Men's PCS pre 4CC 2017

[TGee]

How does the judge selection for GPs work? Can host federations invite whatever ISU-level judges they want? Or can they invite judges from any of the federations whose skaters will be competing at the event -- so there might be some strategy in deciding to invite, e.g., an Australian vs. a Swedish skater to compete?

The way the ISU rules are written it sounds as though the host country picks the judges using a process agreed with by the ISU.

7.3
Panel of JudgesThe panel of Judges in each individual event of the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating will consist of 9 Judgesof different ISU Members in each discipline if possible, but not less than 7 Judges. Only International or ISUJudges are eligible to serve in the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating events. Each Judge may participate inno more than two ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating events plus the ISU Grand Prix of Skating Final.The Organizing ISU Members will invite the Judges based on a procedure agreed with the ISU.


http://static.isu.org/media/351567/gp-general-announcement-2016_17-final.pdf

 

[gkelly]

Thanks for finding the rule.

So we don't know just what that procedure agreed with the ISU consists of.

 

[TGee]

Thanks for finding the rule.

So we don't know just what that procedure agreed with the ISU consists of.

And it can vary by host country if I'm reading it right...

 

[tureis]

True about the large pool of European countries and their potential "overrepresentation" on a judging panel, but here's the thing: the only way for fair representation of all ISU member nations is if they all get equal opportunity to be drawn onto a panel, regardless of size. Which in some cases may mean 5 small countries representing Europe, and 2-2 huge ones representing all of America and Asia.

However, size of the country in the figure skating world tends to also coincide with the perception/influence of the federation, and an up-and-coming US, Canadian or Japanese skater is likely to have an easier time getting slots on the GP circuit, or grabbing the judges' attention just through the flag next to their name, than say a skater from Lithuania, Hungary or Liechtenstein. (I've heard stories about how great some large federations are at lobbying for their skaters, as opposed to the dismal job the Hungarian federation has done in the past for example.)

So whatever a European skater "wins" on a judging panel where the majority of judges may share similar perspective inherent in common geocultural values, may be "lost" on the other end by simply not being taken seriously.

That excludes Russia of course, but let's face it, with its heritage, importance and sheer size of the skating community, Russia is pretty much its own separate continent in figure skating.

Also let's not forget that there are huuuuuuuge cultural differences inside Europe too: just to bring up the most basic north vs. south, west vs. east, so a particular judge being "from Europe" may not mean all that much.

 

[Ares]

Without making any inferences about bias or 'inflation', I have wondered how much national and regional ideas about what are good skating skills, interpretation or performance impact PCS. And I think the same thing comes into play on TES.

The thing is that the ISU regs and SoV are a global consensus about what is excellent or poor. Coming together to define a consensus scoring system doesn't erase those differences. So it makes sense that the judging panels are multinational.

The question is whether they are sufficiently multiregional to avoid the situation wherein 5 or so judges come from a single regional perspective. This was one of the critiques of some of the panels at Sochi. And it can happen when several small European countries are on a panel.

North America definitely has a different perspective on many PCS and technical points, but Canada and the US are just two countries and have relatively small weight on the board. [Recognize that Mexico is in NA, but not ready to say that it shares perspectives of Canada and the US]. Likewise, not sure that Japan and China's importance in the Asian perspective is adequately captured in the typical panel.

I suspect that for the GPs Canada, US, China and Japan select judges from other countries that they believe share their view on key judging issues, but still wonder about how representative judging panels are of the global consensus on average.

Well that Sochi controversy opened that Pandora's box for good, whether we like it or not. Sochi ladies events still looked rigged to many (including me), actually its screams rigged to anyone who's sane. That Olympic Gold from Adelina will forever have asterisk to it.

http://www.crushable.com/2014/02/24...-scandal-olympics-controversy-evidence-proof/

