2015 Finlandia Trophy Ice Dance SD and FD
- Thread starter ivia
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Good for them!!
LOL....indeed, that's why all I offered was opinion, no actual descriptions of the dance that could give you an approximation of the visual...Hope you enjoy them at SA.
Yes, it's OK. But the dance field is weak at SA. The bronze is completely up for grabs. (S&K, Y&M, N&N, H&B, W&L, C&M). If S&K had been healthy, I would be leaning toward them; but they've lost training time and H&B have a home field advantage. They could certainly medal.
Somewhere earlier on this thread, someone said that Skate Canada was backing P&I during the Olympic season. My understanding was that Gilles & Poirier couldn't compete at the Olympics due to her lack of Canadian citizenship in 2014. Nothing surprising about the fact that they didn't finish top three that season, then sprinted up in the Canadian rankings as soon as her citizenship was no longer an issue.
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No, her citizenship was cleared by the Olympics; she was fast-tracked. However, that was also the season in which Paul had broken his ankle during the summer, and they hadn't fully recovered by Nationals. That event was the only one in which P/I have finished ahead of G/P, IIRC.
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- Jan 15, 2010
Sorry, but your comments are pretty funny. No "killer instinct"? Are you kidding? For a team that was wrongly left home from the Olympics by 0.3 points, was robbed of a world's gold medal at least once, and at least 1 national title, but have each time come back stronger and better and tougher than the last time, that's a pretty ridiculous comment. It's the first time out for them this season. With more time and mileage, their programs will be fine.
As for your comment about "momentum and perception", that's just sad. The whole point of IJS was to remove the bias around momentum and perception and music choice, and make scoring based on what is skated on that day, as measured against the rules and scoring system defined in IJS. Momentum and perception should have NOTHING to do with the results. If your comment is true, then ice dance better clean up its act from federations and judges down so that it can be taken seriously as a sport. If skating itself is not interested in behaving like the rules of the sport have outlined, then it only has itself to thank for being thrown out of the Olympics.
Thank you for the clarification, Tereska. It is the only event where I remember those results as well.
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Yes, that was the point of IJS but has it worked? Somewhat but not 100%, and I don't think there is a way to make it work in the sport 100% without removing PCS entirely and making it just a jumps or, in the case of ice dance, step sequence competition. If a skater or team builds momentum throughout the season, the PCS go up throughout the season (even if the team's SS, TR, and CH, for example, haven't really improved much if at all), and if the skater or team then has a bad day, the PCS stay elevated (though blissfully generally don't go up further), and this is the truth. This is also a big part of the reason, in my opinion, that all a skaters PCS in the various categories are inevitably the same or at most within .5 of a point of one another, even if a skater clearly actually has poor transitions but excellent performance and execution (for example). INVARIABLY they still get like 7.5 PE, 7 SS (again as an example) even if the reality would really be more like 8.75 PE, 5 SS.
I understand why people find this reality offensive, but nonetheless it is how things continue to work.
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Okay. I'm excited! 10 MORE DAYS LEFT!!!
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They were "robbed" exactly because they don't have the killer instinct. If their skating had that extra bit of attack, we wouldn't be talking about it. If they skated with the mentality of "Yes, we ARE the best in the World" then their scores would be higher and none of those things you just wrote about would have actually happened.
I don't think words like "momentum" reflect what really happens with PCS scores, although I understand how it appears that way.
Use the word "consistency" instead... and whether it's right or wrong, at least it makes a certain sense: Skaters who are consistently able to deliver good performances and/or improve with each outing are (to my mind) demonstrating better skating skills, than skaters who lack consistency.
That only relates to SS though, and shouldn't affect any other PCS scores... but SS often seems to influence or correlate the other components...
Use the word "consistency" instead... and whether it's right or wrong, at least it makes a certain sense: Skaters who are consistently able to deliver good performances and/or improve with each outing are (to my mind) demonstrating better skating skills, than skaters who lack consistency.
That only relates to SS though, and shouldn't affect any other PCS scores... but SS often seems to influence or correlate the other components...
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No, I think it had more to do with non-skating things like elusive "momentum" and "reputation" and "personal preference". I think we may also be using different definitions of "killer instinct". For me, W/P's resilience and ability to rise above in the face of a lot of unfairness and bad calls is "killer instinct". They have taken lemons and made lemonade. They've trained harder, never relied on reputation, and have gotten better and better over the years. They are fully committed to their sport and their own improvement, and leave nothing behind.
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And why hasn't it fully worked? The issue is not the rules as far as I can see it. The criteria for measurement in the sport is clearly defined. There is nothing wrong with PCS as its defined. The problem is in the application of the rules. We still have way too many judges who are not thinking as IJS intended, but are using PCS like it were 6.0. We need people to get on board with IJS. We need judges to beef up their training so they are better prepared to judge under IJS. And maybe we need to recruit some real dancers to be judges. And we need judges not tied to federations but tied to a central body, chosen at random right before the competition, so we reduce the amount of bias. Will we ever get to 100% reliability? Obviously not. There are bad calls in all sorts of sport from soccer to baseball to hockey. But we can do much, much better than we are. The ISU is under investigation by the EU. I sincerely hope they dig really deep into figure skating as well. It's time to clean up this mess, and behave like a respectable sport. Eventually, the light of day will come to shine into the sport. It's better for the sport to clean itself up. Too many people already think it's just a glorified beauty contest. Which is a shame, because when you actually get to know a few serious skaters, you understand that there are not many athletes in the word, in any sport, that can come close to the level of fitness, strength and toughness of a skater, including pairs and dance.
Part of it is unconscious bias, which is impossible to eliminate without also eliminating the artistic side of figure skating. If there's a perception that a team is stagnating or regressing, it's difficult to look past that, especially as the judges don't exactly have two hours to carefully review all the footage.
