Could judges be replaced by computers in giving TES score?

[Miller]

Corridors are very interesting, but more because of psychology than mathematics, I believe.

Judges try to stay in the corridor -- meaning that they try to guess what the other judges are going to do so that they can go along -- because, well, that's human nature. I think that "reputation" is only a secondary factor, in the sense that when I ask myself, "What scores are my peers going to pressure me into giving out this time?" the best guess revolves around, "I wonder what my peers will give this famous and dominant skater compared to that nobody?"

However, I think that fans give "the corridor" a bad rap. The corridor is so wide that It is practically impossible for a judge to be so far off as to land sufficiently outside the the corridor to get in trouble with the ISU.

The problem with the 'corridor' is that the judges don't use it enough. For example look at any protocol and you'll only find rarely that a judge marks an individual component much differently than the others. Sometimes on TR, but the rest are mostly within 0.5 marks of each other. With relation to other judges well you've got a lot of scope - for example the allowance is 7.5 points in total for PCS components compared with the average, so this works out as 12 points in PCS for a Ladies LP and 15 points for a man. Also it would actually be a bit higher than this as the average would include the judge's higher or lower values - my calculations are that the actual allowance is 13.5 marks for Ladies and 16.875 for Men if there's 9 judges judging. Hence there's a lot more scope for them to be 'brave', but often they're not, and they stick to 'safety in numbers'.

 

[Mathman]

The problem with the 'corridor' is that the judges don't use it enough. ...

It's kind of a damned if you do and damned if you don't dilemma. If your marks are the same as all the other judges, then you are just following the herd. If your marks are different, then you are biased, blind, incompetent, etc.

 

[Andrea82]

If you look at protocols of Senior Bs below Challenger Series level, you can sometimes see bigger variations (more than 1 full point between highest and lowest mark) in Components scores by individual judges.
Some may argue that this happens with medium-lower level skaters because judges don't know what scores they are expected to get unlike with top skaters (they don't know the answer to "what would my peers give him?" question).
Maybe sometimes it happens because some judges "re-adapt" their scoring to the average level of the competition (top skater in weakish field receiving some 7s when he/she would receive low 6s in another higher quality field) or try to distinguish more in a small field compared to when these skaters are fighting for positions 20-30th in a major championship.
In senior Bs it is also easier to see some differences of 1 point between one component to the other on the same skater by the same judge.

 

[tral]

The problem with the 'corridor' is that the judges don't use it enough. For example look at any protocol and you'll only find rarely that a judge marks an individual component much differently than the others. Sometimes on TR, but the rest are mostly within 0.5 marks of each other. With relation to other judges well you've got a lot of scope - for example the allowance is 7.5 points in total for PCS components compared with the average, so this works out as 12 points in PCS for a Ladies LP and 15 points for a man. Also it would actually be a bit higher than this as the average would include the judge's higher or lower values - my calculations are that the actual allowance is 13.5 marks for Ladies and 16.875 for Men if there's 9 judges judging. Hence there's a lot more scope for them to be 'brave', but often they're not, and they stick to 'safety in numbers'.

It's kind of a damned if you do and damned if you don't dilemma. If your marks are the same as all the other judges, then you are just following the herd. If your marks are different, then you are biased, blind, incompetent, etc.

This may be OT? Just a thought that struck me amidst discussions with someone elsewhere.

I will preface by saying that I think CoP is a better system than 6.0, especially considering that it does one key thing well: if you are lying in 6th place after the SP, you can still blow the field away by enough of a margin in the LP to be rightly placed first overall, whereas such a thing became very hard in 6.0 with the "they have to beat such and such, but have to hope someone else doesn't beat them in the process" things, leading to far too many places for judge manipulation overall.

That said, though, I do think the CoP is breaking down the elements and the program content a little too much to the very smallest decimal point, making people miss the forest for the trees; we are losing the overall picture of the program, technical quality, and performance. I am not sure if making me mark skaters with 0.25 increments is an ideal thing to do. It is entirely possible the judges simply don't have the knowledge to mark skaters because of this, too.

