Should quads per program be limited to balance artistry?

[Anna K.]

Some people will say: but it's a sport. Sure it is. But we're not demanding ball players to become faster and faster, higher and higher, are we?

This comparison is so good that I had to single it out.

I am familiar with this feeling that figure skating is losing the ball: with the rotation hunting in jumps and with the level hunting in other elements the whole "why is this all for" is getting lost more and more often.

However, I also feel that this is rather a topic for Does IJS incentivize boring programs? thread or maybe for some new thread.

 

[Mathman]

I'm not sure how this argument of Yuma vs Shaidorov at World's free skate got started. carry the day, sometimes they don't.

I, too, have wondered about the relevance of these examples. Sometimes the big quadster wins, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes the skater with the most quads make mistakes and loses points, sometimes he skates cleanly. Sometimes skating skills and non-jump elements can chip away at an advantage in jumping base value, sometimes not so much.

And...?

 

[Anna K.]

As for the poll question: yes, cut the number of quads.

I don't mind quads when they are done by Malinin but I am tired of underdone quads that we have in the rest of the field - and I don't believe that this is good for athletes' health either. Plus, athletes are getting exhausted and it hurts the performance. Even Malinin with his good technique gets exhausted. His first quads on fresh legs are excellent but towards the end they are getting "fine not great" and "so-so but done". Then, why can't we have best Malinin's quads or unique Malinin's quads (4A) but necessarily need to squeeze out of Malinin as many quads as possible instead?

All posters thorough these pages who are jumping in quad defense because they believe that limiting quads will hurt Malinin are [edited] making me angry because quad limiting will not hurt Malinin. It will preserve Malinin.

So, do it. Limit the number of quads asap.
And I don't care if it will "balance artistry" or not (I believe that program balancing is a different topic tbh).

 

[Mathman]

Very cynically, I would say that judges didn't know how to handle five Components and would give a Presentation score randomly split between the Components boxes...

That's not really cynical, just a statistical fact. With one slight correction. The judges split the presentation score 4 ways, and gave 0.5 less for the Transitions component.

I always supposed that the reason for this was that transitions could actually be labelled and counted, so there was some basis for scoring other than a subjective opinion about matching choreography to music or establishing an invisible emotional connection the audience.

I used to think that it would be better to have just two components, Skating skills/transitions and esthetics. But @gkelly convinced me that the five components, though full of overlap and redundancy, provided the judges with the opportunity of making finer distinctions amomg performances that were of about the same quality. If a judge thought that three skaters were all about at the 8,75 level, but that one was a touch better and another a touch worse, that judge could give skater A 8.75, 8.75. 9.00 in the three esthetic components, skater B 8.75, 8.75 and 8.75, and skater C 8.50, 8.75, 8.75 (thus cheating the system by achieving a de facto finer gradation than steps of 0.25. )

 

[Isk]

I'm not sure how this argument of Yuma vs Shaidorov at World's free skate got started.

Shaidorov won that battle handily, and he should have. Yuma, while the superior overall skater generally, was not good at all that night.

And if the PCS is an argument you'd like to have - even with that very flawed performance, Yuma still won the PCS against Shaidorov by about 5 points. So, the superior technical performance did not beat the "artistic" skater in that area on that night. And frankly, if anything, Yuma was the one who was overscored, at least in Presentation.

I didn't compare them directly. Mine was Yuma's 4S vs crooked landings and loss of flow on some jumps. I mentioned Mikhail as an example of a program that I would find difficult to score. It's like a student paper where one mistake in the first step leads to the solution being much simpler than it would be without the mistake. Further evaluation of such a paper is pointless, evaluated outcome is not achieved, a fair mark for it is 0. But in reality the marker would have to write out the wrong solution, design a scoring scheme for it, and award partial credit if some other steps are correct based on that first flawed step. Doing this is admitting a student's right to solve a much simpler problem and get credit for it. This is what I meant: overall artistic impression. For some skaters it is just much better than for others, and PCS scoring scheme doesn't reflect this. Sorry for being harsh.

Somebody suggested to give 0 points for jumps without landings or with poor landings. I remember my reaction at the times when flawed jump attempts got very little credit, it was strongly negative. I thought: he/she attempted a triple, made the rotation and fell, and got almost nothing for the effort. The next skater did a clean double and got more. Not fair. But nowadays one can get 1/2 marks -1 pt. for a fully rotated jump with a fall and >1/2 marks for a fully rotated jump with a poor landing. I do get tired from watching skaters doing quad attempt after quad attempt, they are all flawed, and there is no program, it's just a struggle to get in the tech. content. There needs to be something that would force skaters to consider whether they want to invest in this risk or would rather play safer, skate cleaner and invest a bit more in the non-jumps. Problem is: whatever new rules one makes, they will figure out how to leverage them.