A +3 Grade Of Execution (GOE) means that the element being graded (like a spin or jump) has been ‘done to perfection’. Even with the wobble displayed in the GIF above, Adelina received 33 +3 GOEs. And although she didn’t make the podium, fellow Russian Yulia was given 27.
In contrast, Yuna had only 13, Carolina had 12, and Mao Asada of Japan and Gracie Gold of the United States had 6 each. So, as The Atlantic Wire points out, 61% of the +3 GOEs given out to the top six women were split between the skaters in first and sixth place, both of whom are Russian, while the remaining 38% was split between the other four skaters, none of whom were Russian. (And no, I don’t know where the final 1% goes in that equation.)
A month ago at the European Championships, Yulia pulled in only 20 +3s on a similar routine, while Adelina had only 13.
When you look at the Olympic scorecards, two judges scored the Russian skaters much higher than any of the others, giving out +3s on elements that other judges scored at 0.
Anonymity prevents us from knowing whom it was, but one judge also rated Yuna Kim’s artistic elements very low, sometimes four points lower than the other judges.
Up to four judges were allegedly in on it — Russia, Estonia, Ukraine, and Slovakia. With that many judges working together, they can get around the skating practice of throwing out the lowest and highest scores from each judge.
The man in charge of making sure no one cheated is the vice president of the Russian Skating Federation. Which is unfortunate because…


Read more: http://www.crushable.com/2014/02/24...ics-controversy-evidence-proof/#ixzz4YgtmMQu1

 

[TGee]

Uhm, this is a men's PCS thread.....

Thought some discussion of how the regional balance of representation on judging panels could impact scoring was on topic, given eppen's analysis. And my point, and gkelly's, is that we don't need to look to or make accusations of corruption, bias, or "inflation" to explain how differences in regional perspectives can impact outcomes.

I mentioned Sochi in this vein. It wasn't intended to move the thread to a revisiting of all the painful discussions around that event. If it can't be raised neutrally, I guess I shouldn't have done so.

What I was trying to say was that some fairly neutral critics raised the concern that a large portion of the judges were from post-USSR countries. These countries share a skating tradition that comes from what used to be a single federation. While they have gone their separate ways, in many cases the skating networks and views about what is good skating remain close. And with a good portion of the panel having a common view on how to interpret IJS, that is likely to have a significant impact on how that event, or any other would be judged. And I'd better sign off on Sochi with that....

 

[karne]

I mentioned Sochi in this vein. It wasn't intended to move the thread to a revisiting of all the painful discussions around that event. If it can't be raised neutrally, I guess I shouldn't have done so.

I can't believe that you got to 1300 posts here without realising that Sochi can NEVER be brought up neutrally.


And for those who doubt it, little country PCS is absolutely a thing. Remember Julian Yee at Boston Worlds? Or Brendan, who should have been way more than four points ahead of Kovtun after the SkAm SP this season? Or Brooklee, who completely outshone Mirai in every facet at the SkAm SP a couple of years ago and ended up behind her because, you guessed it...?

 

[gkelly]

However, size of the country in the figure skating world tends to also coincide with the perception/influence of the federation, and an up-and-coming US, Canadian or Japanese skater is likely to have an easier time getting slots on the GP circuit,

It is much easier for US, Canadian, and Japanese skaters, and also French, Russian, and Chinese skaters, to get slots on the GP circuit because of host picks. Skaters from all other countries are at a disadvantage in that respect compared with skaters from the GP host federations.

Also let's not forget that there are huuuuuuuge cultural differences inside Europe too: just to bring up the most basic north vs. south, west vs. east, so a particular judge being "from Europe" may not mean all that much.

True. And there are also historical rivalries between neighboring countries that might or might not outweigh any regional solidarity when it comes to a judge evaluating a skater who represents a nearby rival country.

One advantage that European skaters might have with European judges is that those judges are more likely to have seen them come up through the ranks on the junior circuit or lower-level internationals within Europe, at senior B events, with low placements at their first European championships, etc., before they get good enough to contend for top medals. So there could be an unconscious pride or other positive feeling from, say, a French judge evaluating a Italian skater they had first judged as a novice at a competition in Croatia.

The same would be true for a Russian or Japanese or US or Canadian judge judging a Russian or Japanese or US or Canadian skater they had been following since childhood. But there are more likely to be cross-border histories of that kind within Europe than in countries with larger distances. You might get some of that effect from Quebec and Ontario judges having judged upstate New York or Michigan skaters at club competitions or vice versa, Washington State judges with British Columbia skaters, etc.

From men's PCS to ladies GOEs...

Well that Sochi controversy opened that Pandora's box for good, whether we like it or not. Sochi ladies events still looked rigged to many (including me),

Fair enough -- that's how you see it.

actually its screams rigged to anyone who's sane.

