- Joined
- Oct 26, 2016
Long post, but bear with me!
I think the team event has problems and is totally goofy. I suspect a lot of us will agree with all or some of these:
1 - The placements are dumb. This isn’t how this sport functions anymore. The fact Zagitova substantially outperformed her competitors should be worth more than 1 or 2 points in the placement standings. Similarly, it doesn’t make sense to punish Russia so much for Kolyada vs Chen when their SP scores only differed by ~6.5 points and both were just utter messes (btw I’m not talking about whether these scores differences were justified - in this thread I’m taking the judging as given).If we are measuring *overall* performance, which is how I and most understand a "team event," then these differences should matter for results.
2 - Because placements only matter, sometimes teams aren’t putting in their best people because they know they are mostly placeholders. We want the best at this event.
3 - Japan and China have almost zero incentive to seriously participate in this. Because they know they couldn’t make a run for Bronze outside of a small chance because of their dance (both) and ladies (china) or pairs (japan). But if Jin and Sui/Han could put up big scores in the LP over their competitors, they deserve that chance at Bronze if their ladies or dance even did serviceable especially if the other teams had big mistakes. In fact, if we could solve this problem - it *might* encourage Japan or China to push for a better dance or ladies or pairs program because if they just improved slightly they’d have a shot at the team medal.
4 - We get the sense that someone like Kolyada didn’t “deserve” his medal because he skated so poorly. That's because he’s just a place holder without much impact on the team.
5 - The SP should be worth less to the team than the LP because the LP should always matter more.
My proposed solution is make the difference in scores in each event count towards the final result. In other words, the fact Shoma did so much better than Chan, the team should get points based on that difference in performance and it should be proportional to the amount of difference in performance.
It solves some of these issues because the gap in scores matters now, which solves (1) - we are now measuring overall team quality. Because the gap in scores matter - rather than just placements - China and Japan could potentially close them if their big names could pull big scores, which resolves (2). And it resolves (3) because now a 5th place finisher in the LP would not just automatically get 5 points, but if he did good enough and came close, it could substantially affect the final result. (4) is resolved somewhat because nobody is just a place holder - your performance might be decisive.
The straightforward answer is just add up the points the skaters get in the TSS. But this doesn’t work mainly because the scorings are totally different - men’s can put up huge numbers compared to women or pairs, and we don’t want it to be this unbalanced, ideally we are measuring the quality of a team so we should want each discipline to contribute equally. We could just switch to a general impression score like snowboarding (scoring everyone out of 100 points) - but that's too weird to do for just one event, so I half-assed a solution.
In order for each discipline to contribute equally - we should set some nearly maximum score that any skater or couple can obtain and assign it a value (I propose 33 for the SP, and 67 in the LP because it roughly mimics the old 6.0 % valuations) and then scale the TSS scores accordingly. I set it at 100 because then, if completely perfect, a team could score a “perfect” 400 (100 in each discipline). The nearly maximum score should be something *highly unlikely* to occur but not outside of the realm of possibility. (I wouldn’t prohibit going above 33, just make it so this will basically not happen unless we get something so phenomenally special).
To illustrate, suppose we were to designate that a 33 is 5% higher than the current World Record in men’s i.e.
112.72*1.05 =~ 118.36
To give you an idea what this skate would be, it would be if Hanyu at his best were to perform a 4Lz and a 4F+3T. Very unlikely, but not unfathomable.
What the “ideal” score of 33 would be is something the judges would decide in advance by the standard of extremely unlikely - but not unfathomable.
Then we scale the scores, so Shoma Uno earned 103.25. So the number of points he would get for this team would be (103.25/118.36)*33 = 28.787.
The entire Men’s points table would look like:
Men’s SP:
1 - Uno (JPN) - 28.787
2 - Bychenko (ISR) - 24.672
3 - Chan (CAN) - 22.768
4 - Chen (USA) - 22.475
5 - Rizzo (ITA) - 21.683
6 - Cha (KOR) - 21.664
7 - Han (CHN) - 21.496
8 - Kolyada (OAR) - 20.732
9 - Fentz (GER) - 18.491
10 - Besseghier (FRA) - 17.024
If I set it at 1.05 multiple for everyone in the SP and 1.025 for dance, mostly because I liked what kind of output what require the scores (again, the actually multipliers on WR scores aren’t important here).
