General Skating Chat

[Xen]

When you are bored at lunch and happen to have excel open...

Back in an episode of Max and Angelo's podcast, they mentioned how incredible Yuzu's ACI 2017 SP scores were, since he managed to grab about 97/98% of all possible points. Taking inspiration from that, and since skaters are not necessarily balanced between technicals and artistry (try as they might) I went ahead and tried to see just who leans which way.

 

Data is from Helsinki 2017 Men's LP scores alone. And in the end, the ones with the almost balanced scores were Yuzu, Boyang. Jason, Nathan and Shoma were next, where the TES and PCS% were within 7% of each other,  and Pchan and Javi had a larger gap and lean heavily on PCs scores. Also, Yuzu managed to net about 95% of his possible perfect score, Shoma at 91%. Patrick, Javi, Boyang and Jason were in the 86-88% range, with Nate coming in at 80% netted.

 

If you look at the Perfect TES, it's pretty scary how huge the gap is between the men, especially between Javi/Pchan and the other men. Nate is...in a league of his own, to put it mildly. All the men left a lot of GOEs on the table, especially on spins-while calculating it bugged me how many spins did not get GOEs above 1! WTF boys...

 

NOTES:

Perfect TES= the full BV of the jumps and full GOEs for the element, if the skater got only Lv3, I go with Lv3, not 4

In the case of Patrick since he had a 3A+Seq+2S, this was hard to calculate. For this element, thanks to Xeyra, it's now a 3A1Lo3S!

For calculations, I referred to this: http://fisk8-score-calc.herokuapp.com/

 

Yuzuru Hanyu
Actual TES received	126.12	TES%	93.89%
Perfect TES	134.33	PCS %	97.08%
Shoma Uno
Actual TES received	120.03	TES%	88%
Perfect TES	135.64	PCS%	94.42
Boyang Jin
Actual TES	118.94	TES%	89%
Perfect TES	133.7	PCS%	86%
Nathan Chen
Actual TES	110.61	TES%	76.46%
Perfect TES	144.67	PCS%	84.78%
Patrick Chan
Actual TES	98.11	TES%	79.28%
Perfect TES	123.75	PCS%	94.92%
Javi
Actual TES	98.62	TES%	81.24%
Perfect TES	121.39	PCS%	94.52%
Jason Brown
Actual TES	88.27	TES%	83.19%
Perfect TES	106.11	PCS%	89.2%

 

I should go do Rostelcom next...

[xeyra]

11 minutes ago, Xen said:

When you are bored at lunch and happen to have excel open...

Back in an episode of Max and Angelo's podcast, they mentioned how incredible Yuzu's ACI 2017 SP scores were, since he managed to grab about 97/98% of all possible points. Taking inspiration from that, and since skaters are not necessarily balanced between technicals and artistry (try as they might) I went ahead and tried to see just who leans which way.

 

Data is from Helsinki 2017 Men's LP scores alone. And in the end, the ones with the almost balanced scores were Yuzu, Boyang. Jason, Nathan and Shoma were next, where the TES and PCS% were within 7% of each other,  and Pchan and Javi had a larger gap and lean heavily on PCs scores. Also, Yuzu managed to net about 95% of his possible perfect score, Shoma at 91%. Patrick, Javi, Boyang and Jason were in the 86-88% range, with Nate coming in at 80% netted.

 

If you look at the Perfect TES, it's pretty scary how huge the gap is between the men, especially between Javi/Pchan and the other men. Nate is...in a league of his own, to put it mildly. All the men left a lot of GOEs on the table, especially on spins-while calculating it bugged me how many spins did not get GOEs above 1! WTF boys...

 

NOTES:

Perfect TES= the full BV of the jumps and full GOEs for the element, if the skater got only Lv3, I go with Lv3, not 4

In the case of Patrick since he had a 3A+Seq+2S, this was hard to calculate. For this element I went with 3A+2T (closest BV wise), but originally I think that should have been 3A3T.

For calculations, I referred to this: http://fisk8-score-calc.herokuapp.com/

 

Yuzuru Hanyu
Actual TES received	126.12	TES%	93.89%
Perfect TES	134.33	PCS %	97.08%
Shoma Uno
Actual TES received	120.03	TES%	88%
Perfect TES	135.64	PCS%	94.42
Boyang Jin
Actual TES	118.94	TES%	89%
Perfect TES	133.7	PCS%	86%
Nathan Chen
Actual TES	110.61	TES%	76.46%
Perfect TES	144.67	PCS%	84.78%
Patrick Chan
Actual TES	98.11	TES%	81.66%
Perfect TES	120.15	PCS%	94.92%
Javi
Actual TES	98.62	TES%	81.24%
Perfect TES	121.39	PCS%	94.52%
Jason Brown
Actual TES	88.27	TES%	83.19%
Perfect TES	106.11	PCS%	89.2%

 

I should go do Rostelcom next...

