Why is the quad Axel so undervalued?

[Magill]

I wasn't joking, but I was trying to look at the sport from the point of view of the general sports enthusiast rather than that of the fan who already knows something about, and cares something about, figure skating.

If a pole vaulter attempt 6 meters but knocks the bar off, he may receive polite applause for the attempt. But he'd better enjoy it, because (as they say at rodeos when the rider falls off his horse), that's the only prize this cowboy is going to get today.

Hanyu's LP from Sochi may heve been watched on youutube millions of times, but the performance itself was only so-so by Hnayu's high standards, and in fact he lost the LP to Nathan Chen, I can easily imagine a casual viewer turning in just for the LP and come away scratching his head --" what's going on, here? The other guy was better -- all those whachmacallits -- quads?" The commentator would have to explain, well Chen fell twice in the short program, so of course he couldn't win the gold medal overall. That wouldn't be fair.

A casual viewer, even watching just FS, would know just from the starting order that Nathan Chen was 17th after SP so getting as high as 5th was a long jump anyway. They would not expect him to win overall at all. Casual viewers are much more intelligent than some people imagine, lol
Yet casual viewers cannot tell a quad from a triple easily so they just do not give a damn about it. They cannot tell differences between different jumps and why some are worth more than some others so this is what makes them wonder. They do not understand why the highest score in the competition was given to someone who touched the ice with his hand on the landing while others did not.
Yet despite their lack of expert knowledge, casual viewers can easily tell a "save" from a "fall on the butt" and do not mistake one for the other
Casual viewers would also know from the commentators that Yuzuru Hanyu was the defending olympic champion coming back after a long injury which was not yet healed properly, who had just started practicing jumping 3 weeks earlier, jumped the most difficult jumps for the first time only the previous week, only a few times, after several months' long break, and was just relying on his experience and luck to make up for his lack of practice. So they would root for him cause this is what casual viewers do - they have no faves in the game so they root for beautiful performances, moving stories and relatable heroes.
Oh, and casual viewers want a thrilling program and not a jumping drill which they find boring and uninspiring.
So, no, they would not expect Nathan's FS in Korea to win at all. Besides, by the time it got to the last group they would not remember his skate anyway as it was not even shown at the score box as the lead because he was not in the lead by then.
PS I assume you meant Korea Olympics and not Sochi as you said, cause Nathan Chen was not competing in Sochi at all

 

[TallyT]

I wasn't joking, but I was trying to look at the sport from the point of view of the general sports enthusiast....

This is not a dig at you, but I have been thinking, people have been saying things like this "what will the average casual fan think" ever since I first got into the sport, and trying to assess what the general public might think on seeing it, or saying "well my friend/family watched it and said this or that" and... it doesn't seem to work that way, you know? Empirical evidence is of course severely wanting, but the average fans worldwide, by weight of what very little evidence there is, don't seem to look at quads, and spins, and pops, and edges and yes, even falls, the way we may think they do or should. The skaters that that gained the most new converts to the sport or to their own careers after PC or BJ seem to have been the not so 'clean' ones. if for very different reasons.

(Actually even if casual fans did, it wouldn't make much difference since they didn't stick around long but that's not the point. And it's not about what common sense would indicate because common sense has no place in sports fandoms.)

I know we want to think that they will be impressed - or put off - by these things, but I can't see any proof except a few "my friend said" that they are or aren't. Fact is, we really need to start admitting we don't have a clue how falls or other faults or indeed whole programs are seen by the majority of 'average', 'casual' or even semi-serious fans.

 

[Magill]

If the ISU wanted to punish bad quads, they could just impose a minus 2 penalty for falls on quads.... I'd support it

Even if they did, it would not have given this elusive olympic gold to Patrick anyway, the difference was bigger than this...

 

[icewhite]

I think this thread has gone very very far from topic.

 

[TallyT]

I think this thread has gone very very far from topic.

I agree.

