Why do "full rotations" matter?

[DizzyFrenchie]

"Religion" is a legit way how to talk about people who have beliefs. There are also scientific and medical descriptions by I prefer to avoid those because of ethical reasons. If you are not happy with the fact that you are a religious believer in my eyes, you can use your ignore button.

So, do you believe that full rotations matter because Yuzuru Hanyu's 4A was called in the Olympic games"? Well, if so, then IMHO your take on this topic is selective and absurd. You have reduced the entire question to one skater's call or non-call. It was never the purpose of this thread.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. English isn't my first language, and even in French, I may tend to digress.
I don't believe that rotation matter because of this call. I don't know how to reformulate in plain, intelligible English what I've stated upper: I believe it matters because the higher the number of rotation, the more difficult, so rotations have to be counted to determine a score.
The case of Yuzuru Hanyu's 4A call at Olympic Games wasn't relevant for this part of the discussion, so I didn't mention it and I don't think that it came to my mind. It became the most relevant event I knew when the discussion focused on the q call, its (angle) meaning in the rules, and how it can be called practically; because this event is when my mind became clear that no, the rule wasn't implying an interval as I had, somehow, wishfully thought since it's implementation, in spite of reading, for instance, rescorings by a Japanese former judge who would call -100° an underrotation and wouldn't agree with a q call then (or no call at all). Somehow, the Beijing Technical Panel was more convincing to me than her. I hope that I have been more explicit? And I hope that you won't call me some "religious" name for writing rationally about facts.

 

[Anna K.]

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. English isn't my first language, and even in French, I may tend to digress.
I don't believe that rotation matter because of this call. I don't know how to reformulate in plain, intelligible English what I've stated upper: I believe it matters because the higher the number of rotation, the more difficult, so rotations have to be counted to determine a score.
The case of Yuzuru Hanyu's 4A call at Olympic Games wasn't relevant for this part of the discussion, so I didn't mention it and I don't think that it came to my mind. It became the most relevant event I knew when the discussion focused on the q call, its (angle) meaning in the rules, and how it can be called practically; because this event is when my mind became clear that no, the rule wasn't implying an interval as I had, somehow, wishfully thought since it's implementation, in spite of reading, for instance, rescorings by a Japanese former judge who would call -100° an underrotation and wouldn't agree with a q call then (or no call at all). Somehow, the Beijing Technical Panel was more convincing to me than her. I hope that I have been more explicit? And I hope that you won't call me some "religious" name for writing rationally about facts.

I certainly appreciate your effort to put it all clear in intelligible English.

I would have appreciated it even more though if you had avoided bringing in an individual case that has a name and a surname because, from my experience, it effectively derails a general discussion.

 

[Anna K.]

I liked the rules before q was introduced, when there was just << or < and if there was no call the skater got full base value and it was up to judges to reduce GOE depending on whether they thought the jump was underrotated (or had other issues) or not.

I guess some people (fans as well as evidently people on the tech committee) thought this was too imprecise and too many judges were giving too many pluses for jumps whose rotation was borderline at best. But until we have better measures that human eyesight from the perspective of one angle per judge/tech specialist, I don't mind giving skaters the benefit of the doubt in these borderline cases.

Same with ! calls for takeoff edges?

The fact that the q-rule was introduced as a tweak to ur-rule rather than a concept in itself actually explains why this rule is so poorly defined. Like, "when you review a jump for under-rotation and you see that it is merely a quarter under then just give it a "q"".
Which also explains why jumps that are clearly no more than a quarter under are often not called at all.
Actually, there is a clause in the rules that in the case of doubt it shall be solved in favor of the skater.

Honestly, I think that the current "q" rule is... well, "stupid" and I can't convince myself about the opposite.
I understand though that the ISU in this regard has been like, of course, humans are fallible but don't fret, the IT solutions are on the way. Which is fine for me. I am even mildly excited

 

[Mathman]

Like, "when you review a jump for under-rotation and you see that it is merely a quarter under then just give it a "q""...

