General Skating Chat

[EisElle]

On 4/3/2019 at 9:20 PM, hoodie axel said:

This is against weird decisions by the coaches in general, and the poor state of judging. Not Medvedeva/Orser specifically.

 

 

Brian Orser says here that her "4T isn't bad". Here's one of Medvedeva's +3T executions from Worlds 2019:

 

 

Now of course this is on a combo, and solo technique may slightly differ, but 270 degrees of PR doesn't fill me with confidence (and she didn't land it backwards, either) that her solo 4T will be done any better.

 

They also speak about her 4S. Here's her 3S now:

 

This jump isn't that great either. It's slightly better on take-off than her toe-loops, but the vault on the jump isn't that great. I am not sure why people say she has one of the best 3S out there.

 

(that's a very nice performance BTW, program set aside. Something quite Sotnikova-at-Sochi-like.)

 

So my question to the coaches out there is, when someone has weak basic technique, why would you try to build quads on that? Why not try to fix the technique, and try to get the skater to vault? Plus, I am sure the coach knows about cheated technique, so why would they try to not fix that and instead try to train a quad?

I was surprised at the mention of a 4T too, to me her toe combos still look laboured so I'm not betting on that one.

As for the 3S, I don't know if the one she did in that FS can be taken as an example of her usual 3S, she was visibly in pain at the end of the skate so that could have factored. I remember one very big 3S, or at least it looked so in the vid, it was from a practice during GP. Of course one big 3S doesn't tells much about her average 3S either (I wanted to check that russian analysis data to see in which range of height her 3S could be, but I can't see the tables anymore) but Zhenya is definitely more comfortable with S and Lo, so it makes sense that, if she needs to try a quad (the current trend says she does), S is really her best bet (or possibly the only bet, since I can't see her ever going for 3A and her Lz...well, it's still what it is).

It looks like she is still jumping the sal with the...I can't remember the name of the shape at takeoff, LOL, I'm gonna call it the non-Yuzuru take off...since Rika, who's training 4S too, has changed hers to the Yuzu-takeoff (I think Lilbet jumps her 4S that way too), I wonder if there's a chance Ghislain will push Zhenya do the same...probably it would be harder for Zhenya to change so radically her 3S technique though, especially since she already needs to focus a lot on her 2A and toe jumps...

 

On 4/5/2019 at 8:08 PM, Flutterby said:

 

That's the thing I've been wondering about the stats - how do they relate to body type? What if a skater has excellent technique but is of a small (ie short) body type. Are they still able to get the same height? 

 

OTOH I think its fairly apparent when a jump is just skimming across the ice rather than getting proper lift off.

iirc LazyLys on twitter had calculated that, according to current icescope data, it looks like for male skater there's no correlation between height of the jumps and height of the skaters (as listed in ISU bio), at least for the 3A.

There are many short skaters who jump high, or higher than one would expect - Keegan, Misha K, of course Midori Ito, but I think also a skater like Karen Chen, and Liza T isn't that tall either. Also, Yuzuru isn't the tallest guy out there and he still jumps very high after a counter...

I guess body type could be a different thing... but again, Keegan isn't "thin", and some skaters from the past who had big jumps were bulkier than Nathan, Yuzu and Boyang (I guess in an era when boots were also heavier, so it was harder to get good lift, so it's even more significant that they could rotate and land those big quads).

So all in all I think the explosive power in muscles (at least in part due to genetic composition of muscle fibers) and technique/timing could matter more than body type.(*) We'll never know how big Satoko could have jumped clock-wise, maybe she would have been a better jumper if she hadn't been forced to adapt her technique to a direction that didn't felt natural to her. Also, if you notice, a lot of Yuzuru's technique relies on perfect timing (I also think that's at least part of the reason why he's so "fussy" about what goes where and when, how to fit this or that on that particular section of the music... it's likely that, to Yuzuru, when the rythm of jumps doesn't suit the music, it feels like irksome discordant notes). In the slow-mo you really see him e.g. coil for the 4Lo, sinking low on his leg and sweep for the 4S, and swing arms and legs together for the 3A. It's a bit like watching an archer drawing and releasing the string

 

(*)It's possible the current "technique" of fast rotation is only suited to a certain body type, but it isn't the only technique avaliable. Though it looks like it's the one that's all the rage for now, and it's likely gonna be all the rage for a while, since there are 0 real incentives in going for bigger jumps (looking at how the supposed core bullet is utterly meaningless atm)

 

 

On 4/5/2019 at 8:28 PM, fireovertheice said:

 

Yes, I know 😒.