Really, the reason the quad axel is the score it is is because the ISU, in their inscrutable wisdom and lack of transparency, say so. Just like the penalty for falls or pops or whatever are what they are because the ISU, in their inscrutable wisdom and lack of transparency, say so. And all the complaining or justifying this way or t'other in the world is not going to change it (how long has it now been since Sochi, or Patrick's controversial Worlds and what has been done? nada) until the ISU in their inscrutable wisdom want to for their own untransparent reasons.

 

[Mathman]

Casual viewers didn't understand precisely that the acclaimed winner was underrotating or cheating a spin or skating on flat edges with low-value transitions, but they did perceive that his jumps and spins were not very light and easy and expressive, that he didn't show great balance, that he kept doing ugly crossovers (without knowing the name of the step), that he didn't have an extraordinary mastery...

I think that that you and I have different notions of what "casual viewers" with no knowledge of or interest in skating perceive. I do not think that the average guy flipping channels between biathlon and snowbaording comes away from the figure skating coverage muttering, "Boy, those jumps and spins were not very light and airy, he didn't show great balance, and -- phew -- can you believe those ugly crossovers?"

Especially when the only thing that the commentators are talking about is, "Wow, he did a quad Salchow. Look at that, he did a quad flip, Oh my god he just did a third quad, a fourth. Holy Mackerel, what a performance!!!"

A casual viewer, even watching just FS, would know just from the starting order that Nathan Chen was 17th after SP

I may be wrong, but I don't think that the "casual viewer" would know or care about any such thing. Even if the announcers says, Nathan Chen is in 17th place, I think the "casual viewer's response would be, "Pass the beer."

Or am I thinking of hockey?

 

[Mathman]

PS I assume you meant Korea Olympics and not Sochi as you said, cause Nathan Chen was not competing in Sochi at all

Oh... yeah... I guess I am channeling my inner casual fan who doesn't know the difference.

 

[Mathman]

Still happens everywhere in all fields... Some of my kids were called "aliens" ( I almost fell off my chair thinking about some fans calling some skaters that same word... ) at the recent concert because they play way harder stuff than most kids their age....

Mirai Nagasu’s middle name is Aileen, One time it was misspelled on the official program as “Alien.” Everyone had a good laugh, including Mirai.

But some people took offence because they thought that Mirai was being singled out as “not an American citizen.”

By the way, in 2007 USA swept the world junior podium with Zhang, Nagasu and Wagner. Guess which one was not born in the United States?

 

[Magill]

I may be wrong, but I don't think that the "casual viewer" would know or care about any such thing. Even if the announcers says, Nathan Chen is in 17th place, I think the "casual viewer's response would be, "Pass the beer."

Or am I thinking of hockey?

17th or 24th - a long, long way from the top guys who perform last. So why do you assume they would care at all if he won or not? In this case, they would not even notice. After all, how many beers between Nathan at 17th and the top 3-1 guys for your imagined "casual fan"? Going by such a scenario, by the last group they might just as well see them as pairs ...

 

[Mathman]

This is not a dig at you, but I have been thinking, people have been saying things like this "what will the average casual fan think" ever since I first got into the sport, and trying to assess what the general public might think on seeing it, or saying "well my friend/family watched it and said this or that" and... it doesn't seem to work that way, you know?

I agree with this. Just look at the posts that threads like this attract. Russian fans think that the only thing "casual fans" of ladies' skating care about is quads, and point to the millions of youtube views of Trusova performances. I keep posting clips of Michelle Kwan, but I suspect that I am just showing my age.

As for men's skating, frankly I do not think that this sport has any "casual fans." I know I can't get any pf my friends and family to watch it.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

I think that that you and I have different notions of what "casual viewers" with no knowledge of or interest in skating perceive. I do not think that the average guy flipping channels between biathlon and snowbaording comes away from the figure skating coverage muttering, "Boy, those jumps and spins were not very light and airy, he didn't show great balance, and -- phew -- can you believe those ugly crossovers?"

Especially when the only thing that the commentators are talking about is, "Wow, he did a quad Salchow. Look at that, he did a quad flip, Oh my god he just did a third quad, a fourth. Holy Mackerel, what a performance!!!"



