General Skating Chat

[cinemacoconut]

21 hours ago, kaeryth said:

Um.... Melbourne is bidding for 4CC 2021????? /Yuzu please stay til 2021 and get 4CC gold.. thanks!/

[source]

 

 

You have NO idea how badly I want this!!!!!!!!!!

 

I actually Have a Common Wealth citizenship which allows me to travel freely to all British Common Wealth Countries! Ive been to australia twice and I love it!!!!♥♥♥♥ Hope Yuzu gets a chance to visit ♥

[cinemacoconut]

15 hours ago, SparkleSalad said:

 

Get ready for the worst website you've ever tried to navigate! 

 

O'Brien Group Arena

 

6,500 seats is enough, right? >_>

 

 It's so tiny! It looks like 600 seats, max! 

 

ETA When Torvill and Dean came they skated at Rod Laver but across the road in Olympic Park is where they had (or still have?) Disney on Ice. There's a bunch of options, really. 

 

 

Damn it. I wanted australia but now not so much. Maybe the 15000 will be sold out if Yuzu decides to go to 4CC

[SparkleSalad]

4 minutes ago, cinemacoconut said:

 

 

Damn it. I wanted australia but now not so much. Maybe the 15000 will be sold out if Yuzu decides to go to 4CC

 

You still want Australia and you're going to help me in realising my dream. We will throw koalas and kiwis at Mr Hanyu AND THERE'S NOTHING ANYBODY CAN DO TO STOP US!

 

Apart from Taiwain and the ISU. 

 

This is my anthem until then. 

Spoiler

 

 

[cinemacoconut]

4 minutes ago, SparkleSalad said:

 

You still want Australia and you're going to help me in realising my dream. We will throw koalas and kiwis at Mr Hanyu AND THERE'S NOTHING ANYBODY CAN DO TO STOP US!

 

Apart from Taiwain and the ISU. 

 

This is my anthem until then. 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

 

I lived in an Oceania country (NZ) and Australia has good food and great scenery which I want yuzu to see. 

 

Also I want to throw winnie the pooh and maybe some koala bears yes after his performance 😍😍 Im a student but I will work part time to go if I have to. 

[kelly]

https://mobile.twitter.com/olyphil/status/989261615617978369

 

Ok why won't it embed

Eta: ok here we go

 

[Xen]

17 minutes ago, kelly said:

https://mobile.twitter.com/olyphil/status/989261615617978369

 

Ok why won't it embed

*shakes head* oh, I see how the targetting works. But unless I'm wrong, someone here has done the math already (might have been the mock panel one) where even without the second half bonus, the order might not have changed much.

[ralucutzagy]

 

[kaeryth]

14 minutes ago, ralucutzagy said:

 

 

So you only need to hit 3 bullets to get +4/+5???

[kelly]

4 minutes ago, kaeryth said:

 

So you only need to hit 3 bullets to get +4/+5???

I think that those 3 bullets *must* be checked in addition to others to get +4/+5

[yuzuangel]

45 minutes ago, ralucutzagy said:

 

Um, considering the travesty in GOE scoring for some skaters, I'm envisioning a worst-case scenario where a skater could have transitions in and out of a program, right on the music beat, etc, but told they don't have enough "height" or "effortlessness" and end up getting like +1 out of 5? it's not like "good height" is an objective bullet. Well, with this criteria, Satoko would technically not get any more than 3/5 on any jumping pass no matter how many tanos and transitions she adds. But then, certain skaters like Zhenya would not have her tanos "count" because her jumps are not effortless. (Of course, whether they are and whether they are judged to be are two separate things...)

 

Would they release whether or not a skater "passes" the first threshold or not? I'm imagining cases where a skater hits every bullet except for one of the first 3 and then gets like a +1 on a tano'd jump with perfect takeoff and landing and spread eagles in and out, and we'll have to play guessing games as to what exactly the judges were thinking when they scored it...