The problem was that she/he told that but a lot (too many for my taste) of the others after practically said that's was right. If considered in itself, it is not so relevant or not so much as what other representative of skaters, coaches or officials have said in these last weeks/days. But taken in the whole context, this also gives me the feeling that everything is not objective and measurable / quantifiable in figure skating. There is no point in competing and scoring following rules - or guidelines  🙄 - ...and for a lot of fans, skaters and officials everything is really fine in this way.

I think there's a cultural issue in figure skating community as a whole - many people still live in the 6.0 and don't think it's even possible to make things more objective.

It's like disregarding all the improvements that were made in science and technology in... DECADES. All those improvements in the ability to measure things, all the things we know better now thanks to studies in physiology, physics and so on, all the new instruments that are being developed... it's as if they were seen as 1) something completely and utterly useless or 2) an evil to be squashed and stomped to the ground. They don't even get a chance. 

 

more angry ranting

Spoiler

 

If FS has to remain a sport, there needs to be some possibility to have reproducible scores, scores that do not change drastically no matter  judging panel. It should be possible to have official standards, clearly stated in rulebooks and official seminars everyone can read and watch, everyone can study and apply (and get scores accordingly).

If I watch the top skaters of all disciplines, I expect to see similar ability for a 9 in SS or in TR.

For jumps, I expect to see a +5 jump to look better than any +3 jump. Heck, it's two whole points more! There must be some visible quality that made the +5 jumps UTTER PERFECTION, right? because that's what a +5 means, UTTER PERFECTION, CAN'T GET ANY BETTER, so there really shouldn't be anything better.

there shouldn't be someone chiming in and saying "goe are subjective". They are, but tha'ts why we need a standard that doesn't change if I look at the first or the last group of skaters, to ladies or men, to a skater from big feds or small feds, a  standard that gets applied at the start of the season in a challenger, in a senior B, mid-season at GPF, and then at Euros, 4CC and at the end of the season at WC, the same standard in every country, same standard for jr and sr.

 

And of course, there should be a system for accountability when those rules and standards are violated (guess what, if everything is subjective than the OWG chinese judges had every right to score Boyang 10 points better than anyone else)

 

Yes, the standard will be more like a range than some fixed value, but it should be possible to discern the bad from the average from the good. And the bad, average and good shouldn't change every 4 minutes. Internal choerence is what FS scoring utterly lacks.

 

 

Otherwise really, if a set of people says a skate is a 100 and that score is "valid" and another set of people says it's a "50" and it's equally valid, there's no meaning in even ranking skaters in any way. If any skater can be at once the first and the last, according to who you ask, 

should we add a tiny footnote at every title and medal? like:

World Champion(*)  

(*)according to judges x, y and z.

A world champion is supposed to be without doubt the best or at least very good, and no one is without doubt very good if there is no way to tell, without doubt, what is good and what is not. Without some kind of objective scoring, all medals and titles are meaningless.

 

 

aaaaaaand some more sad ranting

Spoiler

Ok, I get that skaters try to cope with the absurdity of the scoring and resign themselves to that, it's understandable, they need to survive somehow, and if you don't want to be crushed you probably need to accept that no matter what you do, the socres you get are unpredictable. But for them to actually defending that absurdity is so wrong.

 

And how "true skating fans" can accept this twisted thinking and why they would not even want to try and improve it a little bit is beyond me.

 

Since getting into the sport, I've often felt resigned and tired and it makes me angry, that the general  atmosphere of the skating world and constant saltiness forces me to grow numb to protect myself.

The common attitude in FS scoring often reminds me of Il Gattopardo (The leopard), that kind of bone-deep stillness and immutability, the resignation. Even all the rule changes feel like some kind of "everything must change, so everything can stay the same" (not direct quotation, but that's the meaning). Ineed, if CoP now works exactly like 6.0, things have indeed stayed the same. Congrats to the ISU.

 

At this point I'm growing so weary I wouldn't even mind that much if they were to actually change current SP and FS in "tech program" and "artistic program".

