Figure skating needs CPR

[Poodlepal]

I agree with Skater Boy. This is rather a boring bunch--nobody new, nobody with a strong personality except for Chan.

I disagree with the woman who wrote the article. If you want figure skating to be an elite sport with so many rules that only those who have skated themselves and a few obsessed fans understand it, well, that's one thing. Perhaps the integrity of the sport will be maintained, so that those skaters/obsessed individuals can sigh in appreciation over a perfectly pointed toe or a perfectly quiet edge and realize that's what's really important, not those tacky, attention grabbing jumps.

If you want figure skating to reach a wide audience, you have to have the winner be the one who seemed to skate the best. Period. Because it looks like the judges are making up some subjective nonsense to give the medal (and the prize money) to whomever they want. So Favorite Skater fell so many times? Yes, but look at his bent knee in that turn! That more than makes up for it! I'm not saying that is what they're doing, but the system is certainly open to abuse.

So the ISU has two choices: do something so that you don't have another incident in which someone who falls multiple times wins over someone who skated clean, or leave it as it is and enjoy their small but more "educated" set of fans.

 

[Robeye]

EVEN I am getting tired of rehashing this, but it needs to be drilled into peoples heads. Chan's win showed us that you can win on the strength of your short. (Sure there were other factors, the other favorites having lackluster or disastrous shorts.) Yuna is another good example. Sure, she decimates the competition because she performs in the free, but she's got a nearly insurmountable lead after the short. It's a flaw in the system. The fact that scores aren't placements but rather a sum of points means that people CAN win on the strength of their short programs (It's basically what happened with figures + short back in the day. People won on the strength of their figures and tech programs, even though they consistently lost the free.) This means that the short program is OVERvalued under IJS. Which is why, factored placements, in some form, shape or fashion, needs to come back. I would say that it should be only in the short, so that people can't get too far ahead of the pack.

No person, regardless of who or where they're from, should be able to win a World Championship after having made mistakes on nearly half of their jumping passes (in the free). I don't care if your edges can cure cancer. (BTW, Chan won on the strength of his quads + his edges as well as some ridiculous PCS.)

I dislike this article, she's basically calling casuals lazy, and putting the onus on THEM. No, ma'am, they are the consumer, and if you put out a product that is overly complicated, it won't mean anything, people aren't going to get emotionally invested. I would say I'm as versed in this system as any other hardcore fan, and honestly, it IS complicated. Sure, figure skaters get good feedback from the levels and the breakdown of the scores, but honestly, that's what coaches are for NOT judges. Also, she misses the big pink elephant in the room: JUDGES. She says at the end that the scores are based on what is put out on the ice and not who and where they're from.... and she couldn't be more wrong. Reputation judging still occurs, its just a bit harder to spot.

ANY judging system is going to not work when the PEOPLE who are judging aren't doing it properly or uniformly and are doing it anonymously.

Mathematically, I must disagree that 1) the SP is relatively overvalued, and 2) that the system enables insurmountable leads. Let's look at each of these things individually:

1) SP Relatively Overvalued?. In terms of time elapsed and the quantity of elements and component features judged, the point value of the SP, as a general principle, is pretty proportional to that of the Free Skate, e.g. at a rate of roughly 1 to 2. Therefore, unless one wants to argue that somehow those things in the LP should be inherently and relatively more valuable for qualitative reasons (which would then be disproportionately penalizing SP features), I don't see the logic in this premise.

I suppose one could skew the relative weightings significantly in favor of the LP, such that, for example, a 3Lz in the LP (in the first half) is worth more than a 3Lz in the SP, to make the event "more exciting" with a nail-biting finish. I don't find this persuasive; I mean, why have the SP at all, then? But it could be done. However, let's be clear: this would be a judgment to fulfill a value agenda.

In no way does it demonstrate that the system of giving proportionally equal weightings to SP and LP scores (which is the current system) is either unfair, or that it systematically results in insurmountable SP leads (other than for reasons related to what the skaters themselves managed to do, or not do, on the ice).