 

[LazyFuzai]

Making for example 6 quads in free skate is an art as well.To be honest the main difference is that between great and good PCS given is so small compared to technical score difference between 3A and 4A that it is making less artistry for people.

 

[AxelLover]

Quads already are limited, you can repeat only one type of quad, so you can do 7 quads in a free skate at most (6 without 4A).

 

[lariko]

Quads already are limited, you can repeat only one type of quad, so you can do 7 quads in a free skate at most (6 without 4A).

And we are already losing a jumping pass/combo next season. I am curious to see which unintended consequences this change will bring.

 

[rain]

I've always thought limiting the number of quads would be a good idea. They already limit the total number of jumps, so it's not like it would be unprecedented (and I'd even argue that it wouldn't be a terrible idea to further limit the number of jumps). Right now, jumping is all that matters, which is probably why I've pretty much stopped watching men's competitions on the whole. Great jumpers will still have the advantage, since jumps are worth more than anything else. But the hope would be that the programs would be less boring.

Men is where it's most visible right now, but I have to say, there have been very, very few memorable women's programs in the recent past either, and I would not be sad to see a limit on the total number of jumps for women so that we could get something more interesting.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

That's not really cynical, just a statistical fact. With one slight correction. The judges split the presentation score 4 ways, and gave 0.5 less for the Transitions component.

I always supposed that the reason for this was that transitions could actually be labelled and counted, so there was some basis for scoring other than a subjective opinion about matching choreography to music or establishing an invisible emotional connection the audience.

I used to think that it would be better to have just two components, Skating skills/transitions and esthetics. But @gkelly convinced me that the five components, though full of overlap and redundancy, provided the judges with the opportunity of making finer distinctions amomg performances that were of about the same quality. If a judge thought that three skaters were all about at the 8,75 level, but that one was a touch better and another a touch worse, that judge could give skater A 8.75, 8.75. 9.00 in the three esthetic components, skater B 8.75, 8.75 and 8.75, and skater C 8.50, 8.75, 8.75 (thus cheating the system by achieving a de facto finer gradation than steps of 0.25. )

I'd be all for smaller increments for each if they were fair! But with what you say, why not give a proper score for each Component and round it up or low depending on the aim you have stated? At least it would look like something!

 

[gkelly]

If a judge thought that three skaters were all about at the 8,75 level, but that one was a touch better and another a touch worse, that judge could give skater A 8.75, 8.75. 9.00 in the three esthetic components, skater B 8.75, 8.75 and 8.75, and skater C 8.50, 8.75, 8.75 (thus cheating the system by achieving a de facto finer gradation than steps of 0.25. )

It's only "cheating the system" if you think the system was designed to allow only 0.25 gaps between skaters and no smaller.

I do not think that is the case. For one thing, averaging the scores of 5-9 judges on the panel is going to produce smaller increments. For another, the system was DESIGNED to have five (now three) separate scores from each judge for each skater. That doesn't mean that it was intended for the judges to give vastly different scores for each component to the same performance, but also doesn't mean that it intended for judges to give the exact same score to each component for the same performance. The whole point of having five or three separate component scores is so that judges can reflect differences in quality among these several different aspects of the performance. That IS the system.

Now, how large the gaps should be between components for most components is up for debate. There have been explicit trainings/advice from expert judges/refs/technical committee to split skaters' component scores more when appropriate (and the explanations of how the "corridor" was calculated for component scores explicitly used wide gaps in the examples). There have also been unspoken internal and possibly external incentives for judges to keep the components for each performance fairly close to each other.

I'd be all for smaller increments for each if they were fair!

How do we define "fair"?

And what do you mean by "smaller increments"?
Using 0.1 decimal places (as was the case under 6.0) instead of 0.25?
Using multiple components so that the average total component score between two skaters who are close overall may be less than 0.25?
Something else?

Keep in mind also that the factors mean that, in the men's free skate for example, where the component factor is 2.00, a 0.25 difference on one component between two skaters translates into 0.5 difference in the final score. If we raised the men's FS factor to 2.5, for example, to account for the larger differences in base value with the introduction of more and more difficult quads, then the difference of 0.25 between two skaters in the raw marks a judge gives two different skaters would translate to 0.625. The FS factors make the differences larger than the differences between the raw scores. (Or smaller, as in the women's short program, where the factor is 0.8.)

But with what you say, why not give a proper score for each Component and round it up or low depending on the aim you have stated? At least it would look like something!

That's Mathman's plan to simplify the scoring so that if it doesn't make sense with several components, at least it will no longer pretend that differences matter. It was never the ISU's plan.

And how do you define "a proper score"?

