaters cannot do anything outside of the ISU envelope.

By the way, for fans who are bored with the ladies LP event at U.S. Nationals at Cleveland, you can take a little side trip to Detroit that evening and see Tonya Harding on the undercard at the Mixed Martial Arts Extreme Cage Fight War. (No word on whether Elvis Stojko will participate.)

^^^ I don't think the thread is about the popularity of the sport.So much of this is talking about the general public and not the Sport itself. We all agree the new system mystifies the the general public. That is just one of the problems brought about by the CoP.

But what about the Penalties as laid out by the ISU? Are they fair? For some, it doesn't matter. Those are the rules and for some fans no further discussion should take place.

So why bother discussing any changes in the penalties? Some fans are not happy about how they were arrived at, and the need to have them revised.

skatingbc said:

I think one aim of CoP is to attempt to judge skaters on what they did, rather than compare them to other skaters.

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To me, that completely summarizes what is wrong with CoP-think. The only purpose of a sporting event is to try to beat the other guy.

Shizuka Arakawa won an Olympic gold medal not because she did anything out of the ordinary but because she beat the pants off Sasha and Irina. Go Shizuka! That what sports is about, IMHO.

The CoP emphasizes how many points you get (and invites concepts liike "personal bests") at the expense of the real point: who skated the best?

Joesitz said:

So why bother discussing any changes in the penalties?

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I'm sorry if I went off track. You're right, the question of audience appeal is not what this thread is about.

But in fact, I am coming more and more to exactly the point of view that your question raises. If the problem is the whole idea of the CoP, then, indeed, why bother discussing whether we give an extra two tenths of a point for this or that, or a greater or lesser penalty for something else? Questions like that do not address the problem, IMHO.

Mathman said:

To me, that completely summarizes what is wrong with CoP-think. The only purpose of a sporting event is to try to beat the other guy.

Shizuka Arakawa won an Olympic gold medal not because she did anything out of the ordinary but because she beat the pants off Sasha and Irina. Go Shizuka! That what sports is about, IMHO.

The CoP emphasizes how many points you get (and invites concepts liike "personal bests") at the expense of the real point: who skated the best?

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Wow, I really couldn't disagree more. I think that CoP allows a skater to step back and really evaluate their performances. It allows athletes to see where they need to improve and what they need to do better in order to beat the other athletes. Through the protocol sheets, or "report cards", skaters can objectively evaluate themselves and pinpoint areas that could be improved.

What is wrong with having a personal best? In judged sports, that's really all you can do. Winning is a big thing, but certainly not everything.

There are a number of different categories of people who have some level of interest in how the sport of figure skating is scored:

1) Casual viewers who tune in for the Olympics and may be willing to watch other events on TV if there's nothing better on but don't really follow the sport

2) Fans who make an effort to find whatever skating they can on TV, are familiar with current and maybe past stars and may have strong favorites, will buy tickets to tours that play near their homes, and who may occasionally read books or read online discussion boards like this one but aren't regulars.

3) Serious fans who buy tickets to attend competitions as well as shows, watch and often record all skating they can find on TV and/or online, read books about skating or seek out reference material online, participate in online discussions like Golden Skate, keep up with rule changes as well as possible and care passionately about perceived fairness overall or as it affects their preferred skaters.

4) Low-level skaters including adult skaters who don't compete or don't compete under IJS (yet?) but who have some personal experience with skating technique and who follow elite skating as fans or just as high-level examples of how their own sport is practiced

5) Competitive skaters (including synchro skaters) from approximately juvenile level up to world-class senior, and high-level adult skaters, and their coaches (and parents of competitive skaters, who are often the ones contributing the highest proportions of their own incomes into the figure skating industry)

6) Judges, technical specialists, and skating club and federation officials who have to organize and run competitions according to the rules currently in place and the financial resources available

7) Federation/ISU officials who are in position to determine rules and policies

Most of us at Golden Skate fall into category 3), some of us with overlaps to other categories. And the arguments by several posters in this thread seem to be that the rules about how jumps are scored should take the preferences of this category of stakeholders into account, even in some cases suggesting that this is the only category whose preferences should matter.

Personally, although I am not a member of category 5), I think that it is the needs of *those* stakeholders whose needs should be primary. Specific needs of individuals will vary depending on their personal skating strengths and weaknesses and also the skill level at which they're competing. But the principles should be consistent across the system.

Now, specifics of the rules and the scale of values may have different effects at different skill levels because of some inconsistencies in the way the scale of values has been set up. For example, a deduction of 1.00 per fall is much more punitive at lower levels where the jumps skaters fall on are worth less than 1.00 after -3 GOE than at levels where most falls are on harder triples and quads. Even for falls between elements, 1.00 is a lot harsher deduction from a total program scores around 50 than from a score in the 150 range.

PCS values are factored according to competition level to scale approximately with the average technical element scores at each level.