The difference between this situation and the figures/free skate dichotomy of yore is that, the SP and the LP are essentially like items; it would be like playing 3 innings of a game one day, and then 6 innings the next. Should a run on the second day be counted as 2 runs, just because it would add a certain frisson to the finish? In the latter case, school figures and the free skate are qualitatively different, and people essentially made the judgment that they they didn't particularly care to have these draftsman-like tracings on ice dictate the winner.

2) Insurmountable Leads in the SP? I'll leave Patrick aside and address Yuna's history only: a 3 or 4 point lead going into the LP is only insurmountable if the leader is cleaner and/or has a higher points ceiling than her competitors. It has nothing to do with the SP being relatively overvalued (see above). I would be willing to surmise that if we did a quantitative analysis, it would show that, as a percentage, Yuna's average SP lead is no larger than her average LP lead. In fact, if we look at her latest World performances, her LP point differential was actually quite a bit higher than for her SP.

In the SP, Yuna's score (69.97) was about 4.7% higher than Carolina's second place score (66.86).

In the LP, Yuna's score (148.34) was almost 10.4% higher than Mao's second place score (134.37).

I would argue that Yuna was relatively underscored in the SP, for various reasons (she was skating in an early flight, she hadn't skated in a major competition all year, actually for almost two years, etc.). Let's even bend over backwards to "normalize" the case, and say she didn't get the infamous "e" on her 3F, and her PCS was judged to final flight standards. Call it 73 to 74 points? Revealingly, the average percentage differential for this range would be right around 10% when compared to Caro's SP score, exactly in line with her LP differential.

In other words, at worst, Yuna's SP lead was proportionally far smaller than her LP lead. At best, it was merely equal to it.

That's one of the benefits of looking at the hard numbers. Unless there is some funny business going on, a close scrutiny, more often than not, reveals the internal consistencies and logic.

 

[bara1968]

2007 GPF (1st SP, 2nd LP, 1st overall), 2008 4CC (1st SP, 3rd LP, 1st Overall), 2009 SA (1st SP, 2nd LP, 1st Overall)

Yuna is more a case of insurmountable leads in the short than Chan is, over her career. I'm not saying she didn't deserve her victories. I can't recall 2007 GPF or the 2008 4CC, but I did watch 2009 SA, and she did deserve to win there, she wasn't in second by that much in the long, compared to a clean Rachael Flatt.

Well, so if you rule out 2009 SA, neither 2007 GPF nor 2008 4CC can be good example for your argument since in LP for both competition, #1 skater and Yuna's score difference was almost negligible. : 0.34 For 2007 GPF, 1.83 for 2008 4CC and both skaters made one or two big mistake so Yuna's won was well deserved according to her better SP performance. So these cannot be the examples of "winning by massive SP score only with sloppy LP" like Chan's win from 2013 worlds.

 

[Ladskater]

by Tammy Karatchuk of the Edmonton Journal

The judging system in figure skating is leading the inevitable demise of our sport. That’s probably what some people thought after 2013 World Figure Skating Championships.

More

My question is "why?"

 

[Mathman]

The difference between this situation and the figures/free skate dichotomy of yore is that, the SP and the LP are essentially like items; it would be like playing 3 innings of a game one day, and then 6 innings the next. Should a run on the second day be counted as 2 runs, just because it would add a certain frisson to the finish?

I think a better model (than three innings the first day and six innings the second day) is the semi-finals, then the finals. In the world series, if you win game one by twenty runs that still just counts as one win. To win the series you have to win four games.

In figure skating, in my opinion, the scoring system should be rigged in such a way that you have to give two good performances in order to win the championship. Sometimes that won't happen, but the person who gives two good performances should (IMO) get the nod over the person who gives one good performance.

The ordinal system, with factored placements, was sort of like that. If all went according to plan, a skater who wanted to become champion had to give a good enough performance in the short program to be at least in third place, and then win the finale. This system guaranteed, in so far as possible, an exciting final flight in the LP, when the contestants "go for the gold."

 

[Icey]

I don't see anything new in this article. Just a rehash that does little good imo. I doubt educating oneself about the rules will help things in the end. I don't think most people will ever see Chan's edges etc overcoming multiple falls.

 

[Mathman]

I dislike this article, she's basically calling casuals lazy, and putting the onus on THEM. No, ma'am, they are the consumer,..