That's overstating your case. My first thought when watching on TV and reading no other reactions was not outrage but "The right skaters ended up on the podium. The order is debatable." Are you calling me insane?

http://www.crushable.com/2014/02/24...-scandal-olympics-controversy-evidence-proof/

A +3 Grade Of Execution (GOE) means that the element being graded (like a spin or jump) has been ‘done to perfection’. Even with the wobble displayed in the GIF above, Adelina received 33 +3 GOEs.

That is an extremely misleading statement.

In the first place, there is nothing in the rules that requires a +3 element to be "done to perfection."

The verbatim rules on positive GOE:

These guidelines are tools to be used together with the minus GOE charts. The final GOE of a performed element is based on the combination of both positive and negative aspects. It is important that the final GOE of an element reflects the positive aspects, as well as any possible reductions that may apply.

The final GOE of an element is calculated considering first the positive aspects of the element that result in a starting GOE for the evaluation. Following that a Judge reduces the GOE according to the guidelines of possible errors and the result is the final GOE of the element.

To establish the starting GOE Judges must take into consideration the bullets for each element. It is at the discretion of each Judge to decide on the number of bullets for any upgrade, but general recommendations are as follows:

FOR + 1 : 2 bullets FOR + 2 : 4 bullets FOR + 3 : 6 or more bullets

http://usfigureskating.org/content/2016-17 SP GOE Guidelines.pdf

As long as the element meets 6 positive bullet points with no negative ones in any judge's estimation, it would be eligible for +3 GOE from that judge. It doesn't have to be "perfect," whatever that means.

In the second place, each element is graded on execution separately. It's entirely possible to earn -3 on one element and +3 on the next -- serious errors on one element do not affect the scores for subsequent (or previous) elements.

The GIF of the flawed end of Sotnikova's combination (without including the beginning of the element), combined with the statement "Even with the wobble displayed in the GIF above, Adelina received 33 +3 GOEs" makes it sound as though she received +3s for that element, which would indeed have been egregious. But she didn't -- that combo received all -1s and -2s.

Whatever other valid points the author of that article might have made, the clear intent here to mislead readers makes it hard to take her seriously as an objective analyst.

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

A +3 Grade Of Execution (GOE) means that the element being graded (like a spin or jump) has been ‘done to perfection’. Even with the wobble displayed in the GIF above, Adelina received 33 +3 GOEs. And although she didn’t make the podium, fellow Russian Yulia was given 27.
In contrast, Yuna had only 13, Carolina had 12, and Mao Asada of Japan and Gracie Gold of the United States had 6 each. So, as The Atlantic Wire points out, 61% of the +3 GOEs given out to the top six women were split between the skaters in first and sixth place, both of whom are Russian, while the remaining 38% was split between the other four skaters, none of whom were Russian. (And no, I don’t know where the final 1% goes in that equation.)

To be fair, only 4 of Yulia's +3 scores were on jumps; well over half of those were for spins. Similarly, more than half of Adelina's were for non-jump elements. Since they were the two best spinners among the top women, and spin GOE is awarded more liberally than on the jumps, it kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

 

[SnowWhite]

Without making any inferences about bias or 'inflation', I have wondered how much national and regional ideas about what are good skating skills, interpretation or performance impact PCS. And I think the same thing comes into play on TES.

The thing is that the ISU regs and SoV are a global consensus about what is excellent or poor. Coming together to define a consensus scoring system doesn't erase those differences. So it makes sense that the judging panels are multinational.

The question is whether they are sufficiently multiregional to avoid the situation wherein 5 or so judges come from a single regional perspective. This was one of the critiques of some of the panels at Sochi. And it can happen when several small European countries are on a panel.

North America definitely has a different perspective on many PCS and technical points, but Canada and the US are just two countries and have relatively small weight on the board. [Recognize that Mexico is in NA, but not ready to say that it shares perspectives of Canada and the US]. Likewise, not sure that Japan and China's importance in the Asian perspective is adequately captured in the typical panel.

I suspect that for the GPs Canada, US, China and Japan select judges from other countries that they believe share their view on key judging issues, but still wonder about how representative judging panels are of the global consensus on average.

This. I read so much about how the judging is ridiculous and unfair and intentionally cheated or whatever from fans, and while it's not like I think that there are no politics or anything in figure skating (obviously there are), I also don't think that it's anything like it was, say at the 2002 Olympics. I've always felt like a lot of it can be explained by less "evil" factors. People are biased. That's how humans are. We aren't necessarily biased on purpose. People have individual preferences and different countries view things in different ways. I'm not saying that judges never bump up a skater from their country or bump down a rival, but it's very plausible that a lot of it is less of a conscience plan/decision than that.