Maybe the fall deduction needs to be scaled similarly.
Something like 2.0 for senior men; 1.5 for senior ladies and junior men and ladies; 1.0 for novice; 0.75 for intermediate/prenovice; 0.5 for juvenile.

If the fall deduction were larger at the elite levels, along with this year's larger GOE reductions for high-base-mark jumps like quads and triple axels, would that even out the apparent discrepancy in relative penalties for falls and downgrades?

Mathman said:

I'm sorry if I went off track. You're right, the question of audience appeal is not what this thread is about.

But in fact, I am coming more and more to exactly the point of view that your question raises. If the problem is the whole idea of the CoP, then, indeed, why bother discussing whether we give an extra two tenths of a point for this or that, or a greater or lesser penalty for something else? Questions like that do not address the problem, IMHO.

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I think the reason we became sidetracked was because of the fact that audience appeal is key to the scoring system. If the audience can't understand a skating competition without having read and digested a hundred page document then will they continue to watch?

Some friends/family watched some of the Ladies SP from COR with me at the time. They were asking what the numbers were since they were expecting 6.0 marking. They soon became bored with watching because without anything to guage the total scores by, they couldn't even remember if the skater receiving the marks had done better or worse than the ones that went before. I had to finish watching it at a later time on my own

The minutiae of discussion around downgrades/falls/wrong edge take offs is the tiniest part of a larger picture that the general audience don't get. As with all of these debates on are Underrotations/fall/wrong edge take offs too heavily penalized, you either agree, disagree, or somewhere in the middle. As with everything under COP as soon as i think of a possible fix for something that feels like it works - as soon as i start pluggin scenarios into the "fix" i find it doesn't work as well as I had at first thought.

So far for me the best solution is Mafke's of having GOE of -5 to +1 with the table setting out what point score should be taken off or added for the jumps - the new -4 and -5 should take more points of in total than the current -3. Everything ok with the jump give it 0 GOE, if it is particularly good give it +1. Assign -GOEs along the following lines:

A fall will always receive -3 GOE points.
Any other minor errors (wrong edge take off, wrong edge landing, pre-rotation, under-rotation up to 180 degrees etc, two footed, hand down, step out) receives -1GOE points.
Under-rotation by more than 180 degrees gets -2GOE points.

So if a skater executes a flutz that is underrotated by e.g. 100 degrees and falls (very likely) they get the full -5 GOE.

If a skater has a number of errors that pile up on the jump they could end up getting the same -GOE as if they had fallen on the jump. If e.g. the skater changes edge on take off of a flip, fully rotates it but steps out and has a hand down they end up with -3GOE (But avoid the -1 fall deduction).

Ant

skatingbc said:

Wow, I really couldn't disagree more. I think that CoP allows a skater to step back and really evaluate their performances. It allows athletes to see where they need to improve and what they need to do better in order to beat the other athletes. Through the protocol sheets, or "report cards", skaters can objectively evaluate themselves and pinpoint areas that could be improved.

What is wrong with having a personal best? In judged sports, that's really all you can do. Winning is a big thing, but certainly not everything.

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I don't think there's anything wrong with having a personal best, if it has any meaning. The current system for personal bests does not have any meaning because scores across different competitions with different judging panels and different numbers of judges on the panel can affect the marks quite a lot. National competitions notoriously inflate marks, ignore URs and wrong edge take offs. Senior B internationals similarly have inflated marks etc. Even in the full senior circuit it seems the GP judges start off more harshly and then become more and more lax through Europeans/4CC and then worlds so that the judging coulped with the skaters imporvements through the season nearly always results in "seasons best" scores by the time they're at worlds.

Ant

"Personal best" has some meaning for some sports, especially timed ones or ones with objective measures (like high jumping - either the bar falls or it doesnt)."

Skating is judged and there is no uniformity in judging standards so personal best is just kind of a lame concept.

What skating _did_ have was 6.0, an imperfect standard (since skate order could affect whether it was given out or not) that meant that the judges couldn't reasonably ask for anything more.

I think that some idea of CoP (which I have some sympathy for) could have been combined with 6.0 (though not with secret judging which the ISU is most committed to).

The idea could b that the technical score is made up of jumps (up to 3.0) spins (1.5) footwork (1.0) and transitions (0.5) with more than one way to reach the maximum amount of points.

Similarly, the presentation score could be broken down in similar ways.

Too late now. It's really too bad that it seems that so little thought was given to the structure of the new judging system.

Although I'll be the first to say that underrotations are too heavily penalized now, I agree with the 90 degree cutoff point for ratifying a jump. Unless there is a line drawn somewhere, you eventually run into definition issues (i.e., when do you call something an underrotated triple and when do you call something an overrotated double, and what do you do with the GOE on each?). Something that isn't defined cannot be fairly measured and scored.

However, I think the underrotation calls should be made with the use of real-time replay only, not slow motion. If the technical team can't tell after re-watching it several times in real time, then I say the skater should get the benefit of the doubt. And again, -GOE only for UR of less than 1/4 turn, and for other flaws in the jump, no double punishment for underrotated and downgraded jumps.

