Discussion - Is Sasha's Skating Brittle or Fragile?

euterpe said:

nymkfan51, I agree that there is almost certain to be controversy at Torino.

Think of Irina's Euro win this past season. She had a terrific SP, but her FS was a complete mess, and she not only won the gold medal (reasonable, because her SP was much better than the other skaters) but also the FS. If something like that happens at Torino and a skater wins with a disastrous FS, what happened at SLC will look like a Sunday School picnic.

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Can anyone give the judges' names and nationalities of that event? This is not a put down of Irina who, imo happens to be the top Lady skater at the moment. Even the best have their off-days. I would just like to see if there is a connection in that particular scoring.

There was no secrecy in SLC because names and nationalities of judges were known, and so the scandal became obvious. The IOC was furious. Speedy went into high gear and set the stage for punishing only one Federation in the collusion. In order to protect the other Federation in the collusion, he got the IOC to award two sets of gold medals . He then went on to establish the 'secrecy' method of protecting future collusions. And the competitors be damned. It' sad.

Joe

Here's a new move for Sasha to try!

http://cdn.channel.aol.com/aolnews_photos/0f/06/20050612220909990006

Aw, where is the head? Looks kind of scary. lol.

And it looks to me as if the designer might have polished off a lot of brain killing substances.

With the foot as the head and a little more goo, it would look like the baby alien in the first "Alien." Cool!

Rgirl

Joesitz said:

Can anyone give the judges' names and nationalities of that event?

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Judge No.1 Mr. Gavril VELCHEV BUL
Judge No.2 Ms. Diana BARBACCI LEVY SUI
Judge No.3 Ms. Stanislava SMIDOVA CZE
Judge No.4 Ms. Zsofia WAGNER HUN
Judge No.5 Ms. Jozica PODBEVSEK SLO
Judge No.6 Mr. Hideo SUGITA JPN
Judge No.7 Ms. Laimute KRAUZIENE LTU
Judge No.8 Ms. Inger ANDERSSON SWE
Judge No.9 Ms. Andrea GMELIN ROM
Judge No.10 Ms. Chihee RHEE KOR
Judge No.11 Ms. Irina KIREEVA AZE
Judge No.12 Ms. Mary DOTSCH NED

Referee Ms. Rita ZONNEKEYN BEL
Technical Controller Mr. Fabio BIANCHETTI ITA
Technical Specialist Mr. Scott DAVIS USA
Assistant Technical Specialist Mr. Jean-Christoph SIMOND FRA

Available to anyone with the ability to cut and paste, five minutes, and Google access. No big secret.

nymkfan51 said:

Thanks Rgirl ... some brilliant insights, as usual! :thumbsup:

I will say just one thing about Sasha's record. By most standards, her competitive career has been very successful. The only failure (for lack of a better word), has been her inability to take advantage of several opportunities she had to win the big prize. Obviously she must have hoped to win a National or World championship by now. And given the fact that Michelle scaled back on her competing, and her choreography, the past few years ... my feeling is Sasha may have missed her best chance to do that (especially the National title). I expect we will see a different Michelle at Nats this year ... plus the onslaught of Kimmie, Emily, Bebe, etc. So I think things only get more difficult from here on in (and that goes for MK too!) The good thing for her is though, that she already has 9 titles.

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Hey, you--my favorite person to bump into in the strangest places at figure skating events, lol! Thanks for the nice compliment--back atcha.

And thank you too, Emma, for your great post. I'm blushin'

Nymkfan, ITA with everything you said about Sasha missing opportunities to win Nationals and Worlds, plus the fact that if Michelle and/or a healthy Irina had competed in the GPS/GPF, I'm sure they would have outskated Sasha--barring injury, which was one of the reasons (a smart one, IMO) Michelle decided to opt out of the GPS for two (or was it three?) years, to stay healthy and avoid injury. I also agree that things are going to be much tougher this year for everyone. I don't think we talked about it after COI, but I thought Kimmie Meissner looked much more flowing, strong, and graceful in person than she does on TV. Her arms especially impressed me, but so did the use of her legs and torso. Plus her jumps are very strong technically and once she got the nerves of her first Nationals out of the way, she seems to be a very consistent skater. Of course her consistency in the "big leagues" remains to be seen, but at COI I thought she was just lovely and was really impressed by her skate.


