How Sotnikova beat Kim - Move by Move

WeakAnkles · Mar 10, 2014

drivingmissdaisy said:
Exactly. So neither opinion is "blatantly false"

No, but in either case it is always going to be, for a substantial part of the worldwide figure skating audience, a tainted medal. And that is only going to increase the cynicism so many already feel about judging that is based on a nationalistic model.

cjuarez · Mar 10, 2014

CezarMart said:
Math is math. 6 technical score difference, period. Proven point by point, element by element. And you bitter people need to shut up! There is a reason the 6.0 system is gone.
Let's write a petition to ISU to invalidate math! Math is corrupted! Math is a russophile! Putin corrupted math!

Even in artististry Yuna's marks were overblown in my opinion. No choreography. Performing to tango without a tango? It's the same as performing to waltz with a some random tempo. Just going from jump to a jump with no concept of any performance in between. I am not an expert in dance at all, but I know enough that you cannot just randomly skate around to tango music, because the result will be terrible. If she had chosen some contemporary classical then she would not have exposed her lack of choreography so much. The tango choice was really bad.
However, it's my own personal opinion. It's just how I saw tangos performed before and how Yuna looked disconnected from it.

Not to mention she lacked energy and looked very passive in her performance.

You are wrong!!!

cooper · Mar 10, 2014

drivingmissdaisy said:
Exactly. So neither opinion is "blatantly false"

look.. i don't want to go on and on with this.. yuna is happy with her silver medal.. she's moving with her life.. though of course her fans are not.. but i would accept this whole thing that adelina beat yuna fair and square if ISU didn't screw up the composition of judging panel and the lack of accountability by speedy and others.. honestly.. no matter what this whole debate.. who should have won.. she deserves this and that.. the fact the matter is.. they screw up big time with the 3 judges that are questionable in the first place.. it left me something to wonder..

slutskayafann · Mar 10, 2014

Rewatched the two programs several times. Two different styles. Adelina was powerful, energetic, and risky, at the end skated with passion. Yuna was classical, an expert, and harmonic, she made no one mistake.
I can't break the 2 programs scores technically, but it is not possible to compare the 2 programs in terms of composition as both had very different styles.
Congratulations to both of them in winning at the Olympics. It could have gone either way.

Meoima · Mar 10, 2014

slutskayafann said:
Rewatched the two programs several times. Two different styles. Adelina was powerful, energetic, and risky, at the end skated with passion. Yuna was classical, an expert, and harmonic, she made no one mistake.
I can't break the 2 programs scores technically, but it is not possible to compare the 2 programs in terms of composition as both had very different styles.
Congratulations to both of them in winning at the Olympics. It could have gone either way.

I also just Re-watched the 2 programs, personally I think Kostner should be the gold medalist. Yuna is a little bit lifeless, yes, she is classy but I feel kind of flat (Johnny Weir also stated that). So I think silver for her is reasonable. Adelina should be the bronze though.

slutskayafann · Mar 10, 2014

Meoima said:
I also just Re-watched the 2 programs, personally I think Kostner should be the gold medalist. Yuna is a little bit lifeless, yes, she is classy but I feel kind of flat (Johnny Weir also stated that). So I think silver for her is reasonable. Adelina should be the bronze though.

I don't think it was possible for Kostner to win Gold medal. She needed a harder program.

Memelah711 · Mar 10, 2014

YunaBliss said:
No scoring gymnastics can cover up the truth.

92% of the international public think Yuna was the winner, as evidenced by ESPN Poll. When there is that kind of public consensus... the notion that the judging panel scored this correctly cannot hold water.

This isn't a popularity contest. That "92% of the international public" probably only care about/watch skating once every four years. A four year fans opinion has no merit.

Seriously, these "we absolutely hate Adelina Sotnikova" threads are getting really old and pathetic.

jenaj · Mar 10, 2014

slutskayafann said:
I don't think it was possible for Kostner to win Gold medal. She needed a harder program.

On reflection, I tend to agree. No 3-3 in long program; triple toe/double toe. I think Carolina was the rightful bronze medalist.

jenaj · Mar 10, 2014

leafygreens said:
Blatantly false. People are making up this statement to try and compare Adelina/Yuna to Tara/Michelle, and there IS NO COMPARISON. Yuna is not tentative. Her form is among the greatest in history. She performed perfectly and Adelina did not.

Yuna did kind of "mail it in," in both programs. I do not think either program is among her best, though both were clean. I think she probably should have won, but by a small margin.

jenaj · Mar 10, 2014

vegarin said:
She said that for THE SHORT. There was no problem in free. Not even you can say she should've received Lv3 in the free. Seriously? We've had people counting the turns.

But that explains why the scores were close in the short. Going into the free, Adelina had a four point margin in base value, reduced by her 1 point or so deficit in the short.

capcomeback · Mar 10, 2014

jenaj said:
On reflection, I tend to agree. No 3-3 in long program; triple toe/double toe. I think Carolina was the rightful bronze medalist.

