What Do You All Think About CoP Now?

Patrick Chan has skated two perfect CoP programs with top knotch qualities on almost all front, except some skating fans are still unsatisfied with his performing art. (These fans may never be satisfied with Chan anyways.)

Now what do you think about CoP?

This question was inspired by a poster in another thread talking about skating skills. Some think that CoP emphasises too much on SS. To me, it is supposed to emphasis skating skills since it is skating. CoP doesn't only emphasis SS. It also emphasises athletic abilities. It emphasises on the harder jumps, the harder the jumps, the higher the marks. What, I think, makes some of the skating fans unsatisfied is that these fans think it is not enough in focusing and emphasising on performing art.

Personally, I'm fine with CoP in those aspects. That CoP has produced such high quality athletism and artistry combined programs means that CoP way is right way in general.:yes: Chan has set the high bar for the rest of the field. Has he reached the pinnacle of the performing art? No. Has he reached the pinnacle of the athletism? Very close.

Things that I like about COP...
1. More than one way to win.
2. The emphasis on skating skills and complex choreography
3. The number of mindbogglingly beautiful programs
4. That it's weighted more towards the technical, not artistic.

Things I don't like
1. Messy, high base value elements are worth more than they should be.
2. Judging that rarely distinguishes between the components
3. In Ice dance, that pairness/oneness/match are underrated.
4. The levelling of so many elements in pairs that realistically isn't what pairs is about.

Likes

1. It is not merely a jump competition.
2. Underrotated jumps and flutzes finally given less credit.
3. The fact that skaters are forced to up the ante on footwork and spins.
4. The emphasis on transitions.

Dislikes

1. Judges tending to give the same mark for all components.

2. Slow footwork sequences ( in an attempt to gain higher levels ) with no connection to music.

3. Overtwizzling in ice dance. I know it is a difficult step but I am twizzled out and most look like they are just thrown in for higher base values. I am not talking about the required twizzle sequence. I am talking about all those that are just thrown in to step sequences.

4. Most men doing trying donut camel spins. Ugly positions from most of them and slow to boot. In general any ugly and usually slow position in spins to gain levels ; just stating my biggest beef in spins right now.


5. The scale of values of jumps do need to be fixed. A triple-toe double toe combination should be worth less than a double-toe triple toe combination for example. Right now they are the same which is wrong IMO.

6. The fact that the penalty on falls , turn-outs and 2 foots on fully rotated jumps is so much less than a slightly underrotated jump with a decent landing.

When I first started posting here a few months ago, it was a surprise to me that so many people disliked the scoring system so much. Personally, the more I learned about it, the more I liked it. I'm coming at this from a bit of a different angle - I'm certainly not as knowledgeable as many people here.

One big problem with COP is that casual observers don't understand what the scores mean. A 5.7 or a 5.9 out of 6.0 is easy to understand. But what does 83.51 or 285.37 mean? My mom mentioned to me last week that she stopped watching when they changed the system because she didn't understand it anymore. TV broadcasts should be doing a much better job of explaining it. People need to know basic things like what a good score is, what score a skater would need to win, what is evaluated in the program component marks, and what those things mean.

I would agree that maybe the artistic aspects aren't worth as much as they used to be, but I think that's necessary in a post-2002 world. You have to reduce opportunities for judging bias, or at least perceived opportunities for judging bias.

What I like about COP the most is that it gives me, as a fan, the ability to understand where the scores come from. I've watched skating since 1988, and for most of that time I didn't understand how the judges came up with those marks. I would often be confused about why a skater I liked was placed so low, for example. Now I can understand. Oh, Grishchuk/Platov had great skating skills (etc.), that's why they did so well.

I can even go into the scoring break-downs and see exactly where skaters lost or gained marks, and exactly why the placements ended up the way they were. I'm have a mathematical brain, so maybe that's why I appreciate this so much This is revolutionary for me!

I like that the IJS explicitly defines and evaluates the fundamentals of the sport in the component marks. As someone who has never done figure skating myself, I can also learn about what these things are. What are skating skills? I didn't have a concept of that before I started learning about this. I can learn a lot more about the sport just by studying the protocols and the judging guides on the ISU site.

I agree with others about things like messy footwork sequences and spins done to gain base value, and with certain jumping errors maybe not being evaluated quite correctly. But those are pretty minor things, IMO. My biggest concern is the judges giving similar marks across all the component scores. Why are they evaluated separately if the judges are just going to give the same scores? It must be possible for a skater to have poor skating skills but great interpretation.