[Katt]

I don't like backloading program but i also don't like the idea of no more than 4 of 7 jump passes in 2d half. Ain't they make 2nd half bonus to prevent front loading program ? You don't have to limit the number of bonus jumps if you judge pcs accordingly. Why stop skater who do difficult thing when they can ? The backloading is mostly ladies'thing. but its just a very small group and only Alina did the whole backload FS in senior. None of the men do backloading FS, quad or no quad. Pairs doesn't have 2nd half bonus anymore. 

 

As for the possible goe criteria, its no different from -3/+3. But I can see judges would be strict with +4/+5 in the first 2 season and go wild when its come to Beijing 2022

[Sombreuil]

I know it's been said before but it isn't the criteria that need fixing, it's the way in which judges are selected and paid and therefore influenced by skating federations; also the fact that ISU doesnt police their decisions.  You can clean up a car, give it a new paint job, reupholster the seats, but if the gearbox is shot it still won't work.  All this is just window dressing.

[swanbeau]

Apologies for the extremely, extremely late followed up post. especially to @kaeryth I was procrastinating and then my vertigo kicked in so I’ve been resting and avoiding laptop screen.

 

Now this might seem like a big wall of text agreeing and applauding the isu, but I promise im not. I’m also not isu spokesperson and I actually criticized the new rules a lot, especially a month ago when I first heard of that interview. For the same reason a lot of people have said, ex: contradictory, encouraging skaters to do other quads so high risk of injuries, etc, the usual complain about judges and tp, etc. It’s just that I’m in that space where I’ve come to terms with it and that there’s nothing I can do except trying to understand what exactly is their intention, and what could positively come out of this if all goes well. So I gave it another thinking.

 

What could ISU deemed as a big enough problem?

 

Look at this graph of the men’s score from the last four years. I’m sure a lot of people already seen it. (if anyone knows the source pls tell me)

Spoiler

 

 

 

while it also depends whether someone did well or not in their performance that day, the overall gap between the top 5/6 and the rest of the field is widening every year. The increase in score for 10, 11, 12, is very small while the top 5/6 is scarily high. Especially when a lot of them did well. In 2017, all the top 12 did pretty well in general. But you can see the gap in scores between them more clearly than before.

 

The top 6 did more than 2 quads. So the messages it seems to send is that you cant even fight for podium if you don’t have any quads even if you land the jumps very well. It is a faulty line of thinking and there can be made an argument about the judges giving scores where they don’t deserve [insert other critics about the judging system] but let’s forget about it for now.

 

This line of thinking, however, is not unpopular. The CBC specifically gave it a segment to point that out before they air the last group of Men FS in Worlds 2017.

Spoiler

 

 

And when a lot of the skaters bombed except the champion (Men Worlds 2018), the graph get even more… exponential? Another argument could be made that had judges give the skaters according to what they actually present, the goe and pcs, and hanyu does really well every time even when other skaters also did well, it would produce similar graph (ex. NHK 2015, GPF 2015). But a non hanyu fan might disagree.

 

What does ISU wants?

 

Level the playing field/scores. That’s literally it. A lot of the quadster’s fans might get upset though. although by quadsters i mean skaters who have more than 2 quads. This is also what I take from the ‘no one will be in dominance’ thing that @ chibura at twitter’s friend said. In my opinion, it’s also why some other things in the new rule might affect the russian girls more (second half bonus and varied air position meaning).

 

They upped the scores for other skaters to get close to hanyu back then, now they might want to do it to the whole field of men. It sounds bad. But it’s actually not really? A lot of people complain that they want to see other skaters who might not do many quads but didn’t fall have a chance to win, to award other things beside quads like spins, or other qualities, etc.

 

Also that kind of exponential graph in scores gap between top skaters and the rest of the field might not be good for the field itself. Although this could be made into a whole other argument.

 

What I grasp about the new rule changes

 

1.       Rewarding quality -->  +- 5 GOE

-Falls get punished very harshly. (-5 for quads)

-GOE +4 and +5 can only be awarded to jumps that fulfilled all 3 specific criteria, but also requires other usual bullets.

And other things that I’m sure will be discussed and argued back and forth.

