Ashley Wagner and the Olympics | Page 14 | Golden Skate

Ashley Wagner and the Olympics

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At the time, Ashley had lost to Gracie once, was the only American woman who medaled at the GPF and won a GP event this season, and placed 4th and 5th in the last two Worlds. Based on her record, it was reasonable to think she could win a bronze if multiple skaters melted down and she skated perfectly.

I think you are missing the point. And she only beat a flawed Gracie. Not a 2014 Nationals/Sochi Gracie.
 

Blades of Passion

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Ashley could have beaten a flawed Julia, but not with 3 jumps with -GOE.

She couldn't have, because she physically was not able to do a fully-rotated 3Flip+3Toe, which the scoring system over-punishes her for, and she was simply not going to get the necessary PCS buffer because she didn't have momentum/politics in her favor. It's all ridiculous, but there it is.

The point is, for Gold to have had a relevant chance, she needed to have showed capability to skate a clean competition SP + LP, and depended on 5 top skaters making huge errors.

She did show that capability. She skated a clean LP in the team competition and she has skated many clean SP's. The fact is that she had more technical content and more political backing than most of the other competitors. That put her in the mix to potentially win the Gold medal. All of your repetitive talk is pointless and your dissection of the scores is even worse. Scores are essentially meaningless with the way things are judged. GOE, PCS, and even tech panel calls can suddenly change completely, just because that's what the judges feel like (aka - have been told to do). A scoring differential of 20 points is not hard to make happen if one person makes a costly mistake that drops the entire perception of them and another skater with politics behind them skates their best.

Hell, a scoring differential of 20 points can easily happen even for two exact same performances, if one person is an "unknown" and the other person is a reigning World champ. Switch the perception of the judges and suddenly everything is completely different, even though it shouldn't be.
 

CanadianSkaterGuy

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Okay, if you're going to characterize Gold as having a significant shot at the OGM due to political backing and having done a single clean FS - which didn't even clear 130 points, mind you - and depending on all of 5 top skaters to skate poorer than usual on skating's biggest stage... well, everyone's entitled to their opinion. :laugh:

Also, re: perception... it's cute to see you're reading the judges' minds again. Especially when they've historically shown to be in such accordance with your opinions.
 

drivingmissdaisy

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She couldn't have, because she physically was not able to do a fully-rotated 3Flip+3Toe, which the scoring system over-punishes her for, and she was simply not going to get the necessary PCS buffer because she didn't have momentum/politics in her favor. It's all ridiculous, but there it is.

She did get the 3-3 credited early in the season, but I agree that she never really owned the move. Maybe the system overpunishes that error but it is Ashley's choice to include the combo that she knows can get slammed; she took a risk and it didn't pay off. As far as any PCS buffer, you're right about the lack of momentum/politics in her favor but the judges really seem to be getting behind the young talents now, putting them ahead of second tier veterans and virtually on par with Yuna/Caro/Mao.
 

Mrs. P

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I feel Ashley is dealing with a major case of "you're damned if you do/you're damned if you're not." Last season (2012-2013) people here was railing on her for not putting in the 3-3 for much of the season and now people are saying how Ashley took too big of a risk.

As far as I'm concerned, I think it's good she got it out there. She knows what it's like to do it in competition and probably what she needs to do to nail it for next season. I don't see her giving it up.
 

Amei

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I feel Ashley is dealing with a major case of "you're damned if you do/you're damned if you're not." Last season (2012-2013) people here was railing on her for not putting in the 3-3 for much of the season and now people are saying how Ashley took too big of a risk.

As far as I'm concerned, I think it's good she got it out there. She knows what it's like to do it in competition and probably what she needs to do to nail it for next season. I don't see her giving it up.

Sure fans are giving the damned if you do/damned if you don't, but if she didn't put the 3-3 in and done a clean 3-2, would she have placed any better? Her artistry is not enough to overcome a 3-3.
 

Mrs. P

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Sure fans are giving the damned if you do/damned if you don't, but if she didn't put the 3-3 in and done a clean 3-2, would she have placed any better? Her artistry is not enough to overcome a 3-3.

I feel the judges were sending a clear message that a 3-3 was required to be competitive, so I think she was responding to that message.

She probably would have placed better, but again I am of the mind that it was better for her to get the jump out there.
 

Amei

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She probably would have placed better, but again I am of the mind that it was better for her to get the jump out there.

Me as well, if she is going to continue to competitively skate, she is going to need that 3-3.
 