I may be wrong, but I don't think that the "casual viewer" would know or care about any such thing. Even if the announcers says, Nathan Chen is in 17th place, I think the "casual viewer's response would be, "Pass the beer."

Or am I thinking of hockey?

I don't have my own experience because I'm not very interested in sports in general, I prefer music, ballet or drama as performance, so of course, I've never been the sort of casual fan you're specifically speaking of, the sports enthusiast. Nor my husband's, because, being as little interested in sports as me, he's not interested in bodily expression at all, and will keep watching a ballet variation only if it is supreme excellence in everything; to give you an idea, about ballet, I have shown him the "near best", his only reflection was morphological and he stopped watching before one minute. He DID watch many programs skated by Yuzuru Hanyu, starting with the three programs of the competition where I "discovered" him, one after the other, without a protestation, rather exclamations of admiration.
But I cannot say from experience how a sports enthusiast would see Figure Skating excellence. For instance, some people may believe that a skater is skating something difficult because his skate looks laboured, whereas the best skater's looks effortless. I know there are people like that, but from the idea of numbers we can get, they're not many.
In other sports the abilities necessary for Figure Skating have some common points with those of Figure Skating, and I'm not only speaking of both Gymnastics, Synchronised Swimming, Half-Pipe or Diving. I've never haunted soccer lovers fora but I've casually read sometimes some comments, and it seems that the very best players are very agile. If the skater claimed to be the best doesn't look as agile as the best soccer player, if he doesn't risk moves that may endanger his balance, hey, let's go watch another sport, Figure Skaters aren't worth watching. If they happen to see another skater who does have them, even more so than the best soccer players, if a boxing fan sees explosiveness and precision in the moves, etc, they're more likely to have a good opinion of Figure Skating in general, and of this skater in particular, don't you think so? "Gosh! I'd like to see that featherweight would do agaisnt such or such, we may have surprises", or for a rugby fan : "he'd be a great hooker"...
There was once a poll in Japan, with a list of the greatest baseball players in History in every position, and the greatest coaches, and people could make up their "timeless dream team". Someone had added Yuzuru Hanyu to the list, knowing his interest for the sport, and he won the "best coach" category. Yet at least international fans weren't warned of the poll before the end...

 

[Baron Vladimir]

I can tell my thoughts when i was watching a figure skating competition for the first time - i didnt realize why the winner was not the one who has the best skating at that point of time (with what commentators of the broadcast also agreed)... Then I realized a year after how the competition has Compulsory, Original and Free dance, so 3 portions of the competition. But majority of people back in the 90s and 2000s were able to watch only the last one... I think the biggest problem is because the winner of the night is not really the winner of the night.... The problem can be easily solved = for Ice Dance make 3 gold medalist for example, or for singles = a winner of the jumping contest and a winner of the skating on the ice contest etc etc...

 

[Magill]

This is not a dig at you, but I have been thinking, people have been saying things like this "what will the average casual fan think" ever since I first got into the sport, and trying to assess what the general public might think on seeing it, or saying "well my friend/family watched it and said this or that" and... it doesn't seem to work that way, you know? Empirical evidence is of course severely wanting, but the average fans worldwide, by weight of what very little evidence there is, don't seem to look at quads, and spins, and pops, and edges and yes, even falls, the way we may think they do or should. The skaters that that gained the most new converts to the sport or to their own careers after PC or BJ seem to have been the not so 'clean' ones. if for very different reasons.

(Actually even if casual fans did, it wouldn't make much difference since they didn't stick around long but that's not the point. And it's not about what common sense would indicate because common sense has no place in sports fandoms.)

I know we want to think that they will be impressed - or put off - by these things, but I can't see any proof except a few "my friend said" that they are or aren't. Fact is, we really need to start admitting we don't have a clue how falls or other faults or indeed whole programs are seen by the majority of 'average', 'casual' or even semi-serious fans.

