Nobu watched Yuzu's SP and his reaction: 

 

 

Rough translation
"It is so beautiful that I can cry" 

 

 

 

Yuzu in the newspapers

 

 

[NEWS]

 

 

Some more beautiful photos from SP 

 

[NEWS]

After finally catching up and watching Shoma and Yuma, I understand why Yuzu is holding on 4A for motivating himself. He is so beyond this sport that the current scoring system can’t quantify his skating properly. Rondo is madly difficult, it is so packed, with very few crossovers, redefining the word “transitions”, the crazy entries into the jumps, etc. Who is doing it like him?

I just have one concern and to avoid any bad spirits, I will share after tomorrow FS. I hope everything goes well tomorrow 

My last take: huge congrats to Jeff and Shae. Jeff has always created a masterpiece for yuzu, even better than shae's free programs have been, imho... but this collaboration between them and whoever else also helped, it's the best thing yuzu's ever done, bar none.  Obviously yuzu skated it to perfection, but without the material, the artist cannot perform. Glorious program. 

Mone Chiba's comment on Yuzu's SP:

[NEWS]
 

Non-commentary version of the SP event was added today (second half only): 

 

 

This post has been tagged by yuzuangel as [NEWS].

Out of boredom, I went and rescored some of the skates from yesterday. I would say overall, I was on the more lenient side. Of the ones I did, the results:

#	Skater	My Score	Actual Score	Difference
1	Yuzuru Hanyu	111.76	111.31	0.45
2	Shoma Uno	100.65	101.88	-1.23
3	Kao Miura	95.75	92.81	2.94
4	Sota Yamamoto	94.13	93.79	0.34
5	Kazuki Tomono	92.74	87.79	4.95
6	Yuma Kagiyama	92.23	95.15	-2.92
7	Sena Miyake	91.86	90.52	1.34
8	Shun Sato	87.90	87.27	0.63
9	Keiji Tanaka	83.77	84.10	-0.33
10	Sumitada Moriguchi	83.35	76.14	7.21
11	Mitsuki Sumoto	76.44	68.55	7.89

 

I think the PCS scale I used was a bit too compressed/lenient, which helped Kao a lot (I gave him mostly flat 8s on the strength of his energy, plus I thought he was better on transitions than average), but you could justify lower because he's quite unpolished. I rated him relatively low on PCS compared to most but because I didn't go much below 8, he ended up benefitting. Sumitada and Mitsuki were criminally underscored on PCS, unsurprisingly because they have no reputation. Mitsuki in particular has some really solid skating skills and was well connected to the music throughout, the only criticism I had was he didn't do much emoting. I thought Kazuki was quite underscored on PCS as well--his skating skills aren't amazing, but they aren't bad either, but he was one of the best all around performers out of the non-Yuzu bunch. He emoted, he was connected to the music, he had good posture and his movements were fairly polished overall, and he didn't completely lose that when jumping (some skaters have a tendency to only start interpreting the music once the jumps are done). There wasn't too much I could fault him on.  There were a lot of skaters that I thought had good commitment to music but whose posture and movements were a bit unpolished (eg. Sota), or the other way around. 

 

I wasn't really digging Shoma's interpretation of the music--he's got good posture and movements but I find them a bit one note, and I thought he was sometimes a bit too focused on landing the jumps. Plus his program was fairly empty. So he got a bit lower from me on PCS. Yuma, similar deal. His interpretation wasn't very convincing and came across as quite juniorish, but he was buoyed a bit by the quality of his basic skating and good posture/control of movements. 

 

Overall I find it really tough to score consistently and fairly. I struggled a lot with how to score Yuzu's combo--on the one hand, his air position is noticeably prettier than most skaters', but on the other hand he did wobble a bit and the combo didn't have much outflow, plus he doesn't have the crazy difficult entrance on that jump like on the 3A that would justify bumping it up a bit. On the other hand, some other skaters' combos were landed more securely, but I found their air position less attractive and their overall landing position so-so. I thought 2 for Yuzu's combo was rather harsh given that the flaws were pretty minor, but it seemed unfair to give it a 3 if I was going to give the more securely landed combos the same score. So I decided I would be two judges and gave him 2.5 and the other securely landed, relatively high quality quad combos that just don't have the most attractive air or landing position 3.5. 

