With animated gifs that have obviously been manipulated to slow down the action, I have no way of knowing whether the person who did the manipulation slowed both clips down to the same degree. Since most fans who make these clips have obvious agendas, I wouldn't put it past them to falsify evidence on purpose.
Neither would I. That's why as much as possible I look for the source evidence (i.e. raw video for example) to build my own analysis rather than base it on other people's "already processed" info. The gif I linked I made myself, via a relatively straightforward set of scripts from the raw video. I could post the scripts if anyone wants to run it for themselves (since I wrote them myself), as long as they have Matlab (the program I use to run the scripts) and the videos. Because I have a script written to extract frames from a video and put them into an animated gif, it's relatively easy for me to make those extracts of any (reasonable) length and slow motion as desired on request. It's slowed down simply so that people can see the evidence more readily -- for example, comparing when both skaters take off and when both land -- which people (like me) who haven't seen hundreds of jumps in real time may not be able to compare easily. Anybody that doubts them can 1) get Matlab and run the scripts for themselves and/or 2) compare the frames in the gifs with the frames in the videos that I took them from to see if any were added/skipped.
The problem with using other people's info is not just falsifying evidence; it's also that there can be problems with how they interpreted/analyzed/processed the evidence (such as not realizing that they're comparing a 30 fps video with a 25 fps video, which obviously screws up the comparison when you try to line them up frame by frame) or with the evidence itself (such as brief glitches or skips in the video). This is why I'm always looking for the raw videos. Not to mention getting videos from different sources is helpful; not only can they corroborate each other, but they can also provide different camera angles and in some cases allow me to extract additional information from the videos. For example, the torrent of the Olympic SP is 25 fps but is actually interlaced; due to how interlace works, I can actually convert it into a 50 fps non-interlaced video (losing half the resolution though) for slow-motion analysis. I'm looking for one of the FS so I can do the same thing, but unfortunately haven't found any yet. Also, the fan cams of Adelina's and Yuna's performances
in theory allow me to calculate just how far they actually traveled during their jumps since they captured the entire rink, so I could
in theory measure and answer definitively questions about the distance the skaters covered and the (horizontal) speed they had in the air (assuming the ice rink was Olympic-sized (heh) 30 m by 60 m), which is something I can't do with the network broadcast videos. (I would need to work out the math though, which obviously takes time.)
Yes, that's clear enough in real time. As I said, I don't think either of these double axels deserved extra credit for difficult/unexpected entries . . . or penalty for excessive preparation/telegraphing. They're both pretty average axel entries. Kim's is a little quicker.
I don't think they're much to write home about either, other than (of course) that they're Olympic quality and not the sort of stuff that the typical person will be able to pull off. However, I
don't think it would be fair to classify Adelina's as having a more complex entrance and superior height, which is what I'm refuting. And the gif is my presentation of the evidence to support my point. And obviously it wasn't clear enough in real time if people are making statements otherwise about it -- hence putting it in slow motion so everybody can see it more clearly.
This thread is like a bouncy ball of topics.
Unfortunately, when the judging controversy thread got moved, everybody migrated to this thread, diluting this thread even further. Very few people actually bothered to discuss the footwork anyway. I have Kostner's SP footwork worked out (just the turns; she should be level 3 on the turns alone since it looks like she put her foot down during one of the combination turns) but never bothered to post it.
Someone should just start a thread that disects jumps.
I actually want to take a quantitative look at the jumps (amount of pre-rotation, amount of landing under-rotation, height in air measured via how long skater was in the air, distance covered via measuring fan cam video of the entire rink for distance calibration, rotation speed, etc.) but that's a long term thing. It would be nice because those are measurable objective metrics that (IMO) shouldn't be up for debate if people are actually willing to look at evidence. Though based on this thread, I don't know how productive it would be anyway, since 95% of the posts don't even discuss any of the evidence at all but just people making their own (unsupported) statements and positions.
The judges in Sochi were scoring Yuna relative to Adelina on that night, so to that extent the previous scores shouldn't factor in because they are judged against each other, here and now. The closeness of the scores is explained by the fact that Yuna didn't skate her best and Adelina did; had Yuna skated her best her score would have been higher, probably closer to what she got at Worlds last year. Yuna should not win gold solely on the strength of past performances.
Let me try to make it clearer for you. "Best" is inherently a comparative metric. Saying whether or not someone skated their best is inherently comparing their performance with other performances. Taking the position that past performances shouldn't be considered means there is no meaning to whether or not someone skated their best (unless you're playing the word game of "OMG! She skated the best
and worst tonight!") because there are no longer any other performances to be considered. It's a contradictory position.
And nobody said that Yuna should win gold
solely on the strength of past performances. That's a straw man, but I expect you already knew that. Instead, past performances are used to inform how judging is typically done (such as typical PCS scores), not as a replacement, but people already knew that and this thread (originally, anyway) specifically talks about the Olympic performances.
meh... or maybe they just see the video "evidence" as grasping at straws. The judges aren't sitting around analyzing animated gifs; they go with their gut, give a score and move on. I doubt they gave a moment's thought about which of these two skaters held their entrance edge into the 2A for a half second longer; it'd only be an issue if one was really excessively long and disruptive or, on the flip side, if one was really out of nowhere and had a remarkable difficult entrance. These were both normal, run of the mill 2A entrances. Shrug.
The judges analyze the actual videos, gifs are just a highly compressed medium of the same information. On the other hand, posters are making their own inferences as to how the judges decided (i.e. "the judges scored X because...) and animated gifs are part of the evidence to support the discussion. Now if you're saying you don't care about the evidence for this forum discussion, well, that is your prerogative; after all, some posters in this thread have already said more or less that they don't care what evidence other people present, they're sticking with their position regardless. Is that the position that you're taking?
She did two backcross overs. Count the number of times her heels cross one another from 3:33. It is twice. Over emphasizing a couple steps is one thing. Trying to actually say Adelina's cross overs were some as of yet unnamed innovative step that she invented is completely delusional fabrication. If you are skating from one jump to another it is not the same thing as doing 3 different elements of your program in quick succession, thus creating a dance like sequence of moves that can be appreciated beyond their technical worth.
Eh I think there's some confusion here about what a back crossover is. More knowledgeable skaters should correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that a back crossover is
not simply when a skater crosses their legs (despite the name). It's the half-swizzle pump (in this case with the left foot) prior to crossing the legs, followed by crossing the legs (possibly followed by the feet resetting, but not sure if that's necessary). The crossing the legs is just a natural outcome of that half-swizzle. In this case, after Adelina does the back crossover, for the second move not only is her right leg facing forward instead of backward, but her left leg is briefly in the air in a hop, so doing a half-swizzle with it is impossible, and hence it's not a back crossover despite the crossing of the legs. I agree that it might go by quickly on a replay but it's pretty obvious when watching the video in slow motion (watch for when the left leg suddenly straightens), or the animated gif (you see a brief reflection of the blade in the ice when she's in the air, showing the separation).
Basically, both Adelina and Yuna do one back crossover prior to their stand-alone double axels, with Yuna having a shorter gliding time before the axel. I wouldn't say the gliding time was particularly short nor long (if anyone would get points on the entry, Yuna would for a shorter glide time, but I don't think it was "unexpected"; either both should get that bullet or neither should, unless Adelina's free leg kick counts as an unexpected entrance). Both had the same height for that jump (so again, either both or neither for that bullet). This doesn't disallow fulfilling GOE bullets for the other qualities of those jumps (such as them leading into other moves, flow, etc.), but I've yet to see any convincing case (i.e. with evidence or arguments, not just statements of position) against these points.
