Back on topic, in terms of what's good and bad about the COP...I would definitely love some kind of bonus for the five basic triples for the ladies, juniors and seniors (or perhaps all six edge take-offs, allowing doubles to fulfill the requirement?).
That would make sense.
Or a flat-out requirement that all of the triples be attempted in the LP.
Definitely not that. It's hard enough getting some of the bottom-ranked senior ladies even to attempt the required triples in the short program. Many of the middle-ranked seniors, even some who do well at senior B internationals, only have two, three, or four different triples.
And they may be too old for juniors. So basically you'd be saying, if you're over 19 and can't attempt five different triples, you're not allowed to compete in singles figure skating. Even if you have great skating skills and great spins and two or three pretty good triples. Even if your orthopedist gave the OK to return to training after an injury provided you never again attempt a specific jump. Even if you're the best skater in your country, maybe the best skater your country ever had, and are capable of beating skaters who have all the triples but not much else. Sorry, this sport is only for the elite of the elite, or the not-quite-elite skater who happens to have a knack for triple jumps.
Sure, maybe offer a bonus for attempting all the different triples, or better yet for completing them all with no worse than -1 GOE. Or build in some other kind of incentive for skaters to try them all if they can. But I would hate for skaters to be unwelcome in senior-level competition just because they lack one or two or three of the harder jumps.
The biggest problem with COP--as well as any scoring system in figure skating history--is simply the gap between the audience perspective/casual judging of a performance and the judge's knowledgable perspective and thus the results of the competition. It's always been a problem, but has that gap widened or decreased under COP?
Probably depends on each audience member. Do they go out of their way to learn about the sport by reading or going to the rink, or do they rely only on what they can learn from TV? Are they inclined to believe that results they don't understand represent a problem with the judging (bias, cheating, incompetence, or whatever) or the limitations of their own knowledge of the sport?
There were always competitions where performances fans saw as cleanest, most difficult, or most enjoyable lost to performances that were more obviously flawed. And there was always a tendency to blame that discrepancy on bad judging.
Personally, I found that once I started really studying the sport I understood more and more of the results based on the skating, even when I didn't necessarily agree.
The question is, do audiences want to become educated about the technical details of the sport, or do they want to sit back on their couches, enjoy the pretty skating, maybe count the jumps and the falls, and believe they know more than the judges about who deserves to win.
For the television audience, the tone of the commentary can make a big difference in how the audience perceives the results. Do the commentators respect the judging and also respect the audience's intelligence? Do they focus only on a few obvious points or do they delve into the more subtle details? Do they set up their own opinions as arbiters of good skating and more valuable than the judges', or do they
In the old system, good commentary could look at multiple points of view about how to compare different programs at the same level and offer arguments in favor of both the winner and the runner up. In the new system, it's more valuable to look at where each skater gained or lost points, both in technical content as called by the technical panel and in execution of the elements and various aspects of the program as a whole as scored by the judges.
Once audiences have that knowledge, then there's room for debate over whether the scale of values or other rules should be changed to favor certain skills less or more, whether technical calls on some borderline elements could have gone the other way and produced a different final result, whether judges as individuals or as a group were favoring certain qualities from certain skaters more than many observers thought appropriate. Much better to be able to identify whether the disagreements are with the rules or with the technical panel officials or with the judging officials than just lumping them all together. Good commentary should be able to make those distinctions for the viewers.
Under 6.0, it was winner take all if you won the FS for the top 3, so you had to do well in the SP if you wanted to "control your own destiny," and you still had to win the FS in order to win overall. That's no longer the same, hence Patrick can bounce back from his 4th place SP finish to win everything, which then perplexes many considering he had 4 falls overall.
Even if you don't "control your own destiny" from 4th place after the short, you can still win as long as someone else also beats the short program winner in the long program.
Rippon beat Oda in the long. Chan would still have won Skate Canada under factored placements.
The other way the excitement is sapped is when a skater landing all their jumps thrills the audience, and is dinged with underrotations and edge calls and receives a score quite lower than expected. I'm not saying that edge calls and UR shouldn't be punished. They should be. But that is where I see the divide, between the impact of obvious errors on the audience (a fall) and the errors that only a judge and technical panel with a HD camera can catch. There will always be (and there should be) a gap, but I don't think that divide should be TOO wide, and I freely admit I don't know where to draw the line.
I think the line is drawn in a better place this year than it used to be, now that jumps with 91-179 degree rotation get 70% of the base value instead of getting downgraded completely. That was one of my pet peeves with the system before this year. It should now be less common for an apparently clean and superior performance to lose just because of a few somewhat cheated jumps.
