C/B have a habit of not debuting programs before the G/P. Naturally, they get lots of flak from armchair critics after their GP program debuts. There were the same brickbats last year, but it didn't keep them from becoming 2023 World Champions.
JUDGES do not decide performance levels for each of the dance elements----the tech team does, and they are very experienced at what they do. The judges assign PCS scores and GOE, not levels, and yes they sure did make mistakes, particularly with respect to GOE. Lajoie / Lagha's midline step sequence was L1 woman / L1 man yet they received higher GOE for that element from certain judges than the many other teams who scored significantly higher levels for that same element.
Sorry, but L/L skated a sloppy RD and mugged their way through the FD. They were certainly NOT robbed of a gold medal.
Im not here to argue the results (ive made my views clear on the SkAM section of the forum). Im writing this specific post as theres a few things I want to point out, reguardless if I accept null hypothesis that chock/bates deserved to win.
1) when they debut a program shouldnt matter in competition. The judges judge the program in front of them. It shouldnt matter how new or old the program is. Overscoring cant be justified by people saying "itll improve by worlds", because it shouldnt matter what happens before or after the competition. Only the skating within the competition should be marked.
Tech panels often work on reputation, like any discipline. Notice in free skating, the skaters with better reputation get away with more underrotations than the newer skaters and lower ranked skaters? Same with ice dance and turns.
They have (I can't remember either 1minute or 2 minutes) to review turns after each skater. However, if they assume that there are issues, they can take longer to review without being penalised. There's not enough time to review every turn for every team. So they automatically review lower ranked teams more often than higher ranked.- and slow mo is a lot less forgiving. This phenomenon is worse in ice dance as turn cleanliness cannot always be dictated live. I.e Madi chocks rhythm dance outside mohawk looks clean in fast motion. Slow it down enough and you see she puts it down near the toe, scratches onto the flat edge and then it goes to the nice outside edge. It's not a direct edge to edge transfer, and therefore not a level 4 step sequence reguardless of the calling.
There will always be a specialist live calling for the man and the woman. Often discrepancies in levels between men and women are due to one making mistakes and the other not - but sometimes it is influenced by strictness of the individual specialist - which is why Madis level was higher given equal mistakes as Evan (imo).
GOE is crucial in ice dance, as levels evaluate turn technique, but not skating skills quality - speed, flow etc. Any top ice dancer should be able to go 1MPH and hit almost every turn clean. But that wouldn't get good GOE.
A level 1 stsq with speed and flow isn't necessarily inferior to a level 3 stsq with good flow, and the GOE system is set up to try reward the skating skills demonstrated in the Stsq. The issue is, the judges give high GOE to slower couples with less flow, less kneebend etc who have good reputation.
I'm not arguing or saying LaLa should have won, but rather just trying to delve down into deeper points of the current ice dance judging system.
For me, the French team had by far the best skating skills and turn cleanliness in the event. I won't argue about program performance, or who should win I'm just talking about these specific strengths.
In the FD Chock/Bates got 9.21, the highest in the event. The French team got 8.36 in SS.
I don't care if you think the entire program by chock and Bates is better as a whole- every category should be looked at separately, and judges separately and the best overall person will win by virtue of the scoring system. This isn't happening. Judges decide before inputting scores who had the "best" overall program (or in some unfortunate cases who they think, before the competition, should win the event or politics etc), then input scores to match their justification rather than thinking through and marking each category and invidual element GOE.
Again, you can argue chock/bates deserved to win, I'm not debating that in this particular post. I'm showing the entire scoring system has failed, and people don't get the marks they deserve for the programs and elements they produce on the day. At least in senior ice dance - juniors is much fairer generally (not always but on average).
