General Skating Chat

[yuzupon]

17 minutes ago, Fresca said:

Without the skating skills, how do you enter a jump and land a jump properly with a running edge?

You don't. That's why we cringe at some of those quads. Not only because they are not 'pretty', but because you can almost feel the impacts on the body.

 

17 minutes ago, Fresca said:

Someone said her arm movements were balletic with flamenco influence and I got insulted on behalf of ballet and flamenco dancers.

Yeah, that's definitely an insult to ballet and flamenco dancers. My former ballet dancer friend told me her flapping hands in her individual FS at Oly actually looks like she was trying to fend off a swan attacking her for daring to imitate it. Which had me but also can't unsee it.

 

@cinemacoconut which Junior programs? I only watched her junior programs from last year's and they were even sloppier (and even more in-your-face in terms of choreography) than her programs this year. I am all open for her to prove that she can indeed deliver a really good program. But until then, just like how I see Nathan Chen's, it remains a still-yet-to-be-materialised potential, and her current performances remain unworthy of the PCS scores she is already getting.

[Xen]

Well...am I the only one who found Alina's FS this year better performed last season while she was a junior? I think back then, it had more "light-heartedness." The nerves probably didn't help. This season, the FS was less the issue, the SP though always annoyed me, granted all the swans this year, minus Yuzu's EX, annoyed me.

 

The part that gets me the most though, is why is it that some of these people who took ballet just...don't really transfer it on ice? My mom also did ballet before, and she wasn't impressed by Nathan (especially his musicality felt super flat to her). I didn't dare show her Alina.

[Sombreuil]

I quite liked Yu/Zhangs swan/Rothbart, but totally agree about the rest of the swans.

[WinForPooh]

56 minutes ago, yuzupon said:

You don't. That's why we cringe at some of those quads. Not only because they are not 'pretty', but because you can almost feel the impacts on the body.

 

Yeah, that's definitely an insult to ballet and flamenco dancers. My former ballet dancer friend told me her flapping hands in her individual FS at Oly actually looks like she was trying to fend off a swan attacking her for daring to imitate it. Which had me but also can't unsee it.

 

@cinemacoconut which Junior programs? I only watched her junior programs from last year's and they were even sloppier (and even more in-your-face in terms of choreography) than her programs this year. I am all open for her to prove that she can indeed deliver a really good program. But until then, just like how I see Nathan Chen's, it remains a still-yet-to-be-materialised potential, and her current performances remain unworthy of the PCS scores she is already getting.

She had the same free skate in her last junior year as she did this season, so I'm not sure which older programmes, either? There's one more from 2015, a Ghost mix. The jumps are not all backloaded and there's a little bit of miming, but switch costume and music and the choreography is so similar to Don Quixote. (ETA: Less complicated entry and exits to jumps sometimes, though. The other transitions are very similar.

[cinemacoconut]

Am i the only one who thinks Alina is a well rounded skater? Her black swan sp gave me chills and i loved the choreography. That was my favorite SP out of the whole olympics. 

[Xen]

12 minutes ago, cinemacoconut said:

Am i the only one who thinks Alina is a well rounded skater? Her black swan sp gave me chills and i loved the choreography. That was my favorite SP out of the whole olympics. 

Personally, the SPs I liked from the ladies were far and few in between. If I had to chose, I'd go Satoko Miyahara, Kaori Sakamoto (I didn't notice it was backloaded the first time I saw it, it had enough content, and she really does fly across the ice), Osmond (though it's not my type of music, she did it well), and probably Loena. I didn't like Alina's SP the first time I saw it-the opening moves, minus the starting pose reminds me a bit too much of her FS. She has a bit of a tell with backloaded programs, and this is probably more a choreography issue, and that's the illusion spin step she does. It's always that location in her programs when she starts. I know step sequences are fairly similar these days due to requirements under IJS, but it does seem a bit boring. But if you check that section against her FS, it's pretty much the exact same steps.

 

As for her being well-rounded, she's only turning 16 this year, so I think she can be a very well-rounded skater. She has potential. And for what she does, I'll repeat what I said in the Olys Ladie's thread. She does a very difficulty program with decent ease, and for that I congratulate her. Personally I like Alina as a skater, and as a person, but I do think she's not quite that complete yet. If judged fairly on all the ladies, she may still have won just based on her TES alone, which is much harder than what other ladies were doing.

 

The other issue, people tend to highlight, is where do skaters go once they get such high scores. And to a degree, Alina has reached probably her "cap" this Olys. She doesn't have that many points left to earn when she gets better artistry and programs, and her programs don't have that much TES room either (short of her getting a 3A or a quad). So it's not going to be rosy for her, or Evgenia going forward, since the 3A and quad girls are coming.