 

2. The complaints about quads getting awarded more --> BV of quads decreased

The reason the quads get a lot of BV after Lysacek won in 2010 Olympic is because they want to encourage skaters to jump more quads and reward skaters who do quads better. After all, quads are harder than triples. But the really big increase of BV from their triple counterpart make it that even when they fall they get more points than landing the triples. Like the bv of 4Lz fall and 3Lz GOE +3. see here for jump BV table.

 

In my opinion, most of the complains on quads and quality etc will get solved with these two changes alone. But is it enough? We don’t know. We can only see what falls short on what after it’s been applied.

 

But then,

 

3. For some unfathomable reason, that I suspect had to do with commercial things or something, The Power That Be decided that now we need to cut the free skate to 30 seconds less. Which means the jumps need to be less. So now men fs has only 7 jumping pass.

 

4. With that decision (3) though, it will run into another problem. Which is where this ‘variety bs’ people don’t like to hear about come.

 

So, once upon a time, more specifically before 1982 according to Wikipedia, skaters could attempt many jumps of any type as many as they wished. To encourage skaters to display a more diverse arsenal of jumps, the ISU passed a rule informally known as the "Zayak Rule". Click spoilers for more info about it, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Spoiler

The "Zayak Rule" is named after American and World Champion Elaine Zayak. Prior to 1982, skaters could attempt as many jumps of any type (i.e. takeoff edge) as they wished (e.g. a skater could include 7 triple toe loops in their program with no penalty). To encourage skaters to display a more diverse arsenal of jumps, the ISU passed a rule informally known as the "Zayak Rule" that states that only two types of triple or quadruple jumps may be attempted twice in a program, and if a type is repeated, one of the attempts must be in combination or in a sequence. Triple and quadruple jumps with the same takeoff edge are not considered as the same type of jump. Skaters that violated this rule were penalized with a 0.1 deduction for each infraction under the 6.0 system. The current implementation of the Zayak Rule under the ISU Judging System causes any jumping pass that includes a triple/quadruple jump that has already been repeated twice to receive no value, even if it is in combination or sequence with an otherwise valid jump. In the case of a skater repeating a jump, but fails to do either in combination, the later jump is scored as a jump sequence, and incurs the same devaluation to 80% of its original value.

 

In addition to the Zayak Rule, the ISU Judging System placed additional restrictions on jumps, limiting the number of jumps to a number of jumping "passes" (8 for men, 7 for ladies), meaning that a skater could not attempt unlimited double jumps or make another attempt at a botched jump later in the program without substituting another jumping pass for it. If a skater exceeds the maximum jumping passes, they receive no points for any jumps past the limit and earn a deduction for each extra element.

 

The implementation of the IJS also required that an Axel type jump be included in one of the jumping passes in the free skate, and as of 2010, the number of double Axels in the free skate is restricted to a maximum of 2.

 

So the ideal skaters that ISU had in mind from long ago, is a skater that could master a variety of jumps, if not all. They place value in that. Aside from other forms of quality.

 

That’s also why men fs had 8 jumping pass while women had 7 imo. Since men had a lot more jumps option and possibilities with the layout. But cmiiw though, maybe it’s just blatant misogyny. </3

 

A lot of people seems to have agreed with it. Yuzuru, our favorite skater, in my opinion also chase after these 'ideal'.

 

It’s the reason why he try to fix his flip edge and still jump 3F despite it taking more energy from him (he placed it quite early in his layout), and never getting any advantage from it either. He never gets a +3 for it even once despite him doing everything in his power to upped the quality (transitions, height, flow, what goe bullet didnt he hit?) and seeming to never fall on that jump after Sochi.

 

I suspect it’s because his ideal skate include the ability to master all type of jumps.

 

Now, back to the issue at hand. One less jumping pass.

 

Back when I first heard about it, it indeed crossed my mind, “what about Zayak rules then?” Because even with 8 jumping pass, with this much quads getting mastered, the jump choices are increased, and some skaters have already drop their ‘bad’ jump, so to say. Surely with even less jumping pass it’s not gonna be ‘some skaters’ anymore, it will be the norm.

