Mens SP, Friday, 11/25/11, 9:45AM EST

[lavender]

Love Jeremy's skating and he skate brilliantly. However, I truly dislike swing music and I hate his pants...

[Blades of Passion]

That's exactly what I was trying to explain just above. I guess I was unclear. The "Logic" of COP is to give skaters the most benefits when they make unexpected mistakes. Gao had error on the 3F, causing her to miss the intended combo. Instead of giving that jump a mandatory -3 GOE across the board as prescribed by the rule, the Technical Panel noted that the 1Lz that followed is the combo instead, and since a 1Lz in a combo or not, is a mandatory -3 for GOE due to less than required revolutions, Gao is being saved from being hit twice with two mandatory -3 GOE for just one - on the 1Lz. The panel is actually doing Christina a favor instead of second guessing what her intentions really were since we just don't know and none of us are reliably telepathic. I hope this is clearer now.

Correct. It's terribly unfortunate and unfair, though, that the rules are not logical in many other regards. It's irresponsible and baffling how "Oda issues" that can mistakenly impact a skater's score have not yet been fixed in CoP, even though a clear system to fix the problem has been proposed for many years now. Similarly, GOE should be used almost exclusively to judge the quality of an element. Most of these deductions for jump mistakes should be given by the tech panel, in the form of a reducing the element's base value. GOE should never come into play with an edge violation, for example, otherwise a fall on a flutz is worth the same as a fall on a true lutz. In the SP, having less rotations than required or not having proper preceding movement should come off the base value of the element as well.

The only time I believe -GOE should be used for some kind of violation, outside of judging the actual quality of the element, is if the skater does no combination at all in the SP. If a skater falls on the first part of an intended combination jump, for example, they've already lost the second jump and will get -3 GOE for that jumping pass anyway. That is deduction enough. The skater could tack a jump onto the second part of their planned solo jump, if the solo jump came after the combination, but I believe this practice which has become common under CoP should not be promoted. As such, the intended combination jump that was messed up shouldn't be further penalized with a base value reduction; if such a rule were in place skaters would be urged to tack an extra jump onto their solo jump.

This practice that has sprung up with CoP is bad for two reasons - (#1) It hinders the potential creativity of Short Programs by making it much safer to always put the combination jump before the solo jump. (#2) It detracts from the flow of what should be the solo jump preceded by linking movement, because instead of exiting the solo jump cleanly the skater instead tacks on another jump to it.

If preceding movements into the solo jump of the SP were scrutinized more rigorously and tech panels were handing out clear deductions for such mistakes, this would also help to hinder the case of skaters tacking on an extra jump to their solo jump preceded by movement. If the skater did such a thing, then their intended combination jump would then be seen as the solo jump with required movement and that jump would received further deduction since most skaters do not put linking movement directly into their combination jump.

FYI, the issue of linking movements or connecting steps is harder to ascertain because both jumps could potentially be preceded by such movements/steps making determination on such, unreliable. However, if the solo jump was not preceded by the proper movements after a fall on a previous intended combo jump, judges could in theory deduct the 2nd jump accordingly for failure to execute the proper steps.

Logically in such a case, though, if one of the jumping passes doesn't have linking movement or has significantly less, that should automatically be seen as the combination jump. After all, the whole point of a required element in the SP being a jump preceded by linking movement is to see the very best a skater can do in that regard before the jump. It ultimately doesn't make a big difference either way in the current rules (because both jumping passes are already going to be marked poorly anyway, such as in the recent case with Christina Gao), but that's ideally how it should be if we are scoring the programs and the intent of the rules properly.

[Bluebonnet]

Love Jeremy's skating and he skate brilliantly. However, I truly dislike swing music and I hate his pants...

I hate swing music, hate the movements related to it, and hate his costume. But Jeremy has danced so brilliantly and it was just the dance this music required. I can't help but agree that he did so well. Can't believe that I could be this much contradicting myself.