Yet Carolina skated a completely clean program. No flutzes, UR's or step-outs, the way Adelina did. Likewise, Yuna skated a clean program. She had one somewhat wonky landing on her Lutz, but the jump was saved (without a hand down and not two-footed).

While Adelina's cleanly executed jumps were higher, they did not carry as well as KC or YK. Adelina's 3 GOE's on jumps should have been 1 or 2s. We won't even try to talk about how Carolina could have gotten a lower score in interpretation, skating skill or choreography in PCS scoring. Just ridiculous.

Nadya · Mar 10, 2014

jenaj said:
On reflection, I tend to agree. No 3-3 in long program; triple toe/double toe. I think Carolina was the rightful bronze medalist.

It's that plus another thing. Look, I'm a major Carolina fan, have been since she's been a junior, and in all fairness, you have to acknowledge that Carolina's program -before her footwork sequence - was basically nothing but crossovers and jumps with an occasional spread eagle+head roll tossed in. Beautiful, lovely, powerful crossovers, fantastic jumps, great lines but the first two or three minutes of the program are super-obviously empty.

There is a reason most people don't do complex choreo; the reason is that it's freaking difficult to do that AND jumps. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Choreo breaks your concentration and drains your energy. Carolina used to have unique, challenging choreo and different programs (see Afternoon or a Faun or Riders Through the Storm, no one else did that). When she did that, she was also wildly inconsistent. For the Olympic season, her team obviously decided to do the conventional thing, toss out the uniqueness and skate conservative, somewhat conventional (hello? Ave Maria? might as well do Tosca) programs that maximized Caro's chances of Not Falling. It worked; she did not fall. But let's not pretend that program was a choreographic masterpiece just because it was Carolina who skated it. I love Carolina but I can't pretend her FS was anything other than showcase for jumps.

JayW · Mar 10, 2014

TES questions:
1) Why Adelina got a free pass for wrong edge and underrotation; Mao, Zijun... got scrutinized so though! It is clearly a double standard. Mao is the clear winner of the LP.
2) Why Adelina's +3 GOEs are so much more than those of Caro's and Yuna's?!
3) In both programs, Adelina got StSq4, while Yuna got StSq3. Yuna's StSqs are more intricate and fluidic, Adelina's are bumpy and jumpy.
4) It is not even comparable in terms of Ice coverage and speed!

PCS questions:
Adelina 74.41 vs. Mao 69.68, Joking eh?

gkelly · Mar 10, 2014

Nadya, I agree with everything you say about Kostner and her freeskate except "That program should have a zero mark in choreography."

Let's not get hyperbolic. I wish this thread could be more analytical

To me, a program that deserves a zero mark in choreography is one in which the skater just stands still in one place for 4 minutes or however long the program is, with no movement whatsoever.

If the skater is out there doing something intentional with her blades and her body, there is choreography.

How well does it meet the criteria for the Choreography component? Well, there are a lot of different criteria for that component, so any program might be good at some of those areas and not so good at others.

Judges would have to weight the pluses and minuses in what the skater does to come up with a single number for the Choreography score.

I think it's very useful to analyze what each skater did well and not so well.

All skaters -- the ones who touch our hearts and the ones who make us cringe or make our blood boil when they get higher scores than our favorites.

And even though IJS tells the computer how to weight Choreography vs., say, Skating Skills, or vs. jump difficulty, it doesn't tell us how to weight the individual criteria within a single component, e.g., Purpose vs. Pattern and ice coverage vs. Phrasing. So different judges might end up with different scores even if they saw the exact same things.

This thread could be very useful for pointing out what we each noticed about each program. Maybe you saw something I missed and vice versa. We can't change the results of the competition, but we can improve our understanding of why the results may have come out the way they did, and of the kinds of scores we would give to various programs if we were judging them.

Nadya · Mar 10, 2014

gkelly said:
Nadya, I agree with everything you say about Kostner and her freeskate except "That program should have a zero mark in choreography."

Let's not get hyperbolic. I wish this thread could be more analytical

To me, a program that deserves a zero mark in choreography is one in which the skater just stands still in one place for 4 minutes or however long the program is, with no movement whatsoever.

If the skater is out there doing something intentional with her blades and her body, there is choreography.

How well does it meet the criteria for the Choreography component? Well, there are a lot of different criteria for that component, so any program might be good at some of those areas and not so good at others.

Judges would have to weight the pluses and minuses in what the skater does to come up with a single number for the Choreography score.

I think it's very useful to analyze what each skater did well and not so well.

All skaters -- the ones who touch our hearts and the ones who make us cringe or make our blood boil when they get higher scores than our favorites.

And even though IJS tells the computer how to weight Choreography vs., say, Skating Skills, or vs. jump difficulty, it doesn't tell us how to weight the individual criteria within a single component, e.g., Purpose vs. Pattern and ice coverage vs. Phrasing. So different judges might end up with different scores even if they saw the exact same things.