Incidentally, I think the "personal best" aspect of IJS scoring is actually pretty good, as long as you only look at the technical score, not the PCS marks. PCS marks tend to skew higher or lower depending on the competition and judges.

skatingbc said:

Wow, I really couldn't disagree more. I think that CoP allows a skater to step back and really evaluate their performances. It allows athletes to see where they need to improve and what they need to do better in order to beat the other athletes. Through the protocol sheets, or "report cards", skaters can objectively evaluate themselves and pinpoint areas that could be improved.

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gkelly said:

Personally, although I am not a member of category 5 [competitiove skaters, coaches and parents]), I think that it is the needs of *those* stakeholders whose needs should be primary.

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This being the case, the argument is over. Figure skating has declared itself a insider's sport and not primarily a spectator sport. The rules are for the athletes not the onlookers.

Nothing wrong with that, as long as the powers-that-be own up to the fact that this is the path they have chosen.

Chess is a good analogy. People who play serious tournament chess are intensely interested in rating points and rankings, they follow the games of great masters, they know and care who the world champion is, they argue about scandals (the latest being "toiletgate" where the defending world champion was accused of reteating to the bathroom to consult a computer by cell phone during the championship match), they read books about the latest developments in the Panno Vaiation of the King's Indian Defence (since 1955 white has won 37.2% of the time and black 25.1% with this variation), etc.

Chess is not a spectator sport. No one is interested in watching other people do it.

Nothing much else to say.

Mathman said:

This being the case, the argument is over. Figure skating has declared itself a insider's sport and not primarily a spectator sport. The rules are for the athletes not the onlookers.

Nothing wrong with that, as long as the powers-that-be own up to the fact that this is the path they have chosen.

Chess is a good analogy. People who play serious tournament chess are intensely interested in rating points and rankings, they follow the games of great masters, they know and care who the world champion is, they argue about scandals (the latest being "toiletgate" where the defending world champion was accused of reteating to the bathroom to consult a computer by cell phone during the championship match), they read books about the latest developments in the Panno Vaiation of the King's Indian Defence (since 1955 white has won 37.2% of the time and black 25.1% with this variation), etc.

Chess is not a spectator sport. No one is interested in watching other people do it.

Nothing much else to say.

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I agree with you to a point. Aside from the technical aspects, figure skating is a performance sport. Even spectators who have no concept of the technical can appreciate a good performance. I think that people will still watch skating for the entertainment value from performances. A lot of my friends who have no idea which jumps are which are still flabbergasted at the abilities of some of the skaters. They enjoy watching it, even if they have no idea what is going on technically. Figure skating incorporates technical aspects (jumps, spins, etc) with performance. Chess has technical aspects I suppose, but performance?

Perhaps only skating insiders really know the rules and the judging system, but I think there are still a lot of people out there who watch skating in spite of not understanding all of it. Eurosport (in the UK at least) has shown every single grand prix event, including galas, and some shows in between. CBC has all of the grand prix events online, not sure about the broadcast. Maybe in the States people aren't watching it as much, but I don't think that is the case everywhere.

^ I will go along with you to this extent: if Alissa Czisny wins U.S. Nationals, I take back all the negative things I said.

Mathman said:

^ I will go along with you to this extent: if Alissa Czisny wins U.S. Nationals, I take back all the negative things I said.

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Oh my God. Someone actually agrees with me!

Alissa is a great skater and I hope she can pull it off too!

skatingbc said:

Aside from the technical aspects, figure skating is a performance sport. Even spectators who have no concept of the technical can appreciate a good performance. I think that people will still watch skating for the entertainment value from performances...

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That is an interesting question. Why do casual fans watch figures skating competitions. Is the most important reason

(a) to enjoy excellent performances (as might also be the case for a concert or dance review), or

(b) to root for your favorite to win (as for your hometown baseball or football team)?

Anyway, to get back to Joe's original question, for a typical triple Lutz, here are the penalties as a percent of base value for different errors.

Step-out of landing, -33%
2-foot landing, -33%
Touch down with both hands, -33%
Wrong edge take-off, -33%
Fall, -67%
Underrotation, -78%.

Of these, many people think that the wrong-edge take-off deserves a greater penalty because you didn't really do a Lutz jump at all.

The fall is singled out for special attention with the extra -1 deduction. Without that, the penalty is only -50% instead of -67%.

Every error except underrotation earns the base value for the jump, with deductions taken in GOE. Furthermore all of the others allow the judges to balance to error against other positive features of the element.

Yes, you can say that the skater who underrotates "didn't really do a triple Lutz."

But neither did the skater who takes off from the wrong edge or the skater who falls or touches down with both hands.

It seems to me that if we want stiffer penalties in order to promote better technique, then it ought to be across the board -- especally when falling, two-hands down, etc., are obvious compared with underrotation calls, which may be borderline or questionable.