I totally agree with you that the GOE's are enough to take care of the quality of the tricks. And if it is all just about tricks and only dancers and those creepy contortionists in Cirque du Soleil are artistic, then the "whole package" shouldn't even be considered. But despite what many people now believe, flexibility is not a skating skill.
How Much of the Whole Package is Included in CoP?
- Thread starter Joesitz (RIP)
- Start date
I totally agree with you that the GOE's are enough to take care of the quality of the tricks. And if it is all just about tricks and only dancers and those creepy contortionists in Cirque du Soleil are artistic, then the "whole package" shouldn't even be considered. But despite what many people now believe, flexibility is not a skating skill.
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2006
LIke the Tano Lutz. What makes this move more artistic than any other jump. Is it simply because the hands are over the skater's head? As in, "Look Mom, my hands are over my head."
You and Joe may well be right. But one only has to go to the ballet to see there are "Look Mom, no hands." moments in dance as well.
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
IMO that is really all there is to it. The ISU consciously and deliberately said, no, the "whole package" is out, the Code of Points is in. I suppose this makes figure skating "more like a real sport."
We don't care about the overall impression that a football team makes upon our senses, only about how many points they scored.
Even a program component like Interpretation is broken down into point-earning categories (three criteria for singles, four for pairs, and six for dance).
The opposite approach (regarding figure skating more as performance art than sport) would be strict ordinal judging, period. Each judge gives a list of ordinals, unaccompanied by analysis or explanation. I thought this skater was best, that one was second best, etc. Just like we might say, I liked Nureyev's Apollo better than Baryshnikov's Nutcracker.
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
I think the key is to work the technical highlights ito the program so that they seem like part of the performance, rather than as something separate.
Michelle Kwan was outstanding at that, IMO. Check out the split falling leaf into a change of edge spread eagle that occurs at the big crescendo of East of Eden, or the use of her trademark spiral as the soul-satisfying climax and release of tention that capped many of her programs.
Even in those later programs that were criticized for spare choreography, like Aranjuez and Tosca, the sequence of textbook jumps told a complete story in their own right. This is what, IMHO, is missing from figure skating in the new era.
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2003
Very well put, MM. But given the 180 degree Charlotte and all the 180 degree variations, many fans and possibly judges consider this High Art. I think of it as good for the little girl who brought that to skating before ever taking a lesson. Not like working on an axel or good stroking.
Oh well, we can all agree it's about points, points, points and presentation takes a lame seat backwards. You know two quads are going to bring high PCS scores and the Ladies who 3A will get the highest PCS scores.
Joe
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2003
Except that PCS are still counted as part of the score. For Men's, the value of them is 2x the actual score in the LP.
Under 6.0, there were specific critera for the presentation mark. In fact, when judges were intereviewed on TV after the pairs fiasco as to why they chose B&S or S&P, many cited specific Pre criteria.
We may not care about the the overall impression of the football team, only the number of points scores, but when MVP and other individual awards are voted upon, we certainly care about the individual's statistics and accomplishments. How much the team counts towards the selection can run the gamut. Particularly for playoff MVP's, that the team won often has a big impact, the way a quad/triple used to wow the judges into thinking that the rest of the program was at the same level. However, there are times when the voters said, "wait, imagine what that goalie on the losing team could have done had he had some defense and didn't have to stop 33% more shots on goal, and his save percentage was significantly higher than the winning goalie's."
Last edited:
I agree, mskater93.
I think I've mentioned in the past something someone told me: they said that the 6.0 system was subtractive and CoP is additive. That, too, is, I think, correct. With 6.0, a fall really drops you, and failure to do a required element in the SP terminates your chances of winning overall. That led to a quest for "skating clean(ly)". With CoP, you can become a human zamboni, and still accumulate enough points to win or at least, medal.
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
When I said, "we may not care" (in reference to football), I should have said, "our overall impression of who played a great game is not taken into account in determining the winning team."
Maybe tennis would be a better example. We may love Venus Williams' game to pieces, but if Justine Henin wins more points, it doesn't matter how much we enjoyed Williams' performance.
This, to me, is not in itself an adverse criticism of the ISU judging system. Nor am I saying that the 6.0 system was better.
But I am saying that giving out points for the quantity and quality of each individual element and then adding them up is different from making an overall judgement about how much you liked the show.
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2003
That's the difference between competition and Stars on Ice. I may or not have loved to see Sylvia Fontana vamp at Worlds and the Olympics, but by the standards of Pre (before 2005) and PCS (from 2005), she did not gain many points/votes. Enjoyable isn't listed as a criteria for either system.