The only industry that can get away with this is the fashion industry. The customer likes red. The fashion mavens say, no, you liked red last year. This year you like blue. If you don't, then you are stupid and unfashionable.

It works!

 

[venlac]

Well, so if you rule out 2009 SA, neither 2007 GPF nor 2008 4CC can be good example for your argument since in LP for both competition, #1 skater and Yuna's score difference was almost negligible. : 0.34 For 2007 GPF, 1.83 for 2008 4CC and both skaters made one or two big mistake so Yuna's won was well deserved according to her better SP performance. So these cannot be the examples of "winning by massive SP score only with sloppy LP" like Chan's win from 2013 worlds.

ah ha ... If I don't see it, I would have misknow.
Thank you.

 

[gkelly]

I think the problem goes beyond educating the public and holding judges accountable. When the average fan sees one skater clearly outskate another, yet the other guy wins, explanations of where the winner picked up the necessary CoP points to come out on top will not make that fan like the sport any better.

But how does an average fan know which skater "outskated" another? Either they had to have been educated somehow, or else they just made up their own criteria out of thin air.

Suppose you have never seen figure skating before. And then you come across a competition on TV, or at a local rink with a friend who knows what's going on. You're curious, so you ask "What is this sport about? What are the skaters supposed to be doing, and how do they decided who's best?"

Imagine that your friend, or the TV commentators, give one of the following explanations:

1) Skaters skate around and do tricks, like jumps and spins and steps. The jumps are worth the most. Whoever does the hardest tricks best without falling down wins.

2) Skaters are supposed to perform a dance to the music, use the different technical skills they can do on the blades. They get points for some of the difficult skills, but the most important thing is the overall performance.

3) Figure skating is based on different ways of using the human body to control the blades on the ice. The most important things are the edges on the two sides of the blades and the way they make curves around the ice. The specific technical skills are mostly about turning and curving, at speed, and changing between one edge and another. The speed and the strength of the curves are the most important qualities. The most difficult ways to get from one edge to another, or back to the same edge, are to jump up in the air and turn around three or four times in the air before coming down on a backward outside edge. So those jumps are worth the most. But you have to be good at all kinds of different skills -- six different kinds of jump takeoffs, spins on both feet in different positions, and curves and turns and steps that use different parts of the blades and travel and turn in different directions.

Each of those definitions has some truth to it. And each is missing something. So if you learn about the sport from someone who favors one of those definitions, in many events you're going to have a different expectation of who outskated whom than if you had started with a different definition. (That's not even getting into questions of how results from two separate programs should be combined.)

Likewise, if fans see a skater fall all over the place, but then get 8.5's in performance and execution, it does not do any good to ask the judges why they gave the scores that they did. They will just say, well, this skater exhibited musicality, plus he satisfied bullets two through eight on page 328 of the ISU rule book.

How a judge would answer the question would likely depend on whether the judge is trying to defend herself against accusations of bad judging -- and if so, whether from fans or press or her federation or the referee or assessment commission or non-winning skaters in the event -- or whether she's trying to draw fans into the sport by sharing her thought processes or trying to recruit and train new judges, or whatever. And also how skilled the judge is at translating internal thought processes into verbal explanations. I would hope that a judge who really wants to help the asker of the question understand would not simply cite rule numbers! (But a judge who is being challenged to defend herself would do well to back up her arguments with written documentation.)

And for big mistakes- deduct 0.5 from each component. if you take a risk and it fails you should be even more harshly punished. Big falls and big mistakes are unacceptable for a top skater.

So do these rules only apply to top skaters? How do you define who qualifies as a top skater for whom big mistakes are unacceptable, and who is not a top skater and need not be so severely penalized? Are there different penalties for different levels of competition? For different skaters in the same competition depending on whether or not they're in medal contention?

The reason results were more "discussed" under 6.0 is because the cheating was right there in your face, and you could spot it. (I.E. Bloc Judging)

Not really. You could spot placements you disagreed with right in front of you, but there was no way to tell just by looking at the scores whether they were arrived at by cheating or by mistake or by valid honest evaluation that just happened to disagree with your own evaluation. All you could do would be to come up with theories as to the reasons, but almost never could you prove whether your theory was right or wrong.

