RIskatingfan said:
I thought Kostner deserved her placement in the SP. She skated beautifully and landed three triples, but not the lutz and her solo jump was a loop. All the other top ladies in the top 4 landed a lutz and a flip, the hardest triples (not counting the axel). She would probably be placed higher if she had better presentation, but the only one ahead of her with weaker presentation is Miki Ando who skated very well too and had the more difficult jump content of the SP competition.
I disagree with your conclusions. Under CoP, which I understand is not OBO, but is supposed to be the codification of existing relative difficulty, a base 3F/3T is worth 10.1, or 25% more than a base 3Z/2T. While 3F/3T is still ~10% less difficult than the 3Z/3R, we won't know until next year whether Ando's 1/2 turn cheat on the 3R will count as a 3R or 2R; a 3Z/2R is worth over 20% less than a fully rotated 3F/3T. Arakawa had a tilt on the 3Z and a cheat on the 3T on her 3Z/3T, as well as a cheat on her 3F. Kwan had a small flutz and Cohen had a noticeable flutz. Comparing quality -- height, run-out from both jumps, rhythm -- Kostner's 3F/3T was on par with Ando's 3Z/3R and a little better than Sebestyen's 3Z/2T, and was superior to Arakawa's 3Z/3T, Kwan's 3FZ/2T, and Cohen's 3FZ/2T; neither Kwan's nor Cohen's combination had much height or flow-out, although both of Cohen's jumps were right on the music. Factoring both difficulty and quality, the only SP jump combination that was better than Kostner's was Ando's, if it is universally agreed that a 3R at the end of the combination should always be given .5 turn cheat.
The difference in difficulty between a 3F and a 3R is quite slight slight, or a little over 5%. However, if you also include the difficult in the entrance, the backwards turning edge entrance directly into the 3R was more difficult than any of the steps into the 3F, especially when you consider that Ando was the only skater to go directly into the 3F without delay. Kostner's spins were quite good, and she has good line in her spirals; factoring those in, Ando would have had, at most, only a slight advantage in tech. However, under OBO, the judges are under no obligation to weight the elements correctly. They can be wowed by a
3Z/3R compared to a
3F/3T, when the actual comparatively difficulty is closer to
3Z/3R vs.
3F/3T.
As far as presentation, Kostner was the fastest of the skaters in the last two SP flights, with superb edges, fine posture, excellent responsiveness to her music, sureness and flow, and she was all over the ice surface. Ando was quite heavy in her movements and matched neither the flow, lightness, nor interpretive qualities. I would have put Sebestyen above Kostner in presentation, but her technical difficulty was higher, and in the SP, tech breaks the tie.
The SP format is particularly good for Kostner. Anything beyong 2.5 minutes exposes her flaws, particularly her newly acquired bad telegraph into toe jumps, which gets worse as the program goes on, the sameness of her musical selections, and her tendency to die in the last 30-45 seconds of a LP. If Kostner had landed all of her jumps, she might have deserved to be in the top 6, but when she misses them in a LP, she doesn't have the stamina or overall quality of the other top six skaters (at this competition), Poykio, Rochette, or Suguri.