Same thing with tech panels. You're naturally going to look closer at the jumps of a skater with a rep for URs than one who tends to be clean. And even more than just when to review, if the call is on the edge, consciously or subconsciously, you're more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to a skater who tends to fully rotate. Not claiming that's fair, and I'm no judge, so I don't know anything for certain, but it would make sense to me if that happened. And I can accept that some of that is hard to avoid in a judged sport, even if I don't always like it.

A skater being seen as number one can obviously positively influence their scores too, but that doesn't mean the judge is thinking, "Oh this is the number skater/team from [insert big fed here], so I can't go too low". They could be, but it could also be something in the back of their mind that influences them subconsciously. I don't think the judging is perfect by any means, but I also don't jump to thinking something's fixed just because I disagree with a score. Even in hockey, referees can make really bad calls (and I don't just mean missing things, but also maybe being less likely to call a penalty on a star player who has no rep for being dirty or being a bit intimidated by the leagues best coach, for example) sometimes that influence the outcome of a game, which is unfortunate, but not exactly preventable.

 

[OS]

Stats should not be observed in isolation but in relativity. Who else participated at the event and how they were relatively marked, where is the competition, makeup the judging panel then, how they actually have skated to how they are marked, as well as ANY historical anomalies.

Speaking of Sochi, put it this way. In an effort ISU tries to justify such incredulous judging anomalies and ensures Russian ladies dominance to the next Olympics, consider the changed scoring trends today relative to pre-Sochi.

PCS does not need to be built organically or marked within a narrow corridor, unlike previous eras through hard work and steady earning stripes (medals over years). Russian youngsters and Satoko all benefitted from this.

It has become accepted NORM that momentum can be gained much easier through friendly competitions hence benefit power federations with GP series + Euros (+ EuroBs).

It is now accepted as NORM that scoring can fluctuate greatly from start of the season to the nationals, once power federations work out which youngster manage to survive puberty/injuries/bad publicities/:disagree:TSL etc..

Skating order matters more than ever before. The fact PCS inflation can fluctuate from begin of the season to the end for a promising youngster can be a huge disadvantage to skaters who earned PCS the 'old fashioned way' with the old benchmarks, as there is literally no room to compete, it deters comebacks.

PCS is more puzzling than ever, concerning choreography, performance and interpretation marks, even on occasion Skating Skills. To get the best scores ever, you don't need a particularly good program, great interpretation nor hardest jumps, nor quality of jumps. The distance between the PCS has also become meaningless when it is like of 0.2 or 0.3 difference and hence completely out of wack. but ISU doesn't seem to care, either because of complacency or just because it happen to suit ISU heads (including Lakernik, VP of Russian federation) that manage the sport. Poor artistic men, your efforts are wasted unfortunately as you happen to be in an era they desperately want to keep a Russia young lady for 2018. On the other hand, the power federation youngsters like Nathen Chen may benefit a great deal from this trend.

Consider this also. Despite BOTH WC 2014 and 2015 events took place in Asia, (Mao is to skate in Japan), here were the judging panels for the ladies events...

http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2014/SEG003OF.HTM
http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2014/SEG004OF.HTM
http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2015/SEG004OF.HTM
http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2015/SEG003OF.HTM

Nationality of the judges http://static.isu.org/media/105974/1756-list-officials-fs-id-sys-2012-2013.pdf

Not a single judge from Asia, and only the odd 1 from N.America. It was an unfortunate anomaly first time, it became a pattern the 2nd time.
Kostner's placement 2014 despite a terrible FS benefitted from the slanted panel.

Mao has always been one of the biggest threat to the podium so she was contained. Coincidence Shin Amano seems always get assigned to her competitions and was also the tech specialist at WC2015 after she came off as the reigning 2014 WC then?

What does this mean for the men? The judging panel makeup should be interesting. I expect Boyang's PCS will be suppressed to make room for their own skaters, while we will see a hike in Nathen as US#1 with miraculous feat, but the biggest hike will be reserved for Javier if he deliver, maybe even 10s (They run out of room) Poor Chan, he should have the highest PCS of all, but alas.. The 0.1/0.2 difference is not enough to compete these days. Wholly underated consider the amount of effort to realised a truly detailed nuanced thoughtful gimmick free quality FS program.

