Why do "full rotations" matter?

[Anna K.]

I don't think it's like that at all. That exact 90 degrees][ would be stupid and impossible to judge. I think that there is some sort of understanding about how many degrees short deserves a q, even if this is not spelled out precisely in the published rule summaries.

This is a shortfall of the judging system, actually. For every other case, the rules have defined the range, quote Technical Panel Handbook for Singles Skating:

A jump will be considered as “Under-rotated” if it has missing rotation of more than a ¼ but less than ½ revolution. An under-rotated jump will be indicated by the Technical Panel to the Judges and in the protocols with a “<” symbol after the element code.

and:

A jump will be considered as “Downgraded” if it has “missing rotation of ½ revolutions or more”. A downgraded jump will be indicated by the Technical Panel to the Judges and in the protocols with a “<<” symbol after the element code.

Then, compare it with this:

A jump will be considered as “quarter” if it is missing rotation of a ¼. This jump will be indicated by the Technical Panel to the Judges and in the protocols with a “q” symbol after the element code.

Of course, nobody lands exactly on the quarter. As a result, the q-s have become the mess we witness every other competition with half of the skating community complaining about uncalled q-s and the other half complaining about unfairly called q-s.

Am I mistaking but, prior to when q-s were invented, was there defined an under-rotation in the range between 1/4 and 1/8 (which meant reduced GOE back then)?
This would make more sense IMHO.

 

[lariko]

I have never seen a q with a resulting positive GoE. All i see are like -2. Unless it is artistic marvels who get that

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

I don't think it's like that at all. That would be stupid and impossible to judge. I think that there is some sort of understanding about how many degrees short deserves a q, even if this is not spelled out precisely in the published rule summaries.

And indeed, this type of fixation on precision measuring is, in my opinion, antithetical to the spirit of figure skating anyway. It's on the skater to perform so well that the judges will not be undecided about whether their elements are pristine or cheated.

While I had been a little uneasy because of the formulation, your third sentence was my understanding too, untill Yuzuru Hanyu's Olympic 4A was declared underrotated. It was missing at most 100°, for me it was in the range of a q and I had never seen a jump missing 100° being called underrotated. But then, I realised that for once, the Technical Panel was right.

https://x.com/tshashin/status/1491738921989926913

(I write "for once", because the same Technical Panel, at the same competition, didn't notice that ALL Quadruple jumps and Triple Axels of the skater awarded Gold, were underrotated the same way, they didn't even mark a q; as to the Quadruple Axel, it has NEVER been less underrotated than Yuzuru Hanyu's Beijing one, which furthermore was the only ever to have over four full rotations in the air.)

 

[Mathman]

While I had been a little uneasy because of the formulation, your third sentence was my understanding too, untill Yuzuru Hanyu's Olympic 4A was declared underrotated. It was missing at most 100°, for me it was in the range of a q and I had never seen a jump missing 100° being called underrotated.

I think the reason that Hanyu was given a < is because the under-rotation, though not severe, caused a fall. Plus, the ISU wanted to make sure that it was absolutely clean before awarding the status of first ever Olympic quad Axel.

I think it is the same with qs. If you are somewhere around 90 degrees you are more likely to get a q if the UR causes other problems with the jump, such as necessitating a "saved" landing.

Actually, I don't mind this convention, if in fact this is how the ISU is interpreting its own rules. In any set of rules there are also the "rules behind the rules." I am not aghast that Mr. Ruler and Mrs Protractor are not always the absolute Emperor and Empress of human endeavor.

 

[Mathman]

I have never seen a q with a resulting positive GoE. All i see are like -2. Unless it is artistic marvels who get that

At Skate Canada last week Mone Chiba got a q on the second jump of her 3F+3T combo and positive GOE. She also got a q on her solo 3F with 0 GOE.

I think the reason why this is rare is that if you really land with your blade dead perpendicular to the direction of forward motion, well, you are behind the eight ball as far as producing an esthetic jewel of a graceful landing and garnering big positive GOE.

