Exemplary judging?

I've just had a look at the men's PCS, and here's what I found:

Skater SS TR PE CH IN

Brian 8 6.95 8.2 7.7 8
Nobu 7.3 6.2 7.1 6.9 7.05
Etc

For once, the different Program components actually mean something. The judges clearly analysed each element and graded accordingly, rather than just giving more or less the same grade for each one.

IMHO they followeed the same rule as ever: the highest for SS, the lowest for TR. + if contender, - if not judges favourite; the SS component mistaken with PE component, the TR and CH completely random. Bonus points for looking porny.

Actually I noticed that the components have more variety during a few competition this season and I was somewhat impressed - right until I downloaded the pdf scores and realized that the final score was usually completely random, with the judges giving totally different scores to various skaters and PCS all over the place, in extreme cases (I think it was at Nebelhorn) ranging from 3-something to high 7/low 8. The same applies to GoEs - I saw elements given -2 by one judge, +2 from the other. Needless to say it left me a bit disillusioned...

IMHO they followeed the same rule as ever: the highest for SS, the lowest for TR. + if contender, - if not judges favourite; the SS component mistaken with PE component, the TR and CH completely random. Bonus points for looking porny.

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Joubert deserves high skating skills marks. His basics are great, his ice coverage/speed are probably the best in the world....

I agree with Okami -- if you look closely, it is not so impressive. Transitions is always the lowest of the five scores, usually about 3/4 point below Skating Skills.This does not change much from competition to competition or from skater to skater within a competition.

I always supposed the reason for that is because transitions are the easiest to quantify.

The rest are pretty close to each other and seem to track Skating Skills (although in this competition chorreography seems to be a bit lower than the others.)

NatachaHatawa said:

I've just had a look at the men's PCS, and here's what I found:

Skater SS TR PE CH IN

Brian 8 6.95 8.2 7.7 8
Nobu 7.3 6.2 7.1 6.9 7.05
Etc

For once, the different Program components actually mean something. The judges clearly analysed each element and graded accordingly, rather than just giving more or less the same grade for each one.

Click to expand...

Looks about the same as always to me. The higher finishing skater (in this case Brian) has a higher score in all the program components. I rarely see it not like this. Let's say the third or fourth place skater in an event has the best transitions, but isn't the best at anything else. Would that be reflected in the transitions score? Would that skater score the highest? Who knows. All those program components usually get clumped together and it's often hard to make heads or tails of the scores. I'm pleasantly surprised, though, to see that Brian's transitions score was below Evan's, Jeremy's, and Patrick's. Maybe this is a good sign that they really are going to pay more attention to the individual program components.

In the end, as long as they rank the skaters in the correct order, how they come up with the scores doesn't really bother me. It's not like I want them to hold up a skater, who's splatting all over the ice, because his transitions are superior to everyone. If they have to somewhat lower a skater's PCS because he's screwing up his program royally, then so be it.

I think Nathacha's point would be more convincing if we compare Joubert with Chan:

Skater SS TR PE CH IN
Brian: 8.00 6.95 8.20 7.70 8.00
Patrick: 7.60 7.40 7.05 7.40 7.40

Chan's score reflects both his strong transitions, for which he received a deservedly high score - the highest of all the men, in fact - and his not so great performance, for which he received the lowest component score (not low enough, IMO). Chan's components are also more tightly grouped, which makes sense as he is pretty consistent across all five (he does need to work on presenting to an audience and projecting his performance more). With Brian, we see a much bigger gap between the lowest and the highest, and as often happens, he is higher on P&E than on skating skills - though both are very good scores.

Looking at the full results, we can see that Jeremy Abbott's best score was for interpretation, which I agree with, while Kozuka's and Nobu's were highest on skating skills. Lysacek, like Joubert, got the highest component score on P&E.

Buttercup said:

I think Nathacha's point would be more convincing if we compare Joubert with Chan:

Skater SS TR PE CH IN
Brian: 8.00 6.95 8.20 7.70 8.00
Patrick: 7.60 7.40 7.05 7.40 7.40

Chan's score reflects both his strong transitions, for which he received a deservedly high score - the highest of all the men, in fact - and his not so great performance, for which he received the lowest component score (not low enough, IMO). Chan's components are also more tightly grouped, which makes sense as he is pretty consistent across all five (he does need to work on presenting to an audience and projecting his performance more). With Brian, we see a much bigger gap between the lowest and the highest, and as often happens, he is higher on P&E than on skating skills - though both are very good scores.

Looking at the full results, we can see that Jeremy Abbott's best score was for interpretation, which I agree with, while Kozuka's and Nobu's were highest on skating skills. Lysacek, like Joubert, got the highest component score on P&E.

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Thank you I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. Judges and PC's now have hope. Or maybe these particular judges are the only judges that seperate the five catagories

Buttercup said:

I think Nathacha's point would be more convincing if we compare Joubert with Chan:

Skater SS TR PE CH IN
Brian: 8.00 6.95 8.20 7.70 8.00
Patrick: 7.60 7.40 7.05 7.40 7.40

Chan's score reflects both his strong transitions, for which he received a deservedly high score - the highest of all the men, in fact - and his not so great performance, for which he received the lowest component score (not low enough, IMO). Chan's components are also more tightly grouped, which makes sense as he is pretty consistent across all five (he does need to work on presenting to an audience and projecting his performance more). With Brian, we see a much bigger gap between the lowest and the highest, and as often happens, he is higher on P&E than on skating skills - though both are very good scores.

Looking at the full results, we can see that Jeremy Abbott's best score was for interpretation, which I agree with, while Kozuka's and Nobu's were highest on skating skills. Lysacek, like Joubert, got the highest component score on P&E.

Click to expand...

I chose Brian, because unlike Patrick who is great everywhere, Brian hase great SS, PE etc, but his program has hardly any transitions. Before, the difference between his transition grade and his other grades wasn"t so big. Usually, there is less than 1 point difference between each of the component scores. Here each of the components looked as if they actually meant somehting for the judges.