Edge Calls and UR's--fair or not?

Tara and Johnny pretty much said that they thought a UR was not called for Adam, giving him a victory over two guys with multiple quads. There have been various complaints over the years about judges not seeing one competitors UR or wrong edge but penalizing another.

Are these hard-to-see mistakes of the foot and blade being used as a convenient way for judges to get the results they want? Or are the judges usually consistent and we can be assured that the winners usually rotated everything and took off on the proper edge?

I've been hesitant to criticize the reviews after learning there is only a single camera used to film the element that the panel uses to make the determination. However, Adam's < was visible in real time, but maybe the angle of the panel's film made the determination more difficult.

US judging is so disgusting.

One of these days they will have technology to measure these things. I think when they do they will discover that many, many, many OK-looking jumps are under-rotated.

From the slow motion views that Tara and Johnny were looking at, it seemed like the blade was pretty much straight sideways -- that is, 90 degrees short. I think the rulebook says that it must be "clearly more that 90 degrees" or some such wording, with unclear situations to be called in favor of the skater.

By the way, that is one thing that is so great about Nathan Chen's quads. He comes down with his blade perfectly aligned with the direction of skating, every time.

Poodlepal said:

Are these hard-to-see mistakes of the foot and blade being used as a convenient way for judges to get the results they want? Or are the judges usually consistent and we can be assured that the winners usually rotated everything and took off on the proper edge?

Click to expand...

It's not the judges who determine the downgrades and official underrotations that affect the base values.

It's the technical panel (Technical Specialist, Assistant Technical Specialist, and Technical Controller) who make those decisions.

They're a completely separate group of people than the Judges.

NBC commentators referring to them as judges only led to confusion.

The judges do see the tech panel's calls, and they're supposed to reduce the GOE by 1-2 steps for an underrotated < call or by 2-3 steps for a downgrade << from what they would have given otherwise. So if there are other good qualities to the element and no other errors, the final GOE may be higher than -2 for downgrades or higher than -1 for underrotations.

The base value would be lowered if the tech panel makes those calls.

Judges can also reduce the GOE if the jump looked underrotated to them even if the tech panel didn't call it.

Same for edge calls.

But if anyone were deliberately trying to "get the results they want" by calling or not calling underrotations, it would be the technical panel doing that, not the judges.

I think the reproducibility of these calls - both between observers and between skaters - is so poor that they really have to be re-evaluated in terms of how to judge them. It is not immediately clear to me why under-rotations and edge calls must be done by a tech panel and can't just be evaluated by judges alongside their other metrics of GOE.

gkelly said:

The judges do see the tech panel's calls, and they're supposed to reduce the GOE by 1-2 steps for an underrotated < call or by 2-3 steps for a downgrade << from what they would have given otherwise.

Click to expand...

Hmmm ... so, if a judge enters a GOE into the computer for a jump; and that jump is flagged for review and subsequently given a < or a << by the technical panel...

• Does the computer 'reject' the previously entered GOE (forcing the judge to re-enter a GOE based on the updated technical panel call)? or;
• Does the system at least 'force' the judge to re-approve the GOE they already entered?

Or, explained differently:
IF judges are "supposed to reduce the GOE by 1-2 steps for an underrotated < call or by 2-3 steps for a downgrade << from what they would have given otherwise", then in theory judges should NOT be able to enter a GOE for any jump element flagged for review ('yellow dot') until AFTER the technical panel has made its' decision/call.

• Does the computer system somehow 'notify' those judges who prematurely enter a GOE for a jump that is subsequently flagged, reviewed, and given a < or <<?
• If there is NO automated 'notification' by the system, then it's highly unlikely that this particular judging criteria is consistently applied to underrotated/downgraded jump elements!!

Is anyone familiar enough with the judging system/software to comment?

Here's an image of the elements screen, with video replay available:
http://www.usfigureskating.org/content/judgescreen.jpg

(And here's a component screen, without video:
http://i.nbcolympics.com/mm/photo/sports/general/25/83/28/258328_m03.jpg)


My understanding is:

As each element is performed and called, the element shows up on the judges' screens in the list on the left, and they can enter the score for that element by touching one of the red, yellow, or green (negative, base value, or positive) buttons across the bottom.

At the end of the program, the elements that are being reviewed are highlighted in a different color. The judges need to keep track of any changes to the calls including < or << symbols added, and change their GOEs accordingly if their scores didn't already take that problem into consideration based on their own eyeballing the jump (or replay if available).

When all the reviews are finished, the screen notifies the judges that the elements have been authorized, and then the judge needs to finalize their marks. They might have made changes to earlier scores while the panel was still reviewing the later element(s), as well as inputting their PCS during the tech panel reviews.

But they need to do their own double check and make changes if applicable after the reviews. The system doesn't reject any scores or force the judges to reenter.

The judges "approve" all of their scores at once at the end of the process, and once all the judges have approved their scores the totals go to the announcer to announce them and the judges can't make any more changes.

Thanks for that thorough walk-through of the process gkelly! :agree:

drivingmissdaisy said:

I've been hesitant to criticize the reviews after learning there is only a single camera used to film the element that the panel uses to make the determination. However, Adam's < was visible in real time, but maybe the angle of the panel's film made the determination more difficult.

Click to expand...

The UR jump that Tara & Johnny were criticizing was by Grant, not Adam. In fact, Adam did lose points (after review) for his quad.

Nah, this is a really easy way for judges to get the results they want. US judging does this all the time (especially in international events by being extremely strict towards int'l skaters and lenient af for US skaters).

His quad lutz should've been downgraded and his triple lutz looked underrotated