 

[narcissa]

That's overstating your case. My first thought when watching on TV and reading no other reactions was not outrage but "The right skaters ended up on the podium. The order is debatable." Are you calling me insane?

Hmm I knew absolutely nothing about figure skating during Sochi, and I was certain it would be a controversy as soon as it ended. I didn't even know enough about the scoring to know that Adelina's 149+ was a huge score. To be fair, I also didn't know that Adelina did one more triple. But I thought the order didn't seem right to me. But your opinion is fair too.

The GIF of the flawed end of Sotnikova's combination (without including the beginning of the element), combined with the statement "Even with the wobble displayed in the GIF above, Adelina received 33 +3 GOEs" makes it sound as though she received +3s for that element, which would indeed have been egregious. But she didn't -- that combo received all -1s and -2s.

Shouldn't a step-out be mostly -2's? So -1's are pretty generous.

 

[gkelly]

Hmm I knew absolutely nothing about figure skating during Sochi, and I was certain it would be a controversy as soon as it ended. I didn't even know enough about the scoring to know that Adelina's 149+ was a huge score. To be fair, I also didn't know that Adelina did one more triple.

My first thought was that I preferred Yuna's performance. But a quick glance at my notes showed that Adelina had done an additional triple and I figured that made the difference. Plus we didn't know the spin and step sequence levels right away, which I knew could also make a difference.

Shouldn't a step-out be mostly -2's? So -1's are pretty generous.

The step out itself should be a -2 reduction. But judges are supposed to reward for the good qualities of an element first and then take the reductions. In this case, the triple flip at the beginning of the combination (which was not included in the GIF in that anti-Adelina article) was very good, and the double toe was fine, so the GOE could easily have been on the positive side before reduction for the mistake on the double loop.

 

[Mathman]

The US judges failed to support their own, but managed also to dislike everyone else in the process.

USA judges, equal opportunity curmudgeons.

 

[eppen]

Rigging a judging panel looks like a hard job to me - in major competitions, they perform a draw between the ISU member countries who have entered judge(s) for the draw and 13 countries get drawn. All 13 judges should come to the comp and the final 9 are drawn 45 minutes before the competition starts. Only members who have had a skater in the comp previous year who has finished one part of the comp can participate.

Eg for Helsinki, 26 countries participated in the draw and the obligatory 13 countries got drawn for each discipline. Based on that list, in the men's comp any one of the 5 non-European judges (AUS, CAN, CHN, KOR, UZB) and 8 European judges (BEL, GBR, GER, ITA, ISR, RUS, ESP, UKR) can be in the final panel. The same has happened for each major championship in the past years and the process is explained and verified in the ISU official communications online, such as this one:
http://static.isu.org/media/1145/2048-judges-draw-by-number-championships-2017-rev.pdf

So you cannot know which judges will be there until very late in the process and unless a huge amount of deals between federations have been made earlier, it will be quite difficult to get the panel you wish to have to support your skater. The sheer number of individual scores given (13 GOE and 5 PCS) makes it very hard to control what the outcome is for each element and each PCS score and the trimmed mean takes care of excesses in both directions for each score. When the result can be decided by 0.01 difference in the total score, every little bit counts of course, but it also means that it is extremely difficult to make sure what the result is without very high level of block-voting. Plus this does not even enter the whole discussion of what individuals can and will do, how they choose to support or oppose whatever gets said to them by their federation/ISU or whatever instance wishing to rig a competition.

Also, the discussion on "Europe" makes it also sound like it is a unified block, but as has already been (a little timidly) pointed out "Europe" consists of quite a few different nations and it is not in any way guaranteed that, say, a Western European judge will favor a Western European skater. Eg in the GP example I presented above, Javi actually got quite consistently lower PCS scores from the Western Europeans than from the Eastern European judges). Equally, "Asia" is not a unified judging block. Or even just the two countries usually representing "North America"...

(I really have no great wish to participate in the Sochi debate, but the FS panel featured 4 Russian/Eastern European judges (RUS, EST, SLO, UKR) and 5 from Western Europe/Asia/North America (FRA, ITA, GER, JPN, CAN). The SP panel which judged the ladies in almost similar manner - the difference btw Kim and Sotnikova was even more marginal - was almost exclusive Western.)

And in the end, if the skater rigged to win a competition messes up one or both parts, nothing can really save him.