Hey, Joe--nice to read you again too. Thanks for explaining the origin of the brittle vs. fragile debate. As I said before, I thought Sasha was getting a more balletic, flowing style when she was with Tarasova, though I don't think it's her natural style. I think she would be more of a power skater if she had the technique and went back to putting more time into weight training, although maybe she is doing the latter and she just doesn't have the technique for her to use her strength. I find her biggest weakness to be her stroking, which thus prevents her, in part, from having strong, consistent jumps, plus overall speed and flow. And she's got the right ratio of femur to tibia/fibula too, that is, long thighs and relatively short lower legs. Sasha has the upper to lower leg ratio to have the kind of really powerful stroking as someone such as Fumie Suguri, but Fumie outstrokes Sasha by a mile. And in my opinion, it's all technique, or at least 90 percent. Relating to Nymkfan's point, not only do I think Sasha has missed opportunities at Nationals and Worlds, but I also think she's missed opportunities to improve crucial areas of her technique. Not that I think she didn't do what her coaches said, although I wasn't there so I don't know, but rather that I think Tarasova overtrained her in an effort to rack up as many COP as possible, which she achieved, but I don't think that approach helped Sasha's overall technique. With Robin Wagner I did see some important improvements in her jump technique and edging, but the "Swan Lake" choreography was so watered down--I mean to the point of almost being a junior level program--that I don't think Sasha was able to take those technical improvements and use them in more difficult choreography.

It's a tricky business no matter how gifted you are to arrange a athletic career, which goes without saying. For example, Denise Beilman was and still is a very gifted skater with a strong athletic style. But all she managed was one World Championship (I don't know offhand how she did at Europeans). And I'm sure we can all think of skaters who looked as they had it all, yet after a few seasons, it just didn't come together. I was also thinking of the skater who was the US National champ for several years before Kristi Yamaguchi who married Christopher Dean about five years ago--another name drain. Really beautiful girl and beautiful skater who was done in by her nerves. Angela Nikokinov is another example. Yet then there is Todd Eldredge and to a lesser extent, Rudy Galindo. Todd had a frustrating competive career for many years before he won his one and only World championship in '96. And at the '98 Olympics, as a consistent skater, he was virtually a lock for the bronze but he just lost his focus. I think it's sad to to grade a skater's entire career based on one Olympics in which he/she didn't live up to people's expectations, but for the most part, we all do it. Although OTOH, Kurt Browning was the chief example for a very long time until his masterful professional career erased most of the memories of his two disasterous Olympics.

Anyway, the reason I listed Sasha's placements in international competition over the past few years was to show another side to the assumption that she's the poster child for inconsistency. True she tends to either fall or two foot a jump in many or even most events (I haven't kept track) yet she's also had mistake-free performances, few though they may be. But to describe her as the perennial butt-slider just doesn't fairly describe her skating. I won't name them, but there are a number of other skaters who are considered contenders for the OGM who really are candidates for the Butt-Slider Award. Personally, I'd give Sasha the No-Brainer Screw-Ups Award, meaning she makes really dumb, relatively small mistakes in competition that I would bet she virtually never makes in practice runthroughs. And yes, she falls too, but I don't think as often as many people say she does. Of course anyone is welcome to count up her falls and compare them to skater with similar records in order to prove me wrong. I've still got paperwork from April to get through so I'll leave that project to others.

As Nymkfan said, "This should be one heck of a season! Hang on everyone!" :agree:

Rgirl

P.S. Nymkfan--I'd never leave that part of your quote out

Jill Trenary

Rgirl said:

Not that I think she didn't do what her coaches said, although I wasn't there so I don't know, ...

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John Nicks jokes that Sasha is a lot easier to work with this time around, now that he (Nicks) is older. At 76, he tells Sasha what to do but the next day he can't remember what he told her, so he doesn't know if she did it or not.

