True. Although in the Salt Lake City case I think the "expert commentators" like Scott Hamilton could easily have said, "Well folks, it's now in the hands of the judges. Anton had a slight bobble on the double Axel and a couple of Elena's landing were a little tight. But B&S had richer choreography, expressed the musical theme with greater subtlety, and displayed outstanding blade to ice skills."
I am lucky to live in an area where there are strong local clubs that have really good skaters. When you can go to a local club's annual shindig and see, in addition to a raft of earnest children , skaters like Alissa Czisny, Jeremy Abbott, and Davis and White, all for twenty bucks or so, you get your money's worth. Plus, the next group, juniors and seniors who are at the level of trying to make it to nationals, are really good, too.
Not necessarily. Nobody booed when a clean Michal Brezina with a huge quad was placed second behind Patrick Chan with a couple bobbles in the SP at Worlds. Or when S/Z with a big bobble on a lift won the gold medal at the Olympics over an inspired and clean P/T. Or when a flawed Gordeeva/Grinkov won over a clean Mishkutenok/Dmitriev in 1994, etc., etc.
G&G and M&D are a poor example because people are still arguing that one, so yes, a lot has been said about that competition.
In the first meeting in the Olympics between past champions, eight of the nine judges voted for Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, the 1988 gold medalists, in the freestyle program, while the crowd preferred Natalia Mishkutenok and Artur Dmitriev, the 1992 gold medalists, rewarding them with a standing ovation.
I wonder if there would have been more of an uproar if both teams were not Russian?
INHO this is not so easy when it comes to the three artistic components. The public already understands that a quad is a big point getter. They can be told (they don't have to like it) that just rotating a quad is worth some points even if the skater falls. TV commentators could do a better job in pointing out some of the things that go into Skating Skills and Transitions (instead of just exclaiming, "In this crazy scoring system you get points for every tiny little thing you do!")
When it comes to the musical interpretation and performance side of things, though, I think "educating the public' is a tougher task. Howe can you educate the public to believe that the skater is exuding energy that establishes an invisible bond with the audience?
The Program Components Score, equivalent to the second mark some of you remember from the old 6.0 judging system, is all about the performance. The quality of the skating between the elements. How well the skater performs the program. Does she make it look easy? Does she make it look beautiful -- make it “sing”? How well does she express the music? Does she engage the audience emotionally? The judges have their rulebook full of rules to nitpick with, but what it all boils down to is which skater goes out their and seizes the occasion and grabs our hearts.
The Program Components Scores cover the program as a whole, not just the elements but all the skating in between the elements and the way the whole thing is put together and delivered. The most important is Skating Skills -- the way the skater uses the controls her balance over the blade to move across the ice with speed and flow, on deep curves, in all different directions. These are the fundamental skills of figure skating, the sense of curving over the ice at great speed that make a great skater.
The Transitions score covers the moves in between the elements and the way all the moves are linked together. Choreography is about the purpose behind the program, the way it’s laid out in time and space to create a sense of unity. Originality is also rewarded in this score. Interpretation is the way the skater relates to the music -- general style, rhythm, phrasing, nuances.
The Performance/Execution score is about the overall quality of the performance. Here’s where the judges reward the skater for clear positions and movements, and projecting to the audience with confidence and personality. High quality throughout most of the technical elements might be rewarded here, and too many mistakes or a sense of sloppy technique throughout might be penalized.
"Exuding energy that establishes an invisible bond with the audience."
GKelly: I think that’s one of the sillier component criteria, as written, and certainly one of the most subjective. It would be fine with me if they didn’t bother mentioning it at all.
GKelly said:Commentator B says...
Treat the viewers as intelligent and invite them to understand the technique and the judging criteria.
The other booing tradition is that wherever he goes in figure skating, when Ottavio Cinquanta is introduced, he is often booed.
Definition: Over all skating quality: edge control and flow over the ice surface demonstrated by a command of the skating vocabulary (edges, steps, turns, etc), the clarity of technique, and the use of effortless power to accelerate and vary speed.
Suppose you wanted to explain to a casual fan what was so wonderful about these spins and why they got oodles of points?
Natalie Krieg. Look at her blade on the ice. Just look at it! (The hand and arm movements may contribute to the Performance, Interpretation and Choreography, but that's a trifle.)
Lucinda Ruh. OK, this is obviously the best spin in the history of skating and any fan who can't see that is just uneducable.
Angela Nikodinov. Here a fan can profit from being told something about ballet positions, etc.
Caroline Zhang. This is the only CoP spin in the bunch. I assume it is a level four, the other three being level ones by modern scoring. Caroline looks like a million dollars. But the reason the spin is a big point-getter is because of a a lot of changes of edges and positions. This is hard for the casual fan to see or to understand, plus, all those point-getting features do not make the spin any better, just more difficult. We have a big education job on our hands here, unless we just retreat to, oh look how pretty!
gkelly said:Zhang is able to achieve four "features" to earn level 4 (higher base mark) and also to maintain several important areas of good quality to earn high GOEs; she gets extra points for both difficulty and quality.
We could compare to other IJS skaters who also earn level 4 with lower quality and lower GOEs to point out that Zhang is not earning points for difficulty only.
We could also compare to other skaters (under either system, or examples from outside the context of competition) who do not include as many difficult features but who do achieve as good or better quality and would earn just as high GOEs if judged under IJS.
"As long as I keep on working on new things and improving, then I'm fine," he said, adding he had a "new quad" in mind. He is considering changing the "pattern going into the quad with a smoother entrance."
“As for my program, it’s not all about the technical,” Chan said. “It has to be an integration of the jumps with the transitions, those two elements are not seperate, they are one element and we have to learn to weave the two together.