 

[lariko]

At Skate Canada last week Mone Chiba got a q on the second jump of her 3F+3T combo and positive GOE. She also got a q on her solo 3F with 0 GOE.

I think the reason why this is rare is that if you really land with your blade dead perpendicular to the direction of forward motion, well, you are behind the eight ball as far as producing an esthetic jewel of a graceful landing and garnering big positive GOE.

Oh, Chiba... yeah. Could be.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

I think the reason that Hanyu was given a < is because the under-rotation, though not severe, caused a fall. Plus, the ISU wanted to make sure that it was absolutely clean before awarding the status of first ever Olympic quad Axel.

I think it is the same with qs. If you are somewhere around 90 degrees you are more likely to get a q if the UR causes other problems with the jump, such as necessitating a "saved" landing.

Actually, I don't mind this convention, if in fact this is how the ISU is interpreting its own rules. In any set of rules there are also the "rules behind the rules." I am not aghast that Mr. Ruler and Mrs Protractor are not always the absolute Emperor and Empress of human endeavor.

But later the same 4A was ratified with the same underrotation! And was never-ever jumped without a similar underrotation (and nearly never called q, and never called <)! To the contrary, Yuzuru Hanyu's 4A wasn't to be ratified because of the fall... Your argument is a boomerang. And Yuzuru Hanyu's 4A resulted in a fall, not because of the underrotation but because, as you can see in the GIF, he had made the edge too deep to hold, because his ankle (reinjured the previous day) couldn't hold the shock of a 4A landing! This fall was planned, at least as a possibility then decided at the latest when he saw how the jump was going then he tilt his foot to get a safe fall... and he modified the interpretation of the program accordingly, or more probably, he skated to an alternate interpretation already planned in case of a fall. The fall that wasn't a choice was the 4S fall just after. I'm sorry, this doesn't hold. And, let's recall that the other skater I mentioned didn't get even a q... with all Quads and 3A underrotated... (Some other skaters got some blindness but to lesser gain because they had less base value in underrotated jumps, and most did have some q or < in the protocols.)

https://results.isu.org/results/season2122/owg2022/FSKMSINGLES-----------FNL-000100--_JudgesDetailsperSkater.pdf

So, I don't think that other skaters' scores reflected "fair accepted practice". It's only Yuzuru Hanyu's 4A call that reflected the rule...

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Oh, Chiba... yeah. Could be.

I checked the protocols of this season's Grand Prix among Single skaters. With a q, either the skater gets scores between -2 and 0 resulting in a slightly negative GOE, or they get a really low GOE which I suppose results from more penalties applied, probably further errors unrelated to the q. I didn't try to remember or check the jumps, except one, both from my blurred memory and your implied allegation.
Only two q calls in these four Grand Prix trophies resulted in a slightly positive Grade of Execution, both Women 3F + 3Tq in the Free, that is, a q on the second jump only. One was on Kaori Sakamoto's at NHK, which I didn't check. The second was on Mone Chiba's at Skate Canada International, which (but I don't have a slow motion at hand) seems imaginary:

https://x.com/maarks0628/status/1984961444480462864?ref_url=

To sum up, Mone Chiba got a +0.3 GOE on this Combination, while deserving probably +1.5; but being robbed makes her overscored?

To recentre on the thread topic, I think that we ought to analyse further, for each jump called q, which bullets and penalties have been applied. At first sight, if there's only a quarter turn missing on a jump otherwise excellent, the sanction seems harsh, but as the enhanced protocols give only the final jump's Grade of Execution without the details of the bullets or deductions, I don't think that we can assert that this is the case. In particular, a jump missing, even 60° rotation (therefore not incurring a q call) is unlikely to have a nice running edge exit, don't you think so?

 

[Mathman]

But later the same 4A was ratified with the same underrotation!...

You know, I think that I will have to stop posting on this topic. My imagination just can't keep up. I cannot for the life of me come up with of any reason why the ISU would want unfairly to depress the scores of the skater who was their biggest star both on the ice and in at the box office. It doesn't;t make any sense.

