antmanb said:
So Jeff was 5.34 points ahead of Joubert on jumps alone (so much for joubert's whining about the quad - he should land all his triples and think about fixing his take off edge on his flip to push the technical envelope).
That means that Jeff beat Brian on his non jump elements (spins and footwork) by 4.84 points. Nearly the same as the jumps. Given the lesser points available for spins and footwork compared to jumps, i think the fact the he beat his non jump elements by around the same as in the jumps is a pretty important point to note.
Well, that got me interested and I went back to the protocols (I'm very pathetic
). Now, we can disregard the step sequences immedetialy in terms of this issue, because Brian was about a tenth of a point ahead there, an almost meaningless difference.
Jeffrey had all level four spins, and all of them with low positive GOEs. Brian had three level twos and one level three spin, with slightly lower but still positive GOEs (looking further down the list, KvdP, Voronov and probably others beat him on spins too). The differences in base value for the spins are very small, and Jeffrey helped himself a bit with GOEs. This added up to just under five points difference between Buttle and Joubert - significant, but not that significant in the long program, where gaps between skaters are often sizeable and one UR call or fall on a jump can wipe that difference out.
Obviously no skater wants to leave four-five points on the table; but I stand by my original statement that spins cannot make a real difference except in a close competition between two skaters with a large disparity in spin quality that would be reflected not only in levels but also in GOEs (which, now that I think about it, is not a bad thing); the same is probably true for steps as well (which I'm not as happy about). Anyway, to me, Jeffrey won it by maximizing his content, and Brian would do well to do the same next year - I don't think that at this point he'll ever become a top-notch spinner.
I think Jeffrey won fair and square; but I don't think he trounced anyone (I felt he was slightly overmarked GOE-wise in the LP). And I think if you look beyond his initial reaction immediately following Worlds, Brian is expressing a legitimate opinion regarding scoring, not whining - and as someone wrote a few posts ago, skaters should be encouraged to speak out about CoP. But this is all subjective, as the ongoing debate on this thread has shown. Brian Joubert knows what he needs to work on and I hope he does and that he's healthy enough next year to skate his best (and win
).
Kasey said:
Another positive step would be using the PCS marks as they are meant to be used. There is the possibility that someone could earn an 8 for skating skills and a 5.75 for choreography and interpretation....far too few judges are scoring in that manner though.
The Eurosport guys are always going on about that. They've certainly convinced me.