Occasionally you could see patterns of several judges supporting the same skaters. That would be circumstantial evidence to support a theory of collusion. A heavy weight of many decisions all pointing circumstantially to the same conclusion would be enough to convince most neutral observers. But the scores alone wouldn't be proof. You'd need to have witnessed improper communications between the judges, or get a confession from at least one of them, to prove it.

BTW, there is a way to make placements and the ability of someone to jump spots from 7th to first or from 9th to first, which would be to devalue the placements received in the Short and put greater weight on the free. However, if 6.0 was always done fairly, then this wouldn't be a problem. The problem was never 6.0, it was that judges would place people so low so that, even IF they won the free, they wouldn't move up.

If you're talking only about outright dishonest results, then yes, it's possible (but unprovable without witnesses, confessions, or mind reading) that judges could have intentionally placed skaters they didn't want to win lower in the short program than those judges thought that skater deserved in the short with the express purpose of preventing that skater from winning the title even if

But that's not what we're talking about, for the most part.
Suppose skater A bombs the short program and deserves to place low but is capable of winning the long. Do the judges think, when marking skater A's SP, "I have to make sure this skater ends up fourth or lower in the SP so she can't win the title even if she wins the free? (or lower than 7th so she can't win any medal just by winning the free) Hm, now who can I put ahead of her? Better make sure I keep the skater(s) that I want to win ahead of those buffer skaters."

That people in earlier flights would end up being lower because "room" was being left, and then people who came later, who may have had better reputations, or stronger Federations, would sometimes receive unfairly high marks for something that should have been rightly placed below that earlier skater. There should be some reward for winning the short, you've won one portion of the event, you should have some room to still land on the podium.

These statements seem to contradict each other.
In the short program, skate order was usually random. Skaters who didn't make top 6 in the short usually were placed so low because they had made mistakes and/or had weaker skills or lower technical content -- not because of SP skate order (aside from unintentional psychological effects of skate order), and not likely because judges thought "This skater deserves to be top 3 in the short, but I'm afraid she'll win the long and beat my favored skater, so I'm going to lowball her now on purpose to keep her out of the final group and protect my skater."

In the long program, where skate order was seeded, deservedly low SP results and consequent skating in an earlier LP group could lead to lower scores because of the psychological effects.

So the ISU has two choices: do something so that you don't have another incident in which someone who falls multiple times wins over someone who skated clean, or leave it as it is and enjoy their small but more "educated" set of fans.

The ISU could "do something" -- or several small things that could combine to have a larger effect -- to penalize multiple falls more severely and therefore make it much less likely that a skater with multiple falls would ever win over a skater of comparable skills who skates cleanly.

But they can't guarantee that a skater with multiple falls will never win. Sometimes everybody falls, or at least everyone who has the skill level to contend for medals. Or the ones who don't fall pop jumps or make other equally serious errors. Maybe the only someones who skate clean were starting from a lower skill level to begin with. If the best clean skate (if any) was at a much lower starting level than the best skates with errors, it's entirely possible that even with severe penalties the best skates with errors will still be worth more than the best without visible errors. And of the error-ridden ones, a skate with two falls and everything else strong could be worth more than the next-best skate with three or four or five non-fall errors.

Which means that the operating understanding offered to new/casual fans of what constitutes "skating better" needs to be a little more nuanced than just "Whoever skates best without falling down wins." Because it's inevitable that that formulation will sometimes be contradicted in reality, unless the rules are that fall = instant disqualification.

At the very least, a little more nuance along the lines of "Whoever does the hardest tricks best with the fewest major error usually wins" would communicate that difficulty counts positively, quality counts positively, and mistakes including falls count negatively, without guaranteeing in advance that certain mistakes automatically disqualify a skater from winning even if they still stay in the game.

 

[Skater Boy]

Mathematically, I must disagree that 1) the SP is relatively overvalued, and 2) that the system enables insurmountable leads. Let's look at each of these things individually:

1) SP Relatively Overvalued?. In terms of time elapsed and the quantity of elements and component features judged, the point value of the SP, as a general principle, is pretty proportional to that of the Free Skate, e.g. at a rate of roughly 1 to 2. Therefore, unless one wants to argue that somehow those things in the LP should be inherently and relatively more valuable for qualitative reasons (which would then be disproportionately penalizing SP features), I don't see the logic in this premise.