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

I don't think it's like that at all. That would be stupid and impossible to judge. I think that there is some sort of understanding about how many degrees short deserves a q, even if this is not spelled out precisely in the published rule summaries.

And indeed, this type of fixation on precision measuring is, in my opinion, antithetical to the spirit of figure skating anyway. It's on the skater to perform so well that the judges will not be undecided about whether their elements are pristine or cheated.

What is the understanding? The q is to indicate landing on the quarter - so shouldn’t it only be called if the skater does land precisely on the quarter? So if the skater got a q and managed to rotate 1 degree (89 degrees) more then it’s suddenly not a q? Or if they rotated 5 degrees (85 degrees) is it not a q anymore?

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

But later the same 4A was ratified with the same underrotation! And was never-ever jumped without a similar underrotation (and nearly never called q, and never called <)! To the contrary, Yuzuru Hanyu's 4A wasn't to be ratified because of the fall... Your argument is a boomerang. And Yuzuru Hanyu's 4A resulted in a fall, not because of the underrotation but because, as you can see in the GIF, he had made the edge too deep to hold, because his ankle (reinjured the previous day) couldn't hold the shock of a 4A landing! This fall was planned, at least as a possibility then decided at the latest when he saw how the jump was going then he tilt his foot to get a safe fall... and he modified the interpretation of the program accordingly, or more probably, he skated to an alternate interpretation already planned in case of a fall. The fall that wasn't a choice was the 4S fall just after. I'm sorry, this doesn't hold. And, let's recall that the other skater I mentioned didn't get even a q... with all Quads and 3A underrotated... (Some other skaters got some blindness but to lesser gain because they had less base value in underrotated jumps, and most did have some q or < in the protocols.)

https://results.isu.org/results/season2122/owg2022/FSKMSINGLES-----------FNL-000100--_JudgesDetailsperSkater.pdf

So, I don't think that other skaters' scores reflected "fair accepted practice". It's only Yuzuru Hanyu's 4A call that reflected the rule...

Kinda rich talking about fairness when the judges gave him higher PCS than the mandatory maximum PCS threshold allowed for a skater with two falls.

 

[Anna K.]

Kinda rich talking about fairness when the judges gave him higher PCS than the mandatory maximum PCS threshold allowed for a skater with two falls.

Wasn't it the case because of which the PCS threshold was invented?
Just asking.

What is the understanding? The q is to indicate landing on the quarter - so shouldn’t it only be called if the skater does land precisely on the quarter? So if the skater got a q and managed to rotate 1 degree (89 degrees) more then it’s suddenly not a q? Or if they rotated 5 degrees (85 degrees) is it not a q anymore?

Well, the rules say "1/4" and the range is not defined.
So, technically, even 5 degrees give your fed the ground to protest.

Even if common sense says that there should be the range, the rules do not define it. So, some may insist that the range should be 70 to 90 degrees, others may insist that it should be 90 to 110 degrees, or 45 to 135 degrees... etc.etc.

 

[Anna K.]

You know, I think that I will have to stop posting on this topic. My imagination just can't keep up. I cannot for the life of me come up with of any reason why the ISU would want unfairly to depress the scores of the skater who was their biggest star both on the ice and in at the box office. It doesn't;t make any sense.

At least it explains why yuzu religion features ISU evils. The great big 4A called under...

Allright, allright, I'm already leaving you alone...

 

[Anna K.]

In theory, if a judge starts with +3 for a jump that looked fully rotated to them in real time, and then they see that the technical panel awarded a q, the judge should probably remove the "good takeoff and landing" bullet point for the jump if they had already rewarded it, which would take the positive points to +2 instead of +3, and THEN subtract -1 or -2 for the q reduction. Which would leave the final GOE at 0 or even +1.

Unless the judge then chose to go back and look at the video replay available on their screen and found other errors on the rewatch.