Honestly, I think that the current "q" rule is... well, "stupid"

In my humble opinion the sentence in quotes is exactly the reason why the q is NOT stupid. If the amount of under-rotation in is between 90 and 180 degrees, that's a <, and the base value is reduced. If it is very close to the lower limit of 90 degrees, the tech panel has the q alternative which calls the shortfall to the attention of the judges and instructs them to take it into account un GOE. Sounds reasonable to me.

 

[Mathman]

Indeed, [too much focus on the wonders of rotating in the air] is a large reason why the judging has been so bad - people are getting scored very high for cheating jump entrances and rotating less in the air, or are not using the ideal jump technique of trying to break out of the rotation above the ice.

The best jumps explode off the ice, THEN rotate, and try to slow down before landing to create an airy quality.

But these days you get rewarded for excessively twisting on the ice into the jump and continuing to rotate fast until the skate hits the ice.

I agree with this assessment 100%. Who would include a delayed Axel in a competitive progam anymore? -- it is only worth 1.1 points.

As for exploding off the ice, I really miss the Lutz jump. Skaters who specialized in this element used to take great care to firmly establish the counter-rotation during approach and then POW! Nowadays, it's just another jump.

 

[Anna K.]

On my humble opinion the sentence in quotes is exactly the reason why the q is NOT stupid.

That's what I meant when I wrote it down.

Then I thought about the response to the actual q calls which we have after almost every single competition. About the tech panels who constantly get the flack. About the skaters whose reputation gets destroyed in comment sections and about conspiracy theories that are built where a clear definition doesn't exist. And I asked myself: do I still think that it was NOT stupid to have it this way?

I decided that I don't and I put the said sentence in quotes. YMMD.

 

[Mathman]

Then I though about the response to the actual q calls which we have after almost every single competition.

I think that the reason we see so many q calls is that there are so many jumps that are 90 degrees short of full rotation.

As for adverse responses..to me most of it is wuz-robbing and what-abouting. Hey. how come I got a q and Suzie Belle didn'?!! -- grrr.

Solution? Make your jumps so pure that you can tell the tech specialist,"Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Q."

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

I think that the reason we see so many q calls is that there are so many jumps that are 90 degrees short of full rotation.

As for adverse responses..to me most of it is wuz-robbing and what-abouting. Hey. how come I got a q and Suzie Belle didn'?!! -- grrr.

Solution? Make your jumps so pure that you can tell the tech specialist,"Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Q."

Problem is the judges can still hold it down on GOE. So a pristinely rotated 3S from a lesser known skater will get +1 and the "justification" is that they are average so the jump should be scored with a top threshold of average GOE. But a skater who is more popular or established could get a q (even on a UR), and the judges will give them the same +1 saying that the jump features were better - which is really code for, they come from a strong federation and have been around for a while.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

In my humble opinion the sentence in quotes is exactly the reason why the q is NOT stupid. If the amount of under-rotation in is between 90 and 180 degrees, that's a <, and the base value is reduced. If it is very close to the lower limit of 90 degrees, the tech panel has the q alternative which calls the shortfall to the attention of the judges and instructs them to take it into account un GOE. Sounds reasonable to me.

Do you mean that the q is for, when visually with the Technical Panel camera slow motion the jump seems to be jumped on the quarter, which precise interval by the way may vary depending on the angle of the camera and the foot position but not that much in my opinion (because there's the trajectory to help)? It may be meant this way, in which case I should have preferred it to be written as it was meant? There's no shame in admitting that there is something like what we call in French the width of a stroke? Instead of writing something that has no reality? In any case, it's not applied this way.