I suppose one could skew the relative weightings significantly in favor of the LP, such that, for example, a 3Lz in the LP (in the first half) is worth more than a 3Lz in the SP, to make the event "more exciting" with a nail-biting finish. I don't find this persuasive; I mean, why have the SP at all, then? But it could be done. However, let's be clear: this would be a judgment to fulfill a value agenda.

In no way does it demonstrate that the system of giving proportionally equal weightings to SP and LP scores (which is the current system) is either unfair, or that it systematically results in insurmountable SP leads (other than for reasons related to what the skaters themselves managed to do, or not do, on the ice).

The difference between this situation and the figures/free skate dichotomy of yore is that, the SP and the LP are essentially like items; it would be like playing 3 innings of a game one day, and then 6 innings the next. Should a run on the second day be counted as 2 runs, just because it would add a certain frisson to the finish? In the latter case, school figures and the free skate are qualitatively different, and people essentially made the judgment that they they didn't particularly care to have these draftsman-like tracings on ice dictate the winner.

2) Insurmountable Leads in the SP? I'll leave Patrick aside and address Yuna's history only: a 3 or 4 point lead going into the LP is only insurmountable if the leader is cleaner and/or has a higher points ceiling than her competitors. It has nothing to do with the SP being relatively overvalued (see above). I would be willing to surmise that if we did a quantitative analysis, it would show that, as a percentage, Yuna's average SP lead is no larger than her average LP lead. In fact, if we look at her latest World performances, her LP point differential was actually quite a bit higher than for her SP.

In the SP, Yuna's score (69.97) was about 4.7% higher than Carolina's second place score (66.86).

In the LP, Yuna's score (148.34) was almost 10.4% higher than Mao's second place score (134.37).

I would argue that Yuna was relatively underscored in the SP, for various reasons (she was skating in an early flight, she hadn't skated in a major competition all year, actually for almost two years, etc.). Let's even bend over backwards to "normalize" the case, and say she didn't get the infamous "e" on her 3F, and her PCS was judged to final flight standards. Call it 73 to 74 points? Revealingly, the average percentage differential for this range would be right around 10% when compared to Caro's SP score, exactly in line with her LP differential.

In other words, at worst, Yuna's SP lead was proportionally far smaller than her LP lead. At best, it was merely equal to it.

That's one of the benefits of looking at the hard numbers. Unless there is some funny business going on, a close scrutiny, more often than not, reveals the internal consistencies and logic.

I dont think this is even close to being on topic though if we wrote this much and with such complexity we might even lose die hard skating fans lol.

 

[Robeye]

I dont think this is even close to being on topic though if we wrote this much and with such complexity we might even lose die hard skating fans lol.

Well, there was definitely thread drift, and I was interested in responding to the ideas in the particular post in question.

Are you saying that indulging in geekiness is now not allowed even on a specialty figure skating fan forum?

 

[Mathman]

But how does an average fan know which skater "outskated" another? Either they had to have been educated somehow, or else they just made up their own criteria out of thin air.

Suppose you have never seen figure skating before. And then you come across a competition on TV, or at a local rink with a friend who knows what's going on. You're curious, so you ask "What is this sport about? What are the skaters supposed to be doing, and how do they decided who's best?"

Imagine that your friend, or the TV commentators, give one of the following explanations:

1) Skaters skate around and do tricks, like jumps and spins and steps. The jumps are worth the most. Whoever does the hardest tricks best without falling down wins.

2) Skaters are supposed to perform a dance to the music, use the different technical skills they can do on the blades. They get points for some of the difficult skills, but the most important thing is the overall performance.

3) Figure skating is based on different ways of using the human body to control the blades on the ice. The most important things are the edges on the two sides of the blades and the way they make curves around the ice. The specific technical skills are mostly about turning and curving, at speed, and changing between one edge and another. The speed and the strength of the curves are the most important qualities. The most difficult ways to get from one edge to another, or back to the same edge, are to jump up in the air and turn around three or four times in the air before coming down on a backward outside edge. So those jumps are worth the most. But you have to be good at all kinds of different skills -- six different kinds of jump takeoffs, spins on both feet in different positions, and curves and turns and steps that use different parts of the blades and travel and turn in different directions.