But as fans we don't get to see the individual judges' scores before they see the tech panel scores (and we certainly don't get to read their minds). We just see the average GOE from the first few judges that put in their scores immediately after the element, in the tech box in the corner of the broadcast video.

We may see the tech box score change a bit if slower judges put in different scores, before the tech box changes to showing the next element. Or not, especially if the next element gets called very soon after the jump concluded.

What could happen sometimes could be that 3 judges see the jump as good in real time and put in enthusiastic GOEs right away, and that's enough to trigger a high average GOE shown in the tech box before the judges who were more dubious about the element in real time put in their scores. Some might be putting in 0 or -1 or -2 during the program based on their own real-time perceptions, but as fans we don't get to see this during the program because by the time those judges enter their scores, the skater and the tech box have moved on to the next element. And then some judges who weren't sure about the element might just make a note and not put in any score for that element, waiting to see whether the tech panel calls q or < or even <<.

So it could be that the judges who were quickest to enter scores for that element gave +3, later reduced to 0 or +1, but the judges who didn't put in scores until after the GOE for that element left the tech box gave lower scores and ended up at -2 after the q was confirmed. Or even lower if they also rewatched the replay themselves and found other aspects to penalize.

But I think that big a change, from significantly positive in the initial tech box to significantly negative in the final score on the protocols, with only a q call would be rare.

(Combinations with rotation calls on two jumps and or flips/lutzes that also get ! or e calls would be more likely to have bigger drops in GOE after the tech panel finishes the reviews and judges get to see their calls.)

This is one of the reasons why q-s and ur-s get so much commentator attention: you can't see these effects directly on the score box, so they become the subject of speculation.
I wonder if this will change when automated measurements will be introduced.

 

[Isk]

Penalties for q's are too soft IMO. If you're a popular skater you still get +2/+3 and the judge "justifies" it by saying well it would have been a +5 if not for that minor technical error. Meanwhile a skater from a "lesser" country has no 'q' but their GOE starts off at +2 max, even for a strong jump.

q is also so arbitrary (Sakamoto's 3F+3T comes to mind in her NHK FS where the flip - never mind the PR - is DEFINITELY q if you slowmotion it, with 8 out of 9 judges giving 0 or +1 and only one -1); meanwhile Sarah Everhardt's 3Z+2T+2L gets nailed with a UR 2L and a q on her 3Z which IMO was arguably more rotated than Kaori's 3F in that combo - yielding -3 to -5 on GOE).

Like if you think about it, q is "on the quarter" — how many jumps are EXACTLY 90 degrees short of rotation, and yet we see "q" used so much in protocols? If it's 91 degrees it's UR, if it's 89 degrees there's no call. Wow, these skaters getting q's on their protocols should be commended for PRECISELY hitting that 90 degrees exact.

This was the first question I asked when q was first introduced. Those who introduced it clearly didn't take measure theory course at the uni. They might as well not have introduced it at all, because the probability of the angle being exactly 90 degrees is 0. So q should never be awarded. But it gets awarded and quite often at that. And this was at the time when Lakernik who is a Ph.D. in math-phys was the head of ISU Tech. com.

 

[gkelly]

I liked the rules before q was introduced, when there was just << or < and if there was no call the skater got full base value and it was up to judges to reduce GOE depending on whether they thought the jump was underrotated (or had other issues) or not.

I guess some people (fans as well as evidently people on the tech committee) thought this was too imprecise and too many judges were giving too many pluses for jumps whose rotation was borderline at best. But until we have better measures that human eyesight from the perspective of one angle per judge/tech specialist, I don't mind giving skaters the benefit of the doubt in these borderline cases.

Same with ! calls for takeoff edges?

 

[Mathman]

What is the understanding? The q is to indicate landing on the quarter - so shouldn’t it only be called if the skater does land precisely on the quarter? So if the skater got a q and managed to rotate 1 degree (89 degrees) more then it’s suddenly not a q? Or if they rotated 5 degrees (85 degrees) is it not a q anymore?