There are other little things I like, like the second-half bonus in the long programs. Often skaters used to tick off the jumps all at once in the beginning, which IMO had a bad effect on the overall presentation. Jump now, choreography later? That's not a balanced program. Although I do think spins and footwork sometimes get unnaturally complicated these days, I do like the balance between jumping and other elements.

I've posted before about the comparison between the figure skating scoring system and gymnastic's COP. I used to be a big gymnastics fan, but, IMO, they've just destroyed it with a poorly thought-out scoring system. I won't go into that too much here, but in comparison I'm so impressed with what the ISU has done with the IJS.

I would feel better about CoP if:

1. Scores didn't vary so much from one competition to the next (ie: some Nationals scores are notoriously inflated.)

2. Judges weren't given a shield of anonymity under which to hide. There needs to be at least some perceived accountability if the public is to trust the numbers/placements that they see.

What's the use on disclosure of judges' nationalities?! It just gives a chance to bash the country where the judge came from who gave fan-viewed-unsatisfied results. I think it's unnecessary to disclose the nationalities of the judges.

I'd like ISU keep each judge's marks in the same order without scrabble. So they could be better used for analyzing the results.

Figure skating is the only sport where the judges marks are anonymous. If the public can't trust the judges, they will think that the results are fixed. In return, public interest will wane. People don't like to be told, "you have no knowledge of what a winning performance constitutes, be quiet and accept the results."

I'm sure the ISU thinks roughly in the same way you do though, otherwise something would be done about it.

I pretty much agree with ImaginaryPogue and mmcdermott.

The other thing I'd mention that I'm not thrilled about with the current system is the fact that "free" programs have so many specific requirements or limitations that they're not very free. I'd like to see either more options for kinds of elements that can be considered in the scoring, or some better mechanisms that tech panels can take into account the skaters' intentions and not throw out whole elements that were actually completed based on certain kinds of mistakes.

mmcdermott said:

One big problem with COP is that casual observers don't understand what the scores mean. A 5.7 or a 5.9 out of 6.0 is easy to understand. But what does 83.51 or 285.37 mean? My mom mentioned to me last week that she stopped watching when they changed the system because she didn't understand it anymore. TV broadcasts should be doing a much better job of explaining it. People need to know basic things like what a good score is, what score a skater would need to win, what is evaluated in the program component marks, and what those things mean.

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In what way was 5.7 easy to understand? I have no clue where those numbers came from and if you really think about it, you probably don't either.

The judges had to attend practices to establish what it was the skater was about to attempt and what they were capable of doing in order to assign a base value to the program if cleanly completed, and then they made deductions to that perceived base value based on errors. If we're talking the SP, the deductions were mandated - .4 for a missed element. In the LP, I guess the deductions were whatever the judges felt like deducting. And while the rule book said no credit for incomplete elements, including step-outs, two-foot landings, etc., everyone knew that if you attempted a quad or a triple/triple you got credit for a "creditable attempt", or even for rotating and falling. Plushenko fell in the SP at the Olympics and was placed ahead of other skaters who were clean with quads - Li and Abt. We used to say that if you were Russian, you could fall down and win but if you weren't Russian, you couldn't.

What I like about the CoP is that it regains a little bit of something that was lost when figures were abolished.

Basically, in the 1980s the ISU discontinued altogether the sport of figure skating -- tracing set figures on the ice with a prize for those that were most geometrically perfect. The new sport gave greater and greater prominence to rotational jumps. In the IJS, edging and blade control have come back into well-defined focus.

What I don't like about the CoP is that it produces too much helter-skelter, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink type of programs. The old formula "fast part, slow part, finale" is threatened to be replaced by a non-stop dash to the finish line. There is a reason that musical works like concertos have a slow second movement. Often the slow section is the weightiest part of the composition.

I think it works better for men than for ladies. The top men skaters have the speed and power to make the zig-zagging step sequences look exciting. Among the ladies, the step sequences are slow and labored, for the most part. The men also don't need to be contortionists to get points on spins. More generally, I think that PCS should be simplified. There are too many elements. PCS should be based on performance, interpretation/artistic impression and skating skills. Transitions can be considered as part of skating skills and choreo/linking footwork part of performance. I also agree that judging should not be anonymous.

Dragonlady said:

In what way was 5.7 easy to understand? I have no clue where those numbers came from and if you really think about it, you probably don't either.