 

Actually, Patrick's planned layout had a 3A-1Lo-3S there.

Also, yay the fisk app is back!! 

[Xen]

1 minute ago, xeyra said:

 

Actually, Patrick's planned layout had a 3A-1Lo-3S there.

Also, yay the fisk app is back!! 

Okay, so his netted percentile just slipped further...well I wanted to avoid that. Poor Patrick, that day was not his day.

[robin]

Thanks for the tables @Xen! He’s really maxing out. I guess it gets exponentially harder to reach perfect TES as you get closer to it. I wonder if reaching near 100% with TES is possible as it is with PCS

[Xen]

1 hour ago, robin said:

Thanks for the tables @Xen! He’s really maxing out. I guess it gets exponentially harder to reach perfect TES as you get closer to it. I wonder if reaching near 100% with TES is possible as it is with PCS

He can get very close to it. As mentioned before, a lot of the men left points on the table in GOE scores for spins, and even StSq and ChSq. And in Zu's case, he went first in the group so his jump GOEs were even lower than his average. So I played around with numbers-if I were to increase his GOEs to just 85% of possible max GOE, his actual netted TES percentile would have been closer to 97%.

 

Edit: so I went in and checked, if Yuzu manages to get an a spread of about 2+2+2+3+3+3+3 in the GOEs counted towards the GOE score, then actually he could be near 97% of total TES possible, a 4-5 split of 2's and 3's would work, he would be at 96.67%. But similar to PCS, I don't expect anyone to get perfect GOEs all the time-that I think is more possible in SP, not in LP.

 

Edit 2: Went and checked Nate and Yuzu for Rostel 2017. In Nate's case, I made his repeat 3A2T a 3A3T for the Perf Tes calculation. Yuzu and Nate both screwed up on the StSq, Nate's team needs to explain the last spin (CCoSp1V-he lost 1.6 points there). Yuzu's GOE's are scary. The more I see Nate's SS and CO and IN scores, the more I raise my eyebrows...

 

Yuzuru Hanyu
Actual TES	101.54	TES%	87.26%
Perfect TES	116.37	PCS %	94.38%
Nathan Chen
Actual TES	104.85	TES%	81%
Perfect TES	129.4	PCS%	88.4%

 

[EisElle]

It's kind of funny how Boyang got to be "balanced" when people like using him (rather than some others) to talk about guys who are all jumps jumps jumps (tho for him it's because he doesn't get the full quad bonus on PCS ).  I belive he can have a balanced growth on both PCS and TES (GOE), in time.

 

ngl, one of the reasons I miss Yuzuru is because I want to drown in quality jumps coming out of nowhere, with gorgeous and effortless landings and beautifully matched to the music give him all the GOE

little rant under spoiler, sorrynotsorry

Spoiler

 

Whenever I see these comparative tables about Yuzuru's Helsinki FS, I mourn a lot a little what (the scores) could have been

Darn 6.0  mentality, why is it so hard to give scores to what you see right now in front of your darn eyes instead of planning ahead so the following skaters have their chance? If they are good enough, they can take that chance by themselves, with their actual skating. And if their best isn't enough for them to win over those who got to skate before them, why the heck should they be given the win?

(thinking about maybe judges wanted Yuzuru's score to be within range of others' "best", to make the rest of the competition "interesting" re: podium and gold medal. The total score they gave him was high but not impossible to reach for Javier with his lead from the SP, and Shoma could have gotten there without his mistake.)

Sport doesn't work like that, competition isn't about democraticy, but about rewarding the best skills.

Imo in skating, the judges' work isn't to give everyone equal opportunity, but merely allow skaters to use their own weapons. There can't be equality in skating because skills, layouts, performances aren't equal, that's why e.g. I can't go out there and demand judges to underscore everyone else because I, who can barely skate, want my chance to win too.

But there can be and there has to be fairness in how everyone is judged. So skaters doing quads get the reward for that but don't get a pass on PCS just 'cause quads are so cool and if the quality of their quad jumps sucks they are punished on GOE too. Skaters who are great in everything but quads are rewarded in components and on the quality of their other elements. So they are all treated fairly, even if they are doing different things and following different strategies.

