Reputational judging in figure skating

[gkelly]

Patrick may have received a bit of "London, ON" bonus in 2013. Compositionally Patrick's program wasn't very strong, I think he should have ended it with Muzetta's waltz. He never slowed down in the middle section, which should have affected interpretation. So I think 9.50 from some judges was too much for these components. SS-wise Partick was above the competition, and I wouldn't say his presentation was bad, albeit a bit sloppy with these falls. Perhaps they should have given the win to Denis. He kinda stalked the jumps in the beginning and seemed to run out of steam a little bit towards the end, but it was mostly a clean skate. I think it would be nice to see some arguments why he shouldn't have won and who should have.

Denis Ten did win the free skate at 2013 Worlds, by about 5 1/2 points.

To "give him the win" the judges would have had to consider the point difference from the short program, which is not something judges are supposed to be doing.

If you want to argue that the short program point difference should have been narrower, you'd have to focus on what happened in the short program only, with no reference to anything that happened in the free skate.

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

Patrick may have received a bit of "London, ON" bonus in 2013. Compositionally Patrick's program wasn't very strong, I think he should have ended it with Muzetta's waltz. He never slowed down in the middle section, which should have affected interpretation. So I think 9.50 from some judges was too much for these components. SS-wise Partick was above the competition, and I wouldn't say his presentation was bad, albeit a bit sloppy with these falls. Perhaps they should have given the win to Denis. He kinda stalked the jumps in the beginning and seemed to run out of steam a little bit towards the end, but it was mostly a clean skate. I think it would be nice to see some arguments why he shouldn't have won and who should have.

Patrick didn't get high PCS off the bat, he got 6s at his first worlds in 2008, about the same as Kevin van der Perren.

I think, Safonova's PCS are about right, clean skate or not. Also Davide is a good skater, but just good, not fanstastic, somewhere in the 7-8 range. I am not sure why Petr got high 7s and low 8s for PCS. His program was empty, choreo was shooting, reading and posing, his skating was tentative, and his music generic. Maybe it is good posture, charisma, good looks and 5 quads bonus, maybe it is something else. I think if empty programs got nothing for composition, we'd see fewer quads and fewer such programs, but it is what it is.

I think Denis Ten should have been scored higher and Chan lower on PCS (he was still sub-90, so it wasn't completely outrageous - but the 9's with 2 falls were hella generous), but I think it wasn't completely egregious for Chan to edge him out (though on my scorecard, I would have given Ten the win). Chan had a flawless SP (even after the FS he knew it wasn't his best and his SP bailed him out.).

Ten skated the best he ever had skated and the judges didn't expect that and were reserved in their scoring (that Ten was from Kazhakhstan - and didn't have a team Tutberidze to push for him, a la Tursynbaeva). You're right in that Ten had his flaws - the biggest error being doubling a 3F, and also not having 2 quads like Chan did (Chan's quads scored huge GOE too). It was a good (i.e. bad) example of reputational scoring at play - and judges scored based on what they expected to see from a skater and not what they actually put out there - in both programs.

The judging was pretty wonky in that event - Hanyu like Chan benefited from reputation in the SP and had two major errors including a fall in that SP and still scored higher PCS than a flawless Ten -- but in the FS it was the other way around and he skated pretty well and was underscored on PCS in the FS with only 80.00 PCS... the 7's were super harsh, given he only had one significant error. It's absolutely insane that this FS (https://www.isuresults.com/results/gpchn2014/gpchn2014_Men_FS_Scores.pdf) scored him more than 4 points higher PCS than this FS (https://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2013/wc2013_Men_FS_Scores.pdf)

But back to Chan/Ten - it wasn't so much that Chan was overscored such that Ten wasn't scored as high as he would have scored had he been from a more popular country. And Ten didn't have team Tutberidze to back him like they did with Tursynbaeva (while I'm glad she got world silver and it was well-earned thanks to the 4S, no way she would have gotten 69.83 without team Tutberidze amping her rep up with the judges).