GPF Commentary by Sonia Bianchetti

[Mathman]

I think I'm the only one who cares. Posters seem to want to see only the best and do not care about others or the legitimacy of the sport.

I think lots of people care, Joe.

Sometimes when questions like this come up, a poster (I know I am guilty of this) will say something like, "Well, the reason the ISU does it this way is because..." This gives the impression that the poster supports the ISU position.

But most of the time such posts are just trying to understand the ISU's rationale, not necessarily agreeing with it.

This third event option in pairs is bad from the point of view of sportsmanship. It would be better for the ISU to relax the requirements about being high up on the ISU ranking list, or else allow the host country to fill extra spots with their up-and-comers.

 

[gsrossano]

ACTUALLY, the quote is:

Fill in the next few paragraphs here.

Her point in that part of the piece is that are far fewer clean programs now from the top skaters than there were in the past, and that who wins any given competition now depends in larger part than before on the luck of who has a good day and who has a bad day at that competition. Obviously she thinks this is a bad thing, and blames IJS for it. She is not the first to express this view, and she will not be the last.

It is my impression (having annotated the content of every performance at every major competition I have attended for the last 20 years) that the fraction of clean programs (and clean jumps in particular) has declined under IJS. Whether the impact this has on the consistency of results is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of opinion. I think you are bending the quote to have a reason to bash Sonia just for the sake of bashing her.

If you disagree with her opinion that the current volatility of results is bad, fine. If you disagree with Jack's analysis do your own. (Or somebody send a few hundred dollars to my pay-pal account and I will put one of my analysts to work determining if the fraction of jumps with errors is really different today -- 54% according to Jack Curtis -- than in the past.) IMO programs are less clean than before, but I do like the fact that if someone messes up, the price they pay for it is more obvious.

In doing so, they prevented lesser Pairs from earning a medal. IMO, not nice! Skaters work hard all year and whatever their level of skating is they should be able to compete for medals and not prevented from receiving one.

I would agree that given the choice between having a top team do three competitions or having other teams take those spots and have a chance to compete, I would go with give other teams a chance. The problem is there really aren't other teams to choose from. This year was particularly bad for finding enough teams to assign to any one Grand Prix competition to have a decent pairs event. In fact, the ISU is looking at eliminating pairs at some of the GP events to make larger events at the competitions that might still hold pairs. Say, eliminate pairs at two competitions, so the other four will have bigger events.

The other problem with pairs now is that not only has the number of pairs declined, but the number of countries with teams has declined. This is a major concern at the ISU.

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

I think lots of people care, Joe.

Sometimes when questions like this come up, a poster (I know I am guilty of this) will say something like, "Well, the reason the ISU does it this way is because..." This gives the impression that the poster supports the ISU position.

But most of the time such posts are just trying to understand the ISU's rationale, not necessarily agreeing with it.

This third event option in pairs is bad from the point of view of sportsmanship. It would be better for the ISU to relax the requirements about being high up on the ISU ranking list, or else allow the host country to fill extra spots with their up-and-comers.

Sorry MM, but the multititude of all posts are about the top tier skaters and their ability to win medals, especially gold. To have top tier Pairs teams allowed to have another go at it, albeit w/o points to qualify for the Final but able to win medals, is just not my way of sportsmanship. The rules said two skates to medal and qualify. The ISU overllooked its own rule and promoted unfair contests. (There are two Pair Teams who can say "We won 3 medals even before the Finals.")

Since the ISU broke the Rule, there are a number of posters who believe that God has spoken and one can not dissent. I can.

Joe

 

[dancemaster]

Sonia's thoughts on the GPF can be found here.

http://www.iceskatingintnl.com/current/content/World without Sky.htm

if you agree or disagree with this article point of view is a matter of personal opinion but one thing is not a opinion..less and less people are viewing the sport live and less and less tv channels showing the sport..
what really is the problem is open for discussion but while we wait ice skating is loosing fans.
more people are more interesting seeing a actor trying to do a free jump them the real thing WHY

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

if you agree or disagree with this article point of view is a matter of personal opinion but one thing is not a opinion..less and less people are viewing the sport live and less and less tv channels showing the sport..
what really is the problem is open for discussion but while we wait ice skating is loosing fans.
more people are more interesting seeing a actor trying to do a free jump them the real thing WHY

I think that is only in the US. from what I've been reading skating is doing well in the Big Six except for the US.