AsadaFanBoy

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why doesn't she do 3T-3T? is that a hard combination for her? she could always do the 3-3 in the short and 2A-3T in the long. well, i've only really seen her pull off that 2A-3T once, but from the looks of it, it looks like it'll be in her bag of tricks now
 

Blades of Passion

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Okay, if you're going to characterize Gold as having a significant shot at the OGM due to political backing and having done a single clean FS - which didn't even clear 130 points, mind you - and depending on all of 5 top skaters to skate poorer than usual on skating's biggest stage... well, everyone's entitled to their opinion. :laugh:

Ah, you still really don't get it. Her clean FS would have scored in the 140's had the judges wanted it to (and they would have if she was the only one to fully deliver at the Olympics). We already saw how her PCS went up 7 points between the team event and the individual event, even though her team performance was better. She didn't need all of the other 5 to skate "poorer than usual" either. Kostner, Asada, and Sotnikova all have big consistency issues. Yu-Na and Lipnitskaia were the only people seen as having a high chance of skating clean and neither were considered locks. That is not just my opinion, it's what pretty much everyone was thinking. Statistically, Gracie factually had a chance. Just because it was a lower chance doesn't mean it was discountable. Anything that is at least a 5% chance in statistics is considered relevant.
 

Sandpiper

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But Gold isn't known for skating cleanly all the time... When was the last time she skated cleanly?

She had a chance, but it rested on the aforementioned five making huge errors while she did not. Chances are, even when Kostner or Asada bombed, Gold wouldn't be clean either (she, in fact, did end up falling in the LP).
 

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I think some people disagree just so they can debate more. Cause I cannot believe this thread has turned into another "let's discuss Gracie Gold" fiasco when the point made was pretty obvious, correct, an didn't really require this amount of in depth discussion.

1. Gracie had a high chance to medal, because her PCS was being rated decently and she has World-Class technical ability in that she has great jumps, all the require technical combinations that the judges are expecting from a champion-level skater, can easily hit her spin levels, and GOEs well across all of her elements, barring mistakes.

2. Gracie at least had A CHANCE to win the Olympic Gold Medal, due to the above. No one said she was a FAVORITE, only that she had a chance. A chance that Wagner didn't. The amount of help she needed to get there was minimal compared to Wagner, who actually got a lot of help (all JPN ladies basically imploding in the SP, Lipnitskaya's Falls) and still couldn't muster a better placement with one of the best FS's she did all season.

Wagner had literally no chance to medal, and a Gold Medal should not have been on her radar, or sonar, or whatever... Period. She simply isn't good enough and she's exhausted almost all of the upward momentum the judges were willing to give her. 2012's weak World Championship field was Wagner's best chance to grab a World of Olympic Medal. I don't think she will ever get back to 4th place unless we witness what would be perhaps the worst Ladies competition ever seen - a splatfest to epitomize the word itself.
 

CanadianSkaterGuy

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Sure fans are giving the damned if you do/damned if you don't, but if she didn't put the 3-3 in and done a clean 3-2, would she have placed any better? Her artistry is not enough to overcome a 3-3.

Actually, she would have placed better with a 3F+2T instead of a 3F+3T<<. She would have been 5th at Worlds, ahead of Gold and Suzuki.
 

CanadianSkaterGuy

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I think some people disagree just so they can debate more. Cause I cannot believe this thread has turned into another "let's discuss Gracie Gold" fiasco when the point made was pretty obvious, correct, an didn't really require this amount of in depth discussion.

1. Gracie had a high chance to medal, because her PCS was being rated decently and she has World-Class technical ability in that she has great jumps, all the require technical combinations that the judges are expecting from a champion-level skater, can easily hit her spin levels, and GOEs well across all of her elements, barring mistakes.

2. Gracie at least had A CHANCE to win the Olympic Gold Medal, due to the above. No one said she was a FAVORITE, only that she had a chance. A chance that Wagner didn't. The amount of help she needed to get there was minimal compared to Wagner, who actually got a lot of help (all JPN ladies basically imploding in the SP, Lipnitskaya's Falls) and still couldn't muster a better placement with one of the best FS's she did all season.

Wagner had literally no chance to medal, and a Gold Medal should not have been on her radar, or sonar, or whatever... Period. She simply isn't good enough and she's exhausted almost all of the upward momentum the judges were willing to give her. 2012's weak World Championship field was Wagner's best chance to grab a World of Olympic Medal. I don't think she will ever get back to 4th place unless we witness what would be perhaps the worst Ladies competition ever seen - a splatfest to epitomize the word itself.

"Barring mistakes." :sarcasm: Well it's a good thing Gold wasn't prone to making any mistakes this past season. :sarcasm:

Oy. Not you, now. People honestly thinking she had a shot at gold? Fine, a remote shot, like 2% if all of Kim/Lip/Kostner/Asada/Sotnikova messed up and Gold actually managed to put together a clean SP+LP competition for the first time (which given that she had a major error in every competition prior to Sochi made it awfully unsurprising that she didnt win. It would have required a messier competition than the men's for Gold to have come out on top.
 