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Sorry if I didn't explain myself well enough What a score means, and where it came from, are two different things IMO. What I meant to say is that casual observers understand that a 5.7 out of 6.0 is good. A 5.9 out of 6.0 is excellent. But what is 83.51? Is that good? This is very very basic level of understanding. What is a good score? That's all they want to know. To complicate matters, what constitutes a good or excellent score varies across the four disciplines.

Thinking about how those scores are derived is another level of fan-dom I meant to say, above, that COP makes it so much easier to understand how those scores were derived. But, in order to do that you have to care enough to look up the protocols. In terms of explaining where the scores come from the COP is much better, but in terms of those scores being meaningful to an un-educated observer the 6.0 system is better.

Dragonlady said:

In what way was 5.7 easy to understand? I have no clue where those numbers came from and if you really think about it, you probably don't either.

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True, but what was cool about 6.0 scores was that if you liked a skater better than the judges did, then you could shout, "Boooo! She should have got a 5.8, not that lousy 5.5 you just gave her."

You can't do that with CoP. "I respectfully disagree on calling that spin a level two. I thought she got 5 out of the 8 bullets, although it was not entirely clear except on slow-motion replay whether she held the third position for a full 3 seconds or released too soon."

In this respect the CoP kind of takes the audience out of the game.

mmcdermott said:

One big problem with COP is that casual observers don't understand what the scores mean. A 5.7 or a 5.9 out of 6.0 is easy to understand. But what does 83.51 or 285.37 mean?

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I hear this from the gymnasts during the last summer Olympics. To me, that's insinuating the casual once-every-4-years audience is laughably stupid, sitting on their couches, drooling while saying "I can only count to 10. What comes after that? The numbers are too big; make them stop!"

Even my friends that only watch figure skating when I show them Youtube videos know that a long program of 93 is better than one of 85. I don't know very much about gymnastics, and I don't know which elements are called what, but I do know, at least at the most superficial level, that 14 is better than 13 but not as good as 15.

We can count farther than 6 or 10.

To answer the orignal thread question, simply put, if your fave is winning, it's fine. If your fave is not winning, it's not fine, it needs to be fixed, changed, destroyed whatsoever until something better that your fave can win.

I like it because even if someone's placed 10th in the short program (with small margin), that person can still win. Unlike the granpa 6.0, if you are 4th in the Short, it's very difficult to win, possible, but very difficult. Your faith is in others' hands, not your own.

jenaj said:

I also agree that judging should not be anonymous.

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I do too, but I think it's important to remember that anonymity is not part of the scoring system. Anonymity in the presentation of international scores is a separate change that was introduced at about the same time as the new scoring system, but it's not an inherent part of the system.

Just look at the anonymously presented scores from the major international 6.0 events in 2003 and 2004 ("interim system").

Or the IJS scores from domestic events in the US and elsewhere, which are NOT anonymous.

Junior international scores weren't anonymous when the IJS first started being used on the JGP -- have I missed a change there?

Of course, you can't tell just from looking at a protocol whether the judges score columns are presented in the same order as the judges are presented in the list of officials, or further scrambled by being presented in a different order for each skater. You'd need to know the rules for that particular event.

brightphoton said:

To me, that's insinuating the casual once-every-4-years audience is laughably stupid...

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Not at all. Sports fans like to participate from their couches. When a skater finishes a rousing program the fan likes to shout at the TV screen, "6.0! 6.0! 6.0!" Just like he likes to shout "goal! goal! goal!" at a hockey game.

"84.3! 84.3!" -- it just doesn't carry the same emotional satisfaction.

The sad part is that when this concern is brought up -- audience satisfaction with the product -- the ISU and its supporters dismiss it entirely, usually with supercilious sarcasm.

Emotional satisfaction results from the pleasure of winning an event. What joy is there in 6.0 or 10.0? I find the people who have a fetish for an arbitrary number usually have an agenda to push (pro-6.0/10.0 or anti-CoP/anti-whatever it is that gymnastics use).

jettasian said:

I like it because even if someone's placed 10th in the short program (with small margin), that person can still win.

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That cuts both ways. A person can run up such a big lead in the short program that the LP carries little interest or excitement.

I like the old model better. To win the event you have to skate two great programs. Every skater has his fate in his own hands. Get top three in the short, then win the long, and the prize is yours. Its all up to you. No coasting in either segment.