Also, the "adding up" part is for the tech score, which was supposed to happen under 6.0 as well.
A case in point: Fusar-Poli Margoglio's and Bourne/Kraatz's free dances in SLC were more "enjoyable" than the free dances that Anissina/Peizerat and Lobacheva/Averbukh performed -- and these teams actually heeded the announcement by the ISU that they wanted dance, not psychodrama -- and look where it got them Pre-wise: nowhere fast.
Maybe the ISU and some fans think the CoP makes skating "more like a real sport", but it actually doesn't. Whether it's football, tennis, bball, golf etc. the way you win isn't important. None of these sports prescribes how you win. Football doesn't require a balance between the passing and the running game. Tennis doesn't require a player to show every aspect of the game at the highest levels in order to win. Golf rules don't prescribe which club a golfer uses in every situation. The CoP might look like an objective point system, but, in fact, it is really just a tool for micromanaging skating performances, and a smokescreen to cover up its real purpose - anonymous judging. The hard core fans are arguing about protocols, GoE's and PCS's. The journalists are lamenting the lack of artistry and consistency in programs. Meanwhile the ISU is delivering exactly what the IOC demanded - no more public scandals.
I think we have to remember what Joe's original question is: "How Much of the Whole Package is Included in CoP? "
Joe's question does not ask which is better, or which is more like other sports. In other sports, there is no such thing as "The Whole Package". When one celebrity was asked by an interviewer, to what did he attribute his team's win (golfing for charity) he humorously replied, "more points". That's the thing. Once figure skating became merely about accumulation of points, the concept of "The Whole Package" went out the window. "The Whole Package" was about how well an amateur skater could prepare and present a program that would be good enough for public display as entertainment and art, while demonstrating athletic competence in a *full* list of required elements. One could not only show competence in some kinds of jumps; one was expected to do all the major types of jumps well enough to win.
When Stephane Lambiel won Worlds the first time, he accumulated points by repeating the double axel, avoiding the triple axel. This changed figure skating immensely. Cinquanta may have gotten his freedom from scandal, but he also lost a big portion of his TV audience for this very special, extraordinary sport, which is so distinct in its nature from other sports. This is a sport whose audience had come to expect both artfulness and thrills.
When Trixie Schuba and Janet Lynn competed, the rules favored Trixie. They had to re-think the rules for TV, because tracing figures on the ice was not appealing to the US television audience; besides, there was something wonderful about the way Janet Lynn had skated, a freedom, a beauty. When a skater does a difficult jump, the crowd may gasp, and often applauds. It is at least partially a matter of being thrilled by the risk involved, as with high-wire walking. When Lucinda Ruh performed in Stars on Ice, she was very good at spinning, but was not a jumper. The crowd did not seem thrilled with what she had to offer when I was there; the applause sounded more polite than excited.
I may seem to have wandered off-topic, but I think it is all relevant to the expression, "The Whole Package" . The whole package involves beauty and thrills as well as points; the ability to produce the feeling of the whole package while still scoring enough points to win under CoP, is rare. The effort to do it among those who are young enough to have trained under CoP while young, has produced some amazing skaters, but on the whole, CoP is inimical to "The Whole Package", and it looks as if the whole package concept has gone the way of tracing figures.
Joe's question does not ask which is better, or which is more like other sports. In other sports, there is no such thing as "The Whole Package". When one celebrity was asked by an interviewer, to what did he attribute his team's win (golfing for charity) he humorously replied, "more points". That's the thing. Once figure skating became merely about accumulation of points, the concept of "The Whole Package" went out the window. "The Whole Package" was about how well an amateur skater could prepare and present a program that would be good enough for public display as entertainment and art, while demonstrating athletic competence in a *full* list of required elements. One could not only show competence in some kinds of jumps; one was expected to do all the major types of jumps well enough to win.
When Stephane Lambiel won Worlds the first time, he accumulated points by repeating the double axel, avoiding the triple axel. This changed figure skating immensely. Cinquanta may have gotten his freedom from scandal, but he also lost a big portion of his TV audience for this very special, extraordinary sport, which is so distinct in its nature from other sports. This is a sport whose audience had come to expect both artfulness and thrills.