[WinForPooh]

40 minutes ago, cinemacoconut said:

Am i the only one who thinks Alina is a well rounded skater? Her black swan sp gave me chills and i loved the choreography. That was my favorite SP out of the whole olympics. 

I'm not really sure we watched the same programmes! No, I don't think Alina is a well-rounded skater at the moment. She could be in a couple of years, but there will be no room left in her scores to reflect that because she is currently being marked as a skater with well-developed artistry. It will be a pity when she does develop that artistry and find that there's no more room to rise. Her PE, IN and SS levels are all well below those of her fellow senior skaters. 

[yuzupon]

7 hours ago, cinemacoconut said:

Am i the only one who thinks Alina is a well rounded skater? Her black swan sp gave me chills and i loved the choreography. That was my favorite SP out of the whole olympics. 

Yep, you're probably the only one. At least from among the people I converse with about this matter. Perhaps, our definition of a well-rounded skater is just different, which is fine. Whatever floats your boat and all that. I do know a person who doesn't mind her programs this year as much as I do, but even she doesn't think Zagitova is a well-rounded skater.

 

Look, Zagitova is a marvellous spinner. Her jumping techniques are not the worst, considering she has that tendency among most Russian skaters to pick with a full or nearly full blade in their toe jumps and still rather prone to UR-ing; in that regards, her jumps are definitely better than most of Medvedeva's. Still, she is below Wakaba, Sakamoto, Osmond, and even Daleman and her teammate Tsurkaya in terms of jumps. And even compared to some of the 'softer' ladies, like Mai Mihara, guess whose jumps I'd rather watch. Zagitova obviously has a lot of stamina for being able to backload in both SP and especially FS. And the transitions she (and Medvedeva) packed into her programs are insane (though I personally despised choreographically unnecessary transitions). So, by all means, give her the BV, +GOEs for spins, and good (not high, because the quality of the transitions should count more than the quantity) scores for TR in PCS.

 

But then look at how she executes her movements, or rather the sloppiness by which she does them. Count how many times she missed the music cue, especially when she made a slight mistake. Look at her 2-tone expression: either smiley or flat. Look at her lack of control of edges, which also might well be caused by the haphazard way she does her steps. And then look at what scores she got for the remaining 4 section of the PCS.

 

Perhaps Yuzu's brand of total commitment to his programs and choreographic movements has ingrained itself into my brain too much. But my expectations for Ladies are not as high as that. Just that they at least do half? 

 

ps. During their Junior circuit run, up until JWC 2017, Marin Honda almost always scored higher than Zagitova in PCS. Zagitova's highest PCS for her FS (the same one she uses this year) in JWC 2017 is a whopping 7.89 (CO and IN). And suddenly this time she is averaging 9+???

Can anyone truly make a case that anyone can have their skills improved so tremendously that their PCS skyrocketed like that in less than a season in the Senior circuit?

I mean it happened with Medvedeva before, sure. But again, just because it has happened before, does not automatically make it right.

 

pps. This, THIS, would be the last time I talked about a program I dislike. Ugh!

[WinForPooh]

11 minutes ago, yuzupon said:

Yep, you're probably the only one. At least from among the people I converse with about this matter. Perhaps, our definition of a well-rounded skater is just different, which is fine. Whatever floats your boat and all that. I do know a person who doesn't mind her programs this year as much as I do, but even she doesn't think Zagitova is a well-rounded skater.

 

Look, Zagitova is a marvellous spinner. Her jumping techniques are not the worst, considering she has that tendency among most Russian skaters to pick with a full or nearly full blade in their toe jumps and still rather prone to UR-ing; in that regards, her jumps are definitely better than most of Medvedeva's. Still, she is below Wakaba, Sakamoto, Osmond, and even Daleman and her teammate Tsurkaya in terms of jumps. And even compared to some of the 'softer' ladies, like Mai Mihara, guess whose jumps I'd rather watch. Zagitova obviously has a lot of stamina for being able to backload in both SP and especially FS. And the transitions she (and Medvedeva) packed into her programs are insane (though I personally despised choreographically unnecessary transitions). So, by all means, give her the BV, +GOEs for spins, and good (not high, because the quality of the transitions should count more than the quantity) scores for TR in PCS.

 

But then look at how she executes her movements, or rather the sloppiness by which she does them. Count how many times she missed the music cue, especially when she made a slight mistake. Look at her 2-tone expression: either smiley or flat. Look at her lack of control of edges, which also might well be caused by the haphazard way she does her steps. And then look at what scores she got for the remaining 4 section of the PCS.

 

Perhaps Yuzu's brand of total commitment to his programs and choreographic movements has ingrained itself into my brain too much. But my expectations for Ladies are not as high as that. Just that they at least do half? 

