Originally posted by Chuckm:
Sasha also skidded a bit on the COE, and yes, she didn't stay on it long. Changing the edge is a little bit risky for her, because she often doesn't have good edge control.
Sasha did a change-edge spiral all last season and did fine. True, she only held her CE in her SP at Lalique for about a second, but first time out this year, plus she'd made significant changes to other parts of her SP and LP. As for Sasha often not having good edge control, I disagree. Her catch-foot turning spiral is one of the most beautiful examples of edge control I've seen and the reason her edges are more difficult to hold on her arabesque spiral is precisely because her leg is so high. (There was an excellent biomechanical anaylis of this by Mzheng and others last season.) I would agree that her edges are not as strong as Michelle's or Irina's, or even Shizuka's or Suguri's, but then Sasha shines in areas they don't, such as flow and dance ability. Of course I'd like to see Sasha improve her edges, but to say she often doesn't have good edge control--just not true from what I see.
As for the assertion that at IFSC Sasha's Component scores simply would've been elevated to make up for her poor Technical marks, the data we have from the GP series does not support this. As I said on another thread, given that Sasha fell three times and two-footed another jump, that means she would have received ZERO credit for three jumps ***Edited to add: FOUL BUZZER: THE PREVIOUS INFO ABOUT ZERO CREDIT FOR FALLS IS WRONG! SEE CORRECTIONS IN HOCKEYFAN'S SUBSEQUENT POST*** and would have received a mandatory deduction for the two-foot landing of -3. ALSO EDITED: As for the component scores, at SA, Sasha's LP Total Component Score was 68.88; at SC, 69.28; and at TL, despite having skated much better, 66.80. However, the judges had been giving all skaters lower component marks since Cup of China when the ISU notified the judges to pay more attention to EXACTLY what each component meant. After all, this is a process. Anyway, with three falls and a two-foot, all the judges would have had to give Sasha all 9s and 10s in her component scores and skaters like Jenny 6s and 7s in order to keep Sasha in 3rd. Remember, two judges don't even count, the two high and two low scores are thrown out, which leaves five judges' scores to determine the placements.
I love discussions and disagreements about the COP, but if people are going to make assertions about it, I think they should at least make the effort to understand it [EDIT: NOTE TO RGIRL: AND TO REMEMBER THE RULES!] and become familiar with the kinds of results skaters are getting. Otherwise just say, "I don't know enough about the COP to have an opinion yet." That I can understand and respect. After all, right now, there are a lot of areas regarding the COP about which nobody knows enough to have an opinion about yet and minor changes are being made as we speak. All the Detailed Results for all the GP events are up at the ISU website, ie,
http://www.isufs.org/results/[initials of event, eg, sa, sc, cc, tll, cr, nhk, no space, 2003]/index.htm, eg,
http://www.isufs.org/results/tll2003/index.htm. If you're going to accuse the judges of holding up a skater and always giving her the same scores no matter how s/he skates, then back it up with data from the Detailed Results. One of the reasons Sasha scored well at all three of her GP events is that she skated relatively well at all of them. Skate Canada was her worst and that was only the second time the COP was used. I don't think there was holding up but just lack of experience with the system. They're not going to get this thing right the first few times out, but it's still far better, IMO, than the kindergarten method of the 6.0 system. And at least in the ladies', men's, and pair's events I've seen so far (screwed up taping the dance finals until Lalique and haven't watched them yet) the I've felt the placements were either certainly correct or arguably correct. At least with evenly matched skaters, such as Pang/Tong and Petrova/Tikhonov, with the former winning over the latter at SA by only .12 points, you can see exactly how close it was--as can the skaters.
I do have some responses to some of the seminar statements, but it's late and I've griped enough for one night
One question I do have: I've heard Terry Gannon say that the judges can look at the video tape of any part of a skater's program to see if the skater hit the right edge on a jump or not. Yet I haven't heard anything about this on any websites or discussions about the COP. Anybody know if the judges are able to use video NOW or if this is something planned for next year?
Rgirl
EDIT: P.S. Thanks to HockeyFan for correcting my mistake about the COP and falls. I will now go to detention to study the ISU rules for the COP
sign to explain my humor. But my feelings about 'rush to judgement' remain.