Each of those definitions has some truth to it. And each is missing something. So if you learn about the sport from someone who favors one of those definitions, in many events you're going to have a different expectation of who outskated whom than if you had started with a different definition. (That's not even getting into questions of how results from two separate programs should be combined.)

On a multiple choice test the longest answer is always the right one.

As for who skated best in the opinion of the less knowledgable fan, I think if one skater did a bunch of big jumps, and another gave an emotionally satisfying musical interpretation, while a third dazzled with his blade work, that fan would come away from the contest saying, "Well the judges liked this guy's performance the best, but the other two were pretty good, too, in different ways." In fact, this is the best kind of competition to watch -- everyone was good, each by his own measure.

But when someone has multiple falls and other mistakes that even the most casual of fans can't help but notice, that detracts alike from the glory of the big jumps, the effectiveness of the presentation, and the demonstration of blade-to-ice skills.

 

[GF2445]

To clarify with a person's response to my post, I admit it was wrong of me to use the term 'top skaters.' I believe a reduction in the PCS for mistakes should be mandatory across all higher levels of skaters (senior and junior levels- for smaller levels, I think it should not apply). There has to be a greater emphasis on achieving a clean program over going out of your depth and faulting.

Besides, if you fall or stumble on elements you are not demonstrating control over your edges (Skating skills), linking footwork in between the elements is compromised, the program is not being performed or executed properly, a skater on their bum is not choreography and the interpretation is interrupted by these mistakes.

 

[Mathman]

The more I think about it, the more clear it seems to me that figure skating has a unique burden among spectator sports. In other sports, if you root for the home team and they get beat, you might go away sad but you won't be angry. What makes you go away angry is when the game turns on a controversial (and in your opinion wrong) referee's call.

In figure skating, everything is a referee's call. By it's very nature figure skating will always be the king of wuz-robbing, whatever the scoring system.

 

[gkelly]

As for who skated best in the opinion of the less knowledgable fan, I think if one skater did a bunch of big jumps, and another gave an emotionally satisfying musical interpretation, while a third dazzled with his blade work, that fan would come away from the contest saying, "Well the judges liked this guy's performance the best, but the other two were pretty good, too, in different ways." In fact, this is the best kind of competition to watch -- everyone was good, each by his own measure.

But when someone has multiple falls and other mistakes that even the most casual of fans can't help but notice, that detracts alike from the glory of the big jumps, the effectiveness of the presentation, and the demonstration of blade-to-ice skills.

However, the degree to which falls detract will depend in part on what we understand is the goal of the sport.

If the goal is to do the hardest stuff possible without falling, then obviously the falls would disqualify that person from winning.

If the goal is to present a seamless performance, with some risky preferred but not required, then obviously the falls and stumbles would seriously detract.

If the goal is to do the hardest stuff possible in an allotted time, with credit only for what is successfully executed during that time, then the failed elements would be ignored and the difficulty of what is completed successfully would be privileged.

Of these three options, the first is clearly far from the truth of how the sport has ever been organized, so anyone who thinks that's what the point is has clearly been misled (or never led at all and made up their own rules in their head with no knowledge).

The second and third are each closer, but each leave out important aspects. And they contradict each other.

The rules can also be adjusted to favor one direction or another. So if we're calling for rule changes, which direction should they go. After 2010, many (skaters, coaches, and some fans) called for rule changes that would better reward and encourage greater attempted difficulty, specifically quad attempts. The results made it easier to win with quads and also falls -- especially for one particular skater who has become a lightning rod of resentment. Unintended consequence.

So now the pendulum swings toward calls to penalize falls more severely. That is probably needed, but it has to be done carefully, with more thought into the effects of any rule change in a variety of likely situations, not just the situation that allows that one resented skater to win so often.