CanadianSkaterGuy

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But Gold isn't known for skating cleanly all the time... When was the last time she skated cleanly?

She had a chance, but it rested on the aforementioned five making huge errors while she did not. Chances are, even when Kostner or Asada bombed, Gold wouldn't be clean either (she, in fact, did end up falling in the LP).

Oh but you see, when it comes to hypotheticals, the ones saying Gold could win are taking extreme examples of when her competitors did poorly and then extrapolating specific examples of when Gold skated well (since she hasn't skated a clean full competition ever).

Saying she could have had a shot to win gold is as ridiculous as saying Goebel could have won 2002 OGM if Yagudin or Plushenko had fallen on their quads. It wasn't a likelihood since the Russians (like Kim) were way superior to Goebel. All the politicking wasn't going to give Gold the clout skaters like Kim have. And if Mao hasn't royally messed up and skated her usual decent skates, her clout/difficulty would have easily put her ahead of Gold - as we saw by Mao beating Gold by 22 points at Worlds.

Obviously if the field implodes and you're the one skater who goes clean, you have a shot to win.

Are you telling me that Wagner couldn't have won if she was the only one to skate clean while everyone else in the field committed multiple major errors/falls? She would have but the likelihood of all those skaters bombing is unfathomable. They would need to skate worse than the field at 2012 Worlds.
 

CanadianSkaterGuy

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This is all pointless hypothetical banter anyways. The reality is, if Gold actually did have a chance of winning the OGM she was far outclassed by the top 3 to make that a reality, and she herself didn't even put herself into the mix with a fall of her own. She was fortunate that Mao shockingly bombed her SP (her 2nd worst ever) and Julia uncharacteristically fell in both programs.

Seeing as how she would have surely been 6th with typical Mao/Julia skates, I say she was lucky/capitalized to come 4th.
 

CanadianSkaterGuy

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Ah, you still really don't get it. Her clean FS would have scored in the 140's had the judges wanted it to (and they would have if she was the only one to fully deliver at the Olympics). We already saw how her PCS went up 7 points between the team event and the individual event, even though her team performance was better. She didn't need all of the other 5 to skate "poorer than usual" either. Kostner, Asada, and Sotnikova all have big consistency issues. Yu-Na and Lipnitskaia were the only people seen as having a high chance of skating clean and neither were considered locks. That is not just my opinion, it's what pretty much everyone was thinking. Statistically, Gracie factually had a chance. Just because it was a lower chance doesn't mean it was discountable. Anything that is at least a 5% chance in statistics is considered relevant.

I would agree except Gracie herself hasn't skated a clean competition up to Sochi and even since. She's not a reliable competitor.

Well as long as you agree that it was no more than 5%. :laugh:

And what bizarro statistical "reasoning" are you using to suggest 1 in 20 odds is a "statistically relevant" (whatever that means) chance.

You think Gold would be touted as a somebody in the running for OGM with a mere 5% chance at it? Do you think a political candidate who gets 5% of the popular vote is statistically relevant?

How about this scenario where we take competitions where the faves bombed at some point:
Mao - skates her SP from Sochi individual and FS from Nationals
Kim - skates her 2010 Worlds SP and 2009 Skate America FS (note how far back I had to go)
Lip - skates her SP from Sochi individual and FS like Cup of Russia 2013
Kostner - skates her SP like at Worlds 2013 and her FS at Worlds 2014
Gold - skates her SP like at NHK and LP like at 2014 Worlds
Sotnikova - skates her SP like at TEB and FS like GPF

If that's how the others skated, and if Wagner skated her GPF SP and 2014 Worlds FS, or Suzuki skated like at Japanese Nationals, you don't think either would have won?
 

CanadianSkaterGuy

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The most mind boggling thing as that you seem to be almost oblivious to the fact that Kim was competing, in which case she was likely to go clean or close to clean - certainly more likely than Gold. Right then and there, Gold's hypothetical snowball's chance in hell at an OGM is gone simply by Kim's presence. Unless she magically managed to temporarily switch to the Russian team (which could have been the case given how her PCS was boosted to pro-Russian levels of craziness in the FS).
 

Sam-Skwantch

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Unless she magically managed to temporarily switch to the Russian team (which could have been the case given how her PCS was boosted to pro-Russian levels of craziness in the FS).

Which was crazy in it of itself. At least Yulia and Adelina were putting up results. Yeah Adelina choked huge at GPF but at least she made it there. Gracie seemingly gained points for Frank calling her nearest competitor a little girl. Gracie and Yulia were overscored for sure but I just don't know the reason behind Gracie's? She won the US Nats and that's it. So the magic PCS for her seems like the biggest :scratch: At least Yulia was making a name for herself and taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to her every step of the way to Sochi.

I still think if Kim had skated the GP the boost for the Russians would have been curbed to some extent. :slink:
 
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