Joe

 

[JPierce]

If you disagree with her opinion that the current volatility of results is bad, fine.

I don't. I disagree with unfairly painting skaters (in this case, Brian Joubert as the primary example) as unreliable when they are not, just to sensationalize an article or disingenuously defend an argument. I already said there are plenty of legitimate ways to criticize CoP. Falsely implying that Joubert is a flake isn't one of them.

 

[Mathman]

I thought this was the most interesting part:

(W)hen you have seven jump elements with an average success rate of 54% each (as was the case in the Ladies’ event at the World Championships 2007) for the very best performers, your probability of a clean program is under two percent, meaning you could expect a clean program only two times in every hundred performances. That is now the standard imposed by the rules...

Today the top skaters are trying to perform elements beyond their capabilities, including really good athletes. Even worse, the elements on which they concentrate are increasingly unattractive. And still worse is that these extreme elements are turning what once were performances into lotteries with lower chances of success upon any given day.

About that 54%. Never mind the 2% clean programs, even more basically, it means that the typical ladies program of 7 triples and a double Axel will contain four messed up jumps.

In contrast, coach Frank Carroll did not let Michelle Kwan put an element into her programs until she could hit it 90% of the time.

If you hit 90% of your jumps, you have almost a 50% chance of hitting 7 in a row.

So instead of 2% of the programs being clean, as we see at present, we could expected half of them to be clean (if every coach were Frank Carroll and ever skater Michelle Kwan).

I think this is a serious condemnation of the CoP. The point was to make the scoring more objective, to help insure that most of the time the best skater will win, independent of the idiosyncracies of the judges.

Instead, as Bianchetti says, it's a lottery. The skater that hits the lucky 2% that day goes home with the prize -- not to skate clean again in fifty more tries.

(Saving grace: This is how Alissa can win nationals. )

 

[gsrossano]

The point was to make the scoring more objective, to help insure that most of the time the best skater will win, independent of the idiosyncracies of the judges.

Instead, as Bianchetti says, it's a lottery. The skater that hits the lucky 2% that day goes home with the prize -- not to skate clean again in fifty more tries.

I will quibble with this and say the point of the system is to see that the best performance ON ANY DAY wins independent of the whims of the judges and the reputations of the skaters. The fact the skaters now execute programs full of errors and are rarely clean does not negate that. From the viewpoint of fairness the important thing is that the best program win, even if that means the best program is the least messy program. If the best program is a messy program, such is life. It is still the best program. It happens in all sports that a competitor or team sometimes wins a contest with a performance that is not pretty. The problem in skating is that now a win that is not pretty is pretty common.

I don't think comparing it to a lottery is the best analogy. In a lottery the person who plays the lottery has no control over the outcome. The skaters have control over the outcome. They choose to attempt programs they know are likely to be full of errors. They could instead choose to attempt programs they know they can execute cleanly nearly all the time. But they do not because the system rewards the attempt of things difficult far more than it punishes the skater for the errors. The cost-benefit relations in the system are heavily skewed towards the benefit that come from attempting difficult things.

But if a skater puts the 2% program out on the ice and wins for only once in their life that is fine with me. Better than before when the 2% program would not win because the judges might give the win to the skater with a better reputation who really didn't deserve to win.

IMO the cost-benefit relations need to be changed to put more of a premium on clean programs. But the skaters and coaches don't seem to see it that way. The more common complaint is that there isn't enough reward for attempting difficult things, not that there is too much.

 

[Mathman]

Interesting. As a spectator, she enjoyed Belbin/Agosto's FD the most.

I think this goes to the heart of Bianchetti's complaints about the New Judging System.

In ice dancing, Russians Oksana Domnina & Maxim Shabalin, skating to " Masquerade Waltz", won the ice dancing title ahead of AmericansTanith Belbin & Benjamin Agosto, who skated to a selection from Chopin....Not everybody agreed on these results. As a spectator, I preferred Belbin & Agosto , who were very elegant on the ice and whom I also credit with having chosen dignified and appropriate costumes. At least one team did!

