Analyzing Sotnikova and Kim's footwork in the FS

jenm said:

Yes, I think so too. Actually, Adelina did nothing but several crossovers and a few hand flailing in between her 3S and 2A

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Did you miss mazurka and a three turn between the landing of the salchow and the one back crossover?

She then did a couple of steps that don't even have a real name as far as I know -- a little step from LBI to RFI without much weight on it or turning the whole body forward (kind of like a LBI mohawk, but I just call that kind of move a "step out") then a cross in front, sort of the reverse of normal back crossover. Easy enough to mistake for another back crossover at first glance, but does adds a bit of difficulty and variety.

This is a bit off topic here, but I wanted to share. What I don't get also is that how Julia gets 141 from fairly clean long program from the team event with more difficult elements and choreography, and Adelina just happens to get 149 with her so called "gold-medal worthy performance". I think people get carried away here with what was awarded what, but realistically, in that 5 minute time, I doubt judges have the time to think over things and they were probably scared as balls what the outcome will be like, or maybe not, since they don't seem to care. Judges do whatever they want with the GOEs. As a prime example, I'm going to give Skater A +5 GOEs because I feel like it while I'm going to give Skater B 0+. See what I'm trying to say? The whole judging system does not make any sense at Sochi because those judges knew they will be safe under the anonymous judging system.

jenm said:

I think so, too. Maybe, according to some posters, the elements before and after the skater's 2A might not count for the GoE but they should be reflected in the PCS. Unfortunately, they weren't and that really is puzzling. Yuna's transitions were not only smooth but were perfectly matched to the music. Even the 3-turn before her 3F hit every note. Her last spin was very musical. And someone pointed out that her 2A was, too. And looking at it now, I also realize that so that should have counted for another +GoE.

It really puzzles me that some posters say Yuna's jumps are unmatched because of the quality of nearly everything on it (height, distance, flow, musicality, speed, air position, intricacy and all) but then say Adelina should have edged her out when she had not only mistakes but lesser quality on a several things. I don't get it really.

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Someone posted an official ISU video on here a while ago that literally showed Yuna doing that exact kind of layout with a 2A and spin combination as a demonstration of intricacy. So her 2A is literally exemplary for having an intricate/difficult entrance. Same thing for her 2A with the spread eagle entrance, and 2A with ina bauer entrance. Neither received higher GOE than Adelina's 2A.

sk8in said:

Someone posted an official ISU video on here a while ago that literally showed Yuna doing that exact kind of layout with a 2A and spin combination as a demonstration of intricacy. So her 2A is literally exemplary for having an intricate/difficult entrance. Same thing for her 2A with the spread eagle entrance, and 2A with ina bauer entrance. Neither received higher GOE than Adelina's 2A.

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Was this video from the FS at Sochi?

No it was one of Yuna's earlier programs with the same combination of elements (2A into a spin). She has been doing that layout for years because of the high points it ostensibly earns.

gkelly said:

Did you miss mazurka and a three turn between the landing of the salchow and the one back crossover?

She then did a couple of steps that don't even have a real name as far as I know -- a little step from LBI to RFI without much weight on it or turning the whole body forward (kind of like a LBI mohawk, but I just call that kind of move a "step out") then a cross in front, sort of the reverse of normal back crossover. Easy enough to mistake for another back crossover at first glance, but does adds a bit of difficulty and variety.

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She did two backcross overs. Count the number of times her heels cross one another from 3:33. It is twice. Over emphasizing a couple steps is one thing. Trying to actually say Adelina's cross overs were some as of yet unnamed innovative step that she invented is completely delusional fabrication. If you are skating from one jump to another it is not the same thing as doing 3 different elements of your program in quick succession, thus creating a dance like sequence of moves that can be appreciated beyond their technical worth.

sk8in said:

She did two backcross overs. Count the number of times her heels cross one another from 3:33. It is twice. Again over emphasizing a couple steps, and trying to spin crossovers into 'new' as of yet unnamed footwork that Adelina just made up with her amazing innovative technique is completely disingenuous nonsense. It is not the same as doing real, actual elements in direct succession.