This thread could be very useful for pointing out what we each noticed about each program. Maybe you saw something I missed and vice versa. We can't change the results of the competition, but we can improve our understanding of why the results may have come out the way they did, and of the kinds of scores we would give to various programs if we were judging them.

I was hyperbolic, I agree. Good points. I am going to delete the zero bit out of respect for you.

It just bugs me when people said Kostner should score more on choreography because...she's Kostner? Like that Wire article that said Kostner is known for her choreography and that's why it's a travesty she got less for it than Sotnikova? I am, like, did you watch the program? Or are you just repeating what people said?

wootie · Mar 10, 2014

I sort of despise the topic title. "How Sotnikova beat Kim" is entirely inaccurate as it's not really about how Sotnikova and her skating beat Kim so much as how the political Russian power behind Sotnikova cheated Kim (and possibly Kostner) out of the gold medal. Let's be real. No one really thinks Sotnikova deserved that gold medal based on how she skated (UR, ugly step out, flutzing, atrocious "choreography," thematically pointless program, ugly dress, clunky truck driver skating in a circle) unless you're Russian or have some sort of complex related to wanting clearly inferior things to win.

Anyway, let's change the topic title.

Please.

capcomeback · Mar 10, 2014

wootie said:
I sort of despise the topic title. "How Sotnikova beat Kim" is entirely inaccurate as it's not really about how Sotnikova and her skating beat Kim so much as how the political Russian power behind Sotnikova cheated Kim (and possibly Kostner) out of the gold medal. Let's be real. No one really thinks Sotnikova deserved that gold medal based on how she skated (UR, ugly step out, flutzing, atrocious "choreography," thematically pointless program, ugly dress, clunky truck driver skating in a circle) unless you're Russian or have some sort of complex related to wanting clearly inferior things to win.

Anyway, let's change the topic title.

Please.

So, how do you really feel about Adelina? lol.

leafygreens · Mar 10, 2014

wootie said:
I sort of despise the topic title. "How Sotnikova beat Kim" is entirely inaccurate as it's not really about how Sotnikova and her skating beat Kim so much as how the political Russian power behind Sotnikova cheated Kim (and possibly Kostner) out of the gold medal. Let's be real. No one really thinks Sotnikova deserved that gold medal based on how she skated (UR, ugly step out, flutzing, atrocious "choreography," thematically pointless program, ugly dress, clunky truck driver skating in a circle) unless you're Russian or have some sort of complex related to wanting clearly inferior things to win.

Anyway, let's change the topic title.

Please.

Exactly and none of those things are explained in the article. I would like to see a follow up, "How Sotnikova got all those +3s - Move by Move."

jenaj · Mar 10, 2014

wootie said:
I sort of despise the topic title. "How Sotnikova beat Kim" is entirely inaccurate as it's not really about how Sotnikova and her skating beat Kim so much as how the political Russian power behind Sotnikova cheated Kim (and possibly Kostner) out of the gold medal. Let's be real. No one really thinks Sotnikova deserved that gold medal based on how she skated (UR, ugly step out, flutzing, atrocious "choreography," thematically pointless program, ugly dress, clunky truck driver skating in a circle) unless you're Russian or have some sort of complex related to wanting clearly inferior things to win.

Anyway, let's change the topic title.

Please.

That's the name of the article cited in the first post. I also think that Adelina was gifted by not getting called for a flutz or under-rotation and her PCS was too high. But I also think that scored correctly, she would have been closer to Yuna than some might think. She did have the skate of her life, with lots of difficulty. She is certainly a deserving Olympic medalist. Her dress is irrelevant to her score.

gkelly · Mar 10, 2014

There's already a [strike]conspiracy[/strike] controversy thread for all theories about how the results could not possibly have been arrived at through any means other than cheating.

In fact, several different threads were started within the day after the Olympic ladies' free skate, and every time someone suggested cheating, the whole thread got merged into the conspiracy thread.

And then there's this thread with a title drawn from an article that showed a few reasons why Sotnikova legitimately earned more points as those points alone told the whole story.

I don't know if the intention was to shut down all questions and insist that Sotnikova deserved the win, neither Kim nor anyone else deserved it, everyone who doesn't like the result just needs to accept it and shut up.

To me, I think that this competition was an exciting night of skating with four really strong free skates -- three of them from skaters who also had really strong short programs -- and I'd love to have a spirited intelligent discussion about how they each compared to the others in terms of strengths and weaknesses, how the various aspect of each program compared to the tech panel and judging rules.

But it's impossible to have that conversation if everyone has already made up their minds in advance -- not only about who they think deserved to win, but also about the honesty and motives of anyone who thinks differently. Posts that one skater had no strengths and another had no weaknesses say a lot about the poster's biases and not much of value about the actual skating.

How Sotnikova beat Kim - Move by Move

WeakAnkles

cjuarez

cooper

slutskayafann

Meoima

Match Penalty

slutskayafann

Memelah711

jenaj

jenaj

jenaj

capcomeback

Nadya

JayW

gkelly

Nadya

wootie

Match Penalty

capcomeback

leafygreens

jenaj

gkelly

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