This snowballing of discussion into repeated statistical analysis to expose bias, and discussion of corridors, well, this is simply a new-age description of bias because now we have more numbers to do it on, instead of "5.9"s and "6.0"s (and the implications of the numbers we currently have are different from how those were used, too). We know such bias exists, because what we DO have -- and ideally the judges should be best at this -- is the visual knowledge and standards of skaters past and present, that make us go "really?!" at the state of judging. But I am not sure if the judging will ever be right if (apart from the obvious answer of selecting them with proper standards) we spiral down ever more into trivialities and assign more numbers to them and keep ignoring the bigger picture -- incessant debates about how artistry is just preference or not and why a one point difference in PCS is justifiable or not, as recent instances. Just pick the best skater of the event -- how hard can that be?

 

[Mathman]

Just pick the best skater of the event -- how hard can that be?

Why didn't I think of that!

Seriously, though, I totally agree that the purpose of sports judging is to determine the winner. You win or you don’t. Whether 6.0 or CoP, the ordinal’s the thing.

That said, it is not exactly a slam dunk to say, this guy skated the is best, the rest of you can try again next year. More often, it is: This skater is the best in some ways, not the best in others.

About the 6th-place skater in the SP being able to make up ground, it could also go the other way. The second-place skater in the SP might be so far behind the leader in points that he can’t catch up even if he beats his rival in the LP.

I sort of agree with the criticism of quarter-point increments. It is a little bit phony to say that this skater deserves 7.25 points and not 7.50 points in choregraphy, and then try to pretend that this is some kind of objective cosmic truth. Still, it does allow the judges to sneak in their ordinal preferences on the sly. These two skaters are about the same, but I like this one a tad better, so here is a way to express that judgment without doing too much violence to the chimera of an objective standard.

 

[gkelly]

It used to be in the 6.0 system that judges tended to divide large fields into A, B, C, and D categories of skaters and mostly compared the skaters to others in the same category when deciding which scores to give.

For skaters at the World level, would it be useful to think of A = 9.0+, B = 8.0+, C = 7.0+, and D = 6.0+ (or <7.0 to account for skaters who make it to Worlds on the strength of their elements but don't really deserve 6s or better for program components)?

Then within those categories, how can judges distinguish among skaters who are in the same general range but didn't skate identically to each other on this day?

Right now, they have five component scores and 0.25 increments to work with.

Do we want each judge to have more flexibility to be able to reflect finer gradations in their judgments of exactly how well each skater did in each component area today, within their general range of ability, and also to reflect fine differences between a skater who was very good and another who was just a little bit better? (Even though the judges may disagree with each other about exactly who was best, exactly which component each skater was best at, and exactly where on the 10-point scale to anchor their mental images of the quality, such that the averaging across the panel ends up flattening out the differences.)

Or should judges be given even less flexibility to work with. At worst, just assign each skater a bin (9/A, 8/B, 7/C, 6/D, etc.) with the same component score for everyone in the same bin, and let the TES decide the winners?

Or somewhere in between? More or less than what they have now?

 

[tral]

Why didn't I think of that!

Seriously, though, I totally agree that the purpose of sports judging is to determine the winner. You win or you don’t. Whether 6.0 or CoP, the ordinal’s the thing.

That said, it is not exactly a slam dunk to say, this guy skated the is best, the rest of you can try again next year. More often, it is: This skater is the best in some ways, not the best in others.

About the 6th-place skater in the SP being able to make up ground, it could also go the other way. The second-place skater in the SP might be so far behind the leader in points that he can’t catch up even if he beats his rival in the LP.

I sort of agree with the criticism of quarter-point increments. It is a little bit phony to say that this skater deserves 7.25 points and not 7.50 points in choregraphy, and then try to pretend that this is some kind of objective cosmic truth. Still, it does allow the judges to sneak in their ordinal preferences on the sly. These two skaters are about the same, but I like this one a tad better, so here is a way to express that judgment without doing too much violence to the chimera of an objective standard.