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I admit I laughed when I heard about the bunch of crossovers Adelina had apparently done in between these jumps; I was expecting to see her abandoning all choreography to crosscut her way around the rink stalking the 2A Oksana Baiul-style, and then I saw the one crossover followed by a LBI mohawk-choctaw sequence, which yes, does technically end with a second crossover. This is a common MITF step and the crossover at the end isn't where you generate much power on the move; it's more in the step forward and choctaw where power is gained when the move is done right. The ending crossover is just a step to shift your weight and doesn't really count as the kind of power-generating crossover that people complain about when a skater does too many of them. Anyway Yuna should and does get credit for stepping straight into a spin; that helps boost the score on the spin too.

sk8in said:

She did two backcross overs. Count the number of times her heels cross one another from 3:33. It is twice. Over emphasizing a couple steps is one thing. Trying to actually say Adelina's cross overs were some as of yet unnamed innovative step that she invented is completely delusional fabrication.

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Look again.

At 3:33 she does a back crossover, with the right foot crossing under behind the left.

If the second step were another back crossover, still traveling on the counterclockwise curve, her right foot would cross under behind the left again. That's not what happens. She turns out her right foot so that the toe is facing the direction she's traveling, almost 180 degrees turned out from the left foot, and then she does a crossing step in which the right foot crosses in front of the left foot.

I'm not arguing that this is an extremely difficult step that should get extra points. It's not. But it's not a basic crossover.

If you skate, go try it on the ice: one back crossover counterclockwise, then turn out to step briefly onto right forward inside, then cross the right foot on the ice in front of the left.

Or fake two back crossovers on the floor in your socks. Then try doing what Sotnikova does there, with the turned out step almost at 180 degrees and then the cross in front. Not quite as simple, is it?

The hop and three turn are not especially difficult either. But they're not crossovers either.

I'm just arguing that the person who said she did "nothing but several crossovers and a few hand flailing in between her 3S and 2A" was inaccurate. Let's not distort the facts to try to make a fairly simple series of moves look even simpler than it actually was.

YLFan said:

The controversy is who is more nutty, Koreans or Western leftist Russophobes

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I’m neither Korean nor anti Russian. I don’t think this is funny at all.

gkelly said:

With animated gifs that have obviously been manipulated to slow down the action, I have no way of knowing whether the person who did the manipulation slowed both clips down to the same degree. Since most fans who make these clips have obvious agendas, I wouldn't put it past them to falsify evidence on purpose.

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Neither would I. That's why as much as possible I look for the source evidence (i.e. raw video for example) to build my own analysis rather than base it on other people's "already processed" info. The gif I linked I made myself, via a relatively straightforward set of scripts from the raw video. I could post the scripts if anyone wants to run it for themselves (since I wrote them myself), as long as they have Matlab (the program I use to run the scripts) and the videos. Because I have a script written to extract frames from a video and put them into an animated gif, it's relatively easy for me to make those extracts of any (reasonable) length and slow motion as desired on request. It's slowed down simply so that people can see the evidence more readily -- for example, comparing when both skaters take off and when both land -- which people (like me) who haven't seen hundreds of jumps in real time may not be able to compare easily. Anybody that doubts them can 1) get Matlab and run the scripts for themselves and/or 2) compare the frames in the gifs with the frames in the videos that I took them from to see if any were added/skipped.

The problem with using other people's info is not just falsifying evidence; it's also that there can be problems with how they interpreted/analyzed/processed the evidence (such as not realizing that they're comparing a 30 fps video with a 25 fps video, which obviously screws up the comparison when you try to line them up frame by frame) or with the evidence itself (such as brief glitches or skips in the video). This is why I'm always looking for the raw videos. Not to mention getting videos from different sources is helpful; not only can they corroborate each other, but they can also provide different camera angles and in some cases allow me to extract additional information from the videos. For example, the torrent of the Olympic SP is 25 fps but is actually interlaced; due to how interlace works, I can actually convert it into a 50 fps non-interlaced video (losing half the resolution though) for slow-motion analysis. I'm looking for one of the FS so I can do the same thing, but unfortunately haven't found any yet. Also, the fan cams of Adelina's and Yuna's performances in theory allow me to calculate just how far they actually traveled during their jumps since they captured the entire rink, so I could in theory measure and answer definitively questions about the distance the skaters covered and the (horizontal) speed they had in the air (assuming the ice rink was Olympic-sized (heh) 30 m by 60 m), which is something I can't do with the network broadcast videos. (I would need to work out the math though, which obviously takes time.)

gkelly said:

Yes, that's clear enough in real time. As I said, I don't think either of these double axels deserved extra credit for difficult/unexpected entries . . . or penalty for excessive preparation/telegraphing. They're both pretty average axel entries. Kim's is a little quicker.