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

It's only "cheating the system" if you think the system was designed to allow only 0.25 gaps between skaters and no smaller.

I do not think that is the case. For one thing, averaging the scores of 5-9 judges on the panel is going to produce smaller increments. For another, the system was DESIGNED to have five (now three) separate scores from each judge for each skater. That doesn't mean that it was intended for the judges to give vastly different scores for each component to the same performance, but also doesn't mean that it intended for judges to give the exact same score to each component for the same performance. The whole point of having five or three separate component scores is so that judges can reflect differences in quality among these several different aspects of the performance. That IS the system.

Now, how large the gaps should be between components for most components is up for debate. There have been explicit trainings/advice from expert judges/refs/technical committee to split skaters' component scores more when appropriate (and the explanations of how the "corridor" was calculated for component scores explicitly used wide gaps in the examples). There have also been unspoken internal and possibly external incentives for judges to keep the components for each performance fairly close to each other.



How do we define "fair"?

And what do you mean by "smaller increments"?
Using 0.1 decimal places (as was the case under 6.0) instead of 0.25?
Using multiple components so that the average total component score between two skaters who are close overall may be less than 0.25?
Something else?

Keep in mind also that the factors mean that, in the men's free skate for example, where the component factor is 2.00, a 0.25 difference on one component between two skaters translates into 0.5 difference in the final score. If we raised the men's FS factor to 2.5, for example, to account for the larger differences in base value with the introduction of more and more difficult quads, then the difference of 0.25 between two skaters in the raw marks a judge gives two different skaters would translate to 0.625. The FS factors make the differences larger than the differences between the raw scores. (Or smaller, as in the women's short program, where the factor is 0.8.)


That's Mathman's plan to simplify the scoring so that if it doesn't make sense with several components, at least it will no longer pretend that differences matter. It was never the ISU's plan.

And how do you define "a proper score"?

By fair, I mean a score resulting from each judge's own grid of criteria which would apply to all skaters equally. Should judges have just, during competitions, to fill the boxes that aren't already filled automatically with the measures sent automatically and the judge's parameters, the software would simply calculate the whole and issue a number which could very well be 8.63 or the like (increment of 0.01), for each Component.
By "a proper score" here, I meant a score really meant for this given Component, not the result of a rough division of a global Presentation score irrespective of the particular box filled. For instance, if we take Shoma Uno's Beijing Olympic programs, between his "Shoboe", a Short Program highlighting his excellent Skating Skills, with Transitions worthy of the stage, and his usual "instinctive" Interpretation of the music, these three Components would have been high; comparatively, in "Sholero", an "empty" program he didn't seem to "feel" at all and he couldn't illustrate/go with the intensification of the music, these Components ought to have been significantly lower. This is not what could be observed when he skated them along the season, the Components scores were as usual evenly distributed, here at the Individual event at Olympic Games:

https://results.isu.org/results/season2122/owg2022/FSKMSINGLES-----------QUAL000100--_JudgesDetailsperSkater.pdf

https://results.isu.org/results/season2122/owg2022/FSKMSINGLES-----------FNL-000100--_JudgesDetailsperSkater.pdf

 

[Mathman]

.For instance, if we take Shoma Uno's Beijing Olympic programs, between his "Shoboe", a Short Program highlighting his excellent Skating Skills, with Transitions worthy of the stage, and his usual "instinctive" Interpretation of the music, these three Components would have been high; comparatively, in "Sholero", an "empty" program he didn't seem to "feel" at all and he couldn't illustrate/go with the intensification of the music, these Components ought to have been significantly lower.

I don't think that we can conclude much from examples of this sort. The judges, on the whole, did not agree with your assessment that the one program had transitions worthy of the stage while the other was empty, or that one highlighted the slater's marvelous musical instincts and and the other fell flat.

The judges apparently felt that the programs themselves were of similar quality, though the technical miscues in the LP brought down the TES as appropriate.

Who's right? Who's wrong?

 

[Arigato]

You have to put it in context. Coming from Kolyada this is indeed misleading considering how poorly he skated, but not from Uno considering how well he skated the same program with 2 quads in the 2015 GPF.

How well Shoma skated in 2015 is irrelevant to the 2017 GPF and the question posed by the journalist. Kolyada was talking about 10 years prior to 2017 which puts the timeframe all the way back to at least 2007 or anything before that. Not something as recent as 2015. My point was quads weren't viewed by skaters as "impossible" back in 2007, or prior, as Kolyada stated. He was laying it on thick.

 

[Mathman]

By the way, on the subject of "increments" in PCS, if you look at the protocols the (unfactored) numbers are always quantities like 8.71, 8.54, 8.79, ettc. That's because they are decimal equivalents of 28ths. 28 because it represents 1/4 point steps averaged over 7 judges in the trimmed mean. .71 = 20/28, .54 = 15/28, .79 = 22/28, and so on.