It used to be in the 6.0 system that judges tended to divide large fields into A, B, C, and D categories of skaters and mostly compared the skaters to others in the same category when deciding which scores to give.

For skaters at the World level, would it be useful to think of A = 9.0+, B = 8.0+, C = 7.0+, and D = 6.0+ (or <7.0 to account for skaters who make it to Worlds on the strength of their elements but don't really deserve 6s or better for program components)?

Then within those categories, how can judges distinguish among skaters who are in the same general range but didn't skate identically to each other on this day?

Right now, they have five component scores and 0.25 increments to work with.

Do we want each judge to have more flexibility to be able to reflect finer gradations in their judgments of exactly how well each skater did in each component area today, within their general range of ability, and also to reflect fine differences between a skater who was very good and another who was just a little bit better? (Even though the judges may disagree with each other about exactly who was best, exactly which component each skater was best at, and exactly where on the 10-point scale to anchor their mental images of the quality, such that the averaging across the panel ends up flattening out the differences.)

Or should judges be given even less flexibility to work with. At worst, just assign each skater a bin (9/A, 8/B, 7/C, 6/D, etc.) with the same component score for everyone in the same bin, and let the TES decide the winners?

Or somewhere in between? More or less than what they have now?

Well, perhaps, since in the end only differentials matter, maybe we should have a system that merely has the judges enter differentials.

 

[cohen-esque]

1) Wouldn't these scores have to be tabulated AFTER every skater skates? So, you wouldn't actually know your final score until everyone skated and THEN the relative height/distances were tabulated for every skater to come up with an average -- and then bonuses were allotted? This is why it makes more sense to have a standard minimum threshold height/distance to earn the bonus, (e.g. 0.5 m and 2.5 m, and bonus is given to anyone who exceeds both - as assessed by accurate technology, which IceScope has yet to prove itself to be), rather than having to wait until everyone has skated and the computer tabulates the average height/distance of the field and determine results.

As far as I understand this proposal, then no, you'd know the scores in real time. The skaters would be compared against historical benchmarks. Historical, in this case, meaning basically whatever you want; the combined pool of all measurements ever taken, all measurements from the past one or two seasons, etc.

2) About the 1.0 point bonus (a rather arbitrary number). So is that 1.0 points on the 3A (11.7% of the BV of 8.5) allotted to height/distance? What happens for a 2A? Is the amplitude bonus also 11.7% of the BV -- which is 3.3 (i.e. up to 0.38 points amplitude bonus can be given on a 2A - 0.19 for height, 0.19 for distance)... or does a double axel get up to 1.0 point on amplitude bonus as well? I know certain people love to count every hundredth of a point, but are we really implementing all this technology and effort over less than a point of difference?

Any bonus is going to be arbitrary, but I agree it should be set to a percentage rather than an absolute number. Something like a maximum of 10% BV (just to use the theoretical current maximum, since it's all just one bullet point) and if you get 85% of the height/distance numbers, then you get +8.5% BV in addition to any other GOE bullets. It does seem like a convoluted system to account for some minor percentage of the GOE score, though.

3) what do you do when assessing relative scores for those who do different layouts/elements? Chen/Hanyu was the only skater in the Worlds FS to successfully do a 4F/4L... does that mean he gets full bonus points on height/distance for that element no matter how big or small he executed it? Does Samohin get the maximum amplitude bonus on his 2S since his pop was "higher/farther" than Kolyada's/Tanaka's 2S? If in the ladies, (hypothetically) everyone popped a certain jump and Miyahara was the only one to land it, does she earn the maximum amplitude bonus?

Part of this was addressed in Shanshani's follow-up post, and if you'd read the original post carefully you would see that the answer to you last scenario is clearly no. As for the Samohin/Kolyada/Tanaka, then, yeah, sure, why not?

