Last night he stayed clean and pretty by omitting one jump, albeit and luckily the least valued one in the program. People liked it or didn't notice it. But he can't afford to miss the big jumps by omitting, popping, or under-rotating them, even if he falls. It's the risk he and other top Men have to take. It takes guts. The system awards this risk but so many fans don't. To them, omitting, popping, and under-rotating, as well as wrong edge take off, are all rather acceptable, ignorable, and certainly preferable, but not falls, even with heavy penalties.
I think there are two separate questions. (a) What do the fans like and (b) How should the scoring system address risk, reward and errors.
For (a), the fans want a great performance with no falls. They want to see big jumps and fast spins and no falls. They want to see amazing footwork and eye-catching moves in the field and no falls. They want to see graceful movement performed to beautiful music and no falls.
To the average fan the only thing thing in Patrick's performance that wasn't perfect was that he kind of stubbed his toe on the landing one one of his jumps. (He lost a point or two in GOE for that, says the commentator -- fair enough.)
OK, so who cares what the fans want or don't want, right? Let's get on to the
important question, (b).
The basis of the CoP is that you get points for what you do. Obviously, no scoring system can give out points for what you
plan to do, but don't.
If you omit a jump, that's zero points. Patrick got 0 points for not doing a double toe. He did not receive a penalty for not doing it. He did not receive a reward for not doing it. He didn't do it. His program was not "less perfect" for omitting that element. The idea of "perfection" has been superseded by the idea of getting points for everything you do.
If you totally pop a jump, that's zero points.
If you pop an intended triple into a double or a single (all else being OK) you get credit for the jump that you did.
As for flutzing, a case can be made that if you don't do a Lutz then you should not get credit for doing a Lutz, whatever you might have "planned." But people holding that view have long since been shouted off the rostrum. There is no point bringing that up again.
When it comes to falls, the reason that I think that the current IJS rules are too lenient is this. Rotating four times in the air is a skill but not a
skating skill. It is, indeed, a skill that can be done on dry land. Landing on a smooth secure edge after having rotated four times in the air, that
is a skating skill.
(I admit that sort-of-falls, like Patrick's hands down in the short program, exposes the difficulty with being too dogmatic about this.)