 

Judging transitions is still kind of a huge pain. At this point I'm pretty good at identifying steps and turns on sight, which is helpful, but I don't really have a great idea of what should count as 8, 9, etc. and I also didn't want to count crossovers/direction changes. I basically just started at 8 and bumped skaters up if I noticed them doing harder steps/turns outside of the step sequence and bumped them down if I felt like I saw too many crossovers/they were spending a long time doing element set ups/didn't change direction often enough. Then some adjustment based on the quality of their steps. Doesn't feel super objective, and I have no idea how a judge could properly judge this component without the aid of statistics while also judging everything else.

 

Overall, I don't really understand how you're supposed to score fairly and properly after only seeing the program once. I definitely had to replay everyone multiple times.

 

Edit: After watching Russian nationals. I remember why I used such a compressed PCS scale. Because there has to be room for scoring those empty programs without encroaching on territory used for scoring skaters who can't do rockers and counters.

 

Edit2: After watching Yuzu again, you know what, the combo really isn't as insecure looking as I thought earlier. I think sometimes I project my fear of Yuzu falling onto how I perceive his jumps lol. Bumping the GOE up to 3 

11 minutes ago, shanshani said:

Out of boredom, I went and rescored some of the skates from yesterday. I would say overall, I was on the more lenient side. Of the ones I did, the results:

#	Skater	My Score	Actual Score	Difference
1	Yuzuru Hanyu	111.29	111.31	-0.02
2	Shoma Uno	100.65	101.88	-1.23
3	Kao Miura	95.75	92.81	2.94
4	Sota Yamamoto	94.13	93.79	0.34
5	Kazuki Tomono	92.74	87.79	4.95
6	Yuma Kagiyama	92.23	95.15	-2.92
7	Sena Miyake	91.86	90.52	1.34
8	Shun Sato	87.90	87.27	0.63
9	Keiji Tanaka	83.77	84.10	-0.33
10	Sumitada Moriguchi	83.35	76.14	7.21
11	Mitsuki Sumoto	76.44	68.55	7.89

 

I think the PCS scale I used was a bit too compressed/lenient, which helped Kao a lot (I gave him mostly flat 8s on the strength of his energy, plus I thought he was better on transitions than average), but you could justify lower because he's quite unpolished. I rated him relatively low on PCS compared to most but because I didn't go much below 8, he ended up benefitting. Sumitada and Mitsuki were criminally underscored on PCS, unsurprisingly because they have no reputation. Mitsuki in particular has some really solid skating skills and was well connected to the music throughout, the only criticism I had was he didn't do much emoting. I thought Kazuki was quite underscored on PCS as well--his skating skills aren't amazing, but they aren't bad either, but he was one of the best all around performers out of the non-Yuzu bunch. He emoted, he was connected to the music, he had good posture and his movements were fairly polished overall, and he didn't completely lose that when jumping (some skaters have a tendency to only start interpreting the music once the jumps are done). There wasn't too much I could fault him on.  There were a lot of skaters that I thought had good commitment to music but whose posture and movements were unpolished (eg. Sota), or the other way around. 

 

I wasn't really digging Shoma's interpretation of the music--he's got good posture and movements but I find them a bit one note, and I thought he was sometimes a bit too focused on landing the jumps. Plus his program was fairly empty. So he got a bit lower from me on PCS. Yuma, similar deal. His interpretation wasn't very convincing and came across as quite juniorish, but he was buoyed a bit by the quality of his basic skating and good posture/control of movements. 