4) Sure this could encourage people to have bigger jumps, but that could get dangerous -- what if skaters throw themselves into jumping passes in an attempt to get that bonus? And say they fell (or erred, like a touchdown or stepout) but still had the greatest height/distance - do they still earn the bonus?

The first part is no different from the argument for banning quads, or triples, or twists, or throws, and so on since at least the 70s. And as for the second part, yes. Why wouldn't they? That is literally how GOE scoring has always been done under IJS.

5) Do < and << jumps get any amplitude bonus? ... e.g. Uno was the only skater to have a 4F<, so does he earn 11.7% of the BV of 8.25 - or 0.9625 points because he was the only one to do that?

or compared to all the 4F or all the quads data. I don't see why not, UR jumps are already supposed to be judged on height/distance like any other jump.

6) If we're talking about record scores and personal bests -- if the skaters with the most amplitude are absent from your competition, wouldn't that skew your scores higher than if those skaters were present? Say Skater A with decent jumps just skated cleanly... but Skater B who typically has the biggest jumps in the field shows up. If skater B nails every jump, then they lower Skater A's amplitude bonus and skater A's overall score is lower because of how well skater B skated -- if skater B has a bad day and pops every jump then Skater A has a higher amplitude bonus and skater A's overall score is higher thanks to how poorly skater B skated.

Again, not an issue with historical benchmarks: if the field is jumping lower as a whole one season, the scores would be lower to reflect that.

The IJS was fundamentally designed to start treating skaters more like absolutes (rather than relatives), especially on the technical side. So your score is what you earned and not contingent on whether everyone else performed well or poorly. Your technical score should be formulated by what YOU put out there.. not based on what OTHERS put out there. (The same is supposed to go for PCS -- if everyone else performs terribly, and a skater that typically gets 7's goes clean, they shouldn't all of a sudden get 9's just because everyone else did poorly)..

And they would be meeting an absolute, which unlike the IJS of the past 15 years, would actually be a defined number. I think any value absolutely should be based on what skaters have shown to be actually possible? Otherwise we could just say "2 meters high and 10 meters long." That's clearly ridiculous, but only because we have a sense of what is the best to have been achieved by all past skaters. It is true that the standards might change over time, though if skaters begin to consistently jump higher or achieve greater distance.

 

[gkelly]

Well, perhaps, since in the end only differentials matter, maybe we should have a system that merely has the judges enter differentials.

Differentials between skaters in the same event?

But the judges can't know when they're entering scores for the earlier skaters how they are going to compare against the later skaters.

Under 6.0 judging, the whole point of the judges' task was to compare the skaters' overall performances against each other and to provide rankings. However, it was impossible to keep track of those rankings, in a way that could also be communicated to audiences after each performance, using ordinals only. All those 1s for the first skater will change to lower rankings every time a better skater performs later, but no one is going to announce the changes to the earlier skaters' rankings from each judge. Hence the use of actual scores to serve as placeholders.

If IJS judges were going to compare each skater to every previous skater on each program component, or even just one global component score, they would still need some way of keeping track of how each skater did, and audiences would expect some sort of information about how each skater scored while the event is still in process. So judges would still need to use some kind of placeholder scores.

 

[Shanshani]

Regarding my proposal (sorry, I've been a bit busy and don't have much time to reply), the 1 point was arbitrary and mainly used to make the math easier. 10% of the value of the jump makes sense and fits with how GOE is factored now. Obviously there are details to iron out before it could get implemented (eg. how far back should the historical data go? What about underrotated jumps, falls, and pops?), but seeing as we are far from implementation, my post was mainly there to illustrate the general concept. Cohen-esque is right that historical data would be used in order so that scores could come out immediately, but if you didn't care about final scores coming out immediately then it's possible to simply have a within-competition grading system instead with a predicted score based on historical data immediately and then a finalized score after the whole competition. Lots of options here, depending on what you want to prioritize.

