Championship Ladies FS | Page 38 | Golden Skate

Championship Ladies FS

carolinefan177

On the Ice
Joined
May 17, 2007
After watching Mirai's program for the second time, I could better see some of the URs. However, I think the biggest tragedy here is that it takes most people another glance at a program to understand a skater's score--even Scott Hamilton didn't get it right.

I get that figure skating is a sport, but it's not quite that black and white. What has always drawn me to figure skating was that it was coupled with artistry, elegance, and beauty, and I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that the sport has lost most of this under the current scoring system.

Am I saying it's unfair? No. Skating has simply turned into a system of numbers; those that can master that system, like Rachael, will ultimately be victorious.

I think it's sad that it takes a set of earbuds and some really keen eyes to really get the complexity of the scoring system. Skating has always been about being "in the moment," at least for me.

And for me, Mirai was the one "in the zone" last night, as was Yuakri Nakano at the 2008 worlds.

I mean we could argue back and fourth about this issue, for ages. But, in the end, no matter how much more fair figure skating is or claims to be, there will always be partiality, and that goes for any sport.

Call me ignorant, naive, or unfair, but I think Mirai should have won last night, and I make no apologies for having this opinion.

Besides, that's part of what makes a sport so exciting, the diverse perspectives.

Congratulations to both skaters...

And I hope Zhang makes a quick recovery and does what she thinks is best for her and her body
 
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oleada

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 27, 2007
I still can't see the underrotation of Mirai's 3Lz. I can give you the last 3T, the 2A+3T maybe, but the 3Lz? can't see it.
 

FlattFan

Match Penalty
Joined
Jan 4, 2010
I just wish this system was used in the 1988 Olympics and 1990 worlds. Midori Ito would have won those two handily. Thank god the CoP addressed this problem and reward the right skater this time around.
 

mystichaze

On the Ice
Joined
Nov 7, 2007
Congrats to Mirai and Rachel for making the Olympic team. I'm not a Wagner fan but I have to give her some respect for skating like she did last night, only if it weren't for that fall in the SP she would definitely be on the team. Was she sent to JR worlds last year too? Tom Zakrajsek must be a very proud coach for having two of his students winning titles in Spokane (Agnes Zawadzki & Rachel).Frank Carroll will also be very busy preparing his team of skaters for Vancouver (Evan, Mirai and Carolina).
 

janetfan

Match Penalty
Joined
May 15, 2009
I just wish this system was used in the 1988 Olympics and 1990 worlds. Midori Ito would have won those two handily. Thank god the CoP addressed this problem and reward the right skater this time around.

Midori had the slimmest of chances to win as long as school figures were being used. She was a great free skater but was very poor at figures. Exceptionally poor.

She was eliminated from medal contention at Calgary because of her poor figures. In 1990 Jill skated a bad SP but still had enough of a lead because of the figures to win the WC.
 

chuckm

Record Breaker
Joined
Aug 31, 2003
Country
United-States
Any comments on what you heard on the buds last night? Did they explain how Rachael's score was a new pb by what - 20 or more points?

I still don't see how her 200 + score has even a remote resemblance to Yuna or Mao's skating when they have received similar scores.

I knew before Mirai took the ice last night there was no way she could top Rachael's inflated score. So again, a moment of CoP madness intruded on what had been a good competition.

Like Scott, and most fans I did feel some hope after Mirai skated because it just looked and felt so much better than Rachael.

Nationals scoring has always been inflated. But IMO 130 for Rachael's FS is a more reasonable score than 144 for Rochette's FS at Canadian Nationals. Rachael got 116 for her FS at Skate America, where she received no credit for her final spins. Those spins have been corrected, which would have given her an additional 6 points. So 130 is not that far off from 122. OTOH, Rochette's top FS score was 124.15---144 is twenty points beyond that.

At least several skaters have achieved scores over 130, but NO lady has ever scored 140, much less 144.

If Mirai had fully rotated all 6 of her jumps, she could easily have passed Rachael. She was already ahead of Rachel by 0.66 after the SP. She would have gained 10.06 for fully rotated jumps plus a possible +3 in GOE, which would have raised her TES to 69.95 vs. Rachael's 69.05, and that would have given her the title and a score at least 1 point higher than Rachaels.

Mirai MUST work on fully rotating her jumps. If she doesn't, the ISU tech teams will drop her TES and the judges will ding her SS and her PCS scores.
 

oleada

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 27, 2007
Where are you re-watching the programs? I'm dying to seem them again.

They are up at nbcolympics.com

Regardless of the UR's or not, Mirai should have destroyed Rachael in the PCS and that didn't happen. I'm fine with her being second if the URs were there, but the PCS is frankly a joke.
 

inside edge

On the Ice
Joined
Nov 26, 2009
Nationals scoring has always been inflated. But IMO 130 for Rachael's FS is a more reasonable score than 144 for Rochette's FS at Canadian Nationals. Rachael got 116 for her FS at Skate America, where she received no credit for her final spins. Those spins have been corrected, which would have given her an additional 6 points. So 130 is not that far off from 122. OTOH, Rochette's top FS score was 124.15---144 is twenty points beyond that.

At least several skaters have achieved scores over 130, but NO lady has ever scored 140, much less 144.
Here comes i love skating :p
 

ks777

Record Breaker
Joined
Aug 15, 2003
They are up at nbcolympics.com

Regardless of the UR's or not, Mirai should have destroyed Rachael in the PCS and that didn't happen. I'm fine with her being second if the URs were there, but the PCS is frankly a joke.


