Men - LP

[silverlake22]

First of all, Chan FELL on TWO jumps in the SP, and then fell again on footwork, supposedly his strength. He won because he was much, much too highly marked in the SP, and that gave him a huge cushion so he could once again skate a messy FS with a fall and several wonky jumps, and still come out on top.

Mroz skated a clean FS with a quad and two 3As in a competition where he was the only one who DID skate a completely clean FS. Sure, he's far from the most exciting skater in the world, but he delivered the goods when it counted. Mroz didn't give the callers any reason to ding his elements, and the judges appropriately kept his PCS scores on the low side. Joubert and Verner got called on their many mistakes and the judges weren't inclined to give them the huge PCS that Chan got on home ice.

Many mistakes? Verner doubled a loop and was downgraded on a borderline 3a, Joubert had a step out of a 3-3 combo and was downgraded on a borderline 4t, I don't consider that many mistakes, they each had one visible mistake. I guess they both got edge calls on their flips too but I don't remember either getting edge calls on that jump before. To me, it seemed like the judges had some kind of bias toward Kozuka and were looking for any excuse to knock Verner and Joubert down a peg. Kozuka had 2 clean programs so he deserved to win, but not by nearly as much as he did. I honestly would have had Mroz 4th, and Verner and Joubert in 2nd and 3rd in whatever order. Verner's 70 in the SP was a slap in the face as was Joubert's 135 in the FS. It looked like the judges got scared Kozuka would bomb and so intentionally kept the scores down for Verner and Joubert in the FS so that Kozuka could still win even if he bombed. I mean giving Joubert 72 for PCS, come on? Usually it's between 75 and 80.

[chuckm]

Maybe when Joubert was skating well the judges awarded him with big PCS scores, possibly because he could churn out those big quads. Same with Verner. But both men bombed big time in Vancouver. And in the GP last year Joubert and Verner each had one good and one bad competition. Verner made the GPF only because Joubert withdrew, and then finished last in both SP and FS.

Anyway, Joubert is not exactly a skater's skater: his spins and footwork aren't that great, he consistently gets "e" on his flip, he skates on two feet most of the time, and there's no special finesse to his presentation. His big selling point is his jumps, so when his jumps aren't quite there, his PCS scores suffer.

[Medusa]

Bias towards Kozuka? Don't be ridiculous. Kozuka has been consistently lowballed since the GPF 2008. And it's not like he got any scores worth mentioning here.

We cannot analyse every judging decision to death. I think the the skaters were ranked just about right. Yes, the irregularities concerning the downgrades are not pretty or necessary, the requirements for spins have been debatable since the introduction of COP and overall one could desire more consistency in judging. But I don't think anyone got really screwed here.

Brian's skating is worth nothing when he is not skating with power and confidence. Unfortunately that has been missing during this competition (and several others). Verner on the other hand has lots of (as in lots of lots of) practise in selling his programs even when things are going wrong, even when they are going terribly wrong. That might have been a factor here.

[silverlake22]

Bias towards Kozuka? Don't be ridiculous. Kozuka has been consistently lowballed since the GPF 2008. And it's not like he got any scores worth mentioning here.

We cannot analyse every judging decision to death. I think the the skaters were ranked just about right. Yes, the irregularities concerning the downgrades are not pretty or necessary, the requirements for spins have been debatable since the introduction of COP and overall one could desire more consistency in judging. But I don't think anyone got really screwed here.

Brian's skating is worth nothing when he is not skating with power and confidence. Unfortunately that has been missing during this competition (and several others). Verner on the other hand has lots of (as in lots of lots of) practise in selling his programs even when things are going wrong, even when they are going terribly wrong. That might have been a factor here.

I will say one thing, I do think Verner's performance quality in the FS suffered a little bit because he was clearly focusing on the jumps. I mean, he was still performing well, but not as much as he sometimes does, and honestly for him getting the jumps done is more important at this point so he can get his confidence back up. Joubert also didn't perform the best in his FS either, I think mostly because the program is out of his usual element.

That being said, I do think their inconsistency affects their PCS, while other skaters seem to get pretty constant PCS, Joubert and Verner seem to have more of a range, almost like the judges don't want to hold them up PCS wise unless they deliver the goods, however for Chan the PCS always remain sky high regardless of how he performs.