 

*conspiracy theory*: ISU is letting CoP break so they can push for that. They're trying to drive everyone crazy with how TES should not mean high PCS an after 2022 they'll come to us and offer a brilliant solution: make a TES program and a PCS program, each with a medals... people will THANK them for that.

A pity FS was supposed to blend both. Tbh that's almost the only thing that still makes me rebel to that idea. It would be a betrayal of Yuzuru's legacy and it pisses me off that everything he has worked for and the example he ahs set won't have the chance to inspire anyone.

 

[hoodie axel]

8 hours ago, LadyLou said:

As for the 3S, I don't know if the one she did in that FS can be taken as an example of her usual 3S, she was visibly in pain at the end of the skate so that could have factored. I remember one very big 3S, or at least it looked so in the vid, it was from a practice during GP. Of course one big 3S doesn't tells much about her average 3S either (I wanted to check that russian analysis data to see in which range of height her 3S could be, but I can't see the tables anymore) but Zhenya is definitely more comfortable with S and Lo, so it makes sense that, if she needs to try a quad (the current trend says she does), S is really her best bet (or possibly the only bet, since I can't see her ever going for 3A and her Lz...well, it's still what it is). 

It could be better, and maybe she's improving. I never thought she had a particularly great salchow even before this season, though. If you see how Sakamoto, or Kostner, or Tuktamysheva do it, theirs are far "floatier".

 

Maybe they're building up the technique for the 4S and it's in progress.

[Old Cat Lady]

Considering where Jason's 4s is, I'm taking the news with a giant grain of salt.  Perhaps they're trying to build up an image early for the judges. It's going to be really tough for her to get on the team next year even with that quad though.

[Marte]

On 4/8/2019 at 2:29 PM, Old Cat Lady said:

Considering where Jason's 4s is, I'm taking the news with a giant grain of salt.  Perhaps they're trying to build up an image early for the judges. It's going to be really tough for her to get on the team next year even with that quad though.

 

If not impossible. I honestly doubt it is possible, with these junior coming up, to be considered by the RusFed, for her the only possibility to compete would be to jump a 4S/4T. The problem is that Med's jumps are small and his technique is not clean, but maybe she can pull off enough rotational speed (I think this is Jason issue with the quad). This situation will be more or less the same for Alina.

[airi]

I wouldn't say it's impossible, look at this year, they love her so much. Plus, it's still to be seen how those juniors will do as seniors.

[Yume]

Honestly, i can see Medvedeva on nats podium if she does well with what she has, even with no quads. Don't underestimate fed's love for her and how high those GOEs and PCS can go.

[Marte]

Yes they love her but honestly it's a miracle that she won the bronze at World, even if only one junior girl comes up, for me she would be the first to lose support since she doesn't even train in Russia anymore.

 

2 minutes ago, Yume said:

Honestly, i can see Medvedeva be on nats podium if she does well with what she has, even with no quads. Don't underestimate fed's love for her and how high those GOEs and PCS can go.

 

In the end all comes down to RusFed and what they decide to do 

[shanshani]

On 4/1/2019 at 6:40 AM, Veveco said:

Bringing this here because I don't want to derail the general Yuzu topic again but:

 

 

 

ISU shenanigans aside, serious question: what would be, in your opinion, the best way to integrate Icescope - or equivalent technology - in the judging system?

 

I certainly think that new technologies should be used as a more objective way to grade of jumps (you know, the ever elusive height/distance guidelines from ISU), but clearly it is not the only relevant factor. Air position, landing, difficult entry/exit (haha, right?) etc. are still very important. So what is your best hypothetical scenario? Would you see it as 2 separate components of the jump score, one from Icescope-like + one from judges for execution? Or Icescope stats used to factor the score somehow, goe style? Or a level system (being in this range allows you a bv of so much, step seq style) ? 

 

I'm curious to see how more experienced fans/skaters would prefer to see this being used. 

 

Also, don't tell me it's impossible to develop a similar technology to evaluate rotations and finally get fair calls for UR. 

Catching up on this thread. Here's what I proposed on GS:

 

What makes most sense is if a certain number of possible GOE points are available for height and distance, and you get a % of them depending on how far/high you jumped, all completely graded by computer. The standards could be set using historical data.