When Trixie Schuba and Janet Lynn competed, the rules favored Trixie. They had to re-think the rules for TV, because tracing figures on the ice was not appealing to the US television audience; besides, there was something wonderful about the way Janet Lynn had skated, a freedom, a beauty. When a skater does a difficult jump, the crowd may gasp, and often applauds. It is at least partially a matter of being thrilled by the risk involved, as with high-wire walking. When Lucinda Ruh performed in Stars on Ice, she was very good at spinning, but was not a jumper. The crowd did not seem thrilled with what she had to offer when I was there; the applause sounded more polite than excited.
I may seem to have wandered off-topic, but I think it is all relevant to the expression, "The Whole Package" . The whole package involves beauty and thrills as well as points; the ability to produce the feeling of the whole package while still scoring enough points to win under CoP, is rare. The effort to do it among those who are young enough to have trained under CoP while young, has produced some amazing skaters, but on the whole, CoP is inimical to "The Whole Package", and it looks as if the whole package concept has gone the way of tracing figures.
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2003
My use of the term Whole Package meant exactly that and what I am questioning is whether the PCS scores represent the old Presentation scores when whole packaging meant so much more.
As it is now under CoP with so much presentation being used in GoEs, transitions, etc., all on the Tech side, and the PCS score duplicating much of that and yet percentage wise do not equal the Tech in their total points - Is it fair?
(Good post Dodyell otherwise, but can you answer my question?)
Joe
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2003
The PCS have nothing whatsoever to do with the technical panel, and the only place where transitions have any impact on GOE, which is the sole realm of the judges, unless there is a mandatory deduction called by the technical panel (falls, wrong-edges on jumps), is in some transitions into jumps.
There were technical aspects of the criteria for the Pre score in 6.0, just as there are technical aspects to PCS, like Skating Skills and Performance/Execution.
I don't understand what fairness has to do with anything, WRG CoP vs. 6.0 in terms of presentation. PCS, at least the way written, are based on the duration of the category throughout the program. How long does the skater meet the criterion over the course of the program?
If the skater does a long, difficult spin that doesn't reflect a musical change, the judge has ample opportunity to ding the Choregraphy or Interpretation scores. How is that not taking the "Whole Package" into consideration? How is it any less fair that a judge thinks "complicated spin, up the PCS" under CoP, than giving a 5.9 in presentation, because the skater landed a quad combination?
If anything, the major complaints about PCS have been that they are placeholders, just like the Pre score used to be. If that's the case, then there's no difference between 6.0 and CoP, at least on the second set of marks, and how is this taking the "Whole Package" into consideration any less?
Last edited:
Well, I think that almost all the qualities that were considered as part of "the whole package" under the old system are included in at least one of the new marks in the new system, but there isn't any single mark to sum up overall impression of the program.
If there has to be a focus on details or on overall impression it's impossible to address both at once, I think that the focus on details is a fairer way to run a sport.
Overall impression is more appropriate for skating considered as an art. Which is not the purpose of ISU competition. I wish there were more of a market for artistic skating for its own sake, but it's not the sport's governing body's responsibility to provide it.
That's not strictly true. The short program requirements demanded competence in certain specific skills but some sorts of skills have never been included among short program requirements (e.g., jump sequences . . . or throw jumps for pairs before 9 years ago).
For much of the sport's history there was no such thing as well-balanced program requirements for long programs. In the mid-80s there were limits placed on repeating the same triple jumps, but there was never any requirement to include all the major types of jumps. Those skaters who had mastered five or six different triples were able to include more total triples in their programs than skaters who had mastered only two or three types, but whether to prefer five triples of five types over five of three types with two repeats, or whether to reward skaters who included doubles of the takeoffs they didn't have triples over those who just left out those takeoffs entirely was only one small consideration that individual judges were free to apply or ignore when deciding who had the best "whole package." For some judges and fans it was an important consideration, for others it wasn't, but it has never been part of the rules.
Similarly, some judges (and fans) may have rewarded skaters who variety of spinning skills (all basic positions used about equally, in both forward and back spins, plus extra features like flexibility, edge changes, spinning in both directions, jump-overs, creative or difficult positions, etc.); for other judges (and fans), just performing a more limited set of spin skills especially well was just as good (look at Scott Davis for example); for others, there was no real advantage to having any special variety or quality in the spins as long as there were a few spins of some sort in the long program, and other things like basic skating, jump count, and/or overall beauty or entertainment value were the deciding factors.