 

ps. During their Junior circuit run, up until JWC 2017, Marin Honda almost always scored higher than Zagitova in PCS. Zagitova's highest PCS for her FS (the same one she uses this year) in JWC 2017 is a whopping 7.89 (CO and IN). And suddenly this time she is averaging 9???

Can anyone truly make a case that anyone can have their skills improved so tremendously that their PCS skyrocketed like that in less than a season in the Senior circuit?

I mean it happened with Medvedeva before, sure. But again, just because it has happened before, does not automatically make it right.

 

pps. This, THIS, would be the last time I talked about a program I dislike. Ugh!

 I know, I thought I was done with the frustration, too. 

[SparkleSalad]

2 hours ago, Xen said:

The part that gets me the most though, is why is it that some of these people who took ballet just...don't really transfer it on ice? My mom also did ballet before, and she wasn't impressed by Nathan (especially his musicality felt super flat to her). I didn't dare show her Alina.

 

I would say they probably danced how they skate. Learning ballet doesn't mean you have any particular talent for it.

[WinForPooh]

25 minutes ago, SparkleSalad said:

 

I would say they probably danced how they skate. Learning ballet doesn't mean you have any particular talent for it.

Six years, Nathan learnt ballet, according to an article. US media but still. Six. Years. I don't even know what to think. 

[ClarissaH]

I've seen this particular comment brought up a lot, in regards to better rewarding well-executed components. I'm going to say that the solution that would likely work the best would be to expand the GoE window from -3 through +3 to -5 through +5, better reward well executed elements and a larger penalty for sloppily done ones. Considering the little point differences between medaling positions, it sometimes coming down to fractions of a point, this change will definitely shake things up. 

[WinForPooh]

12 minutes ago, ClarissaH said:

I've seen this particular comment brought up a lot, in regards to better rewarding well-executed components. I'm going to say that the solution that would likely work the best would be to expand the GoE window from -3 through +3 to -5 through +5, better reward well executed elements and a larger penalty for sloppily done ones. Considering the little point differences between medaling positions, it sometimes coming down to fractions of a point, this change will definitely shake things up. 

 

If executed well, maybe...

 

I do think the only real way to make it all work would be to remove all federation influence from judging, and have judges be reviewed by an independent panel whose findings are made public to check for bias or kickbacks. It'll never happen, of course, and if it did, it would be just another kind of politics. 

[ClarissaH]

6 minutes ago, WinForPooh said:

 

If executed well, maybe...

 

I do think the only real way to make it all work would be to remove all federation influence from judging, and have judges be reviewed by an independent panel whose findings are made public to check for bias or kickbacks. It'll never happen, of course, and if it did, it would be just another kind of politics. 

 

The way the judges grade execution, at least to my knowledge, is public. Over on the General Hanyu chat I linked to a spreadsheet a reddit user made, taking the grades for the elements of the skater, including the nationality of the skater and the judge and cross referencing to look for national bias, which there no surprise was. It's public knowledge who the biased judges are so the obvious solution is to remove them from judging panels and replace them. Another way to help eliminate bias would be to not include the highest and lowest GoE judge scores in the mean calculation, so if one judge is favoring a skater while another is biased against them, they don't get included so they pretty much cancel out. In cases where judge scores are close to each other and there isn't any bias, not including the top and bottom values would have minimal effect on the mean score. 

[WinForPooh]

7 minutes ago, ClarissaH said:

 

The way the judges grade execution, at least to my knowledge, is public. Over on the General Hanyu chat I linked to a spreadsheet a reddit user made, taking the grades for the elements of the skater, including the nationality of the skater and the judge and cross referencing to look for national bias, which there no surprise was. It's public knowledge who the biased judges are so the obvious solution is to remove them from judging panels and replace them. Another way to help eliminate bias would be to not include the highest and lowest GoE judge scores in the mean calculation, so if one judge is favoring a skater while another is biased against them, they don't get included so they pretty much cancel out. In cases where judge scores are close to each other and there isn't any bias, not including the top and bottom values would have minimal effect on the mean score. 

It is public knowledge, but nothing is actually done about it. Judges who have a track record of biased judging still keep on being sent by feds to do more judging. There was a piece on Buzzfeed (of all places) about bias in judging and any disciplinary actions faced by judges. There was a total of two judges who faced actual disciplinary action, iirc, and it wasn't for bias. They do some kind of review that involves an algorithm that checks for scores outside of a certain corridor, but apparently that corridor is so wide that almost nothing is flagged by it. They're not in any real sense accountable to anybody except their federations. That is just a very flawed system for fairness.

 

This one.