E

 

[Jaana]

(I really have no great wish to participate in the Sochi debate, but the FS panel featured 4 Russian/Eastern European judges (RUS, EST, SLO, UKR) and 5 from Western Europe/Asia/North America (FRA, ITA, GER, JPN, CAN). The SP panel which judged the ladies in almost similar manner - the difference btw Kim and Sotnikova was even more marginal - was almost exclusive Western.) E

Yes, but quite a lot Russian names in the whole judging panel of ladies freeskate:

http://www.isuresults.com/results/owg2014/SEG004OF.HTM

 

[eppen]

Jaana, the numbers for the FS panel were already in my post with countries: 4 Eastern Europe/Russia, 5 all others. So, assuming that there was an "Eastern block", they did not have a majority to make sure that the GOEs and PCS would reach the required levels, they would have needed at least 1-2 others. Plus the "western" SP panel of gave equal PCS scores to both Kim and Sotnikova in PCS indicating that also those judges thought they were equal. And in this world of ours, if 17 (one judge was in both panels) more or less agree on something, then they really must agree on it, or what?!

E

 

[shyne]

Yuzu's FS in SC this year is not that different from his FS at NHK and GPF. (At least not by 4-5 points on PCS)
The differences in PCS can only be explained by the location of the event and the host preference.

Jin, on the other hand, did so much better at COC than SA.
the "consistency" in PCS only reflects how Judges failed to recognize his growth and improvement.

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

Jaana, the numbers for the FS panel were already in my post with countries: 4 Eastern Europe/Russia, 5 all others. So, assuming that there was an "Eastern block", they did not have a majority to make sure that the GOEs and PCS would reach the required levels, they would have needed at least 1-2 others. Plus the "western" SP panel of gave equal PCS scores to both Kim and Sotnikova in PCS indicating that also those judges thought they were equal. And in this world of ours, if 17 (one judge was in both panels) more or less agree on something, then they really must agree on it, or what?!

I agree. The SP and LP were scored almost identically by the judging panels, with the difference in the BV of the LPs accounting for 80%+ of the margin of victory.

 

[eppen]

Yuzu's FS in SC this year is not that different from his FS at NHK and GPF. (At least not by 4-5 points on PCS)
The differences in PCS can only be explained by the location of the event and the host preference.

Jin, on the other hand, did so much better at COC than SA.
the "consistency" in PCS only reflects how Judges failed to recognize his growth and improvement.

I tried, but could not get a very good idea of what the ISU procedures on how the judges are selected for the GP events are excatly, but the countries represented tend to be those participating in the competition. At least for last fall it was easy enough to verify. If there were not enough (9) countries among the skaters, additional countries were repped in the panel (1-3, ITA in SA, SC and NHK, SVK and AUT in NHK and JPN, NZL and POL in CoC) and vice versa, if there were more than 9 countries, one did not get a judge (AUS in Trophee de France).

So, in a way the host country influences the compostition of the panel because they have a lot to say on which skaters will be invited to their GP event, but because every nationality most times gets represented in the panel, it is again a bit hard to see how this could explain the differences in the PCS scores for one skater in different events. Unless you have a suggestion on how to analyze and verify that, shyne? Of course, there are more possibilities to make deals behind the scenes, but if you look at the analysis above, apart from trying to support your own and diss the opponent a bit, there are really no clear trends in pCS scoring for the top dogs.

Secondly, the ISU handbooks explicitly say that the judges should only judge what they see in that competition and not let past performances or reputation influence their judgement. That is probably quite difficult to do and to verify in any way... Jin has gotten about 2 points higher in PCS in the fall compared to Worlds last spring. We'll see soon enough whether the situation has changed since the fall! I do believe that if several panels of 9 persons - usually always different persons - give similar scores to a skater time after time, then there has to be some truth to the evaluation.

Just out of curiosity I looked at Hanuy's TES scores for the three GP perfromances and SC and GFP were quite similar: low BV for his standard (85 and 88 respectively) with GOEs about 10 and 8 respectively. The difference in PCS is fairly large, though: 88.12 to 92.36... At NHK he got 94 BV and ca. 12 points in GOE and 92.52 in PCS. In the Worlds in the spring, his results were similar or even slightly poorer to GPF final in numbers. The 88.12 was definitely a dip in his PCS, but difficult to explain with just poor technical performance which tends to lower the PCS a point or two. My purely amateur personal feel based on TV for the SC performance was that Hanyu was merely executing the moves (more or less) and not really doing much of a presentation/interpretation. Since then, the performance side has been much better, again IMHO.

E