Did Kostner deserve the bronze?

Meoima said:

I am comparing Sasha to the new girl, not Caro if you know what I mean. Yulia has been very consistent this year. Anna also made a good impression in Worlds. I am not saying they are more beautiful skater than Sasha but Sasha retired already. And the new girls, until now, have shown that they have great potentials. And that is interesting to watch.

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Understood. It is just I find it irritating that Sasha seems forever be associated with inconsistency, very unjustly in my view! New girls have yet to prove their consistency too: Anna was only 6th in GPF. Julia had a great season but finished 5th in Olympics. I am too looking forward to watching them next season.
To go back to original question and especially a new twist to it, in my opinion Caro didnt deserve the Bronze but she earned it alright! Btw Sasha was pretty much given Bronze in 2006 Worlds after a terrible LP, so it is not unusual for judges to reward retiring skaters. For Ave Maria alone I personally could give all the Gold in the world to Caro any day!

I'm not a big fan of Kostner but I am ok with her getting the bronze. Though I hope that it was the last time she got a medal with such a freeskate.

I don't understand..Her technique score placed 9th, but her PCS placed 1th....Maybe that was her last gift from Cinquanta.

swc0931 said:

I don't understand..Her technique score placed 9th, but her PCS placed 1th....Maybe that was her last gift from Cinquanta.

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It was actually 11th for TES and 1st for PCS. That kinda BS needs to stop, even if Kostner's SS are miles above the competition.

This minor brouhaha makes me wonder if we need some hybrid of the 6.0 / COP system in terms of placement. Setting aside whatever we think of judging (in my book, judging across the board has gone insane since 2010), it's clear Carolina beat Pogo because her substantially superior short program. Under 6.0 you needed solid performances in both the SP and LP (at least relative to the field), which seems like a desirable feature for COP to have also. But this has some issues too. Let's say skater A turned in an amazing short program, one of the best ever, and then A's main competitor turn in a decent one for 2nd. But then A made small errors in the FS which put them in 2nd in the FS and hence overall, but in terms of quality the FS was pretty close to A's rival. Here A turned in the best performance overall, but wasn't rewarded properly for it. Hence, maybe a hybrid where placement is determined by weighing the two programs. Without thinking too much about the specific weights something like:

Placement = SP Score*0.8 + FS Score*1.2

seems somewhat reasonable. For what it's worth, that placement formula would have had Ten beating Chan at WC2013, which was also seemingly won by a superior SP. Actually, Carolina would still have beaten Pogo with this formula, but at least the points Pogo would have to had made up would be substantially reduced - she would have only had to be beat Kostner by about 7 points in the FS rather than 11. Even ignoring any possibly dubious judging of Kostner's FS, 11 point difference is just enormous and is just a lot to ask of any skater, but 7 seems more reasonable to me.

I'd have to run it through more outcomes to see if I like the weights, but 0.8 / 1.2 seemed fair on first glance. I think it strikes a good balance by not allowing too bad of a meltdown in the FS to be compensated for solely by a great SP, but it still puts substantial value on SPs.

Programs are already weighted differently: the SP has considerably fewer elements so the total TES possible is much lower, and the PCS are factored at half what they are for the FS - with the exception of ice dance, where specific components are factored differently for each segment. Why is further factoring of the program as a whole needed?

It's still possible for a skater to overcome an SP deficit - like Konstantin Menshov moving from 11th to the podium at this year's Euros, or V/T moving up from 8th to 2nd (and almost winning) at 2012 Worlds, or Yuna Kim moving from 7th to 2nd at 2010 Worlds. If it's possible for a very good FS to compensate for a weaker SP, why can't the reverse happen sometimes, too? Especially a skater like Kostner, who made specific mistakes but had no URs or wrong edge takeoffs and who deserves high PCS (maybe not as high as she got, but certainly higher than Pogo).