 

Overall I find it really tough to score consistently and fairly. I struggled a lot with how to score Yuzu's combo--on the one hand, his air position is noticeably prettier than most skaters', but on the other hand he did wobble a bit and the combo didn't have much outflow, plus he doesn't have the crazy difficult entrance on that jump like on the 3A that would justify bumping it up a bit. On the other hand, some other skaters' combos were landed more securely, but I found their air position less attractive and their overall landing position so-so. I thought 2 for Yuzu's combo was rather harsh given that the flaws were pretty minor, but it seemed unfair to give it a 3 if I was going to give the more securely landed combos the same score. So I decided I would be two judges and gave him 2.5 and the other securely landed, relatively high quality quad combos that just don't have the most attractive air or landing position 3.5. 

 

Judging transitions is still kind of a huge pain. At this point I'm pretty good at identifying steps and turns on sight, which is helpful, but I don't really have a great idea of what should count as 8, 9, etc. and I also didn't want to count crossovers/direction changes. I basically just started at 8 and bumped skaters up if I noticed them doing harder steps/turns outside of the step sequence and bumped them down if I felt like I saw too many crossovers/they were spending a long time doing element set ups/didn't change direction often enough. Then some adjustment based on the quality of their steps. Doesn't feel super objective, and I have no idea how a judge could properly judge this component without the aid of statistics while also judging everything else.

 

Overall, I don't really understand how you're supposed to score fairly and properly after only seeing the program once. I definitely had to replay everyone multiple times.

 

Thank you for your thorough review and analysis.  It's very helpful to see how difficult it is to judge these complex elements on the fly.   

 

I am a dressage rider and I see similar type of challenges in judging the scores consistently on Grand Prix level freestyle performances, which also include subjective judgement.  At least in dressage, you have the judges spread out around the ring and able to evaluate movements from different points of view.  ISU could take a page out of this and spread the judges and technical specialists around the ring so that they can observe and evaluate from different angles, without having to introduce additional cameras.  Ofc, this will not fix the judging biases which seems to be deeply embedded in the culture of figure skating judging community, but this approach could - at the very least - remove the existence of "blind spots" in the ring.  

 

 

3 hours ago, Wyell said:

Non-commentary version of the SP event was added today (second half only): 

 

 

This post has been tagged by yuzuangel as [NEWS].

thank you for posting! this one also had slightly different camera angles from the FujiTV one.

 

Mitsuru Nobuchika (former professor from the Keio University) about Yuzu’s SP 

Translation:

 

[NEWS]

 

 

6 hours ago, shanshani said:

There were a lot of skaters that I thought had good commitment to music but whose posture and movements were unpolished (eg. Sota), or the other way around. 

 

 

You've got to be kidding me. Sota has posture issues??? To me his back and limbs are among the best stretched and straight in today's men's skating, movements controlled down to his fingertips, and underscored spins. And no way is he near the unpolished level of Miura. JMO of course.

 

"Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso" has reached over 6 million views (currently 6.571.146 ) ... Wow 

 

Video: https://sports.yahoo.co.jp/video/player/6058624

(blocked in my country)

 

I love this program 

 

 

 

This post has been tagged by yuzuangel as [NEWS].

4 hours ago, surimi said:

 

You've got to be kidding me. Sota has posture issues??? To me his back and limbs are among the best stretched and straight in today's men's skating, movements controlled down to his fingertips, and underscored spins. And no way is he near the unpolished level of Miura. JMO of course.

I don't think it was as bad as Miura, but he wasn't as polished as the best of the men either. I gave him significantly higher PCS than Miura, I just docked him a bit because he didn't quite meet the attention to detail gold standard. Eg. I found his free leg position sometimes awkward, extensions didn't quite go down to the fingertips, often his posture/limb position when prepping for jumps was awkward/unaesthetic. It wasn't that bad but if you compare him to Yuzu or many of the ladies he's not quite there yet. 

On 12/25/2021 at 5:06 AM, Melodie said:

And he himself literally pointed it out lol

 

 

 

 

This post has been tagged by yuzuangel as [NEWS].

He's really pushing the boundaries in ways no one thought was possible! We've all been focused on the 4A and didn't even realize there are other areas that could be made even more complex yet here were have Roncapu! Truly the GOAT!!

 

This post has been tagged by yuzuangel as [NEWS].