For the sake of demonstration, it could work like this. Let’s say we allot 1 GOE point available to be earned for height and distance, maybe split 0.5 for height and 0.5 for distance. (Someone made the comment that this should probably in actuality be 10% of BV, which I agree with. Going to use 1 just to make the math easier though.) Suppose we take a bunch of 3A data and we find that the biggest height is 0.7m and the biggest distance is 3.62m (which indeed was the case in the World’s SP). Let’s also say that, once we take into account lower tiers of competition, we find that the average 3A height is 0.56m and the average length is 2.62m. Let’s stipulate that your 3A has to at least be slightly above average to start earning height/distance GOE points (but of course we can argue about this—maybe the standard should be higher, maybe lower). From this, we could construct a scale where your height/distance GOE is proportional to how far your 3A is above the average, and the standard for full marks is set by the maximum height/distance among the historical data.

So, applying this to the Worlds men’s SP 3As, assuming those measurements are accurate, it would look like this:

Yuzuru Hanyu would get maximum marks for his 3A on both height and distance, as their height and distance matches the maximum height and distance in the historical data (obviously this is cheating a bit since I’m using his 3A in the historical data but this makes the math easier to demonstrate and the numbers somewhat grounded in reality, so deal with it haha). Therefore, he gets the full 1 point for height and distance.

Shoma Uno would get 0 points for height on his 3A, since his height of 0.51 is below the average height of 0.56. However, he would also receive (3.44-2.62)/(3.62-2.62)=82% of full marks for distance, as his distance of 3.44 is 82% of the way between the average (2.62) and the maximum (3.62) in the historical data. Therefore, he would earn 82%*0.5=0.41 GOE for distance.

Mikhail Kolyada, on the other hand, would receive (0.65-0.56)/(0.7-0.56)=64% of full marks on height, as his height is 64% of the way between the average and the maximum, so 0.32 points. But he would receive nothing for distance, as the distance on his 3A (2.5m) is below average. (I personally kind of disagree with this and would argue for weighing height more, but we can argue over the details, this is just demonstration.)

Nathan Chen would receive (0.58-0.56)/(0.7-0.56)=14% of the full marks on height, for 0.07 GOE, and (2.66-2.62)/(3.62-2.62)=4% of the full marks on distance, for 0.02 GOE. Therefore, he would earn 0.09 GOE in total for jumping slightly, but only slightly, higher and longer than average. (Of course, let me note that I completely made up the average numbers—the actual average for clean 3As in the Worlds SP was 0.59m height and 2.87m distance, but I put lower numbers on the theory that the men at Worlds would have bigger 3As than all of the men who can jump a 3A do on average).

Keegan Messing, on the other hand, would receive (0.64-0.56)/(0.7-0.56)=57% of full marks for height, giving him 0.29, and (3.33-2.62)/(3.62-2.62)=71% of full marks for distance, giving him 0.36, for a total of 0.65 GOE for a strongly above average but still somewhat short of the maximum jump in terms of size.

Anyway, you get the idea. Again, the details can be tweaked, but I find the general idea to be much more sensical than a binary choice of whether the jump had “very good” height and distance. Of course, all the math can be done by computer, so all this is fully automated. It also has interesting strategic consequences—in addition to doing a better job of incentivizing jumping big, which I think the current judging is very bad at, it also has the interesting side effect that if you can figure out how to jump much bigger than your opponents, you can suppress their GOE scores (presuming the historical data is continually updated, which I think it should be). For instance, Yuzuru’s 3A was a whole 5 centimeters higher than the next highest 3A, from Mikhail Kolyada. Consequently (under this example scoring regime), no other competitor was able to score more than 64% of the points available for height! I think that would add an extra dimension to the competition and really encourage bigger jumps.

 

Admittedly, it would be difficult to set standards for jumps that are rarely jumped, like 4Lo and 4F. In those cases, perhaps standards could be set using a data set pooled from all of the quads. Unfortunately, I think that might short change 4Lo jumpers a bit, since I don’t think loops tend to get as high and far as other jumps because of the mechanics of the jump, but it would be a fair compromise until a bigger data set is built, and certainly better than whatever passes for height/distance judging now.