Mathman

hockeyfan228 said:

Judge No.1 Mr. Gavril VELCHEV BUL
Judge No.2 Ms. Diana BARBACCI LEVY SUI
Judge No.3 Ms. Stanislava SMIDOVA CZE
Judge No.4 Ms. Zsofia WAGNER HUN
Judge No.5 Ms. Jozica PODBEVSEK SLO
Judge No.6 Mr. Hideo SUGITA JPN
Judge No.7 Ms. Laimute KRAUZIENE LTU
Judge No.8 Ms. Inger ANDERSSON SWE
Judge No.9 Ms. Andrea GMELIN ROM
Judge No.10 Ms. Chihee RHEE KOR
Judge No.11 Ms. Irina KIREEVA AZE
Judge No.12 Ms. Mary DOTSCH NED

Referee Ms. Rita ZONNEKEYN BEL
Technical Controller Mr. Fabio BIANCHETTI ITA
Technical Specialist Mr. Scott DAVIS USA
Assistant Technical Specialist Mr. Jean-Christoph SIMOND FRA

Available to anyone with the ability to cut and paste, five minutes, and Google access. No big secret.

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Thanks Hockeyfan for the list and for the google access. I presume 7 of those 12 judges were the actual judges for the event. right?

Interesting there was no Russian or Finnish judges.

Joe

Rgirl - I've always thought of Sasha as trying too hard to be a balerina on ice and it came across as ballet by the numbers. JMO. However, in Moscow, she skated more to the feel of the music than showing off her flexibility. I liked that.

Your point about her working more as a power skater, is well taken. I think I would like sasha to drop that "porcelain" quality and get into the Denise Bielman style which I always thought of being "feminine" power with the accent on feminine.

I really think Sasha has a crack at the gold in the Olys but she is up against THE power skater of recent times.

Joe

Joesitz said:

Your point about her working more as a power skater, is well taken. I think I would like sasha to drop that "porcelain" quality and get into the Denise Bielman style which I always thought of being "feminine" power with the accent on feminine.

Joe

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Not sure what you mean the "porcelain" quality. But I don't think she should drop that quality. There are tons of power skaters out there, she does not need to be just another one. Her "porcelain" quality is unique in her own way and most of all judges seem to like it. She looks delicate on ice, she just needs to refine some of her edge quality (like someone pointed out that don't 'scratch' the ice when stroking. I read this comments not only in this board, also in other board).

I'd actually like to see Sasha at a midpoint between power skater and porcelain. mzheng is right, that quality of her skating is what separates her from the others.
Just the right mix of beauty and power is the best way to go, IMO.
And I agree with Rgirl about her stroking. I actually thought that Robin had begun to make good strides with her on that.
For what it's worth though, I think going back to Nicks and California was a good thing for her. I don't think we can underestimate the importance in an Olympic season of a skater being comfortable and happy where they are living and training.

Hey, Rgirl ... where's our next meeting?

Hockeyfan said:

Judge No.1 Mr. Gavril VELCHEV BUL
Judge No.2 Ms. Diana BARBACCI LEVY SUI
Judge No.3 Ms. Stanislava SMIDOVA CZE
Judge No.4 Ms. Zsofia WAGNER HUN
Judge No.5 Ms. Jozica PODBEVSEK SLO
Judge No.6 Mr. Hideo SUGITA JPN
Judge No.7 Ms. Laimute KRAUZIENE LTU
Judge No.8 Ms. Inger ANDERSSON SWE
Judge No.9 Ms. Andrea GMELIN ROM
Judge No.10 Ms. Chihee RHEE KOR
Judge No.11 Ms. Irina KIREEVA AZE
Judge No.12 Ms. Mary DOTSCH NED

Referee Ms. Rita ZONNEKEYN BEL
Technical Controller Mr. Fabio BIANCHETTI ITA
Technical Specialist Mr. Scott DAVIS USA
Assistant Technical Specialist Mr. Jean-Christoph SIMOND FRA

Available to anyone with the ability to cut and paste, five minutes, and Google access. No big secret.