In the mid-1990s there started to be guidelines about "well-balanced programs," and by the early 2000s these became requirements that could lead to deductions for any types of elements that were lacking. But they were still fairly general -- a skater could certainly meet those requirements without ever doing, for example, more than four different jump takeoffs or ever doing more than two revolutions of camel or sit spin or five revolutions of backspin in a whole program or ever doing any turns besides threes and mohawks or ever doing any turns at all in the opposite direction.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2003
Just five within a .5 range of each other
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
It seems to me that when people (especially sports writers) belittle figure skating for not being a real sport, these are the two points they make.
1. It's a judged activity, like diving, dog shows, and the pie-bakeoff at the county fair. To qualify as a real sport there has to be an objective way of determining the winner.
2. What's with the music and sequined costumes? Is it a sport or a Vaudeville show?
So, for these critics I think that the CoP can be sold as a step in the right direction. (Now about those sequins...).
I agree with this criticism (although I am not sure that this was the intent of the ISU -- it just turned out that way in retrospect). Two years ago they tweaked the rules in such a way that you could get higher levels on spins and spirals by doing a Biellman. We saw what the result of that was.
The next year they said, oops, we better tweak the rules again to get rid of all those awful Biellmans -- and they did.As Dohiyel also suggests, right now a top lady would be a fool if she didn't do two Lutzes and two flips in her program. A good flutz is worth as much as a loop even if they catch you, plus you might get away with it.
Well, they could have gone to anonymous judging without the CoP, if that were their only objective. In fact, the Interim System was exactly that -- 6.0 judging with anonymity and the random draw.
As for avoiding scandals, I don't see how the new, old, or any other judging system is any better or worse at achieving that goal. The only reason there was a scandal at Salt Lake City is because Madam Le Gougne spilled the beans. If she had remained mum, nothing would have happened except the usual wuzrobbin'. (By the way, did you notice that the newly elected President of the French Skating Federation is...Didier Gailhauget?
)Two years ago they tweaked the rules in such a way that you could get higher levels on spins and spirals by doing a Biellman. We saw what the result of that was.
It was always possible since the new system was introduced in fall 2003 to get higher levels on spins and spirals by doing Biellmann positions. (Before the new system, it was possible to get judges to give you a little extra mental credit for doing them well, except in the required ladies' SP layback, but it wasn't spelled out anywhere.)
Then they clarified that at least 8 revolutions in layback and/or sideways leaning position were required for that required SP layback before the Biellmann would be considered as a feature.
Then they decided that some skaters, especially Slutskaya, were using too many Biellmanns for higher levels so they limited the number of times that position could be used as a feature.
So now you won't see as many as you saw 2-3 years ago. But the ones you do see might be just as awful in quality, or just as good (and everywhere in between).
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2003
I'm not against the CoP, but when you put music to a sport as a component, what are you trying to prove? ( I don't mean Skate Dance. That is understandable.)
Diving has many tricks to judge and the sport is measureable give or take the possible hanky panky. Music is not necessary which is best served in a Acquacade.
Joe
Diving has many tricks to judge and the sport is measureable give or take the possible hanky panky. Music is not necessary which is best served in a Acquacade.
Joe
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
Just five within a .5 range of each other
In fact, that is the biggest complaint about how the Program Components are being used -- as a "whole package" mark. This is totally antithetical to the spirit of the Code of Points, which says, no, these marks should be independent of each other and should reflect cummulated brownie points (just how many of the six specific characteristics listed under Performance/Execution did the skater exhibit with a good, very good, or superior mark?)
For better or for worse, I agreee with this bottom line conclusion. Even though the present version of the CoP has not yet succeeded, and very likely will never succeed completely, in converting figure skating scoring into an "add up the points" equation -- still, that is its goal and its animating spirit.Dohiyel said:
As I understand the intent of the IJS (I thank GSRossano for explaining this to me), the first two Program Components, Skating Skills and Transitions, belong to the technical side of the equation, along with the base scores, GOEs, levels, and deductions that comprise the TES.Joesitz said:
The other three Program Components -- Performance/Exection, Choreography, and Interpretation -- combine to play the role of the old second mark.
In a well-balanced program without too many mistakes, the tech score should approximately equal the component scores, on the average, after factoring (this is the purpose of the factors -- to make the TES and the PCS of apporoximately equal force). So the ratio of "first mark" to "second mark" is 1.40 to .60, or 7 to 3 (more than twice as much on the tech side).
In other words, 70% of your total score is "first mark" and 30% "second mark."
Is this fair? Well, it's not balanced between technical details and "whole package." But I guess you can say that it is fair in the sense that the rules -- like them or not -- apply to all skaters equally.
Similar threads
