In posting a response to this thread I think it is best for me to first admit my bias towards Nagasu. I will make no attempt to hide that she is one of my "favorite" skaters. However, I will also say that despite my disagreement with some of the UR calls, I don't think she was the best skater of the night, and regardless of those errors, am not entirely surprised she ended up off the podium.
That said, it seems many posters on this board need a reality check. There is an interesting thing going on with the issue of underrotations, for all skaters, not just Nagasu. In Nagasu's case, here, I'm probably the only one on this board willing to say "What underrotations?" I'd give the judges the first double loop, the second triple Lutz, and the triple loop. Both toe loops were clean, as was the first Lutz and the flip. My attitude might perhaps be because of the fact that the jumps she landed looked utterly identical to those landed in the short program. I will certainly agree that in both programs the jumps were indeed "close." There was a certain lack of ease in the completion of the rotations, but I will contend that they were completed.
As a skater, I can say it is true that we know when a jump is cheated. However, I also know from doing hundreds of triples in practice and competitions that we also know when a jump feels good or right, despite what the tracing on the ice might look like. In the rink where I trained many of the coaches had the habit of saying "I liked that triple flip," for example. This would often come after a jump that may have been two-footed or had a step out, or perhaps, even slightly underrotated, but the point is that a jump is not merely about one technical quality or another. Of course I know that all these things are mistakes and the point of practicing and competing is to get as close to eliminating these errors from the jumps as possible, but sometimes a jump is about a lot more than just whether it's "fully rotated."
In regards to that, I get the impression that some posters believe a triple jump to be three revolutions in the air. This is not the case and never will be. It is a physical impossibility to jump up into the air, then initiate three rotations and float down to the ice. The rotation is always created on the ice and in many or most cases completed on the ice. The pioneer in studying jumps, Kathy Casey, was at this event and it would be interesting to get her take on this. I posted about this issue several months ago in the thread about Sasha Cohen and in regards to toe axels and other jumping errors. If my memory serves, I believe most triple jumps actually rotate less than two-and-one-half turns in the air. Most of the "lost" rotation comes from the take off, but a portion of it also occurs on the landing.
I think it's rather unfair to say that Mirai's jumps suck or that she has poor technique. Making these statements based on the presence of an underrotated landing only illustrates that one has a lack of understanding of the term technique and what it means in regards to jumps. It seems to me that Nagasu's jumping technique is among the best, at least of the American ladies. Her flow (I do not mean speed, but rather the rhythm of her body), the position of the arms, legs, and back, the rotational position, and on good days, the landing position, all demonstrate good technique. I have a habit of arguing semantics, but if we're going to criticize Mirai's jumping we should call into question the execution of the jump, rather than the technique itself.
I think there are a couple problems stemming from the judging itself. I think the new system has a lot of elements in place which seem to me to be designed to advance the sport of skating both technically and artistically and that is great, but I don't think we can actually change the way the sport technically is executed and has been for years. Think of how many skaters would be stripped of medals if the past competitions were retroactively judged by our current system. This is not solely because the sport is advancing, but simply because in part, this is the way jumps are done. I think the system is making skating too objective. There was a wonderful comment by a poster in another thread (which one excapes me at the moment) suggesting there be a sliding scale for underrotations. The poster used the example of a triple flip jump and providing the figure that each degree of rotation is worth .0051 points and that if a skater underrotated a triple flip by 1/4 turn or 90º, that the resultant value would be about 5.041. I think this is a wonderful idea in theory. Unfortunately since, as stated above, no jump consists of three revolutions in the air, the math is a bit flawed. The other problem would be that it would just be impossible for a human to make these kinds of judgements. The last thing we need is for the sport to be judged by computers or robots. The reason it was a nice suggestion is that it illustrates another point I made in my post in regards to toe axels in the Sasha Cohen thread: I don't care what anyone says, as a skater I know that jumps are not objective, but in fact very subjective. To place all this value on a jump's rotation only makes the rest get lost. And at the time I referenced Miki Ando's double axel-triple toe from last year's GPF in which the toe loop was downgraded. Even the commentators agreed. In slow motion it was questionable, but watch that jump in the performance and it was as clean a double axel-triple toe as you can imagine. I'd say the same for Mirai's attempt at the same combination here. Sure her landing was poor, but that was a triple toe loop no matter how you look at it.
In the end it's obvious that the system encourages skaters to better themselves technically and I think Mirai should definitely do that, especially if she wants to win medals. But at the same time it's just all too arbitrary. It's like scientific experiments that have to be considered inside a vacuum in order to be solved. But skating is not in a vacuum, and I think the judging system or its adherents and upholders need to step back a bit and think about what they're actually asking for. And this goes for jumps, spins, footwork choreography and all the rest.
I hope that this made some sense and did not come across as a crazy rant in defense of Nagasu.
Me, too.
