Your opinion on Skate Canada

Men: Although nobody skated close to their best, I still love Patrick's LP, Hanyu's SP, and I'm also growing more fond of Hanyu's LP. I still hate the choreography of that first spin and the musical transition going into the last Quad, but it's a lovely program otherwise. I really appreciate how he spread the jumps throughout this program, doing the Flip literally out of nowhere after the footwork sequence and then doing that Lutz at the VERY end of the program. Impressive. Also the 4Loop attempt in the LP didn't deserve the << call I don't think, it was a bit past forwards, a better attempt than the SP.

Women: Osmond's SP was the highlight, she deserved to beat Medvedeva if not for the odd stumble (so hopefully she can do the program perfectly later in the season). Her LP is not good, though, totally forgettable. Don't think she should have beaten Miyahara overall. Rika Hongo was HEINOUSLY undermarked. Disappointing programs in general, although I do like both of Alaine Chartrand's programs. They just aren't as god as what she had last year, the LP in particular. And she needs to get rid of that 2A+3S combination, it is too clunky!!! Also, she didn't deserve < calls on her Lutz and Flip in the LP. They were within 1/4 of a turn, with tight landings. The technical panels remain bad at their jobs, sigh.

Pairs: Switching the Chinese teams up was a good decision that I supported all along and it's nice to see the results this soon. Yu was the only person against it and now that she is having success, I'll bet she will be satisfied with the result. After nearly 2 decades, Hao Zhang now FINALLY has a partner who allows his artistic side to come to the forefront, with the technical. They still have plenty of work to do, getting more in sync as a team and adding more difficulty, but they are well-matched and on the right track. Duhamel/Radford landing a good 3Axel in the SP was great to see.

Dance: THE REACTION OF CHOCK/BATES AFTER WINNING THE FREE DANCE (and also momentarily thinking they won the entire competition) IS ONE OF THE BEST THINGS EVER. I don't care for any of the actual FD's, although I do think all of the teams have good concepts for their FD's. The Short Dances are way better this season, I think because the skaters feel freedom that they are actually allowed to do something modern. Stepanova/Bukin are charming, fun, and sexy at the same time. Gilles/Poirier are lots of fun. Virtue/Moir are superb. Jean-Luc Baker deserves more praise, he is excellent.

Medvedeva is the reigning 2016 World Champion, the reigning 2016 European Champion, the reigning 2016 Russian Champion, the reigning 2015-2016 Grand Prix Final Champion, and the reigning Skate Canada International gold medalist

Kaetlyn Osmond is the reigning 2016 Canadian National bronze medalist, was 6th at 2016 4CC, is the reigning 2016 Finlandia Champion, and the reigning 2016 Skate Canada International silver medalist.

chuckm said:

Next week in CoR it's Chock/Bates with 13 points (188.24) vs. Bobrova/Soloviev with 11 points (174.77), and newshooter Weaver / Poje who didn't do any prep events this fall. Wonder if the Russian Fed will bring in an extra-special tech team to ensure that gold medal for Bob/Sol, who needs it to make the GPF. Lord knows they've done that to C/B and W/P in the past!

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Last year W/P won and C/B were third, no Russians on podium

mhu714 said:

I'm sure some will kill me for this but Medvedeva leaves me cold. She's certainly an amazing jumper but looks like a little girl, all the hand over the head is distracting and even annoying at times. Plus, to me she over emotes and is hugely over scored for PCS.

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Plus programs which are the photocopies of last year and previous year too. Good for a second group skater, not for a two times Worlds champion (junior 2015,senior2016)

chuckm said:

Medvedeva is the reigning 2016 World Champion, the reigning 2016 European Champion, the reigning 2016 Russian Champion, the reigning 2015-2016 Grand Prix Final Champion, and the reigning Skate Canada International gold medalist

Kaetlyn Osmond is the reigning 2016 Canadian National bronze medalist, was 6th at 2016 4CC, is the reigning 2016 Finlandia Champion, and the reigning 2016 Skate Canada International silver medalist.

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Ja, Medvedeva is all that, very consistent, but apparently not evolving up. Osmond was a beautiful come back. Hope she stays healthy and consistent. China will tell.

Ladies - Medvedeva deserved the win but I am not really a fan of the LP. It is almost an exact replica of last season's with different music. I find the music disturbing. Osmond was impressive. Hope to see some improvement in the LP. Liza's jumps are a thing of beauty but her LP was extremely slow. She looked like she was skating in mud. Sataoko's jump landings looked wobbly. Oh Mirai I just don't know what to say.

Dance: Loved Chock and Bates programs.

chuckm said:

Medvedeva is the reigning 2016 World Champion, the reigning 2016 European Champion, the reigning 2016 Russian Champion, the reigning 2015-2016 Grand Prix Final Champion, and the reigning Skate Canada International gold medalist

Kaetlyn Osmond is the reigning 2016 Canadian National bronze medalist, was 6th at 2016 4CC, is the reigning 2016 Finlandia Champion, and the reigning 2016 Skate Canada International silver medalist.