 

Because skaters literally have no reason to include it. It is a disadvantage. And they’re competitive athletes. They want to win, score better. Take yuzuru, for example. A lot of other people have also pointed out that including 3F in for the new rule is going to be a huge disadvantage. I think alice/xmonster on tumblr explained it once but i cant for the life of me find the post anymore help.

 

Now quite some people are wondering if its a matter of ‘will his determination of bringing his ideal win’ or ‘will he drop it for the disadvantage it brings’.

 

Like I said before, from the past rule, ISU seems to value skaters who are more diverse and can master all type of jumps. But the possibilities of skater with that same ideal (not only yuzuru just in general) who will be ‘forced’ to drop it, or at least ‘highly encouraged from the rules to drop it', can now be high.

 

That doesn’t sound good, it’s like ISU is going back on their own words or value. "Why are we required to jump axel then?" “Why do skaters need to jump a fixed number in the free skate again?” “Why do we even has free skate?” Wondered some hypothetical people who like to stir some sh*t.

 

So, the no-quad-repetiton seems to be in answer to that.

 

And while I’m sure the choice to specify ‘quad’ there, instead of searching other ways to try to solve the issue. has some correlation to the complaints of quads and quality, in my opinion, the time cutting to 30 seconds less from The Power That Be is more of a direct cause to it.

 

It seems like a contrast of what they said about quads being bad for skaters, etc though. They will just train other type of quads and get injured. People wondered. Yes. That’s because, imo, that’s never their concern in the first place. Remember what iSU want, what they really, really want, aayyy, but also not really because it's just my opinion and i dont know ISU at all.

 

Skaters are competitive athletes. They get injured all the time. They can get injured jumping a 2T. The ones who are driven will always train for a more difficult quad as long as that quad is worth more point, even if it’s just 0.5 points.

 

That doesn’t mean we can’t provide a safe environment to help tone it down of course, but I don’t think ISU has any offer of a perfect solution at the moment. For now the responsibility is all in the hand of skaters, coaches, and their own team.

 

I think if skaters with a layout like Kazuki Tomono, skating a performance like his free skate at Worlds 2018, starts getting on podium or even winning, it will tone down by itself. Hopefully the Quad BV decrease will help a lot. And the euphoria of first skater to do this and that will hopefully die down after the mythical 4A is landed soon (by our one and only hopefully ).

 

Although I feel like the way they ‘marketed’ it, or more like ‘announced’ it, as an attempt to ‘reduce the quad revolution’ is a bit… uhm false? Can be easily misunderstood? I don’t know the right word. But well, they can’t directly say it’s to level the scores either. They also can’t say why in the hell they decided to cut the time (stupid decision tbh). And technically it kinda is controlling the quad revolution? and they can cover other things, and it’s simpler and shorter. So I guess the quad revolution takes the blame.

 

Which is why when people see that no-quad-repetition rule, the contradictory stands out. Because when people, concerned fans especially, think ‘quad is bad’ they think about skater’s health first. Which is a good thought, the skaters being safe i meant not the 'quad is bad'  unfortunately, that seems to not be the priority of ISU. They dont necessarily dislike quads per se. Hell they might even like it. It gives them views and news and attentions.

 

Although I think it might be better for them to only apply the no-quad-repetition rule later. It’s not really a chronic problem yet in the men’s field. So ‘sacrificing’ early season to see if it will become a big enough problem or not, or see if people will complain “skaters these days avoiding all their bad jumps take off!1”. so long the problem does not peak nearing Beijing Olympic and only fixing it after it finished lmao.

 

Because applying it now when majority seems to be opposed of it is not really wise. Especially if they will only revoke it later nearing the Olympics. (I’m of the opinion that the non-quad-repetition rule will affect skaters who repeat both 4Lz and 4F the most, so some big fed might want it gone before Beijing Olympic, but a lot of people digress, which is, to each their own).