 

 

RE: judges only ticking bullets for GOE and let the computer sum them

It would be good and it would make scores more understandable (and likely a little bit less wild) but idk how easily it can be implemented in those overcrowded screens they use, and whether it would make the scoring slower. But one thing that imo would be doable could be for judges to imput separately their total negative and total positive GOE and make the system sum (plus a 0 if judges think the element has no positive nor negative features) instead of letting them give the final GOE themselves. Maybe this would be enough to make them pause a moment more and consider which are the features of the element that deserve detraction and which deserve a reward. 

E.g. I would like to know whether judges ever remember that there are all those -1 and -2 to be given for things like bad air position, tiny jumps, poor take off and long preparation etc etc or they only give negative GOE for more obvious mistakes like touch down, step out or ur.

I'd like to know how much they deduct from spin GOE for "traveling" or "/Poor/awkward, unaesthetic position(s)" and "Slow or reduction of speed".

And if they apply the reductions for stsq when  "Poor quality of steps, turns, positions", "Does not correspond to the music" "Less than half of the pattern doing steps/turns" and choreo sq when "Does not enhance the music".

 

Also RE: @fireovertheice's table about crossovers and turns in Seimei 1.0 vs H&L vs Seimei 2.0

I really want to see a (lot of) Seimei 2.0 skated to its whole potential, without Yuzu having to play catch up because of saved jumps and missed combos. Likely, the stats would be even more mind-blowing. Still, it's amazing how Yuzuru increased so much his tech but without throwing out of the window his own vision of the ideal skate. Tho now I worry that he might be forced to reduce the difficulty of his program. I honestly don't know which he would hate more, letting go of his harder quad(s) or reduce the complexity of his skating between his elements. Both options are against his core beliefs, and he might even need to do at least a little of both darn injuries

Imho Seimei's choreo sq is where Seimei was and is superior to H&L in complexity (and I feel more thrilled waiting for that sequence, tbh, both because of the captivating music and because it means the jumps have ended so one can half-breath in relief ), but the program themselves have a different mood and a different concept, so one ChSq screams epicness and drama while the other is soft and flows beautifully towards the last jump and spin (and of course I take the opportunity to rewatch both sequences).

Seimei's ChSq is a powerful climax and this is why imo some of his competitors' ChSq with just one big highligh and nothing more feel really, really bland (and kinda underwhelming) in comparison, while Seimei has the kind of emotional and grand ending to burn itself in the audience's memory for years and years.

[xeyra]

 

I wanted to bring this here because it's interesting to look at Vincent Zhou's layout at Junior Worlds in 2017 and then compare it to what he's doing nowadays. I honestly am not surprised he underrotates so much. He went from 3 quads total across two programs to 7 quads total across two programs basically in a few months, with TWO new quads he wasn't doing in 2017 (4F and 4T). His evolution had no steady increase; he and his team just decided to throw everything at it. Vincent, you're a smart kid, why do you need everything so quickly and so heavily? It's mind-boggling, to be honest, that he can even land the quads he does. Or has the stamina for it. The power of youth.

 

I'm wishing him the best but this strategy is just... 

 

 

 

[yuzuangel]

Just now, xeyra said:

 

I wanted to bring this here because it's interesting to look at Vincent Zhou's layout at Junior Worlds in 2017 and then compare it to what he's doing nowadays. I honestly am not surprised he underrotates so much. He went from 3 quads total across two programs to 7 quads total across two programs basically in a few months, with TWO new quads he wasn't doing in 2017 (4F and 4T). His evolution had no steady increase; he and his team just decided to throw everything at it. Vincent, you're a smart kid, why do you need everything so quickly and so heavily? It's mind-boggling, to be honest, that he can even land the quads he does. Or has the stamina for it. The power of youth.

 

I'm wishing him the best but this strategy is just... 

 

 

 

Well, his goal was to make the Olympic team, and he did it. Not sure he would have if he had kept at 3 quads? Maybe now that he did, he'll go back to something he can handle next season, if he's still around.

[xeyra]

27 minutes ago, yuzuangel said:

Well, his goal was to make the Olympic team, and he did it. Not sure he would have if he had kept at 3 quads? Maybe now that he did, he'll go back to something he can handle next season, if he's still around.

 

It's not like he's that much more competitive with 5 quads when 4 are URs. Ross Miner with 1 beat him at Nationals (though he kind of was not dinged for at least one UR in his 3A). I don't know, I think 4 quads in his FS would have been enough (the days when 4 quads seems reasonable) and he could at least work on enough stamina to rotate them all properly.

 

I wonder, though, if the problem is not lack of stamina but just the bad habit of being able to land URed quads. It's difficult to fix, once you're so used to landing underrotated jumps. This happens with the ladies so much too. 