True. Yet in the end of the day, numbers do not lie. We might not be able to differentiate between "casual" and "regular" fans and guess what they think but they all "vote" in the same way - with their remote controls, credit cards paying for tickets and pay-for-view streams, clicks on free videos and streams. This is the only objective and measurable data we have. There's no need to imagine it, it's out there, just waiting to be taken into consideration...

 

[Mathman]

I can tell my thoughts when i was watching a figure skating competition for the first time - i didnt realize why the winner was not the one who has the best skating at that point of time (with what commentators of the broadcast also agreed)... Then I realized a year after how the competition has Compulsory, Original and Free dance, so 3 portions of the competition. But majority of people back in the 90s and 2000s were able to watch only the last one... I think the biggest problem is because the winner of the night is not really the winner of the night.... The problem can be easily solved = for Ice Dance make 3 gold medalist for example, or for singles = a winner of the jumping contest and a winner of the skating on the ice contest etc etc...

This really cme to head in the 1970s when a skater would be so far ahead in compulsory figures that the contest was over before the free skating even began. The solution then was to ditch figures altogether.

But I for one would not favor separate medals for jumping and for "artistic" skating. The charrm of the sport is that it wraps everything up into one big ball of wax. This makes for judging comntroversies and for disagreements about the relative weight that is placed of various aspects of the sport. But on the whole I can live with that.

 

[NanaPat]

If the ISU wanted to punish bad quads, they could just impose a minus 2 penalty for falls on quads.... I'd support it

And if they all fall, eject them all from the competition/game, as a hockey referee did recently.

 

[Skating91]

I think they undervalue the quad axel value by design so that the ISU, federations, officials, retain greater control over the result through massaging of GOE and PCS. Otherwise with a sky high base value the skater takes away a lot of the power from the ISU, federations, officials if they are able to successful rotate and land quad axels (with a base value that represents their actual difficulty). Suddenly it doesn't matter if the don't ding their favourites for clear edge or rotation problems, or want to give a perfect 10.0 for PCS to a skater without a single quad in his arsenal. It suddenly becomes like a real sport like football where it doesn't matter how you get the ball in the net it's important that you get more of them in the back of the net. The skater with the biggest and best jumps (assuming all legal and rotated) will win.

It's similar to how they reduced the value of quads and made it more attractive to jump a sequence which obviously requires a lot less talent than jumping a quad, a lot less risk, but allows a a skater to pump up their base value scoring similar points to someone who can achieve a quad. It keeps more skaters in contention, keeps scores artificially closer.

Someone made the argument that it is only one additional rotation (4 instead of 3 so should receive 33% more or something along those lines), but the quad axel is exponentially more difficult than a triple axel (and similar with any quad compared to a triple jump). Otherwise we should make the 2A 100% more than the 1A, 3A only 50% more than the 2A, etc. Is that fair to make the 3A only 50% higher than a 2A. A 2A a jump that any woman in a competition around the world can jump versus a 3A which less than 10 senior women in the entire world can jump? Of course not.

 

[Skating91]

There has been the thought in the Russians threads that the 4Lo gets attempted more often by Russian men - indeed they like to go for it. Why is not so clear. The 4Lz is also popular. Hardly anybody does the 4F. Does that mean the 4F is more difficult? Maybe. There is almost nobody who is able to jump it with clean technique. But then I would think that's also because if you train for either 4Lz or 4F and they are roughly equally difficult, you will go for Lz because it's worth slightly more. So maybe they are just equally difficult? As a non-top skater, ehem, I can't say.
Could also be that the 4Lz is, in theory, more difficult, but, for those who are already extremely good at high rotation, it's easier.
Could be that certain coaching techniques favour certain jumps while the jump itself is not harder or easier in general.

At the moment it seems to me that the 4Lo, 4F and 4Lz should all get the same bv. But I think it's extremely difficult to tell as an amateur from the outside. It's probably more helpful to ask high profile skaters who are actually training, attempting, and even landing these jumps cleanly.

The 3Lz seems much harder than the 3F (most will agree I think), but the 4Lz is possibly not any more difficult than (or possibly easier) than the 4F for someone with a strong 3Lz. At top levels, most have a strong 3Lz otherwise they would be filtered out. Maybe some kind of selection bias going on.