Domnina and Shabalin skated the higher-scoring program under the CoP. But the spectators liked Belbin and Agosto better (if not, indeed, Virtue and Moir ).

That's the whole lament in a nutshell. The ISU judging system encourages and rewards skating that no one wants to watch.

 

[Mathman]

I will quibble with this and say the point of the system is to see that the best performance ON ANY DAY wins independent of the whims of the judges and the reputations of the skaters. The fact the skaters now execute programs full of errors and are rarely clean does not negate that. From the viewpoint of fairness the important thing is that the best program win, even if that means the best program is the least messy program...

But if a skater puts the 2% program out on the ice and wins for only once in their life that is fine with me. Better than before when the 2% program would not win because the judges might give the win to the skater with a better reputation who really didn't deserve to win.

It is hard to argue against that.

As I understand Mrs. B's point, it is that this phenomenon is bad for the sport because it does not allow for the development of stars who can be counted on to place well in many competitions over a long career, which is what the public likes.

This is consistent with Bianchetti's successful campaign for the abolition of figures -- it's not what people want to watch.

In other sports, when a team wins ugly -- that's good. In fact, in sports like American football and basketball, fans take pride in the fact that their guys have no grace or finesse, and we love it when our team wins by making only 99 awful blunders while the other team makes 100. Kind of weird.

 

[dancemaster]

I think that is only in the US. from what I've been reading skating is doing well in the Big Six except for the US.

Joe

where??
from what i see only Japan and a bit in korea

 

[gsrossano]

In other sports, when a team wins ugly -- that's good. In fact, in sports like American football and basketball, fans take pride in the fact that their guys have no grace or finesse, and we love it when our team wins by making only 99 awful blunders while the other team makes 100. Kind of weird.

That brings into focus a major change with IJS that the fans have not kept up with. Under 6.0 the goal was not only to win, it was to be PERFECT when winning. But the quest for the perfect 6.0 has been eliminated (another of Sonia's objections to IJS). Under IJS the goal is ONLY to win. The concept/quest for perfection is not present in IJS. But the fans from 6.0 are still in the mindset that the goal should be both win and be perfect, and when they see so many winning performances that are not perfect it is a disappointment.

 

[Mathman]

That brings into focus a major change with IJS that the fans have not kept up with. Under 6.0 the goal was not only to win, it was to be PERFECT when winning. But the quest for the perfect 6.0 has been eliminated (another of Sonia's objections to IJS). Under IJS the goal is ONLY to win. The concept/quest for perfection is not present in IJS. But the fans from 6.0 are still in the mindset that the goal should be both win and be perfect, and when they see so many winning performances that are not perfect it is a disappointment.

I think all of these points come down to the same big dichotomy. Sport or performance art? The first mark or the second?

When you go to the ballet, you don't want to see the dancers fall down, crash into the scenery, or drop each other in lifts.

When you go to the NASCAR race, you want to see one guy run another into the wall and WIN. Higher, faster, stronger.

This is telling:

IMO the cost-benefit relations need to be changed to put more of a premium on clean programs. But the skaters and coaches don't seem to see it that way. The more common complaint is that there isn't enough reward for attempting difficult things, not that there is too much.

In other words, the skaters and coaches think of themselves as athletes rather than performers.

About risk and reward, I suppose you could argue like this. If you have a 90% chance of landing your triple Salchow, that's worth 4.0 points
on the average, while a 50% reliable triple Axel is only worth 3.75.

(Now I'm tempted to send in my $100 for an analysis of the expected values of the all the different elements. )

 

[debdelilah]

About risk and reward, I suppose you could argue like this. If you have a 90% chance of landing your triple Salchow, that's worth 4.0 points
on the average, while a 50% reliable triple Axel is only worth 3.75.

A triple axel is worth 3.5 after a fall, though, so that changes the average. With a 50% success rate it would go like this:

No fall--7.5
fall--3.5
No fall--7.5
fall--3.5
total: 22
divided by 4= 5.5 points

 

[Tonichelle]

where??
from what i see only Japan and a bit in korea

while the US has seen less interest since the 90s I think Joe's right when he says other parts of the globe are just as interested as they were if not more so...

it took someone taking a baseball bat to Nancy Kerrigan's knee to get the US public to notice the sport... so when it went back to playing nice the interest died off