Personally, I think 2 seasons is probably the right amount of historical data, as I would want the standard to change to reflect the current state of competition. For jumps with mistakes, I think there's a number of options--you could say that UR, edge, and falls are all not eligible for the bonus, or you could allow them to be eligible on the basis that the jump still achieved a certain height/distance regardless of the other problems (I do think that jumps with these errors should be excluded from the historical data set though, since not excluding them from historical data may introduce weird incentives like trying a very big jump you know you aren't going to land simply for the sake of messing with the scale). I'm personally not wedded to one way or the other, and I don't really see why it would be a problem for the concept of grading height/distance on a scale. It just seems like a decision you have to make on exactly how you'll do it, and judges actually have to make that decision right now anyway when they determine whether and how they're going to count positive aspects of the jump against deductions for mistakes. It's just that right now, this decision is being made without any systematicity. I do think pops should be eligible, especially if the bonus is equal to maximum 10% of base value--the GOE received will be reduced anyway.

 

[Mathman]

Under 6.0 judging, the whole point of the judges' task was to compare the skaters' overall performances against each other and to provide rankings. However, it was impossible to keep track of those rankings, in a way that could also be communicated to audiences after each performance, using ordinals only.

I think that was the biggest reason for the demise of the ordinal system. Sports audiences in general demand a running score to engage their interest in the unfolding competition. Alexa is ahead of Maria after both perform, and then Simi skates and suddenly Maria is ahead of Alexa -- huh? -- you just lost the audience.

In ordinal judging you can't count your chickens before they hatch -- that is, you can't announce partial results until all the data from the whole competition is in. In that respect CoP is more satisfying to the fans. You can keep track of "slay counts," etc.

 

[Mathman]

Regarding my proposal (sorry, I've been a bit busy and don't have much time to reply), the 1 point was arbitrary and mainly used to make the math easier. 10% of the value of the jump makes sense and fits with how GOE is factored now....

It is an intriguing proposal. To me, it seems like the principle you propose is something like this. We could separate the GOEs into those aspects that can by measured with some degree of objective accuracy (height and distance of jumps, maybe speed and centering of spins, maybe variety and difficulty of steps and turns in step sequences) from those are harder to quantify (jump matches the musical phrasing, smooth landing edge).

This would be consistent with the overall concept of the IJS, which is quantify what you can, then give your best judgment on those aspects of the performance that can't be quantified so easily.

The other point of view is that we already have too much of this artificial division. Figure skating is a judged sport -- if we don't like that fact we need to switch over to a different sport.

Edit: Now that I think about it, a computer could probably figure out a way to measure the "smoothness of the exit edge."

 

[Casual]

These are all good suggestions... except y'all ignore the obvious:

Crooked judging is a feature, not a bug; hence, any "skatetech" digitalization of figure skating will only serve to enshrine and legitimize biases.

As an infamous Russian dictator supposedly said about popular vote, "it doesn't matter how they vote, what matters is how we count".

Until undue influence (which is in effect CHEATING) is removed from figure skating, nothing will change. :disapp:

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

As far as I understand this proposal, then no, you'd know the scores in real time. The skaters would be compared against historical benchmarks. Historical, in this case, meaning basically whatever you want; the combined pool of all measurements ever taken, all measurements from the past one or two seasons, etc.


Any bonus is going to be arbitrary, but I agree it should be set to a percentage rather than an absolute number. Something like a maximum of 10% BV (just to use the theoretical current maximum, since it's all just one bullet point) and if you get 85% of the height/distance numbers, then you get +8.5% BV in addition to any other GOE bullets. It does seem like a convoluted system to account for some minor percentage of the GOE score, though.

Part of this was addressed in Shanshani's follow-up post, and if you'd read the original post carefully you would see that the answer to you last scenario is clearly no. As for the Samohin/Kolyada/Tanaka, then, yeah, sure, why not?

The first part is no different from the argument for banning quads, or triples, or twists, or throws, and so on since at least the 70s. And as for the second part, yes. Why wouldn't they? That is literally how GOE scoring has always been done under IJS.

or compared to all the 4F or all the quads data. I don't see why not, UR jumps are already supposed to be judged on height/distance like any other jump.