To clarify with a person's response to my post, I admit it was wrong of me to use the term 'top skaters.' I believe a reduction in the PCS for mistakes should be mandatory across all higher levels of skaters (senior and junior levels- for smaller levels, I think it should not apply). There has to be a greater emphasis on achieving a clean program over going out of your depth and faulting.

So lack of falls/major errors should count for more than what is actually attempted and completed in the rest of the program? I.e., "Whoever does the hardest stuff possible without falling wins" -- but how difficult the successful stuff was and how well the successful stuff was done should take a back seat to the presence or absence of falls?

Also, the size of the penalty needs to be considered carefully.

For example, consider a single competition that includes the six skaters with the following jump content:

Anna: 3Lz+3T, 3F+2T+2T e, 3Lz, 1Lo (pop), 2A+3T, 3S, 2A

Beatriz: 3A (fall), 3A+2T, 3Lz, 3F+3Lo, 3F+2T+2Lo, 3T (fall), 3S

Catherine: 3Lz+2T e, 3F+2T, 3Lz e, 3F, 3Lo<, 3S<, 2A+3T+SEQ

Diana: 3T+2T, 3S+2Lo, 3T, 3S, 2A, 2F+2Lo+2Lo, 2Lz (all clean)

Elena: 3F<< (fall), 3Lo<, 3T+3T (fall), 3F<, 2A+1Lo+3S, 3S, 2A

Fabia: 3S<+1T, 3S<<, 3T<<, 2A, 2A+2T, 2F+2T+2Lo<, 2Lz

To the naked eye, Catherine landed the most triples -- 7 -- with the the fewest obvious errors. Should she win, or should Anna and Beatriz get more credit for attempting greater difficulty and executing with mostly greater quality?

Should the fall penalties be set large enough so that Beatriz couldn't beat Anna in this situation even if she replaced one of the triples she fell on with a successful double and only had one fall?

Diana had an easier jump layout, but she executed everything she attempted with no mistakes. Is two falls from Beatriz enough to put her behind Diana if Diana had good quality on everything?

Should Elena's program with three successfully landed triples (one in combination with a failed triple), two landed/somewhat cheated triples, and two falls challenge Fabia's with zero rotated triples?

What if Diana was slow and cautious and did nothing but skate around with bad posture, telegraphing her jumps, with easy spins and steps only to the minimum required? Should it then be possible for an energetic, charismatic, well, choreographed and musical performance from Elena to beat her despite the falls?

Should the number of visible errors be the deciding factor? Should the number of triples landed be the deciding factor? or should there be room for other qualities of the jumps and other qualities besides jumps to make the difference?

Is it more important to make sure that Beatriz is punished for her falls and prohibited from winning this event? Should the punish-Beatriz rules be indifferent to how they affect lower-ranked skaters, e.g., whether Diana or Elena or Fabia earns the coveted last top-10 spot at Junior Worlds?

 

[dorispulaski]

Being unfairly judged (and predetermined) has not damaged the attendance at professional wrestling.

If you're going to have pageantry, have pageantry: have clearly characterized heroes & villains (including the judges), overdone costumes, and commenters who try to build excitement in the show. Sell little action figures. Of course, you can't do that on the Olympic track competitions, but a pro circuit based on the same premise could do quite well.

 

[Mathman]

Sell little action figures.

:yes: :banana:

 

[ForeverFish]

:yes: :banana:

Hey, I'd buy a Brian Joubert action figure

 

[louisa05]

I've said this before elsewhere. The problem is that the scoring needs to be accessible without "homework". Contrasts to other sports are valid here.

In baseball, you can be an expert fan and understand statistics and pitch selection and what a "hit and run" play is and you can enjoy all the pre and post game analysis of such things. And that's great. I'm that girl. I love to watch on television where I can clearly see where the pitches are at. But then there are people like my husband. He likes to sit in the sun at a stadium with a beer and watch a game and hasn't the slightest clue what an ERA is or the difference between a slider and a fast ball. And he doesn't care. He does know what an out is. And he knows when a run scores. That is all he needs to know to actually enjoy the game and know who is winning or losing. And baseball needs both of us to keep selling tickets.