Then the total team points after the SP would look like:
Mens+Ladies+Pairs+Dance
OAR: 20.732+31.511+30.215+29.110 = 111.568
CAN: 22.768+27.748+28.590+32.194 = 111.300
USA: 22.475+26.800+26.044+29.383 = 104.702
ITA: 21.683+29.194+25.248+28.234 = 104.359
JPN: 28.787+26.804+21.440+24.200 = 101.231
CHN: 21.496+22.788+25.827+22.187 = 92.298
GER: 18.491+21.505+28.138+22.148 = 90.282
KOR: 21.664+25.552+19.343+20.236 = 86.795
FRA: 17.024+18.123+25.573+22.561 = 83.281
ISR: 24.672+17.999+20.338+17.370 = 80.379
With these point differentials, no way would’ve OAR used Z/E because they would’ve known they were in a really solid spot to win. And justly so - Osmond was blah and Chan shouldn’t have been far ahead of Kolyada in points. We would’ve gotten a better event. Also, as you can see by the chart, China could’ve been in the chase for Bronze if you look at what numbers Boyang Jin and Sui/Han could’ve delivered. This isn’t possible in the current system of placements. I also think this would give China and Japan incentives to develop their programs since even if they had serviceable dance teams they could make a run for the Bronze. Right now, if they have a 9th placer - it’s done. But if they had a closer finishing 9th placer - now they are in the run. Italy would’ve also been much closer and rather than having an outside shot, would’ve have a very solid shot if Kostner had delivered and Rizzo had done somewhat better.
The main objection I would see if that this scoring would "confuse" the viewers - but I think it's simple to explain. The commentators would just say "Judges determine a score that constitutes a 33, and then the skater's scores are scaled relative to that." Simple enough. Plus, none of the casual viewers understand the scoring at all anyway, so who cares, we can just make it as complicated as we want now.
I think the team event has problems and is totally goofy. I suspect a lot of us will agree with all or some of these:
1 - The placements are dumb. This isn’t how this sport functions anymore. The fact Zagitova substantially outperformed her competitors should be worth more than 1 or 2 points in the placement standings. Similarly, it doesn’t make sense to punish Russia so much for Kolyada vs Chen when their SP scores only differed by ~6.5 points and both were just utter messes (btw I’m not talking about whether these scores differences were justified - in this thread I’m taking the judging as given).If we are measuring *overall* performance, which is how I and most understand a "team event," then these differences should matter for results.
2 - Because placements only matter, sometimes teams aren’t putting in their best people because they know they are mostly placeholders. We want the best at this event.
3 - Japan and China have almost zero incentive to seriously participate in this. Because they know they couldn’t make a run for Bronze outside of a small chance because of their dance (both) and ladies (china) or pairs (japan). But if Jin and Sui/Han could put up big scores in the LP over their competitors, they deserve that chance at Bronze if their ladies or dance even did serviceable especially if the other teams had big mistakes. In fact, if we could solve this problem - it *might* encourage Japan or China to push for a better dance or ladies or pairs program because if they just improved slightly they’d have a shot at the team medal.
4 - We get the sense that someone like Kolyada didn’t “deserve” his medal because he skated so poorly. That's because he’s just a place holder without much impact on the team.
5 - The SP should be worth less to the team than the LP because the LP should always matter more.
My proposed solution is make the difference in scores in each event count towards the final result. In other words, the fact Shoma did so much better than Chan, the team should get points based on that difference in performance and it should be proportional to the amount of difference in performance.
It solves some of these issues because the gap in scores matters now, which solves (1) - we are now measuring overall team quality. Because the gap in scores matter - rather than just placements - China and Japan could potentially close them if their big names could pull big scores, which resolves (2). And it resolves (3) because now a 5th place finisher in the LP would not just automatically get 5 points, but if he did good enough and came close, it could substantially affect the final result. (4) is resolved somewhat because nobody is just a place holder - your performance might be decisive.
