There are a lot of things I like about COP. I like having the points and levels per element spelled out. It's nice to be able to track how the skaters improved and how they adjusted their programs during the season.
I believe it's made dance less of a political contest, though in some ways I agree there is a sameness to the routines. As a team finds a stunt that is consistently called a higher level, other teams just copy the stunt. ANd if a team has a stunt that scores well, they will keep it forever, thus discouraging year to year innovation in choreography.
Pairs has the most problems:
1. You can do two of the same lifts in a program. This means that for top scores you are going to see two axel lasso lifts in every program. I don't like the repetitiveness. There should be a Zayak rule on this.
2. Lack of a Zayak rule on jumps. Several teams have planned 3 triple toes in their LP: A triple toe triple toe sequence and a single triple toe. Again, it gets boring. I think the sequence was left in to encourage sequences like those done by Gordeeva Grinkov-series of hops and jumps culminating in a double or triple. But that's not what's being done.
I agree that the emphasis on axel lasso's this year has really shown up the pairs with lifting problems. However there are more pairs than you mention that in their own lower level way have not had a problem with lifts. There is a weird situation now where the top two pairs (T&M and S&Z) are not the best lifters in the world. They are Zagorska/Siudek and Petrova/Tikhonov