Ok I rewatched Mirai's LP again. I rewatched her Lutz and toes. Her 2axel/3toe look fully rotated to me and her solo 3lutz look also rotated to me. Her last jump, 3toe, look maybe underrotated but it was very close. I watched them over and over..

I also watched Rachel's 3/3 and I have to say her 3toe looked underrotated.
 

oleada

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 27, 2007
I totally agree. The only jump I can spot the UR on is the last 3T. The 3Lz and the first 3T looked good.

IMHO, Rachael gets the benefit of doubt from the callers, because more often than not she does rotate her jumps (aside form the back end of her 3+3), but Mirai doesn't, which wasn't fair at all in this case. I can't tell if it was UR or not because you can't see her blade in the camera angle. She did have a bad landing and barely got deducted for it - it's not like the jump was that great to begin with.
 

skatemom1122

Final Flight
Joined
Dec 22, 2009
Sounds to me like some of you should have been callers last night. You guys have watched these jumps back in super slow motion replay, right? The same kind of replay available to the real callers?
 

R.D.

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Excuse me, but the audience at Spokane was NOT perturbed. A good portion of the audience was wearing the ear buds which delivered the technical commentary on each skater. So the audience KNEW Mirai had not rotated all of her jumps.

The scoring system wasn't flawed, Mirai's jump technique was flawed.

I was in the audience and the applause after the final scores and placements was announced was deafening. NO ONE BOOED RACHAEL'S WIN.

They didn't tell us on NBC though until AFTER Rachel won. I seriously thought Nagasu won and admit to being confused for a little bit from the results. I know I wasn't the only one...even some skaters thought the same thing.

Not saying Rachel didn't win fair and square, but this is a clear drawback of the Cop system. Why penalize so heavily errors barely visible to most people?
 

seniorita

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 3, 2008
a very very short review of what happened?i cant find the results in the 50 pages,:laugh: who will be sent to Olys?
Did Sasha skate?
 

ImaginaryPogue

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 3, 2009
a very very short review of what happened?i cant find the results in the 50 pages,:laugh: who will be sent to Olys?
Did Sasha skate?

1. Flatt
2. Nagasu
--
3. Wagner
4. Cohen
5. Gao

Flatt and Nagasu are going to Olympics/Worlds. Nagasu URed 3 jumps in the long, which hurt her and has led to much discussion about COP's imperfections.
 

FlattFan

Match Penalty
Joined
Jan 4, 2010
I still can't see the underrotation of Mirai's 3Lz. I can give you the last 3T, the 2A+3T maybe, but the 3Lz? can't see it.

I slow mo my recording and for both the lutz and the last toe, she landed backward.
The flip was questionable, too.

A stricter caller would probably ding her for the flip as well.

Mirai is lucky in this event.

Mao flutz carries a -2 or -3 GOE.

Hers was less than -1.
 

FlattFan

Match Penalty
Joined
Jan 4, 2010
Ok I rewatched Mirai's LP again. I rewatched her Lutz and toes. Her 2axel/3toe look fully rotated to me and her solo 3lutz look also rotated to me. Her last jump, 3toe, look maybe underrotated but it was very close. I watched them over and over..

I also watched Rachel's 3/3 and I have to say her 3toe looked underrotated.

are you imagining things because I would love to see a video where they show rachael's blade on ice for the 3toe?

From the NBC source I watch, it looks like she slightly overrotated, causing unstable landing
 

silverlake22

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 12, 2009
I slow mo my recording and for both the lutz and the last toe, she landed backward.
The flip was questionable, too.

A stricter caller would probably ding her for the flip as well.

Mirai is lucky in this event.

Mao flutz carries a -2 or -3 GOE.

Hers was less than -1.

Mao's flutz is worse, but I do think where Mirai has a history of URs, the judges were looking at her jumps especially close. Her jumps do look MUCH better as far as I can tell though, and the fact that she got 5 triples ratified at SC also makes me more confident. She just needs to tweak her jump line up a bit and she should be fine. Judges are especially hard on 3-3 jumps (or for Mirai her 2a-3t jump) because those are seen as advanced combinations and they don't want to credit anyone for such a hard, point getting combination unless it is clearly clean. The 3t was at the end of the program so that's probably something that can be fixed with more stamina. She should just switch the second lutz to a flip and switch the 2a-3t to a 3t-2a sequence and then she should be all set. Still amazing performance by her last night though :agree:, even with the URs that I could not detect :love:. She was so cute in the press conference too, she is very much a socal asian teen but I like that about her.
 

karenll

Rinkside
Joined
Jan 23, 2010
I totally, agree, R.D. I hate this nitpicking aspect of CoP. I thought it when Yuna Kim was given a UR call at GPF, and think it now with Mirai's UR calls. This does nothing but cause great skaters to doubt themselves and their entire jump technique, and makes them really tentative and nervous when they go out on the ice. And all these UR calls for Mirai are definitely going to influence the international judges negatively against her at the Olympics.

I think CoP nitpicking is the major reason for Mao's recent troubles. They took one of the best jumpers in the world, one of the only ladies who can do a triple axel, and made her so depressed and insecure that she keeps falling apart. If you're always worried about clean triples getting downgraded, how can you focus on skating a good program?

I think skaters should be rewarded for clean, artistic, and exciting programs. I don't even care about jump entrance edges that much. For example, a 2004 Malaguena program from Sasha Cohen is just so much better impact wise than a short program from Elena Sokolova, even if Sasha does flutz and Elena doesn't. And somehow, CoP has to find a way to take this into account.
 
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