Then how do you ensure consistency from skater #1 to #20 then if there is a not set standard in the Free Skate and leaving everything on a case by case basis?
There are a lot of areas where the standard is left up to the individual judges, even in the new system. There's a lot more standardization under IJS than under 6.0, but there are still a lot of areas that come down to individual judgment. It's just broken down more clearly what each area is.
I'm not sure how to avoid this because so much of what is being judged is qualitative or otherwise based on perceptions of gradually increasing qualities, not on discrete quantifiable or either/or categories. Essentially what the judges are doing is taking a continuous analog phenomenon and doing their best to digitize it into scores.
Basically, what the technical panel does is black and white (except for the notorious "gray areas"), and that usually accounts for approximately half the score, so already that's a much greater standardization than what we had under 6.0.
For what the judges do, the GOE guidelines, especially the negative ones which are similar to the short program deduction guidelines under 6.0, give a standard framework for applying GOEs. But only some errors are either/or. For errors that can occur along a range of severity, the judges have some flexibility to decide whether, e.g., it was bad enough to deserve a -2 reduction or only -1. This was also true with the 6.0 deductions. This is appropriate and fair because not all instances of the same kind of error are equal.
Similarly, the positive bullet points give guidelines on what to reward and how many areas need to be rewarded to achieve +1, +2, or +3. "Good" can be defined, but ultimately the perception of most of these qualities is subjective. Each judge needs to decide for him/herself whether a good quality was good
enough to deserve the bullet point. And in borderline cases, e.g., if there are three clear very strong positive bullet points, whether three very-good points should be equal to four just-plain-good ones and deserve +2, or whether another pretty-good quality can be found to add up to four bullet points to justify a +2.
Each judge needs to be consistent in their own application of how they apply the penalties and the rewards. That's what trial judging and experience moving up the judging ranks are for. Some judges will naturally tend more to focus on the negatives and some more on the positives (e.g., does a fast beautifully positioned spin that travels a couple feet across the ice deserve a plus or a minus or balance out to 0)? Some will be generous and give the skaters the benefit of the doubt whenever there's a borderline situation; others will be stingy and give the more severe penalties in doubtful cases but withhold the pluses whenever they have any doubt. We can't get every judge in the world to see and think exactly alike. The important thing is that they are each consistent in their own application of the written criteria and that they are applying the same criteria.
The program components are more subjective in the sense that they deal primarily with qualitative and not quantitative criteria. More specific guidelines and documentation thereof would be welcome, but ultimately each judge needs to determine independently where each component falls on a scale of 0-10, compared to all the other performances that judge has seen over years of judging, and specifically being consistent with the other performances in the same event today.
True, I mostly agree. The question is how do you measure whether the said "extra" contribute a lot or a little to the criteria of the TR component? Hence, I think a simple rule of thumb to go by is that if the free skating move or steps in question satisfy both the GOE and TR criteria re: creative / difficult / unexpected or intricate, then the contribution is considered major, otherwise, no.
But it's not just either/or. Some major contributions are more major than others, and some minor contributions are more minor than others. It's a continuum. And the "variety" criterion can only be assessed across the whole component, not one transition at a time.
Another factor is judges are laser focus on GOE, and tend to prioritize their time on deciding what to assign on GOE.
I'm not sure that's true. For the majority of elements, the judge sees the element and knows right away exactly what GOE it deserves. For a few they may have to take a few seconds to decide, and they might change their minds from the beginning of the element to the end. Occasionally they might need to consult the written rules after the program before finalizing their marks to determine, e.g., how much an unusual error is supposed to be penalized, or whether two positive areas fall under the same bullet point or two separate points. But for 90% of the elements, I would guess, it takes two seconds during the program to input the GOE. And there are only 7-13 elements per program. Less than a minute of program time is spent figuring out the GOEs. The rest of the time the judges can be thinking about components.
Step sequences take maybe 20-40 seconds, and the judge probably has a good idea of the expected GOE within the first 5 seconds, subject to alteration if the skater later stumbles or falls or significantly gains or loses strength. That's a lot of time during the element itself in which to contemplate how the element contribute to the skating skills, choreography, interpretation, etc. Same for some spins.
It would be efficient in solving two questions with one thought process. This also creates a consistent standard such that Skater #1 cannot come back and complain that he/she did the exact same thing as skater #15 but somehow, you failed to give him credit while rewarding the person who skated later. Of course, this may result in lower than average GOE vs. the panel's average but you will gain a high degree of consistency, which is also very important and most importantly, fair to the skaters since everyone is subject to the same rigorous standard.
But the standard is not and does not need to be "only numerous steps or skating moves before an element can contribute to the creative/difficult entry GOE bullet point."
Each judge needs to be consistent between skater #1 and skater #15 in the same competition. They get that consistency by judging thousands of performances before they get to the top judging ranks. But if they make one decision for skater #1 and then when they see skater #15 doing the exact same thing and realizing that it deserves a different GOE, they should stick to whatever they did for skater #1, to stay consistent within this competition between skaters who are being directly compared.
Still, "doing the same thing" doesn't necessarily mean doing it exactly as well. Maybe skater #1 does an Ina Bauer directly into an axel with arm overhead. But the axel is small and slow with a wobbly landing edge. The judge can think -1 for the jump itself, +1 for the entry and air position variation, and enter a final GOE of 0. Skater #15 does an Ina Bauer directly into an axel with arm overhead. The jump is big and fast with good flow on the landing. That's 4 or 5 bullet points right there, so the judge gives it +2. Skater #1 can complain that she and skater #15 both did the same extra things on the jump so they should get the same GOE, but skater #15 had a much stronger jump and that's why she got two more points worth of GOE.
As for how it affects the program components, that largely comes down to quality as well, which is explictly one of the Transitions criteria. A higher quality Ina Bauer would add more to the Transitions component than a lower quality one. A Bauer that covers more ice with a stronger curved pattern and/or that is more specifically phrased to the music would add more to the Choreography component than a Bauer that's just stuck in there for a couple of feet. So it would be inappropriate to write guidelines that state "Ina Bauer directly into single axel always adds 0.25 to the Transitions component and Ina Bauer directly into double axel always adds 0.5." That's not fair to the skater who does it better.
That's precisely why I don't feel in this specific case re: Yu Na's Triple Flip in her National LP should get any GOE bullet for unusual / difficult entry given that they did not demonstrate anything that would differentiate that particular set up from that a good novice or junior skater.
If you're judging and you consistently don't raise the GOE for that kind of entry from a senior skater (even if you do, consistently, at lower levels), then you'd be doing your job correctly. If another judge consistently does reward it for all senior skaters, or for all senior skaters who do it above a certain threshold of quality, then she is also doing her job correctly. As long as you're each consistent.
Yes, I agree this particular entry done by Urmanov is both impressive and difficult. Your example is interesting in that such execution may indeed be penalized under the stringent SP rules although as we have seen it again and again, including today's Men SP at the Europeans, some judges simply don't reinforce this requirement very well. It's no surprise getting some of those judges to understand how to judge Transitions properly required some major effort on the part of ISU over the last few years, even before Mr. Inman's famous revelation just prior to the Vancouver Olympics.
Again, the rules for the GOE on the jump out of steps in the short program are not and do not need to be the same as the rules for how steps preceding jumps contribute to the Transitions component in the free program or the other short program jumps. If the same rules apply to all jumps, then there's no need to have a specific short program element that requires more.