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Joe said:

Thanks Hockeyfan... I presume 7 of those 12 judges were the actual judges for the event. right?

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Right. And that's the problem. We do not know which seven were the actual judges for the event and which five were just sitting up there as decoys to pull the wool over our eyes.

The ISU does not list the nationalities of the judges any more, but as Hockeyfan notes, they are well known people and it is easy to find out this information. It is also possible, with a little effort, to work backward from the totals and figure out which 7 scores were actually used and which 5 scores were thrown out in the random draw.

But since the judges' scores are listed in random order, it is not possible, from the data alone, to match up the scores with the names of the judges on Hockeyfan's list.

The following would be an interesting exercise. There are 792 different ways to choose 7 real judges from a panel of 12. For each of these 792 possibilities, one could compute the total scores that each skater would have received had that particular choice been made. For what percentage of the choices would there have been a different outcome in terms of final placement of the skaters?

Mathman

Mathman said:

The following would be an interesting exercise. There are 792 different ways to choose 7 real judges from a panel of 12. For each of these 792 possibilities, one could compute the total scores that each skater would have received had that particular choice been made. For what percentage of the choices would there have been a different outcome in terms of final placement of the skaters?

Mathman

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Since I have no idea HOW to calculate this...I'll just say it would be super cool to read someone else's analysis (hint, hint particularly for a close event...it just would add to all the event post-morten what if's in an interesting way.

About judges names: I keep trying to ignore that they are anonymous...but really, i think that totally stinks and do hope it is changed. It's not even the possible hidden cheating that bothers me nearly as much as how it makes judging faceless, and seem to just happen by magic...what I mean is that in judged sports, part of the sport is the judge (whether it is a judge or referee) and that person or persons shapes the dynamic of whatever the event is, so that athletes often have to adjust their 'game' (whatever it is) to the particular panel of judges/referees, and I find that to be part of the excitement of the game. When it is hidden, as it is now in figure skating (or as before where it was presented as IF it were totally objective), that just irks me and takes away from that part of the excitement of a sport (for me), and that part of the analysis of what happened (IMHO of course).

Mathman said:

The following would be an interesting exercise. There are 792 different ways to choose 7 real judges from a panel of 12. For each of these 792 possibilities, one could compute the total scores that each skater would have received had that particular choice been made. For what percentage of the choices would there have been a different outcome in terms of final placement of the skaters?

Mathman

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Actually as long as the 7 randomly chosen judges' scores consistantly used in the whole phase of competetion, I don't see the difference compare to the old 6.0 where the 7 judges would be hand drawn....The difference is anonymouse, general public and skating fans has no way to tell which judge give what scores. If as ISU claimed the '[anonymouse' help reducing the pressure of judges, then it also definitely help hiding incompetent judging, which is worse than the pressure. Not to mention the bias and cheating.

mzheng said:

Actually as long as the 7 randomly chosen judges' scores consistantly used in the whole phase of competetion, I don't see the difference compare to the old 6.0 where the 7 judges would be hand drawn....

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Quite true. But even so I think this would be an interesting study, for the reason that here we have a pool of comparably qualified judges' scores which we can use to investigate the extent to which judges' whims dictate the outcome of a contest, as opposed to objective criteria.

After every contest, no matter how the judges are chosen, we armchair critics go on a wuzrobbed jag, saying why skater A should have scored higer than skater B and why the judges are all wet. I would be curious to see whether a slightly different judging panel would concur that so-and-so was robbed by the chosen 7, or whether all similarly composed judging panels would be in accordance with one another.

Emma, that's a fascinating point of view about the dynamics of the judging as a part of the sport. NJS enthusiasts say that's what was wrong with 6.0 judging -- the personalities and personal foibles of the judges were too much a part of the game.

In the NBA playoffs going on right now (Go Pistons!) the commentators are having a field day on just that issue. Namely, that different refereeing crews will call a game differently and it is up to the players to adjust their game appropriately. That was certainly the case in the Detroit-Miami series. One game they were calling every ticky-tacky touch foul, the next game they let them slug it out.

