Kim doesn't deserve a lot of the GOE that she has historically gotten on her jumps, and especially not on her spins or spirals.
Kim does 6 crossovers into her opening combo, and after the crossovers she does a back edge pull and then some back cross strokes. That's all. There is literally no transitions/clear steps going in and out of that combo, no delay in rotations, no variation in position (Rip Lutz, Tano Lutz). That combo should get +2 GOE Max. The fact that she skates around in predominately one direction doing crossovers for a fair bit of the program should impact her TR and SS PCS scores. A less-reputable skater who skated Kim's program exactly as she skated it would struggle to break 8s for SS and TR with the way that program is structured, and getting 6 Bullets for a +3 on that combo clearly shows the judges are frequently willing to forego the criteria and simply smash "+3" simply because she did a decent combination. There are clear criteria for awarding GOE to jumps, and a lot of her jumps simply aren't meeting enough of the criteria to get a +3 yet the judges have continued to throw them at her... There is no explanation for this other than: Reputation.
Adelina does 2-3 crossovers and transitions/choreo straight into her opening 3-3, with basically no hesitation.
On Kim's triple flip, she does some crossovers, and then a Mohawk (one of the easiest transitions), steps forwards and glides into a hugely telegraphed triple flip. Again, it's simply criminal to give that +3 GOE if you're going by the criteria. Kim also telegraphs the crap out of her 3F in the SP, which makes me wonder why she gets such high GOE when she has no clear steps directly preceeding the jump, which the requirements call for...
Adelina does Mohawk-Choctaw-Counter straight into her triple flip with barely any hesitation. Before going into it, she skates (with transitions and choreo) in both directions. She also does choreo out of the jump, which counts as a transition.
That's how Sotnikova's program works the system - you can see this throughout the program. Look at the skating into, out of, and between the elements. Kim's GOEs have historically been inflated, but people never really questioned it because she's always stood up on her programs or had such huge leads going into the FS that it didn't even matter - that, or her competitors faltered. Additionally, she's a veteran and she's been getting this type of PCS for a while and she has been smart about only showing up when she was ready to the few major competitions she's competed in in the past few years, so there is not much variation in her performances... Her PCS skyrocketed quite a bit leading up to Vancouver and ever since then the judges have been unwilling to score her programs based on how they were structured and skated, because they simply carried forward the status quo. Her program from 2013 Worlds was magical, but her protocol was a joke.
These programs were not on the same level as her 2013 or 2010 programs. There is a clear difference between even her 2009 Worlds FS and this one. She had two times as many transitions in that program, way more choreo and expression. It isn't even comparable. These programs were "easy skates" for Yuna Kim, and she probably needed them to be easy because she wasn't competing that much and probably does not have the same level of stamina that she had back then.
These YNK programs were cleverly designed to coast to an easy gold on her reputation with as little technical content as possible to win and some of the easiest in-between skating of the competition in the top 12-14 skaters. They were designed to maximize her chances of going clean and bank on her reputation.
The question should not be why Sotnikova is suddenly getting massive PCS.
The question should be why skaters with well-balanced IJS programs are struggling to get high PCS while veterans that take coffee breaks or speed skate through their programs are awarded ridiculous marks. This has always been a problem with the "second mark" in skating. In 6.0 as well as in IJS, and in both cases the only way for an upstart skater to win was for the judges to suddenly inflate their second mark past what they were "allowed" to obtain previous to give them the win.
People on this thread are seriously expecting Sotnikova to get PCS at the level of Miki Ando when she won her last world title, which is a laughing stock.