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I don't think they're much to write home about either, other than (of course) that they're Olympic quality and not the sort of stuff that the typical person will be able to pull off. However, I don't think it would be fair to classify Adelina's as having a more complex entrance and superior height, which is what I'm refuting. And the gif is my presentation of the evidence to support my point. And obviously it wasn't clear enough in real time if people are making statements otherwise about it -- hence putting it in slow motion so everybody can see it more clearly.

Sam-Skwantch said:

This thread is like a bouncy ball of topics.

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Unfortunately, when the judging controversy thread got moved, everybody migrated to this thread, diluting this thread even further. Very few people actually bothered to discuss the footwork anyway. I have Kostner's SP footwork worked out (just the turns; she should be level 3 on the turns alone since it looks like she put her foot down during one of the combination turns) but never bothered to post it.

Sam-Skwantch said:

Someone should just start a thread that disects jumps.

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I actually want to take a quantitative look at the jumps (amount of pre-rotation, amount of landing under-rotation, height in air measured via how long skater was in the air, distance covered via measuring fan cam video of the entire rink for distance calibration, rotation speed, etc.) but that's a long term thing. It would be nice because those are measurable objective metrics that (IMO) shouldn't be up for debate if people are actually willing to look at evidence. Though based on this thread, I don't know how productive it would be anyway, since 95% of the posts don't even discuss any of the evidence at all but just people making their own (unsupported) statements and positions.

drivingmissdaisy said:

The judges in Sochi were scoring Yuna relative to Adelina on that night, so to that extent the previous scores shouldn't factor in because they are judged against each other, here and now. The closeness of the scores is explained by the fact that Yuna didn't skate her best and Adelina did; had Yuna skated her best her score would have been higher, probably closer to what she got at Worlds last year. Yuna should not win gold solely on the strength of past performances.

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Let me try to make it clearer for you. "Best" is inherently a comparative metric. Saying whether or not someone skated their best is inherently comparing their performance with other performances. Taking the position that past performances shouldn't be considered means there is no meaning to whether or not someone skated their best (unless you're playing the word game of "OMG! She skated the best and worst tonight!") because there are no longer any other performances to be considered. It's a contradictory position.

And nobody said that Yuna should win gold solely on the strength of past performances. That's a straw man, but I expect you already knew that. Instead, past performances are used to inform how judging is typically done (such as typical PCS scores), not as a replacement, but people already knew that and this thread (originally, anyway) specifically talks about the Olympic performances.

flyushka said:

meh... or maybe they just see the video "evidence" as grasping at straws. The judges aren't sitting around analyzing animated gifs; they go with their gut, give a score and move on. I doubt they gave a moment's thought about which of these two skaters held their entrance edge into the 2A for a half second longer; it'd only be an issue if one was really excessively long and disruptive or, on the flip side, if one was really out of nowhere and had a remarkable difficult entrance. These were both normal, run of the mill 2A entrances. Shrug.

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The judges analyze the actual videos, gifs are just a highly compressed medium of the same information. On the other hand, posters are making their own inferences as to how the judges decided (i.e. "the judges scored X because...) and animated gifs are part of the evidence to support the discussion. Now if you're saying you don't care about the evidence for this forum discussion, well, that is your prerogative; after all, some posters in this thread have already said more or less that they don't care what evidence other people present, they're sticking with their position regardless. Is that the position that you're taking?

sk8in said:

She did two backcross overs. Count the number of times her heels cross one another from 3:33. It is twice. Over emphasizing a couple steps is one thing. Trying to actually say Adelina's cross overs were some as of yet unnamed innovative step that she invented is completely delusional fabrication. If you are skating from one jump to another it is not the same thing as doing 3 different elements of your program in quick succession, thus creating a dance like sequence of moves that can be appreciated beyond their technical worth.