Regarding the implementation of automated rotation counting (at the very least) which would have been easy and cheap to implement in the last decade at least, and have accounted since for so much over- and underscoring, your latest posts here have made me think of another situation. Until the early 1990s, Mathematicians were VERY careful not to give Finance "elaborate" Mathematical tools, lest they would do incalculable mischief, and Finance was content with little more than the four Arithmetic basic operations. But then, the Société Générale Trading operations, in an error, recruited a young graduate of the École Centrale de Paris, unaware of these worries, and who applied some basic notions of Integration and Derivation to his own (workplace) operation and won them a lot and was made to replicate it with others and... we know what happened to the whole Finance sector. That Traders and their bosses wouldn't know about Integration and Derivation anywhere in the World until the 1990s seems incredible but so it was.
Now, we all know the old dinosaur that ISU is... Have they been made aware of the "latest discoveries" in Maths and Physics, leading to — glps! — the Particle Kinematics? Could it be what has prevented them to this date, in spite of hundreds of thousands of Dollars (as per their published budget) spent towards automated assistance to judges, from having done even the smallest experiment at a local competition level? After all the greedy Finance sector was all after getting more money and bracing thousands of billions yet couldn't think about studying Maths or Physics at High School level, why did I assume that ISU, who doesn't even have such fierce motivation, had these notions as a given?
Could anyone tell them that there's an easily calculable way to relate the position of a dot, the speed, the acceleration and so on? That any tiny cheap chip on the market will do that?

 

[Mathman]

Well, I didn't follow all that finance technology, but my own opinion is that figure skating would not benefit much from having more accurate measuring tools. I think that this is emphasizing the wrong aspects of the discipline, to its detriment.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Well, I didn't follow all that finance technology, but my own opinion is that figure skating would not benefit much from having more accurate measuring tools. I think that this is emphasizing the wrong aspects of the discipline, to its detriment.

I think quite to the opposite that it would be better for Figure Skating's legitimacy as an Olympic Sport and for skaters' physical and mental health.

 

[Mathman]

I think quite to the opposite that it would be better for Figure Skating's legitimacy as an Olympic Sport and for skaters' physical and mental health.

Far be it from me to endanger anyone's physical and mental health.

But I am somewhat dispirited over the direction that the sport has become fixated on. In the Skate America women's short program just completed, Rinka Watanabe scored 74.35 points and Alisa Liu scored 73.73/.Well. it was close, but somebody has to win and somebody has to lose -- it's a sport, after all.

Now... why did Rinka win and Alysa lose? The protocols make it clear. Rinka did a 3Lz+3Tq and lost a fraction of a point in GOE. Alisa did a 3Lz+3Lo< and lost a little more than 1 full point. q versus <. Is this really what we watch figure sjkating for?

 

[Isk]

Far be it from me to endanger anyone's physical and mental health.

But I am somewhat dispirited over the direction that the sport has become fixated on. In the Skate America women's short program just completed, Rinka Watanabe scored 74.35 points and Alisa Liu scored 73.73/.Well. it was close, but somebody has to win and somebody has to lose -- it's a sport, after all.

Now... why did Rinka win and Alysa lose? The protocols make it clear. Rinka did a 3Lz+3Tq and lost a fraction of a point in GOE. Alisa did a 3Lz+3Lo< and lost a little more than 1 full point. q versus <. Is this really what we watch figure sjkating for?

No. But I am afraid it has to be this way with information availability. Imagine things being judged in 6.0 and people discussing how things have been judged. Without protocols judges would have to do a lot of explaining, so they'd have to come up with some sort of written logic.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Far be it from me to endanger anyone's physical and mental health.

But I am somewhat dispirited over the direction that the sport has become fixated on. In the Skate America women's short program just completed, Rinka Watanabe scored 74.35 points and Alisa Liu scored 73.73/.Well. it was close, but somebody has to win and somebody has to lose -- it's a sport, after all.

Now... why did Rinka win and Alysa lose? The protocols make it clear. Rinka did a 3Lz+3Tq and lost a fraction of a point in GOE. Alisa did a 3Lz+3Lo< and lost a little more than 1 full point. q versus <. Is this really what we watch figure sjkating for?

Do you mean, what if Alysa Liu's Components had been scored on the same basis as Rinka Watanabe's?
Irony apart and supposing that their Components had been for real such as they were scored, yes, the ranking between two skaters can be based on only a small difference in rotation, it's a sport and not all victories are huge? I don't see the problem.