 

my opinion right now is kinda neutral and leaning more towards agreeing with the intention, especially with the no-quad-repetition applied. but even if that's not applied i'm still neutral, for now. i might not like the execution or when i discover some other bs to complain about later 

 

tl;dr what if skaters get injured while practicing different type of quads because of this? answer: ISU.... dont care about that.

edit:

tl;dr 2, no-quad-repetition is a direct result of the time cut in the free skate rather than the complaint about quads.

tl;dr 3, The requirement of jumping axel, the number of jumps, and basically the whole rule on what gets repeated or not in the free skate are tangled with each other with the 'variety = Good' as the reason at the core of it, and threatening that might encourage other things of value to also be questioned, for ex: the whole point of a free skate, and the push for it to be gone and be replaced with an artistic program, but this is just my guess and opinion and should not be taken at face value. I hope I'm wrong.

another edit:

Tl;dr 4, since ISU is an organization, what rule is being pushed and passed are all in the hands of different people with different mindsets and beliefs (and politics and personal interests). It helps that there is a clear set of values that can guide the action they will take. My guess is variety and quality are part of it. However, the execution might not necessarily follow it and in which case, when it gets to the extremes, they will pass another rule, etc, etc, it goes in circle.

 

Sorry for this long post and if someone had already said this somewhere after the last time I post promising to come back with a more coherent thoughts and taking forever to write this. There might be other points that I missed or skipped because it’s too long, so sorry. I don’t know how people do this all the time, writing long analysis with their second language… i have a headache and I want a long nap now, I hope my vertigo wont come back 

[xeyra]

7 hours ago, kaeryth said:

 

So you only need to hit 3 bullets to get +4/+5???

 

As @kelly said, you need to hit the first 3 bullets BEFORE other bullets can be counted for +4/+5. So, for example, you could hit bullets 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 on a jump, but because the jump didn't look effortless (3), it can't get past +3 GOE. I don't know how they'll be counting the other bullets for +4/+5 once a skaters hits the first 3, though. I expect maybe you need all of them for +5? Maybe 2 extra bullets for +4?

 

Edit: further info says after getting the 1-3 bullets a skater needs one more out of 4-6 for +4 and two more for +5.

 

Anyways, I expect this to get as abused as it is with the current scale, more so even because of how subjective 'very good' height and distance can be. No judge is going to be measuring a jump to see if it falls under very good......

[WinForPooh]

6 hours ago, yuzuangel said:

Um, considering the travesty in GOE scoring for some skaters, I'm envisioning a worst-case scenario where a skater could have transitions in and out of a program, right on the music beat, etc, but told they don't have enough "height" or "effortlessness" and end up getting like +1 out of 5? it's not like "good height" is an objective bullet. Well, with this criteria, Satoko would technically not get any more than 3/5 on any jumping pass no matter how many tanos and transitions she adds. But then, certain skaters like Zhenya would not have her tanos "count" because her jumps are not effortless. (Of course, whether they are and whether they are judged to be are two separate things...)

 

Would they release whether or not a skater "passes" the first threshold or not? I'm imagining cases where a skater hits every bullet except for one of the first 3 and then gets like a +1 on a tano'd jump with perfect takeoff and landing and spread eagles in and out, and we'll have to play guessing games as to what exactly the judges were thinking when they scored it...

I am also here *smh* at how the most obviously subjective points were chosen as the mandatory ones. I mean, in theory, I actually agree with that - no jump should max out on points unless it's a beautiful jump. A very good jump that is technically within allowed limits should get the BV that's counted on when layout is planned, but the extra should be for going beyond, and maxing out should be for beautiful jumps. But I have a shirt that says beauty is in the eye of the beerholder, and here, effortlessness is going to be in the pocket of the powerful federation. That is very annoying.

 

I am not as annoyed about limiting the bonus for second half jumping passes. It is a great test of endurance, but it does make the programme look odd more often than not. It's a sport with rules, and one rule was introduced to discourage frontloading, which made skates oddly unbalanced. Now that rule is being amended to discourage complete backloading, because that also makes skates often oddly off-balance and avoiding that end result was the intention of that rule in the first place. Stamina is one of the key assets of the athlete, but it appears that rule weighted the advantage of stamina too heavily and the amendment seeks to adjust that a little. As long as more than half of jumping passes in the second half gets a bonus, I think it's fair enough.