Again, not an issue with historical benchmarks: if the field is jumping lower as a whole one season, the scores would be lower to reflect that.

And they would be meeting an absolute, which unlike the IJS of the past 15 years, would actually be a defined number. I think any value absolutely should be based on what skaters have shown to be actually possible? Otherwise we could just say "2 meters high and 10 meters long." That's clearly ridiculous, but only because we have a sense of what is the best to have been achieved by all past skaters. It is true that the standards might change over time, though if skaters begin to consistently jump higher or achieve greater distance.

If we're talking about a standard requirement for getting a mark (which sounds like a level, essentially), then it should be something that is achievable by a good amount of elite skaters.

e.g. there's a level for a spin that requires 8 rotations to achieve it -- now, I'm sure some skater has at some point done a difficult variation with like 16 rotations, but just because that's been the highest ever performed doesn't mean that now, everyone who does 8 rotations on an extended spin position should only get 50% of the value of the added level because they're only doing half (8 instead of 16) of what the historical record was. This is why the ISU prescribes minimums to get a level, knowing that skaters can do more (and indeed many do), but still making it difficult enough that it's actually something worth awarding.

The same should be applied for any bonus that's given out for amplitude -- the skater needs to achieve minimums to get it, but everyone who achieves that minimum gets the same bonus (regardless of whether they clear the minimum height by 1 centimetre or 1 metre).

In some sense then, hypothetically, amplitude would be best treated like a "level" on a jump - not scaled based on who's done it best historically. So like a 3A could almost treated like a compulsory dance sequence (where requirements need to be hit in order to increase the level) in that it measures height, distance, landing speed (for example). A level 3 3A YYY (if it meets all the minimum height, distance, landing speed) gets 1.0 BV added to it, a level 2 3A YNY (if it has good height and landing speed, lacks the necessary distance) gets 0.70 BV added to it, level 1 3A YNN (if it has good height but lacks distance and landing speed) get 0.40 BV added to it, and a standard 3A which doesn't meet any minimums gets the standard BV of 8.5. And of course, height/distance would then be removed as a judged GOE bullet, because it would be calculated by computer.

BUT there has to be a set threshold for height/distance/landing speed that is achievable by a great deal of skaters (otherwise the quality bonus is pointless and only favours a select few). Of course this would also have to be different for every jump, because the minimum height on a 2S shouldn't be the same minimum height on a 4S, etc. etc. etc. And yes, as you said, these standards could change over time (e.g. a back 3-turn is no longer considered a difficult entry into a spin, and it needs to be more difficult than that).

 

[cohen-esque]

If we're talking about a standard requirement for getting a mark (which sounds like a level, essentially), then it should be something that is achievable by a good amount of elite skaters.

e.g. there's a level for a spin that requires 8 rotations to achieve it -- now, I'm sure some skater has at some point done a difficult variation with like 16 rotations, but just because that's been the highest ever performed doesn't mean that now, everyone who does 8 rotations on an extended spin position should only get 50% of the value of the added level because they're only doing half (8 instead of 16) of what the historical record was. This is why the ISU prescribes minimums to get a level, knowing that skaters can do more (and indeed many do), but still making it difficult enough that it's actually something worth awarding.

The same should be applied for any bonus that's given out for amplitude -- the skater needs to achieve minimums to get it, but everyone who achieves that minimum gets the same bonus (regardless of whether they clear the minimum height by 1 centimetre or 1 metre).

In some sense then, hypothetically, amplitude would be best treated like a "level" on a jump - not scaled based on who's done it best historically. So like a 3A could almost treated like a compulsory dance sequence (where requirements need to be hit in order to increase the level) in that it measures height, distance, landing speed (for example). A level 3 3A YYY (if it meets all the minimum height, distance, landing speed) gets 1.0 BV added to it, a level 2 3A YNY (if it has good height and landing speed, lacks the necessary distance) gets 0.70 BV added to it, level 1 3A YNN (if it has good height but lacks distance and landing speed) get 0.40 BV added to it, and a standard 3A which doesn't meet any minimums gets the standard BV of 8.5. And of course, height/distance would then be removed as a judged GOE bullet, because it would be calculated by computer.