I was on a hurry in my previous post because I was just in a pause from Skate America, but there's also how Technical Panels and judges are busy. It was said at the 2020 Europeans when the scoring of Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron was delayed so long, a big part of the Technical Panel's time is taken by rotation counting, and honestly, an automated program would do it more accurately (independently if there's a good safety) than judges and free them for the tasks where their human appreciation is still needed for a part, and will always be needed for the rest. In 2020 too, Yuzuru Hanyu's graduation thesis mentioned that problem of how judges are busy, and tested the cheapest possible method of automated counting on himself.

 

[eppen]

Though it has to be said that protocols can be read in very many ways :-D My reading of Rinka & Alysa was that Rinka won the tech side thanks to her 3A and Alysa the PCS. The q & < calls on the combos meant relatively little - especially as Alysa's < earned slightly more points than Rinka's q.

Just out of curiosity, did a few calculations on my quad data and rotation calls for two periods. First, from 2010-11 to 2019-10 when the < was introduced and there were two grades for underrotation. Then 2020-21 to 2024-25 for the three grades.

2010-2020 quad attempts 7754: < 1562 (20%) and << 619 (8%)
2020-2025 quad attempts 10542: q 1354 (13%), < 1660 (16%), << 775 (7,5%)

The proportion of rotation calls has increased from 28% to 36% in the latter period with the 3 grades. Partly this could be bcs of the new grade or then maybe bcs more skaters attempt quads and not all of them are that god at it. The 2010s was still partly about less risk taking with the big jumps after all (and no, there were no big differences btw the first and second half of the decade).

And indeed, qs do get 0,00 or positive GOEs. For the 10542 attempts mentioned above, 104 times (ca. 1%). 2/3 of these in domestic competitions and 1/3 in international ones. There have been some teacher's pets as in international comps Shoma Uno got 6 positive q calls and Vincent Zhou 7. The latest example is Ilia Malinin's 4Lz+3T combo in his Skate Canada short - two judges gave it -1, three 0 and the remaining four 1 with the final GOE being 0,33. Obviously the panel was very much in agreement that despite the q, it was a pretty good jump combo.

I think it's actually good that commentators mention various calls, so that there are then less surprises when a seemingly clean program gets low scores... In some competitions, they show also which elements are reviewed and then sometimes even what happens after that. I think that would be great to have in more comps since it would open the process of how the panels work. During the JGP series Ted Barton was also listening in on the discussions of the tech panel and they are maybe contemplating whether to make those available also to viewers.

It would be interesting to see if an automated system would change the rotational calls radically - and how many fans hoping for it to be implemented would turn against it after their favorites would turn out to get more rotational calls than with human eyes ;-)

E

 

[gkelly]

How about if we get accurate measurements of jump rotation as soon as the technology is reliable and affordable, with appropriate penalties for small, medium, and major levels of underrotation, and ALSO get more opportunities for skaters to earn enough points in other areas so that a better skater can still win over a better jumper, depending how much better each skater is at their individual strengths.

If technology can someday make us confident that rotation calls are accurate and consistent, would it be appropriate to not share them with the judges? I.e., if a jump gets a < call it will lose base value and it will lose GOE from the judges who saw the underrotation in real time (or in replay if they choose to look at that jump again after the program), but can still get positive GOE from judges who saw a nice clean jump in real time?

Of course, that would also mean that judges who saw underrotations in real time could still penalize, even if the technology awards full base value.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Though it has to be said that protocols can be read in very many ways :-D My reading of Rinka & Alysa was that Rinka won the tech side thanks to her 3A and Alysa the PCS. The q & < calls on the combos meant relatively little - especially as Alysa's < earned slightly more points than Rinka's q.

Just out of curiosity, did a few calculations on my quad data and rotation calls for two periods. First, from 2010-11 to 2019-10 when the < was introduced and there were two grades for underrotation. Then 2020-21 to 2024-25 for the three grades.

2010-2020 quad attempts 7754: < 1562 (20%) and << 619 (8%)
2020-2025 quad attempts 10542: q 1354 (13%), < 1660 (16%), << 775 (7,5%)

The proportion of rotation calls has increased from 28% to 36% in the latter period with the 3 grades. Partly this could be bcs of the new grade or then maybe bcs more skaters attempt quads and not all of them are that god at it. The 2010s was still partly about less risk taking with the big jumps after all (and no, there were no big differences btw the first and second half of the decade).

