gkelly
Thanks for the detailed and reason explanation!
I basically told my mom, who read "all the controversy" but didn't see the event, that what was so amazing to me is take 2010 out of the equation (specifically YuNa's stellar skates, and one of the best final flights for ladies ever), and any one of the top 3 may have one gold at another Olympics (and possibly top 4...then imagine a different SP for Mao and that number grows).
But, that aside, it is interesting to really analyze the goe's and the levels. The utter difficulty in assessing these in anything like real time as gkelly explains, raises a lot of questions about the cumbersomeness of this scoring system. I suppose it also points to the importance of a 3 person team for callers. The issue of PCS as MM explains it raises similar issues (too much to account for, just go with SS as the first component).
Suggestions that efforts to quantify the PCSs even more does not seem to me the way to go, IMO. Also, only weighting what we lump as "artistic" about 30% seems, to me, a bare minimum and I wouldn't want that to diminish any more (and fear that quantifying PCS more would not only add more layers of opacity, but would eventually lead to diminishing this more). How to keep that "artistic" head nod and reward technical difficulty is clearly very challenging. Moreover, many of us, I think, at times conflate technique with technical difficulty (or vice versa) - excellent technique may not always equal difficult, and technical difficulty does not always involve the best technique.
Surely, much of the outrage and feelings of unfair judging would be diminished if the judges were not anonymous and if the powers that be in figure skating found more ways, like some of the explanations in this thread, to communicate about this sport to general audiences. The latter seems to be something that the ISU refuses to do or entertain, and that is a huge problem. But listening to former skaters now commentators also suggests some very fundamental core disagreements about what "a winning performance" looks like. I just don't know the contours of this disagreement is - is it simply "old school" versus "younger generation" or does it reflect deeper knowledge that includes much of what is discussed here about levels, about the meaning of the criteria for distinct pcs and so forth (or both, or something else).
All that said, there is clearly - again as others have mentioned - nothing like being in the front row while the event is happening. The speed, the energy, and the confidence/command of the skater is really something quite different live than on tv. So too might be noticing changing skating direction (I find it really hard to figure that out watching on tv as the camera angles change, I loose sense of where I am in the arena or the vantage point of the camera).
Thanks for the detailed and reason explanation!
I basically told my mom, who read "all the controversy" but didn't see the event, that what was so amazing to me is take 2010 out of the equation (specifically YuNa's stellar skates, and one of the best final flights for ladies ever), and any one of the top 3 may have one gold at another Olympics (and possibly top 4...then imagine a different SP for Mao and that number grows).
But, that aside, it is interesting to really analyze the goe's and the levels. The utter difficulty in assessing these in anything like real time as gkelly explains, raises a lot of questions about the cumbersomeness of this scoring system. I suppose it also points to the importance of a 3 person team for callers. The issue of PCS as MM explains it raises similar issues (too much to account for, just go with SS as the first component).
Suggestions that efforts to quantify the PCSs even more does not seem to me the way to go, IMO. Also, only weighting what we lump as "artistic" about 30% seems, to me, a bare minimum and I wouldn't want that to diminish any more (and fear that quantifying PCS more would not only add more layers of opacity, but would eventually lead to diminishing this more). How to keep that "artistic" head nod and reward technical difficulty is clearly very challenging. Moreover, many of us, I think, at times conflate technique with technical difficulty (or vice versa) - excellent technique may not always equal difficult, and technical difficulty does not always involve the best technique.
Surely, much of the outrage and feelings of unfair judging would be diminished if the judges were not anonymous and if the powers that be in figure skating found more ways, like some of the explanations in this thread, to communicate about this sport to general audiences. The latter seems to be something that the ISU refuses to do or entertain, and that is a huge problem. But listening to former skaters now commentators also suggests some very fundamental core disagreements about what "a winning performance" looks like. I just don't know the contours of this disagreement is - is it simply "old school" versus "younger generation" or does it reflect deeper knowledge that includes much of what is discussed here about levels, about the meaning of the criteria for distinct pcs and so forth (or both, or something else).
All that said, there is clearly - again as others have mentioned - nothing like being in the front row while the event is happening. The speed, the energy, and the confidence/command of the skater is really something quite different live than on tv. So too might be noticing changing skating direction (I find it really hard to figure that out watching on tv as the camera angles change, I loose sense of where I am in the arena or the vantage point of the camera).