- Joined
- Aug 26, 2010
Jumps are important to the eye of the audience, especially of the casual fans. Separating jumps from other elements helps the audience to understand the scores (Even a non-skater like me can tell who makes a nasty fall). Also from the logical point of view, jumps (rotating in the air) deviate from typical skating that involves at least one foot on the ground. In other words, jumps are naturally a distinct category.
Skating is of course very important. And that's why skating skills in my proposal are incorporated into GOE or levels for EVERY element. If it is obligatory to have a category called "skating", then let's call the combined score for both Jump and Non-jump elements "Skating Techniques".
I'm OK with whatever weight determined by a consensus of experts. Please bear in mind the Transition plus Skating Skills only contain a maximum of 20 points under the current system. Say, if the perfect score for man's short program is roughly 100 points, they represent only 20% (not 25-30%) of the total score. And the percentage will be even less under my proposal because skating skills are accounted for by various elements. For instance, the ability to generate speed effortlessly during the footwork section is assessed under the Footwork category. My estimate for the weight of my Transition category is around 15% of the total score.
Oh, yes, I am 100% pro-Yuka. Her quality will be rewarded with positive GOE and her edge-based Transitions will be taken into considerations when the technical specialists assign an overall difficulty level to the category based on a preset criterion, similar (though not identical) to how the level is assigned for Footwork.
In my proposal, the Transition category will have GOE and levels (hence base marks).
How do we come up with GOE and level guidelines? It's a job of skating experts, but I will describe my layman's idea in brief: First, list all attributes supposedly assessed under the category. Second, divide them into two groups: quality traits and difficulty traits. For instance, my preliminary, incomplete grouping is as follows:
Quality Traits: general speed, security of edges, edge depth, effortlessness/smoothness.
Difficulty Traits: Skating and turning in both directions, one-foot skating, holding a single edge for an extended period, number of crossovers/progressives/stroking-type movements and digs to gain/maintain momentum, use of turns other than threes and inside mohawks, etc., variations and intricacy of positions and movements.
To assign a GOE (say, -5 to +5 for this category), the judges theoretically will rate each attribute (except for "security of edges", which I will discuss later) in the Quality Traits from -5 (very poor), 0 (average), to +5 (excellent), add the total for all scores and divide it by the number of traits and come up with the mean. After some practice, judges can skip this process and directly assign a score (their estimated mean for all quality traits except for "security of edges"). The "security of edges" is like a deduction category: -0.5 for every detectable wobble and -3 for every interruptive tumble or fall. Say, a person has outstanding skating skills and execution but falls once on his crossover. A judge may still give him +2 (5 -3) for his GOE.
The level for Transitions is determined by the difficulty traits. Each trait is considered a feature. The more features demonstrated, the higher the level and thus the base mark.
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