General Skating Chat

[shanshani]

11 hours ago, ralucutzagy said:

 

wow this is a big departure from typical ISU practices. Usually the ISU goes out of its way to include judges from the countries of the top competitors, on the theory that national bias will cancel each other out. I guess they've decided to go the opposite way for this competition (which they should!). Guess they don't consider Boyang a top competitor though. Poor Boyang.

[kaeryth]

 

Quote

The International Skating Union (ISU) has chosen Infront as a media rights partner for the next four seasons.

 

The agreement includes media rights across all territories worldwide with the exception of Canada, China, Japan, Korea and USA to ISU's flagship events – the annual World and European Championships in Speed Skating, Short Track Speed Skating, Figure Skating and Synchronized Skating. It also covers all World Cup and Grand Prix competitions in these disciplines.

 

In total, Infront will ensure global exposure for more than 120 events during all four seasons, including through both traditional broadcast and digital channels. In order to promote the events further and support the growth of all disciplines, Infront's media rights sales approach will include multiple carve-outs providing the ISU with numerous opportunities to exploit selected media rights through their own platforms.

 

[Murieleirum]

2 hours ago, kaeryth said:

 

 

 

I don't really speak business so I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing 

[shanshani]

Theoretical calculations for clean Yuzu versus clean Nathan match up at Worlds, featuring Yuzu with the Helsinki layout and Nathan first with the US Nats layout and then with an upgraded layout including 4S

 

Yuzu wins over both Nationals and upgraded Nathan under the assumption that Yuzu maintains a 5 point PCS edge and a 0.5 point GOE edge per element (though it's pretty close versus upgraded Nathan). I think I lowballed both of them on GOE and PCS for a clean skate based on how judges have been judging this season (but in Nathan's case, I seriously hope I didn't lowball him relative to judges, because those are some pretty generous scores imo), but it's the PCS and GOE margins that matter, not the actual scores. So I think barring seriously wonky judging, Nathan still needs Yuzu to make at least a small mistake to win (contra Johnny Weir), assuming he's completely clean (less likely if he adds 4S). But it's mostly going to come down to who is cleaner--Yuzu might have room for one mistake if Nathan sticks with his Nats layout.

 

 

[Bilge]

I hope this is the place to write this but omg he literally turned into a tornado there!!

 

 

 

 

[Xen]

I was kind of curious if anyone has ever bothered to plot out the men's and ladies' PCS scores to see the normal distribution and where skaters sit on a bell curve. 

Part of the reason is to figure out what is the avg, mean and actual scores given to skaters, relative to each other, as PCS does seem to factor in skater's relative performance vis-a-vis each other. 

 

So I've gathered the data for the ladies at 4CC, taking out Brooklee Han as she WD in the long. So of the 21 skaters, my current results are:

Component	Mean	Median	St Dev
SS	7.10	6.95	0.88
TR	6.79	6.59	0.97
PE	7.04	6.93	0.99
CO	7.08	6.89	0.93
IN	7.11	7.02	0.99

 

Sheet is here: (link)

I actually don't use excel that often anymore (there's a project software that does all these calculations for me at work), and I'm definitely not a statistician. But I thought having a good normal distribution chart, with a decent indication of where people sit on a bell curve, might give clues as to how big a factor nationality is, and evaluate (vs actual PCS guidelines) where skaters are considered ranked next to each other.  Then maybe we can start actual discussions of whether or not skaters are sitting where they should be sitting on the actual bell curve. 

[yuzuangel]

On 1/29/2019 at 10:48 AM, Murieleirum said:

 

I don't really speak business so I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing 

 

Same 

[SparkleSalad]

 

[yuzuangel]

5 hours ago, SparkleSalad said:

 

I............find it ironic. 

[WinForPooh]

14 hours ago, SparkleSalad said:

 

 

So both Vincent and his coach have just straight up called them 'bad calls', huh? Well that's nice, good to see they're getting the right takeaways from all this.