The straightforward answer is just add up the points the skaters get in the TSS. But this doesn’t work mainly because the scorings are totally different - men’s can put up huge numbers compared to women or pairs, and we don’t want it to be this unbalanced, ideally we are measuring the quality of a team so we should want each discipline to contribute equally. We could just switch to a general impression score like snowboarding (scoring everyone out of 100 points) - but that's too weird to do for just one event, so I half-assed a solution.
In order for each discipline to contribute equally - we should set some nearly maximum score that any skater or couple can obtain and assign it a value (I propose 33 for the SP, and 67 in the LP because it roughly mimics the old 6.0 % valuations) and then scale the TSS scores accordingly. I set it at 100 because then, if completely perfect, a team could score a “perfect” 400 (100 in each discipline). The nearly maximum score should be something *highly unlikely* to occur but not outside of the realm of possibility. (I wouldn’t prohibit going above 33, just make it so this will basically not happen unless we get something so phenomenally special).
To illustrate, suppose we were to designate that a 33 is 5% higher than the current World Record in men’s i.e.
112.72*1.05 =~ 118.36
To give you an idea what this skate would be, it would be if Hanyu at his best were to perform a 4Lz and a 4F+3T. Very unlikely, but not unfathomable.
What the “ideal” score of 33 would be is something the judges would decide in advance by the standard of extremely unlikely - but not unfathomable.
Then we scale the scores, so Shoma Uno earned 103.25. So the number of points he would get for this team would be (103.25/118.36)*33 = 28.787.
The entire Men’s points table would look like:
Men’s SP:
1 - Uno (JPN) - 28.787
2 - Bychenko (ISR) - 24.672
3 - Chan (CAN) - 22.768
4 - Chen (USA) - 22.475
5 - Rizzo (ITA) - 21.683
6 - Cha (KOR) - 21.664
7 - Han (CHN) - 21.496
8 - Kolyada (OAR) - 20.732
9 - Fentz (GER) - 18.491
10 - Besseghier (FRA) - 17.024
If I set it at 1.05 multiple for everyone in the SP and 1.025 for dance, mostly because I liked what kind of output what require the scores (again, the actually multipliers on WR scores aren’t important here).
Then the total team points after the SP would look like:
Mens+Ladies+Pairs+Dance
OAR: 20.732+31.511+30.215+29.110 = 111.568
CAN: 22.768+27.748+28.590+32.194 = 111.300
USA: 22.475+26.800+26.044+29.383 = 104.702
ITA: 21.683+29.194+25.248+28.234 = 104.359
JPN: 28.787+26.804+21.440+24.200 = 101.231
CHN: 21.496+22.788+25.827+22.187 = 92.298
GER: 18.491+21.505+28.138+22.148 = 90.282
KOR: 21.664+25.552+19.343+20.236 = 86.795
FRA: 17.024+18.123+25.573+22.561 = 83.281
ISR: 24.672+17.999+20.338+17.370 = 80.379
With these point differentials, no way would’ve OAR used Z/E because they would’ve known they were in a really solid spot to win. And justly so - Osmond was blah and Chan shouldn’t have been far ahead of Kolyada in points. We would’ve gotten a better event. Also, as you can see by the chart, China could’ve been in the chase for Bronze if you look at what numbers Boyang Jin and Sui/Han could’ve delivered. This isn’t possible in the current system of placements. I also think this would give China and Japan incentives to develop their programs since even if they had serviceable dance teams they could make a run for the Bronze. Right now, if they have a 9th placer - it’s done. But if they had a closer finishing 9th placer - now they are in the run. Italy would’ve also been much closer and rather than having an outside shot, would’ve have a very solid shot if Kostner had delivered and Rizzo had done somewhat better.
The main objection I would see if that this scoring would "confuse" the viewers - but I think it's simple to explain. The commentators would just say "Judges determine a score that constitutes a 33, and then the skater's scores are scaled relative to that." Simple enough. Plus, none of the casual viewers understand the scoring at all anyway, so who cares, we can just make it as complicated as we want now.
skating is not a team sport anyway, except synchronized skating