And indeed, qs do get 0,00 or positive GOEs. For the 10542 attempts mentioned above, 104 times (ca. 1%). 2/3 of these in domestic competitions and 1/3 in international ones. There have been some teacher's pets as in international comps Shoma Uno got 6 positive q calls and Vincent Zhou 7. The latest example is Ilia Malinin's 4Lz+3T combo in his Skate Canada short - two judges gave it -1, three 0 and the remaining four 1 with the final GOE being 0,33. Obviously the panel was very much in agreement that despite the q, it was a pretty good jump combo.

I think it's actually good that commentators mention various calls, so that there are then less surprises when a seemingly clean program gets low scores... In some competitions, they show also which elements are reviewed and then sometimes even what happens after that. I think that would be great to have in more comps since it would open the process of how the panels work. During the JGP series Ted Barton was also listening in on the discussions of the tech panel and they are maybe contemplating whether to make those available also to viewers.

It would be interesting to see if an automated system would change the rotational calls radically - and how many fans hoping for it to be implemented would turn against it after their favorites would turn out to get more rotational calls than with human eyes ;-)

E

Very interesting!

Honestly, and teacher's pet problem apart, some q jumps are really good apart from the q, and judging jumps is normally counting bullets and deductions, not throwing numbers thought to be appropriate to a given call. Some jumps are actually very good apart from the lack of rotation and gkelly's suggestion seems very interesting. I have in mind a combination which was < (both jumps) after the rules, and would be q under Mathman's preferences, which received no call and got 4s from all judges albeit lacking one of the essential bullets (normally it caps the GOE at 3), but apart of this lack of rotation, it was a really good combination. A q would have been -2, but starting from 4, not from 3 as a cap isn't a starting point, so with a full rotation he'd have deserved +3, with a q he'd had deserved +2 (now there's a further call when both jumps are q in a combination), with a < call the sanction would have been pretty harsh with the reduced base value and all.

 

[museksk8r]

I do feel like the microscopic focus on jump rotations now does detract from the overall impression of the singles and pairs programs. As a fan and viewer, I am hyper focused on it as a result. Yes, absolutely, precision in this sport matters, and under-rotations should definitely be pointed out during commentary and penalized by the tech and judging panels. I’ve come to the point of who really cares though on jumps that are nicely landed on the quarter. I feel as long as the skater landed on the quarter and still had flow on the jump landing and it was clean otherwise, then the jump shouldn’t receive -GOE or a point deduction. Giving that jump base value and even a 0 or +1 in GOE would not bother me.

 

[Mathman]

Though it has to be said that protocols can be read in very many ways :-D My reading of Rinka & Alysa was that Rinka won the tech side thanks to her 3A and Alysa the PCS. The q & < calls on the combos meant relatively little - especially as Alysa's < earned slightly more points than Rinka's q.

Oh...yeah...I didn't notice the triple Axel. Well, that's it, then. A triple Axel and clean program, that's the ball game.

 

[Mathman]

How about if we get accurate measurements of jump rotation as soon as the technology is reliable and affordable, with appropriate penalties for small, medium, and major levels of underrotation, and ALSO get more opportunities for skaters to earn enough points in other areas so that a better skater can still win over a better jumper, depending how much better each skater is at their individual strengths.

I think that the ISU is sympathetic to this goal but has not shown much imagination as to how to go about achieving it. Tinkering with reducing the number of jumping passes or introducing a choreo step or spiral sequence has not had much effect.

The most painless step would be simply to increase the PCSs factors across the board -- but that would invite more indignation about biased and subjective 6.0-type judging, and we are back to square one. In the men's free skate at Skate America Shaidorov did 4 quads including a quad Lutz and a quad flip. His 4 quads featured two falls, 2 URs, two unclear edges and a q. He got negative GOE on all of them except the Lutz. In PCSs he was 5th behind Aymos, Brown, Grassl, and Tomoko. Shaidorov won.