 

ETA: Also an excellent example of how a lot of US media just basically does PR. If the headline is an indication of what the report is supposed to be about, talking to a skater and his coaches shouldn't be the primary part. It should have comments from multiple judges, tech panel, and at least a record of attempting to get a comment from an ISU representative. Even if they won't comment, putting it out there repeatedly that ISU did not respond despite requests for comment is part of how you put pressure on them to step up their tech assistance for judges and tech panel. Here, there's a comment from one US judge in the second half of the article and that's it, the primary narrative comes from Vincent and his coach. It's sloppy journalism but then I don't think actually delving into the issue was the intention here anyway.

 

Also, hilarious how it was not a problem at all when their skaters got away with dodgy 3As and 4Los within the 90 degrees were called. 

[anski]

That’s... such a bad move. I’ve always liked Zhou (I never believed the American propaganda that he’s the best skater yadda yadda yadda, tho) but I’m gradually starting to get irritated by him and his coach. I know it’s not Zhou’s fault that everyone is treating him like he’s above or like he’s the messiah of skating bc of his quads, but suggesting that camera faults resulted in his score is...  a bit rude towards skaters who actually scored higher. Just... learn to accept “failure”.

[shanshani]

Yikes that article. I agree that there should be better cameras, but the implication that Vincent's URs were called incorrectly is *rolls eyes* I don't think Vincent would fare better under more camera angles and higher speeds.

[EisElle]

US media reinventing the wheel Equipment for panels isn't the best, this isn't new, and it's a bit disappointing that we have articles about that only thanks to Vincent of all the skaters it's as if jpn media had started a campaign for better camera angles claiming Satoko's jumps were unfairly called (sorry Satton). All skaters are judged with the same bad equipment, included Vincent's competitors at 4CC. It's likely all of them have sometimes been unlucky (or lucky) with camera angles on some jumps and have received unfair calls (or avoided fair calls. Leaving aside the selective blindness from panels atm). But for Vincent to have such monumental bad luck so often...!!! (oh wait...when it's not bad equipment, there are ballerina ankles to blame)

I think it's already the second article in a few months framing Vincent as The victim of unfair calls...but...well, I'll be happy if US media could really put some pressure to ISU and force them to improve the equipment.

 

Quote

"that’ll take a lot of hard work on my side and not blaming others for giving me bad calls.”

YES, please.

 

btw, leaving aside the reason of the article, I don't think the piece is bad. I agree with the main point -- ISU should give better tools to panels (and also work on making scoring more consistent....but one step at a time). ISU owes that to skaters, whose careers depends on the calls they receive.

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“If a panel isn’t sure, they say, ‘Well, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt,’” Rossano, who operates the figure skating website iceskatingintnl.com, said. “But if you give that skater points they don’t deserve, you punish everybody else, especially if they are going to call quads.”

That's true too. Same could be said about the argument 'lenient panel but consistent panel is fine'. No, I want a strict and consistent panel. maybe it's just one skater, but if that one skater has rotated all the jumps, he/she deserves to see that reflected in BV, even if it means the other 15 skaters have lower BV due to the strict calls. Why would that one skater count less than the other 15? It's not like the other 15 are being unfairly dinged...

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And coaches should be careful what they wish for: higher-speed equipment could, in certain cases, expose additional weaknesses in jumps, including rarely called pre-rotations.

nice from LynnR. to say that

and whoa is that PRE-ROTATION I read, on NBCsport?

Weird, I thought no one in the skating workd cared about PR, why is she even mentioning that? not so long ago, someone, somewhere else, felt compelled to claim that, on behalf of the whole skating community, so this is actually quite funny

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“If they’re going to measure the sport, they better get the equipment that they can measure it with,”

YES PLEASE I'M BEGGING

 

In the meanwhile Japan is out there experimenting with ice-scope...who knows, maybe in 20 years or so the currently available technology will be implemented in FS... after all ISU is still stubbornly insisting on CDs...in the era of cloud sharing... 20 years feel like a reasonable time

tho ISU is in good company in behing way behind the times...it took an awful lot for football to even start experimenting with VAR...and at least there is one practical reason for ISU's delay: fundings (or rather, their lack of) why no billionaire is interested in making donations in figure skating? It's a such a beautiful sport...so diverse...full of riveting narratives, athletic feats, unexpected twists and there is DRAMA

[Xen]

3 hours ago, LadyLou said:

That's true too. Same could be said about the argument 'lenient panel but consistent panel is fine'. No, I want a strict and consistent panel. maybe it's just one skater, but if that one skater has rotated all the jumps, he/she deserves to see that reflected in BV, even if it means the other 15 skaters have lower BV due to the strict calls. Why would that one skater count less than the other 15? It's not like the other 15 are being unfairly dinged...

nice from LynnR. to say that

and whoa is that PRE-ROTATION I read, on NBCsport?

