Looking over the scores from the Men's Qualifying Groups, I notice that Tomas Verner (CZE) scored 23.94 (by the time the actual score was factorized down) to place 16th in Group B. These are higher scores than Group A's #14 John Hamer (GBR) [23.78] and #15 Zoltan Toth (HUN) [23.35] got. Yet Toth made the cut for the SP and Verner didn't.
It seems to me, since COP is a highest-score-based system, as opposed to a placement system, that it would have made more sense, and been much more fair, had Verner made the cut and Toth didn't, regardless of placement. It is conceivable that under these rules, someone could be 16th place in one group and be like 10 points ahead (not exactly a tiny margin) of the #15 in the other group and get cut anyway. I realize that under the old system similar things were probably going on as well, but getting back to the fact that we are no longer operating under a PLACEMENT system, I feel the fair thing to do would be to let the top 30 highest-scoring skaters in regardless of how they placed.
Any thoughts on this?
It seems to me, since COP is a highest-score-based system, as opposed to a placement system, that it would have made more sense, and been much more fair, had Verner made the cut and Toth didn't, regardless of placement. It is conceivable that under these rules, someone could be 16th place in one group and be like 10 points ahead (not exactly a tiny margin) of the #15 in the other group and get cut anyway. I realize that under the old system similar things were probably going on as well, but getting back to the fact that we are no longer operating under a PLACEMENT system, I feel the fair thing to do would be to let the top 30 highest-scoring skaters in regardless of how they placed.
Any thoughts on this?