That is exactly the point. Such an ultra-literal interpretation of "on the quarter" can't possibly be right. If it were, no qs would ever be called.

But they are. Therefore, the ISU mist mean (although they don't say so explicitly in the information that they make public) "somewhere around 90 degrees." Like 90+/- epsilon. What is epsilon? is it 90+/- 5 greets? +/=10? +/-15?

I don't know. but the ISU Technical Committee must discuss such things and convey their deliberations to prospective tech specialists in training seminars. etc.

... right?

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Kinda rich talking about fairness when the judges gave him higher PCS than the mandatory maximum PCS threshold allowed for a skater with two falls.

You're OT but... Kinda rich pretending that judges gave him "higher PCS than the mandatory maximum" while I posted the protocols a few messages up. Or maybe you don't remember what the thresholds were then? It's true that ISU have deleted them on their site. I could retrieve them here:

PCS in Beijing/1: serious error and criteria

I am not a figure skating judge, nor have I ever thought of becoming one. For years my ability to understand what was happening on the ice, beyond seeing the most glaring mistakes, was so limited t…

sportlandiamartina.link

This article is fine because, although it refers to Beijing Men Short Program (with that blatant underscoring of... the same skater, you would have guessed, or perhaps no, denial is a serious matter) you also have the exact wording, and the reason why the threshold wasn't even applying to the first fall, given how it was done and integrated in the movement and the program; there was ONE of "falls, interruptions during the program and technical mistakes that impact the integrity/continuity/fluidity of the composition and/or its relation to the music" not two. One may not reproach those who did consider there were two such serious errors, in spite of Lakernik's own declaration that this threshold was "facultative" on falls (after some overscored skaters got 10s with a disruptive fall). But those who gave scores even lower for such a program? And only two judges daring to give a — glups! — 9.00 in interpretation (8.75 was the threshold in this Component for two serious errors) as if the whole program's Interpretation of the music, falls and all, wasn't worth at least 9.5? Kinda rich, as you say...
By the way, the whole thread by Martina Frammartino, with very minute explanations with the support of ISU material on how to score Components, is very interesting, I don't post the links because Components scoring is really out of this topic, I was just reacting to your very wrong, out of topic statement; but it would deserve a thread I think!

@Anna K., stating facts isn't constitutive of a religion. It's stating facts. Denying facts is often constitutive of a false religion, or a cult, or an ideology.
Furthermore, here Yuzuru Hanyu's Olympic 4A's q call is really the event which couldn't be missed in this thread, when debating on q call. I don't know what failing to see that, can be...

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

This was the first question I asked when q was first introduced. Those who introduced it clearly didn't take measure theory course at the uni. They might as well not have introduced it at all, because the probability of the angle being exactly 90 degrees is 0. So q should never be awarded. But it gets awarded and quite often at that. And this was at the time when Lakernik who is a Ph.D. in math-phys was the head of ISU Tech. com.

Lakernik had a PhD in Maths/Physics? Then this reminds me of this Grenoble Chemistry Professor (and politician in charge of the puddle yard skating rink) who gave the (plastic) Gold Medal to the Bronze Medalist, it made a very cute scene:

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

 

[Anna K.]

@Anna K., stating facts isn't constitutive of a religion. It's stating facts. Denying facts is often constitutive of a false religion, or a cult, or an ideology.
Furthermore, here Yuzuru Hanyu's Olympic 4A's q call is really the event which couldn't be missed in this thread, when debating on q call. I don't know what failing to see that, can be...

"Religion" is a legit way how to refer to people who have beliefs. There are also scientific and medical descriptions but I prefer avoiding those because of ethical reasons. If you are not happy with the fact that you are a religious believer in my eyes, you can use your ignore button.

So, do you believe that full rotations matter because Yuzuru Hanyu's 4A was called in the Olympic games"? Well, if so, then IMHO your take on this topic is selective and absurd. You have reduced the entire question to one skater's call or non-call. It was never the purpose of this thread.