Joesitz said:
Easy Mille - You are not on one of those boards that thrive on catty remarks constantly just to show how smart you are with all sorts of quips.
Joe
Well said and right on, Joe. And I include myself in reminding Rgirl of these very sentiments.
LUCKY YOU (and Eliza, too) being in Portland to see Nats live! Having seen one in '84, t'aint nothin' like it.
Have fun -- and take care of that jet lag. New York to Portland, yikes! They say drinking lots of water helps. I hope the airline didn't make things worse by showing continuous Pauly Shore movies on the flight. :banging:
BTW, Sasha did do a combo. When she touched her hand down, she was doing the 3flutz part of her 3flutz/2toe combo, which she did complete despite the touch down. I don't know what the deduction is for a touch down, but from the first angle they showed on TV, it looked to me as if her hand didn't actually touch the ice. But on the replay from another angle, it was very clear that her fingers touched the ice. I don't know, but maybe the judge who gave her the 5.8 for technical didn't see the hand go all the way to the ice. Or maybe that judge is biased, bought off, a fool, or, as is possible, has a reasonable rational relative to the placements he gave the other skaters. I do think 2nd was the right placement for Cohen.
Anyway, as Mathman rightly reminds us, the scores themselves really don't matter, as much as it seems like they should. It's the ordinals that determine placement and the ordinals only. For example, the judge that gave Michelle a 5.6 and Sasha a 5.4 for technical was described as "screwy" or "weird." But as long as 5.6 was the highest score he gave for technical, which it obviously was since Michelle had first place ordinals across the board, then it doesn't matter what her scores were, even though the scores are supposed to reflect very poor, poor, good, very good, outstanding, and ideal skating in terms of technical or presentation. In the end, the right skaters, Michelle and Sasha, got the correct placements, 1st and 2nd, respectively, from the "screwy" judge.
Had that same judge given Michelle a 5.6 and, just as an example, given Katy Taylor a 5.9, with the respective ordinals being Michelle 4 and Katy 1, then THAT would be reason to get upset -- very!
From the skaters I saw, I agreed with most of the placements, more or less. Though personally, I would have put Taylor lower than 6th and Hughes higher than 10th, but not being there live, it's hard to say. Also, as has been discussed many times before, under the OBO system, ie, 6.0, skate order is a factor. Emily Hughes skated early. Had she skated later, perhaps she would have been higher in the standings. And not to get too much into the COP, even in 10th after the SP, under the COP, a skater can still medal and even win.
As for how these SPs (and LPs) will fare under the COP for those who didn't compete in the GP series, I have no idea. But I do know that I wish the USFSA would have voted to use the COP for this year's Nats. I understand that the USFSA had to vote before the ISU announced it would be using the COP for this year's Worlds, so the USFSA got stuck with bad timing. Still, the writing was on the wall and knowing the COP was being phased in, it would have seemed the wiser choice for the skaters to get as much experience with the COP as possible. But what's done is done.
BTW, does anyone know if Russia, Japan, France, or any other countries used or plan to use the COP for their Nationals?
Finally, thanks from me too, Eliza, for your terrific and unbiased report on what happened both during the programs and the warm-up. I hope you don't have any aspirations for being a journalist. With fairness and accuracy like that, you'd never make it.
(Sigh! Probably more true than we realize.) But we love it here!
Rgirl
But well said and thanks to you and everyone else for bringing this discussion back to where it's supposed to be. I'll try my best as well