BUT there has to be a set threshold for height/distance/landing speed that is achievable by a great deal of skaters (otherwise the quality bonus is pointless and only favours a select few). Of course this would also have to be different for every jump, because the minimum height on a 2S shouldn't be the same minimum height on a 4S, etc. etc. etc. And yes, as you said, these standards could change over time (e.g. a back 3-turn is no longer considered a difficult entry into a spin, and it needs to be more difficult than that).

You... just deliberately keep trying to miss the point of things, don’t you?

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

You... just deliberately keep trying to miss the point of things, don’t you?

Could you please formulate an actual response instead of just being snide about it (or maybe I should just placate you by agreeing with you next time, and we'll call it a day?)? I was making a point as to the case for judging skaters on the day instead of judging them compared to a historical benchmark - sorry I should have bolded that part of your post and edited the rest out.

One comment of yours I didn't address was this:

[referring to my comment asking if a skater can still get the maximum amplitude bonus if they have the greatest height/distance but still fall]
Why wouldn't they? That is literally how GOE scoring has always been done under IJS.

So this means theoretically a skater could throw themselves into the air get the biggest height and distance, and fall spectacularly, and it still ends up counting as a benchmark by which skaters attempt to achieve amplitude bonus in future competitions. That makes no sense.

I'm guessing we'd also get skaters avoiding entry transitions and telegraphing simply to gain more speed and momentum in order to maximize their amplitude bonus on every jumping pass.

A rather interesting paradox I've noticed from some of the comments on here and Twitter/other forums:

Certain fans - "We don't want figure skating to turn into figure jumping."
Also these certain fans - "We need to leverage technology to incentivize/reward those who jump the biggest and scale everyone else accordingly."

 

[Blades of Passion]

Bigger jumps deserve more points, but they need to be landed. Skaters doing less transitions in order to go into jumps with more speed and jump them huge is a good thing (unless the overall program becomes boringly empty, of course). We’ve lost the exciting build up into jumps and the very real choreographic impact it has. Not all jumps need to go like that, but certainly there is great merit in a program having highlights and showcasing an explosive jumping quality.

Pretty much everyone “telegraphs” their entrances now anyway. It doesn’t matter if they are doing some random steps/turns before the jump, you can clearly see from their body language as they go down the ice that they are setting up for a jump. Almost nobody is doing truly unexpected and spectacular entrances anymore, the kind that Matt Savoie or Gary Beacom were doing. Something like a split jump directly into a 3Toe used to be fairly common as well; nobody does that anymore. All entrances are telegraphed these days. They are just telegraphed with busy-work beforehand, instead of long and powerful edges.

 

[tral]

Could you please formulate an actual response...

Why? What's the point of doing that with you?

I'm guessing we'd also get skaters avoiding entry transitions and telegraphing simply to gain more speed and momentum in order to maximize their amplitude bonus on every jumping pass.

A rather interesting paradox I've noticed from some of the comments on here and Twitter/other forums:

Certain fans - "We don't want figure skating to turn into figure jumping."
Also these certain fans - "We need to leverage technology to incentivize/reward those who jump the biggest and scale everyone else accordingly."

Good reason for my asking that, right here. Thanks for the strawmen and the slippery slope fallacies.

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

Why? What's the point of doing that with you?

Good reason for my asking that, right here. Thanks for the strawmen and the slippery slope fallacies.

I don't see it being a slippery slope saying that a skater might forego transitions to try to get greater amplitude if an amplitude bonus is introduced. Fewer transitions allows for greater speed entering a jumping pass and thus potentially greater amplitude. That's just logic based on physics...

But hey, if you want to expend the effort to make a post attempting to misappropriate my arguments as straw men, while neglecting to contribute more to the discussion within this thread, then you do you boo!