If Yuzu needs to get TES 108-109 for a fair PCS of 91-92, then shouldn’t Patrick PCS above be in 85++? Or else if using Patrick score above, if he comes back and hit TES 100 he will get PCS 108
From fairness perspective, you don't want to give a high score to someone taking a small risk and attempting an easy program; you also don’t want to give a very low score to someone taking a very big risk and attempting a difficult program. Obviously it’ s much more difficult to perform well when you are doing something so difficult. So if judged fairly, the PCS should be linked to the risk/difficulty of the program, and the overall quality/performance will explain the smaller variation in the PCS.
But the problem is judges are very much influenced by a skater’s reputation/consistency. If you gave 9’s (or 8’s) to the same skater in the past, you will continue to give a similar score even when he/she does something easy or performs poorly. It might just be a human psychology thing that makes it hard to judges to break away from their previous scores. You need a significant reputation status change for judges to give you a significantly higher or lower score. That’s how we often end up seeing a puzzling/controversial situation: a top skater skated poorly or watered down their program, but still got a higher PCS than a lower rank skater completed a more difficult program well.
That’s what happened to Yuzu before he won the GPF 2013 and the Olympics. He always attempted the most difficult program. But even when he performed well, he got low 80s in the PCS anyway. In fact, his PCS stayed in low 80s regardless of how well he performed. I really think that was due to his lack of championship titles. If you look at the LP at WC 2013, Yuzu got 89 in TES and 80 in PCS, with a BV of 83.61 (he got the highest TES in the whole competition). Javi got 83 in TES and 85 in PCS, with a BV of 70.27. Both had two quads (Javi popped a quad). They both skated in the second last group. Neither skated in the final group so both of their marks were held down due to the skate order. Javi did not have better skills than Yuzu and he didn’t perform anything better than Yuzu. But he was the European champion, so he received more generous GOEs and PCS than Yuzu. (Yuzu had no major championship titles and he was still a relative newbie at the senior circuit at that time.) In fact, Javi probably got a 5 point boost in the PCS due to his champion title. If Javi skated in the final group, his PCS would’ve been close to 90. If Javi didn’t receive the bonus for his champion title, Yuzu would’ve been on the podium instead of Javi. This is just an illustration to show how the PCS is very much influenced by a skater’s reputation, much less by a skater’s skills and performance. It’s unfair, but that seems to be the reality in figure skating.
I do think Patrick's PCS was too high (relative to the lower rank skaters) given the difficulty and performance he gave (at least, based on my view of fair judging.) I think that was due to his world champion status rather than his skills. People think Patrick’s SS skill is much better than Javi, but his PCS is not much higher than Javi’s when they compete together (about 2 points in the LP at the Olympics). So the skill/performance explains very little of the PCS.
Now Yuzu also earned the champion title, so all skaters with champion titles are more or less judged with the same reputation inflation in the PCS. So the difference of their PCS now comes down to the program difficulty and execuation quality/performance, which is minimal, 1 or 2 points usually. So it’s unlikely Patrick will have any PCS advantage over Yuzu now, especially now Yuzu has a much more difficult program.
As for the COC score, the COC judges are generous judges. They were generous to Han Yan (skating at home, defending COC champion), Kovton (4th at worlds, Russian Champ) and Yuzu (Olympic Champ). They gave Han Yan 80 PCS for a disastrous LP, Kovton 83 PCS for a badly skated LP with a fall and Yuzu 84 PCS for an LP with 5 falls. I don’t think Kovton ever got 83 for that kind of performance anywhere else. Even his TEB 2014 performance scored only 80 and he didn’t make any mistakes there. If you take away the repuation boost Yuzu got and judge him as a newbie, similar to how he was judged before 2013 GPF, he most likely would’ve got 79-81. So he did get a boost (probably around 3-5 points boost in the LP and maybe 1-2 points boost in the SP), but in no way did his performance deserve only a 60s or low 70s PCS, given how difficult his program is. The only question is whether the bonus Yuzu got would’ve changed the final placement. My answer is no because the gap between him and Dornbush was over 10 points.
here is the interview