This divides each full point interval into about 28 subintervals of .036 point each, rounded to the nearest hundredth.

 

[Mathman]

Quads already are limited, you can repeat only one type of quad, so you can do 7 quads in a free skate at most (6 without 4A).

You mean Ilia can't do eight or nine quads by doing a couple of quad-quad combos? Poor baby.

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

You mean, “should quads be limited so that favourites can get by with errors or poor content, and politicked judges can give them 9.5’s and gold medals regardless of how they do, and armchair figure skating enthusiasts can ‘justify’ their faves with low tech content winning?”

“It’s called figure skating not figure jumping is the usual tired retort”… but you know it’s also not called figure showskating either. If you don’t like the big elements that define the sport you can always watch the gala — or watch YouTube videos from the 80s and 90s.

There is also this misconception that devaluing the tech side will suddenly spur on skaters to unearth beautiful artistic qualities and incredibly choreographed programs that they would never have been able to showcase if not for quads hampering them. Artistic marks are controlled by the judges - if skaters do the tech the judges have no choice but to give them the base value but judges can do whatever the heck they want when it comes to PCS/ artistic impression. A wonderful skater from some minor unknown country will be given de facto 6’s and 7’s because in the judge’s opinion that’s all they’re supposed to get. And you wanna magnify that by diminishing tech further?

I mean, geez Jason Brown is still skating. Just enjoy it.

 

[Arigato]

Excerpt from Kazuki Tomono interview:

"It's not a sport where you simply get points for being skillful."

Originally, technical elements and components/performance composition were established as separate components to be judged independently. However, as Tomono points out, 'strong' skaters who consistently land jumps also see their components scores steadily rise. "During the period when Russia participated in competitions, I recall watching with a sense of unease as young female skaters who landed difficult jumps saw their components scores soar with each event."

Skating technique, in particular, is something built up over many years; it is not something that suddenly improves in two weeks or a month. Yet stable jumpers often find their skating technique score has crept up to the 9-point range before they realize it. I have sometimes questioned whether this truly fulfills the original role of the components. However, in Tomono's statement, "This isn't a sport where you just get points because you're good," I saw the resolve and integrity of an athlete who has dedicated their life to a judged sport.

「後悔しないように…」演技直後、涙の跡が残った友野一希（27歳）が記者陣に見せた覚悟「うまいから点数が出る競技ではない」「あとは信じ切る力」（田村明子）

11月14日、ニューヨーク州北部レイクプラシッドで開催したGP5戦目、スケートアメリカ。男子は友野一希がSPで1位スタートしたが、翌日のフリーではジャンプミスが出て最終結果3位となった。ベテランのケヴィン・エイモズが初のGPタイトルを手にし、

number.bunshun.jp

 

[gkelly]

My point was quads weren't viewed by skaters as "impossible" back in 2007, or prior, as Kolyada stated. He was laying it on thick.

How many quad lutzes, flips, or loops had been attempted in competition as of 2007?

We know that none had been attempted successful as of that time.

My understanding of what Kolyada meant by "the jumps that we're doing today would have been thought impossible to do" was the more difficult quads that hardly anyone was trying and no one had yet succeeded at as of 10 years earlier. Along with the possibility of including 5 or 6 quads in a program. Quad toe and quad salchow were definitely fairly standard elements as of 2007 so I don't think those/the idea of "quads" in general is what he meant by "the jumps that we're doing today."

We won't even talk about quad axels, because that probably wasn't really on Kolyada's radar either.

 

[Arigato]

How many quad lutzes, flips, or loops had been attempted in competition as of 2007?

We know that none had been attempted successful as of that time.

My understanding of what Kolyada meant by "the jumps that we're doing today would have been thought impossible to do" was the more difficult quads that hardly anyone was trying and no one had yet succeeded at as of 10 years earlier. Along with the possibility of including 5 or 6 quads in a program. Quad toe and quad salchow were definitely fairly standard elements as of 2007 so I don't think those/the idea of "quads" in general is what he meant by "the jumps that we're doing today."

We won't even talk about quad axels, because that probably wasn't really on Kolyada's radar either.

Guys were trying quads in the 80s - 90's before Kolyada was even born. They weren't stupid enough to risk putting them in competition because they couldn't duplicate them on a consistent basis, but they were trying them outside of competition. It's been discussed many times over the decades. I'm talking about all the way back to Boitano, et al. Besides, Kolyada had no idea what any one person would think impossible let alone any male skater before his time. That this is being revisited so many times is rather odd. And illogical. Neither you nor Kolyada know when or where anything was attempted - or what was or wasn't thought impossible. The drama is amusing.