Or there is football. You can understand the difference between an option offense or a spread offense and recognize when the defense is blitzing and when they are not. But you don't need to know any of that to recognize when your team does or does not score a touchdown. Again...at our house, we watch college football and I know all of those things and when a team might be better off passing and when they should run...husband knows when they score a touchdown. He doesn't need to know the rest to enjoy watching our favorite team. Once again, football needs both of us for ratings and ticket sales.

Then there is skating. In order to understand who wins and loses under the current system, you have to understand the difference between a 1/2 and 1/4 cheated jump and a level 2 vs. level 3 footwork sequence and recognize the subtlety of superior vs. merely excellent edging (which you can rarely get a sense of on a television broadcast) and don't forget that the entire thing is multiplied by a factor or some such algebraic equation. For broadcasters to adequately explain this, we would barely be able to hear the music as the evaluation would be constant (and we have a level 3 spin with 6 rotations which will give her a .07 multiplied by xy to the 18th power advantage over our previous performer....). If math is not your passion (and even if it is--Mathman must like math and he is not enthusiastic) and you are not really a skating fan anyway and don't know who the performers are, you're going to change the channel. Or if you stay and watch, you're going to see a skater make multiple mistakes and be given a gold medal and all the explanations in the world aren't going to make sense because our general perception of sports is that excellence wins. The excellence that we can see. No one pitches a perfect game and loses because the opposing pitcher's wind up was a more textbook pitching form.

 

[gkelly]

I've said this before elsewhere. The problem is that the scoring needs to be accessible without "homework". Contrasts to other sports are valid here.

So what would be the answer?

If the goal is to sell tickets by producing an entertainment product that casual viewers can easily understand, then skating would need rules that rewards only things that casual viewers can see for themselves and that severely penalizes every mistake that casual viewers can see for themselves.

Anything that requires actually knowing the difference between one edge and another would have to be irrelevant. Which means that that sport would not be figure skating.

If the ISU wants to make money from casual fans, they could invent competitions of jumping and dancing on ice using figure skating skills that rewards only successful jumping and entertaining performance.

There might sometimes be close contests between skaters who demonstrated different mixes of jumping skills and performance skills, or different styles of performance, so there might still be times when people would disagree with the results. But there would be a lot less confusion about how someone won.

Put in a rule that any fall disqualifies the skater, and there would never be a winning performance with a fall. Getting up and continuing the program would not be allowed -- someone comes out with a hook and drags the skater off the ice. That would be entertaining and easy to understand.

Of course there could be days when the ice is bad, or everyone at the event is recovering from food poisoning or flu, or it's just one of those days, and every single skater in the event ends up falling at some point in the program. Sorry no one got to finish their programs, and no one was left standing so there's no one left to win. Doesn't matter who was best of all the programs with falls, because programs with falls are not allowed to win.

Or allow one (or two) fall(s) with only a deduction and don't disqualify the skater until the second or third fall. So then there would never be a winner with "multiple falls," but at least it would be likely that some skaters would make it through the program without being disqualified.

The sport that cares more about edges and difficulty and quality would be only for participants and aficionados. It would still be in the Olympics, but fans of the commercial sport who buy tickets to fan-friendly events and watch them on TV but don't care about edges would find the Olympic sport arcane and boring in comparison.

If you're going to have pageantry, have pageantry: have clearly characterized heroes & villains (including the judges), overdone costumes, and commenters who try to build excitement in the show. Sell little action figures. Of course, you can't do that on the Olympic track competitions, but a pro circuit based on the same premise could do quite well.

Yes. A pro circuit -- whether run by or ignored by the ISU -- can make its rules as fan friendly and edge-indifferent as it likes.

But it still couldn't guarantee that the participants would never ever fall unexpectedly. So it couldn't have both predetermined results and a no-wins-with-falls rule.

The results could always stick to the predetermined script regardless of who fell or anything else about how each skater actually performed that day. And then when the performances don't match the script, fans could enjoy outrage at the injustice of pre-scripting the results and laugh at how badly reality matched up with the script.

Or there could be predetermined scripts and choreography (including choreographed falls) designed to support results that tell a satisfying story. But if a pre-scripted ends up falling by mistake, there could be built in penalties guarantee a change in results.

Or forget about live events and build in reskates to guarantee that a predetermined winner will provide an (edited) video performance that fits the script.