[yuzuangel]

1 hour ago, xeyra said:

 

It's not like he's that much more competitive with 5 quads when 4 are URs. Ross Miner with 1 beat him at Nationals (though he kind of was not dinged for at least one UR in his 3A). I don't know, I think 4 quads in his FS would have been enough (the days when 4 quads seems reasonable) and he could at least work on enough stamina to rotate them all properly.

 

I wonder, though, if the problem is not lack of stamina but just the bad habit of being able to land URed quads. It's difficult to fix, once you're so used to landing underrotated jumps. This happens with the ladies so much too. 

Yeah, you're totally right. It's the whole 'it takes 10,000 tries to land a jump, and 30,000 tries to fix one' issue, i guess. when you're nervous in competition relying on muscle memory all your old habits (mule kicks, wrong edges, URs) kick in.

Then I wish he goes back to 3 and does them properly as well. And earn those PCS.

[Sombreuil]

But before he can do that V himself has to see that there are problems, which doesn't seem to be the case at the moment

[EisElle]

For someone who apparently sometimes has confidence issues, it looks like Vincent lacks some good self-criticism, tho.

idk, Vincent puzzles me. He is clever and in some interviews he sounds self-aware and humble, and he looked so dejected after IdF, but then he goes out at Nats still with that crazy layout that exacerbate all the issues he has, and a lot of his jumps are rightly called UR (and some have forward take off too) and he doesn't seem to realize he has a real issue... 

Maybe I'm just reacting too strongly to his words after Ashley complained so vocally about Nats scoring and being left out of Oly team (and after reading that ugly article complaing about russianization and mistaking PCS for "artistry" only. It's not like SS and TR are exactly Ashley's forte... )

I'd like to know if Vincent's team is really aware that he is prone to UR and working on it or just dismissing it as a one-time-mistake (which is not). Or if they think the odds of him getting a call are low enough it's not worth trying to fix that issue and lose consistency on the jumps

 

Little question out of curiosity about Nathan: has he ever jumped a quad out of steps (or with some entry worth a GOE bullet)? I think he still had no step before his solo 4T in the SP at Nats so I'm wondering if he can do them but usually needs to save energy/wants more stability/just has no time while improvising layouts, or he has just never tried that in competition (and correct me if he did have a step that I've missed)

 

[ralucutzagy]

 

[Xen]

13 hours ago, LadyLou said:

For someone who apparently sometimes has confidence issues, it looks like Vincent lacks some good self-criticism, tho.

idk, Vincent puzzles me. He is clever and in some interviews he sounds self-aware and humble, and he looked so dejected after IdF, but then he goes out at Nats still with that crazy layout that exacerbate all the issues he has, and a lot of his jumps are rightly called UR (and some have forward take off too) and he doesn't seem to realize he has a real issue... 

Maybe I'm just reacting too strongly to his words after Ashley complained so vocally about Nats scoring and being left out of Oly team (and after reading that ugly article complaing about russianization and mistaking PCS for "artistry" only. It's not like SS and TR are exactly Ashley's forte... )

I'd like to know if Vincent's team is really aware that he is prone to UR and working on it or just dismissing it as a one-time-mistake (which is not). Or if they think the odds of him getting a call are low enough it's not worth trying to fix that issue and lose consistency on the jumps

 

Little question out of curiosity about Nathan: has he ever jumped a quad out of steps (or with some entry worth a GOE bullet)? I think he still had no step before his solo 4T in the SP at Nats so I'm wondering if he can do them but usually needs to save energy/wants more stability/just has no time while improvising layouts, or he has just never tried that in competition (and correct me if he did have a step that I've missed)

 

I wasn't that shocked about his statement? After what happened with the ladies in 2014, Vincent probably has to sound confident enough to ensure he doesn't get eyed too to be replaced for the Olys spot, especially as his body of work this season isn't that great, and junior worlds might not count as much. 

It could also be in practice he doesn't have as much an issue, but nerves of competing brings out the worst.

Maybe his strategy for the sheer number of quads was to offset the potential calls he'd get? Or at the very least, showcase to the judges that he has the quads to make a statement internationally.

[fireovertheice]

2 hours ago, ralucutzagy said:

 

 

That's not new here the Planet, but thanks to this video (due the hard work of others ) we have the possibilty to spread these data. Thank you for sharing it.

We all know that PCs are a joke (and PCs at Nats are really a farce, after what we have seen in USA Champs, mostly in women and men single): still, to point to the part of them that coud be more objective and / or countable, and to observe what skaters actually do with their feet, could be useful for fans and also for the judges (I hope).