1. Balance and rhymic knee action and precision of foot placement.
No. l alludes to skating directly to the music?
Not necessarily, although stroking in time with the music should be rewarded somewhat here.
Basically it's how steady are the skaters on their feet and over their edges, how neatly do they do steps like mohawks and choctaws, etc.
For rhythmic knee action, watch the very beginning of the warmup, before the skaters start practicing tricks and are just stroking around and when there is no music (or at least no program music) being played.
The freestyle skaters who are particularly good in this area will have will be more even over both feet and will bend their knees more evenly and smoothly than the skaters who are not so good at this. But the dancers tend to be very good at this. If you just watch the stroking at the beginning of a dance warmup even at not quite the elite levels you should see some good examples of rhythmic knee action independent of music.
Dancers also tend to be a lot neater on average than freestylers in their foot placement.
2. Flow and effortless glide.
No. 2 alludes to skating with a variety of good stroking?
Yeah. Do they seem to accelerate effortlessly and fluidly, or does the stroking seem choppy or effortful? Do the turns blend in fluidly with the rest of the skating, or do they slow down, scratch or scrape, etc.
3. Cleanness and sureness of deep edges, steps and turns.
No. 3 alludes to wrong edge take-offs, spin travelling and tripping on footwork?
Definitely yes on the footwork, and also spirals and other gliding moves -- both in the step sequences and spiral sequences, and also in every step, turn, and edge between the elements. Not only whether or not the skater trips, but also how securely s/he holds the edges, and how deep the edges are.
Scrapy turns or changing edge before or after counters, rockers, brackets, or choctaws so that they essentially turn into threes or mohawks would also be penalized here.
Maybe some consideration for takeoff and landing edges, but those would primarily be covered in the GOEs for the jumps -- this component is really more about the actual skating than about the jumps and spins.
4. Power/energy and acceleration.
No. 4 alludes to fatigue and controlled speed?
Yeah. Mainly to technique in generating speed, what part of the blade the skater pushes from and what part s/he glides on. Fatigue might cause the technique as well as the energy to deteriorate, which would lead to less power and acceleration.
5. Mastery of multidirectional skating.
No. 5 alludes to varied choreography covering the whole ice?
That would be part of it. Mainly: does the skater stroke in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions and perform turns in both directions?
6. Mastery of one-foot skating.
No. 6 alludes to what? a one foot spin? A long pause entry into a jump?
Again, the components are less about the elements than the in-betweens.
How much time does the skater spend gliding (or turning) on two feet? Not spread eagles/Ina Bauers, but just the basic skating. If there's a lot of time with both feet on the ice, that would be penalized here. On the other hand, if the skater can stay on one foot for a long time, generating power through edge pulls and turns, and turning several times, even in both directions, that would be rewarded here.
To judge these items would take more than a few minutes of time allotted to the judges. It is probably judged by the standards of the 6.0 system for 'whole package', and grades are just spread out before times up.
Well, the judges are taking note of these all the way through the program (in their heads, and often on paper). They also did under 6.0. The standards for what's considered good skating skills haven't changed, only the process of assigning the scores.