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Eh I think there's some confusion here about what a back crossover is. More knowledgeable skaters should correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that a back crossover is not simply when a skater crosses their legs (despite the name). It's the half-swizzle pump (in this case with the left foot) prior to crossing the legs, followed by crossing the legs (possibly followed by the feet resetting, but not sure if that's necessary). The crossing the legs is just a natural outcome of that half-swizzle. In this case, after Adelina does the back crossover, for the second move not only is her right leg facing forward instead of backward, but her left leg is briefly in the air in a hop, so doing a half-swizzle with it is impossible, and hence it's not a back crossover despite the crossing of the legs. I agree that it might go by quickly on a replay but it's pretty obvious when watching the video in slow motion (watch for when the left leg suddenly straightens), or the animated gif (you see a brief reflection of the blade in the ice when she's in the air, showing the separation).

Basically, both Adelina and Yuna do one back crossover prior to their stand-alone double axels, with Yuna having a shorter gliding time before the axel. I wouldn't say the gliding time was particularly short nor long (if anyone would get points on the entry, Yuna would for a shorter glide time, but I don't think it was "unexpected"; either both should get that bullet or neither should, unless Adelina's free leg kick counts as an unexpected entrance). Both had the same height for that jump (so again, either both or neither for that bullet). This doesn't disallow fulfilling GOE bullets for the other qualities of those jumps (such as them leading into other moves, flow, etc.), but I've yet to see any convincing case (i.e. with evidence or arguments, not just statements of position) against these points.

Ok, turning your foot out on a cross over, instead of just doing a normal cross over, is simply not in the same league as entering a jump after a choreographic sequence. We are talking about an element that requires lots of footwork, vs a foot maneuver that is barely perceptible. Again, for lack of a less punny word, equating these things because of a foot turn is spin.

sk8in said:

Ok, turning your foot out on a cross over, instead of just doing a normal cross over, is simply not in the same league as entering a jump after a choreographic sequence. We are talking about an element that requires lots of footwork, vs a foot maneuver that is barely perceptible. Again, for lack of a less punny word, equating these things because of a foot turn is spin.

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Eh I'm saying it's not a crossover at all (notwithstanding that the legs cross -- that's where more understanding skaters will have to chime in). Also, Blades of Passion in this thread previously demarcated the beginning of the step sequence as after a skater did a crossover; extrapolating from this, then whatever Adelina and Yuna did before their crossover (3S + steps for Adelina, sequence for Yuna) likely wouldn't count toward the entrance to their axels (more experienced skaters will have to weigh in on this). And depending on how generous you are, the backward one-foot glide that both did before their axels likely nullify anything they did between it and their respective back crossover.

Well there isn't really a way of entering an axle that doesn't start with a backwards glide, any more than there's a way of entering a flip without a 3 turn. That's just the technique of the jump. The measure of quality comes from how telegraphed it is.

There is virtually no backwards glide going into Yuna's 2A. As soon as her crossover is done, she has half her body turned to do the jump. Again, we're talking about intricacy. A cross over itself does not negate the connected nature of elements. The proximity of the elements determines whether or not they are intricately packaged.
http://youtu.be/hgXKJvTVW9g?t=4m8s

Ok, this discussion can be interesting, but analysing every single crossover or step that Adelina and Yu-Na performed between their jumps deserves its own thread (if you REALLY think that this is worth discussing)... This thread is now not about comparing step sequences AT ALL

sk8in said:

Well there isn't really a way of entering an axle that doesn't start with a backwards glide, any more than there's a way of entering a flip without a 3 turn. That's just the technique of the jump. The measure of quality comes from how telegraphed it is.

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There are other ways to get into an axel, and most of those ways should be worthy of extra credit as difficult entrances on the GOE and/or in the Transitions component.

The most common way to get into an axel taking off on the left forward outside (LFO) edge, which we see here, is step forward from right back outside. Step from right back inside would be slightly more difficult, but still counts as "from a backward glide."

Directly from a spread eagle or Ina Bauer would be from gliding backward on one foot and forward on the other at the same time -- there's no step forward if the forward edge for the takeoff was already part of the glide. (Ina Bauer, crossover, step forward would be a connecting move and then the normal entrance, not quite as difficult as the direct weight shift)

Another option is step from right forward outside glide to left forward outside takeoff edge. No backward glide at all. Some coaches have skaters first learn their axels or double axels from this approach. If it's done in a telegraphed way by a skater for whom the jump is clearly a new element, that would be worth the same or less than the more common step from back outside to forward outside. But as part of the flow of choreographed movement where the axel without backward glide comes as a surprise, it should be worth more.