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And, BANG, old Chuckie is back! If you are going to mention achievements why not do a fair comparison, and talk about the body of athletes competitive resume, as opposed to the past year. Especially when one of the two was crippled with a major injury and was re-learning to skate after an 11 month absence from the sport. How convenient to exclude her Olympic Silver medal, her 2 Canadian Champs, the 2 Grand Prix wins, 2 wins at Nebelhorn, and a top 10 placement in her first Worlds.

I know it's been a hard pill to swallow for you, the new realities of Canadian women's skating and all, but to diminish an athlete's achievement in sport, knowing the dedication and the sacrifices it must have taken...in one word Chuckie, ...cheap!

A revisionist version of history, speaks volumes about a person!

Uhm, I think that perhaps folks might want to take a breather on the accusations of bias, poor scoring etc...

And I have another theory why we see such different judging trends across the Grand Prix events of what some refer to as the "large federations".

Thought # 1, skating is a global sport, and one of the key jobs of the ISU is to bring together different thoughts about what is good and excellent skating from different countries, both technically and aesthetically and establish a consensus.

Thought #2, different countries will have different emphasis in their skating development programs and competitive processes below the level that ISU norms take hold.

For example, on the Lutz corner, a few of us have been discussing some of the differences in lower level skating programs and judging competitions between the US and Canada. They are almost 180 degrees apart....and I was really surprized by how radically different they could be. e.g. the USFSA still uses 6.0 judging, where Skate Canada not only uses a fairly tough set of standardized absolute scoring criteria from the bottom up, skaters are not allowed to be ranked in competition until the equivalent of the [former] preliminary test. So Canadians are expecting tough technical calls on take-offs and landings etc. and bottom up scoring from the lowest levels, while the US 6.0 top down scoring system stresses ranking based on perceived overall performance.

I don't have enough information about what the other large federations in Russia, Japan and China are doing at the lower levels, but if the differences are as striking as they are between Canada and the US, where there are still many skaters who compete on both sides of the border for experience, I would expect fairly profound differences across the board...

Conclusion #1 These differences from the ground up are going to [a] reflect national concepts about what is good; and influence what both the judges and audiences pay attention to and value.

Conclusion #2 -- Americans, Canadians and Russians finding different things to be 'good' isn't bias, it's normal and to be expected.

Thought # 3 --- Grand Prix and Challenger events have judging panels [by ISU policy] that are significantly determined by the host countries. And they are going tend to seek out judges that emphasize judging points that they think are important even while respecting broad geographic representation.

Conclusion # 3 ---GP events hosted by large federations are likely to have judging that reflects judging priorities of the hosts as long as host countries have strong influence over the panels.

Thought # 4 --- Skaters and judges from the smaller federations, especially in Europe, may get out to other federations events more often. Such as for the other ISU events, especially below the Junior level. This may give them a a more "average" or consensus idea about what to look for and how the rules should be interpreted.

Conclusion # 4-- Perhaps smaller federations aren't less biased, but because they have to reach outside more from the novice level up, they maybe able to represent the ISU consensus better on average. And as such their choice of judging panels might be closer to the consensus.

I do think we've reached a point where the scores are starting to tell us more about the judging panels than about the performances on the ice. :roll9:

Sam-Skwantch said:

I do think we've reached a point where the scores are starting to tell us more about the judging panels than about the performances on the ice. :roll9:

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I think it has been worse in the past than it is now.
I agree with the SC results (the ranking, I don't care about the actual points) overall, especially with the Ice Dance results because it matched my predictions.

And I want to mention that I appreciate Hanyu falling so gracefully on his quad loops. But I'm still not sure wether I want him doing quad loops, 3 quads and 2 triple axels are enough for me in the FS. I want those men to be able to keep the performance level up.

psusanne said:

I think it has been worse in the past than it is now.
I agree with the SC results (the ranking, I don't care about the actual points) overall, especially with the Ice Dance results because it matched my predictions.

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That's sort of my point. SB, PB, and WR are completely meaningless in reference to the skating we see and more indicative of the judges and tech panels tendencies.

Men:Kevin Reynolds was awesome and made an incredible come back

Ladies: Katelyn Osmond had a great skate and showed she is healthy and ready for competition

Pairs: Thought it was great; no complaints

Dance: V/M were outstanding as always; in a class of their own. Of course they are still early in the season, but its classy all the way. Great choreography and music. I was also thrilled by and happy for P/G and loved Alexandra Paul and Mitchell Islam's program - exquisite

?

I don't know why I read this. I thought this was supposed to be friendly discussions here. Actually, Hanyu skates and trains in Canada under Brian Orser and is well loved here by all the fans, case closed.