With the 4Lo, maybe the logic is if we attempt the jump and goes bad we're not burning a 3T on something like a popped 4T for example. Don't know just throwing an idea out there

 

[Mathman]

It suddenly becomes like a real sport like football where it doesn't matter how you get the ball in the net it's important that you get more of them in the back of the net. The skater with the biggest and best jumps (assuming all legal and rotated) will win.

I agree. The ISU does not want figure skating to become like football where the only thing that matters is who does the biggest and best jumps. I do not, however, think that there is anything cynical or sinister about this. The ISU likes the idea of a potpourri of diffenent skills presented in a "balanced program." Me, too.

Someone made the argument that it is only one additional rotation (4 instead of 3 so should receive 33% more or something along those lines), but the quad axel is exponentially more difficult than a triple axel (and similar with any quad compared to a triple jump). Otherwise we should make the 2A 100% more than the 1A, 3A only 50% more than the 2A, etc. Is that fair to make the 3A only 50% higher than a 2A. A 2A a jump that any woman in a competition around the world can jump versus a 3A which less than 10 senior women in the entire world can jump? Of course not.

I think the idea would be that 1A to 2A is 1.5 revolution to 2.5, for an increase of 67% (currently 200%).

2A to 3A is 2.5 revolutions to 1.5 for an increase of 40% (currently 142%)

3A to 4A, 3.5 revolutions to 4.5 for an increase of 29% (currently 56%)

All very mathematical but does not make any attempt to measure the relative difficulties (as determined, for instance, by what percentage of all skaters can do it). Hence this thread -- how does the ISU come up with the numbers in the scale of values?

When figure skating is taken over by AI, the robots will laugh at us poor benighted humans.

 

[Mathman]

The 3Lz seems much harder than the 3F (most will agree I think), but the 4Lz is possibly not any more difficult than (or possibly easier) than the 4F

It definitely seems that way. Very strange. 4Lz seems to be a dime a dozen these days, but 4F and 4Lo are still considered to be really, really hard. I wonder if it has something to do with the toe-pick assist. At the lower levels the skater has to master the techique of co-ordinating picking in with lifting off. Once you've got it, though, the vault into the air makes rotations easier (comparing the Lutz to the loop, for i nstance).

Contrasted with triple jumps, the first triple landed was the triple loop (1952). The harder triple toe came later (1964). By the way, the first person to do the triple toe loop in conpetition was someone named Tommy Litz. We coulld have had the Lutz and the Litz, or even a Lutz/Litz combo. Mr. Litz is still coaching at Lake Placid, I believe.

 

[Skating91]

I agree. The ISU does not want figure skating to become like football where the only thing that matters is who does the biggest and best jumps. I do not, however, think that there is anything cynical or sinister about this. The ISU likes the idea of a potpourri of diffenent skills presented in a "balanced program." Me, too.

Sure, but then we can ask why shouldn't someone with only doubles not be able to compete against someone with strong triples? As it stands there is no way for someone with only doubles but great components to compete with someone with great triples, but someone with only triples can compete with someone with strong quads because base value of quads does not represent difficulty.

I think the idea would be that 1A to 2A is 1.5 revolution to 2.5, for an increase of 67% (currently 200%).

2A to 3A is 2.5 revolutions to 1.5 for an increase of 40% (currently 142%)

3A to 4A, 3.5 revolutions to 4.5 for an increase of 29% (currently 56%)

All very mathematical but does not make any attempt to measure the relative difficulties (as determined, for instance, by what percentage of all skaters can do it). Hence this thread -- how does the ISU come up with the numbers in the scale of values?

When figure skating is taken over by AI, the robots will laugh at us poor benighted humans.

Each rotation is exponentially harder so should be multiples higher not fractionally higher (especially with a quad).

For an Olympic sprinter it would be much easier to get the 100m sprint time down from 10.2 seconds to 10 seconds, than from 10 seconds to 9.8 seconds. Even though it's the same 0.2 decrease in the time.