 

 

[Old Cat Lady]

14 hours ago, shanshani said:

It also has interesting strategic consequences—in addition to doing a better job of incentivizing jumping big, which I think the current judging is very bad at

 

If the judges actually followed the guidelines, the current system does do a decent job of rewarding height/distance.  Being a core bullet, it makes a huge swing in scores. But since people keep pushing the "these are only guidelines, you don't have to follow them" narrative, not only is there no reward, but like the "out of steps/difficult entry" bullet, judges actually punish skaters for things they're supposed to be rewarded for since these things make the jumps so much harder and, therefore, often cause other problems. There's a reason that Nathan and Vincent are so much more consistent and it's not because they're so much more talented - they save a lot of energy with their small jumps and simple entries and those jumps are much easier to control.  Frankly, if anything, I'm often impressed that Nate's managed to actually complete the rotations in such small jumps. 

 

That's also why I'm not surprised at the lack of correlation between height/distance and GOE's - big jumps are harder to land well so naturally the jumps are likely to have other problems or don't have the extra features.  so the judges then deduct for the problems but don't give credit for the height/distance.  

 

What I think would be interesting is seeing where the jumps that get greater than 3 GOE are on the list of height/distance ranks since height/distance is supposed to be a core bullet.  I think it's fair that if the jump is in the bottom third or half of all jumps in size, then they shouldn't get that bullet.

[kaeryth]

The Technology of Ice Scope

 

 

 

 

[WinForPooh]

9 minutes ago, hoodie axel said:

Historically? Based off the current field? Sakamoto's jumps aren't "very good" level based on historical data, nor are her jumps the biggest currently, as far as I can tell. She does have generally better overall jump quality than most current skaters though.

 

That person literally just brought up the example of a small quad to compare, too. Makes absolutely no sense.

 

This ignores the question I posed, too. If a "very good" jump gets +5, it means we're equating it to a best ever, essentially perfect jump which would get +5, too. Logical?

 

Well that's kind of unfair because then how do you differentiate between (and reward) average and above average jumps, in height and distance? That is one bullet and a necessary one to get more than +3, iirc, so no above average jumpers would get anything more than the whew-just-managed-rotations small jumpers, if you consider 'very good' to mean something like oh-boy-that-almost-took-off-into-orbit like Boyang's 4Lz. Then unless you're one of the .5% of truly exceptional talents with the capability to jump like Boyang, you'd have absolutely no motivation to do more than just manage to get the rotations, and cross fingers for politicking and a generous TP in case you're a bit under. Because you either tick the bullet or you don't, and if you don't, you're capped at +3 no matter what. Which anybody might get with transitions and good air position, let's say. 

[yuzuangel]

3 minutes ago, WinForPooh said:

 

Well that's kind of unfair because then how do you differentiate between (and reward) average and above average jumps, in height and distance? That is one bullet and a necessary one to get more than +3, iirc, so no above average jumpers would get anything more than the whew-just-managed-rotations small jumpers, if you consider 'very good' to mean something like oh-boy-that-almost-took-off-into-orbit like Boyang's 4Lz. Then unless you're one of the .5% of truly exceptional talents with the capability to jump like Boyang, you'd have absolutely no motivation to do more than just manage to get the rotations, and cross fingers for politicking and a generous TP in case you're a bit under. Because you either tick the bullet or you don't, and if you don't, you're capped at +3 no matter what. Which anybody might get with transitions and good air position, let's say. 

Sorry let's move the convo to this thread ^^ 

[yuzuangel]

19 minutes ago, hoodie axel said:

 

That person literally just brought up the example of a small quad to compare, too. Makes absolutely no sense.

 

I don't see how it makes no sense.

They're saying that a quad has an average height and so does a 2A, and those average heights are probably very different.

So it shows that averages matter. 

[WinForPooh]

2 minutes ago, yuzuangel said:

Sorry let's move the convo to this thread ^^ 

 

 That was very OT there. 

[WinForPooh]

2 minutes ago, yuzuangel said:

I don't see how it makes no sense.

They're saying that a quad has an average height and so does a 2A, and those average heights are probably very different.

So it shows that averages matter. 

 

If a 2A had the height of even a small quad it would mean a leg wrap at least. I love Yuzu's toe jumps but his 2T rippon has to have a leg wrap because his toe jumps are so big in general. Without the rippon he'd lose a bullet point there. 

 

And now I double posted.  I'm on fire.