Mathman

Mathman said:

In the NBA playoffs going on right now (Go Pistons!) the commentators are having a field day on just that issue. Namely, that different refereeing crews will call a game differently and it is up to the players to adjust their game appropriately. That was certainly the case in the Detroit-Miami series. One game they were calling every ticky-tacky touch foul, the next game they let them slug it out.

Mathman

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This is probably why this issue is soooo on my mind right now....(yes, GO PISTONS!!! wasn't B. Wallace great the other night???!!!? and I loved seeing Billup and Hamilton get into it...yippy!) And I guess I'm sort of thinking that knowing the names of the judges, where they are from, something about their training and probably more could be useful (and fun) information to use in analyzing why results go the way they do. I don't believe or expect that 'bias' can be eliminated or even should be, but scrutinizing the potential sources and contours of it should -- i think -- but part of the game (and its fun too), and all athletes and judges/referees should be evaluated for their competence and for comforming to the rules etc....If the latter (referring to judges and their antics) wasn't done well before under 6.0, I just fear it will be less so now (and just for the record, i like NJS for many reasons, but hate this part of it).

ETA -- sorry i forgot...i was trying to distinguish between 6.0 antics and 'normal bias'; i realize the line between what I'm calling 'bias' and outright antics (cheating) will always likely be blurry at some point...but I do also think there is a difference between subjective evaluation (inherently human and part of the fun of judged sports) and outright sabotage, cheating, or bias based solely on deal making, national preference etc; its the former 'natural bias' that I think can be exciting and could be part of our analysis of this sport...the latter should be critiqued and opposed (again imho).

Mathman said:

Quite true. But even so I think this would be an interesting study, for the reason that here we have a pool of comparably qualified judges' scores which we can use to investigate the extent to which judges' whims dictate the outcome of a contest, as opposed to objective criteria.

After every contest, no matter how the judges are chosen, we armchair critics go on a wuzrobbed jag, saying why skater A should have scored higer than skater B and why the judges are all wet. I would be curious to see whether a slightly different judging panel would concur that so-and-so was robbed by the chosen 7, or whether all similarly composed judging panels would be in accordance with one another.Mathman

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As you are aware, I am always on the side of the skater/competitor and very much against the whimsical judges. All competitors have a dream and work long hours for that dream. They deserve absolute correct judging. Yes, there are incompetent judges but moreso there are judges who have this innate need to have their country whether they are representing it or happen to have another nationality to have skaters of similar background to be on top. This is not necessarily an overt cheat; it is more of similar cultural backgrounds thinking.

The wuzrobbed attitude is perfectly natural among some fans. It came to a head in SLC with the fans of, as well as the not so fans of S&P, who agreed that they were the best THAT NIGHT! not necessarily the best team.. I did not read one item against B&S who all agreed are a beautiful Pairs team but they did not skate a clean program THAT NIGHT!

I would like to see Lambiel or Klimkin win the Men's Olys; Michelle or Irina win the Ladies Olys; Savachenko and Szolkowy win the Pairs and Delobel and Schoenfelder win the Dance. I do have 2nd choices in Pairs and Dance. As long as the judging is fair, I can accept the losses of these skaters and teams. I just don't whant anything whimsical.

Absolutely none of my choices are based on my nationality or my ethnic background . Why should it? I'm old fashion. I like figure skating and hope the best person(s) win THAT NIGHT.

Joe

PS. Yes, yes, Two sets of judges would be a hoot especially if it included all the different regions.

What is discouraging (for the skaters AND for the fans) is to see the judges using the PCS scores to place the skaters where they want them, just the way they used 'presentation' under 6.0. That seems OK when the scores are consistent with the performance, but sometimes they are not.

Irina got the highest PCS scores for her dismal FS at Euros and the faulty SP at Worlds. In the Worlds '05 SP, some of the judges actually gave Sokolova higher PCS scores than Kwan. At the 2003/2004 GPF, Sasha got huge PCS scores for her 2-fall FS, high enough to finish 2nd in the FS ahead of Arakawa, who had a much better skate.