Often skaters put an axel right after another jump with a mazurka or tap-toe/side hop in between, so after the backward glide there's the hop, land on right toepick while traveling sideways, step onto LFO without additional backward gliding. Only slightly more difficult than the simple step forward.

Then there's gliding backward on the left foot and turning onto the takeoff edge still on the left foot with no step forward: either left back inside with a three turn onto the LFO, or left back outside with a counter onto LFO.

And then there was one example of Gary Beacom (who jumps clockwise, taking off from right forward outside for his double axel) doing a long forward glide on RFO for most of the length of the rink, then shifting his weight and jumping up from that same edge.

I'll go find video examples if you're interested. But since neither of these skaters are doing this here, not really worth spending a lot of time on. Read through this thread -- a number of different examples there.


For flips, some other approaches would be difficult and some (e.g., mohawk) just alternate but comparable in difficulty to the three.

That is true, but my point is that if a conventional entrance fits into the backend of another difficult element, the proximity of the two elements affects the second element. If you're talking track and field, it would be harder to run a long jump that starts with a 400 meter dash seamlessly, than it would be to do two events with a jog in between. Yuna's footwork ended with a backwards glide, so it happened to fit into a conventional 2A technique.

In short if the judge/technical panel had dinged Adelina for her mistakes on the flutz, under-rotation and two-foot stepped out accordingly to the guidelines and awarded her with level 3 step sequence and Yuna level 4 instead in the FS. The results should have been the case as illustrated below.

Adelina:

Element BV GOE
3Lz+3T 8.90 -1.40 (A minimum of -1 each for the flutz and under-rotation and its original element BV reduced from 10.10. A 3.6 points swing.)
3F+2T+2L 9.24x -1.40 (A minimum of -2 for two-foot stepped out, 0.5 difference.)
StSq3 3.30 1.21 (The discrepancy is 1.09.)

Yuna:

StSq4 3.90 1.60 (The discrepancy is 1.06.)

The final scores:
Yuna’s 219.11 + 1.06 = 220.17

Adelina’s 224.59 – 3.60 – 0.50 – 1.09 = 219.90

They can keep the miraculous PCS & whopping GOEs for the rest of elements for Adelina and Yuna still had been the rightful winner.

^And what of the whopping GOE for Yuna's wonky lutz?

Bottom line is: woulda, coulda, shoulda. Yes, if *everything* had gone that way, Yuna could have won. But... she didn't. To win in this sport, judges give marks. Adelina got more. So it goes. I'm not sure what's to be gained from this line of thinking, really. To make yourself more upset about the result? It won't change. Personally I saw odd decisions from the rather randomly inconsistent tech panel and wacky GOE for every single skater in the event. That's just how it goes. When you're lucky enough to get a slew of great skates at the Olympics, it's going to be a close call and sure, if all the little judging decisions had gone a different way, someone else could have won. But they didn't. C'est la vie.

Yuna's lutz was shaky. True. But it was landed on one foot. Adelina had a two-foot landing. The judges prematurely decided that Adelina was the best they were going to see and there was nothing Yuna could even do to win after they did that. She was overscored. Yuna was supposed to make a mistake to justify their decision, only then she didn't. TBH, I'm not even sure it was fixed for Adelina. It may have just been an instance of the judges being influenced by the crowd who loved Adelina. But I haven't rewatched her program once whereas I have re-watched Yuna's countless times. A mistake WAS made.

flyushka said:

^And what of the whopping GOE for Yuna's wonky lutz?

Bottom line is: woulda, coulda, shoulda. Yes, if *everything* had gone that way, Yuna could have won. But... she didn't. To win in this sport, judges give marks. Adelina got more. So it goes. I'm not sure what's to be gained from this line of thinking, really. To make yourself more upset about the result? It won't change. Personally I saw odd decisions from the rather randomly inconsistent tech panel and wacky GOE for every single skater in the event. That's just how it goes. When you're lucky enough to get a slew of great skates at the Olympics, it's going to be a close call and sure, if all the little judging decisions had gone a different way, someone else could have won. But they didn't. C'est la vie.

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Bonjour!

I’m curious… does it bother you to what I think?