Team J1-CAN J2-JPN J3-USA J4-FIN J5-CHN J6-NED J7-RUS J8-ITA J9-KOR PCS TES Overall
C/B: 5th 1st 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd 3rd 4th 2nd 1st 2nd
V/M: 1st 1st 2nd 1st 1st 1st 1st 2nd 1st 1st 2nd 1st
G/P: 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd 4th 2nd 4th 4th 2nd 4th 3rd 3rd
C/L: 3rd 2nd 4th 4th 3rd 3rd 2nd 1st 3rd 3rd 4th 4th
S/B: 4th 3rd 5th 5th 5th 4th 5th 5th 5th 5th 5th 5th

The most biased was the Canadian. He even had the audacity to place the Russian ahead of C/B. He gave both the Canadian teams 1st and 2nd place.
The most fair was the American, Japanese and Chinese judges. The Italian judge remained true to that old saying "I love my own..." putting the Italian team ahead of the pack. The Korean Judge didn't like the Americans, plain and simple, I guess the song just too modern for her taste, and choreography too outside of the box. It did not appeal to her conservative mindset.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the competition. Scoring is a very 'subjective' and 'relative' thing. One's background does affect one's perspective and grading method.

I hope you're able to see what I'm trying to show. I don't know how to do 'table'.

Sam-Skwantch said:

I do think we've reached a point where the scores are starting to tell us more about the judging panels than about the performances on the ice. :roll9:

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Dear Sam, actually it has always been that way. Most are just in denial out of good faith, national loyalty or selective feigned ignorance

Well as I've said before - it's gets so tiresome to come in here and read about judges' bias, country's bias, poor judging. underscoring, overscoring....yada! yada! yada! The judging system is what it is - fair or not, prejudiced or not. All the skaters in the world have to deal with it. It would be so nice, if not impossible, to come in here after a competition and just discuss the skating instead of the unfairness, etc. etc. Everybody has their favorite skater and it's always disappointing when they don't skate up to our expectations. but unless you have a resolution to all the ills of the judging system........blechhhh! Not all the judges can be that biased and unfair but it seems like the accusations and finger-pointing are always the same Country bias always makes me laugh because the judges aren't all from that country. Why would a judge from Russia or France (for example) hold up a poor skate by a Canadian (for example) Defies reasonable thought process. Regardless of what you think or where you're from or what your experience is....someone ALWAYS cries foul. Tiresome.

Ladies: tech panel! :yes2:
Men: :hslap:
Pairs: :yawn:
Ice Dance:

I forgot to say. Hanyu had a poor short program skate and landed in 4th behind Chan who was in 1st place and as Tracy Wilson stated had Hanyu landed his 4th quad - the quad Lutz he would have won the gold - no biased opinion there or judging. Perhaps Hanyu should have held back on the quad Lutz and not been so ambitious. Just saying...

Astrid56 said:

Team J1-CAN J2-JPN J3-USA J4-FIN J5-CHN J6-NED J7-RUS J8-ITA J9-KOR PCS TES Overall
C/B: 5th 1st 1st 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd 3rd 4th 2nd 1st 2nd
V/M: 1st 1st 2nd 1st 1st 1st 1st 2nd 1st 1st 2nd 1st
G/P: 2nd 2nd 3rd 3rd 4th 2nd 4th 4th 2nd 4th 3rd 3rd
C/L: 3rd 2nd 4th 4th 3rd 3rd 2nd 1st 3rd 3rd 4th 4th
S/B: 4th 3rd 5th 5th 5th 4th 5th 5th 5th 5th 5th 5th

The most biased was the Canadian. He even had the audacity to place the Russian ahead of C/B. He gave both the Canadian teams 1st and 2nd place.
The most fair was the American, Japanese and Chinese judges. The Italian judge remained true to that old saying "I love my own..." putting the Italian team ahead of the pack. The Korean Judge didn't like the Americans, plain and simple, I guess the song just too modern for her taste, and choreography too outside of the box. It did not appeal to her conservative mindset.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the competition. Scoring is a very 'subjective' and 'relative' thing. One's background does affect one's perspective and grading method.

I hope you're able to see what I'm trying to show. I don't know how to do 'table'.

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Thanks for a sincere attempt to back up your critique with fact based analysis....

Without taking anything away from your sincere analysis, I do find it interesting that American fans in particular seem to want to still be focused on ordinals. It seems a common theme/perspective, and if it reflects a USFSA perspective, then it's not surprising that Canadian scoring is significantly different when from all I've seen, scoring in Canada is very bottom up in approach.

I would have never thought to have put this up myself without the numbers [and sincerely think you are right that background impacts the way we look at these things]....and note that the top two and bottom two absolute scores get tossed out in the calculation of the average score, so without the numbers we can't tell whose was thrown out....

I'm struggling with an assertion that the Canadian judge placing the Russians ahead of Chock and Bates is a reflection of bias, when you say the Japanese judge was among the most fair, but placed the Russian team 3rd.