Weird, I thought no one in the skating workd cared about PR, why is she even mentioning that? not so long ago, someone, somewhere else, felt compelled to claim that, on behalf of the whole skating community, so this is actually quite funny

YES PLEASE I'M BEGGING

 

In the meanwhile Japan is out there experimenting with ice-scope...who knows, maybe in 20 years or so the currently available technology will be implemented in FS... after all ISU is still stubbornly insisting on CDs...in the era of cloud sharing... 20 years feel like a reasonable time

tho ISU is in good company in behing way behind the times...it took an awful lot for football to even start experimenting with VAR...and at least there is one practical reason for ISU's delay: fundings (or rather, their lack of) why no billionaire is interested in making donations in figure skating? It's a such a beautiful sport...so diverse...full of riveting narratives, athletic feats, unexpected twists and there is DRAMA

*sigh*

The issue of tech panel is pretty simple. If we were to judge 100 meter dash, a referee needs to ensure all athletes are really running 100 meters and start at the same point. Not someone gets to jump start 0.5 seconds early, someone can get away with running 90 meters and another needs to go 110 meters to count.  If that were allowed, we'd consider the sport a complete farce.

 

And that is essentially the role of the TP- ensure everyone is starting more or less at the same baseline (BV in this case). We already have PCS issues, GOE biases, country biases etc, that already are doing the equivalent of giving athletes a slight 0.5 seconds head-start. The least we could do is ask the TPs to ensure people are doing a full 100 meters. (Not to mention there is already PR allowances so technically not everyone is starting at 100 meters).

 

As for PR- I know this sounds like conspiracy, but part of me wonders if it isn't targetted towards potential Beijing contenders early on. In this case, I'm looking at Shoma's 4F in particular, potentially Gogolev's 4Lz, and potential Russian men coming up. In short, any of the potential contenders with a decent reputation for Pre-rotation, since US is quite secure in Nate's jumping ability.  This also allows some opening of the floodgate to PR against JPN and Russian ladies, especially Russian ladies who have a PR reputation to a degree.

USFed does want a medal, which it hasn't had for a long while internationally.

[shanshani]

17 minutes ago, Xen said:

*sigh*

The issue of tech panel is pretty simple. If we were to judge 100 meter dash, a referee needs to ensure all athletes are really running 100 meters and start at the same point. Not someone gets to jump start 0.5 seconds early, someone can get away with running 90 meters and another needs to go 110 meters to count.  If that were allowed, we'd consider the sport a complete farce.

 

And that is essentially the role of the TP- ensure everyone is starting more or less at the same baseline (BV in this case). We already have PCS issues, GOE biases, country biases etc, that already are doing the equivalent of giving athletes a slight 0.5 seconds head-start. The least we could do is ask the TPs to ensure people are doing a full 100 meters. (Not to mention there is already PR allowances so technically not everyone is starting at 100 meters).

 

As for PR- I know this sounds like conspiracy, but part of me wonders if it isn't targetted towards potential Beijing contenders early on. In this case, I'm looking at Shoma's 4F in particular, potentially Gogolev's 4Lz, and potential Russian men coming up. In short, any of the potential contenders with a decent reputation for Pre-rotation, since US is quite secure in Nate's jumping ability.  This also allows some opening of the floodgate to PR against JPN and Russian ladies, especially Russian ladies who have a PR reputation to a degree.

USFed does want a medal, which it hasn't had for a long while internationally.

Interesting. Well if it takes USFed politicking to get some decent tech equipment and fair tech calls, I'm all for it. But in ladies, Alysa Liu is known for having a PR problem, isn't she? I guess she's very young so she could fix it.