General Skating Chat

[hoodie axel]

31 minutes ago, WinForPooh said:

 

I think the jump GOE would reward big jumps with speed and flow in that system, and it would go towards higher PE and IN and maybe CO as well if a jump is big, without reduction in speed, and with good flow out - if the TR into jumps is meh and affect those components, that should be reflected in the score too - so that should balance out some. 

Fair.

[Xen]

I think the issue is this, we have different definitions of what is a masterful jump.

 

Let's say you have 2 types of jumps:

1) A 3A  that has above avg height and distance (let's say 3m distance but only around 60 cm height), but the skater has intricate steps weaving in and out of the jump, all of which match the chorepgrahy. The flow is nice and the air position is tight and looks effortless.

2) A 3A that has great height and distance (let's say 3.3m distance and 70 cm height), air position is good, flow on landing is nice and looks effortless. But no steps (simple or even intricate) coming in and out of the  jump to match the music, and no varied air position.

 

Question is, which is the more masterful jump? Both stand out above the crowd, one for how fancy it is, and another due to how pure and large it is.

 

Having steps, especially intricate ones meant to highlight the music and choreography would reduce speed and require the skater to have pretty good SS to ensure they hit the correct take off position and timing to jump up properly. So you could argue that the skater has to have pretty solid grasp of jump technique to begin with before even considering doing intricate steps (say, rolling 3 turns) before a jump. But this also could affect the overall height and distance achieved, since speed going into the jump itself can affect the results. However it is also possible the skater could not jump that much bigger and needed all this augmentation. So this is a trade off.

 

On the other hand, the second type of jump demonstrates very traditional, "pure" jump technique. But the trade off for the skater to keep that, might be the skater cannot add any augmentation.

 

If I use the bullets I listed before, both jumps can merit a +3 GOE, assuming no negative deductions. And I think that's fair, as both demonstrate a good grasp of jump technique, and they are doing trade offs to do the best they can. However, neither should reach +5 because to a degree, the idea of a +5 "true mastery" of jumping, would be a combination of both type 1 and type 2 jump. That is, you want something that is the best of both worlds.

 

IMO, if properly applied, we really would be seeing very few +5 and +4 jumps (and no, not even all of Zuzu's jumps would get +5 or +4s). There would not be that many +3's either. Most jumps would be huddled around 0-2 GOE if no negatives are applied to begin with. Because quite frankly, most jumps are average to begin with.

 

Edit: forgot to add something. As to why I think some bullets must be met before we get a +5 GOE, hmm, personally I guess I take it more like handing out letter grades in a class. Ie 0-2 are the C's and some of the lower B's, +3 is a bit like a B+ and 4 and 5 are the A's range. So yes, the issue is does your demonstration of your skill warrant a C, B or A?  And IMO, at least where jumps are concerned, I think most jumps make passing grade, but very few truly stand out to me at least. And okay, so I'm a harsh grader XD

 

As for all those trade offs- I think the idea is to give skaters the options to do trade-offs and mark them correctly for their choices. So a skater who's not a big jumper, could still use other methods to make their jumps stand out and demonstrate that they have jump technique mastered to a degree. And a big jumper can opt for a no-frills approach. All trade-offs and choices, all ones that should be marked properly. But hey, if you're some space kitty who can opt to not make any trade offs and you land everything, well I don't see why you don't deserve that +5 then.

 

[Xen]

I also want to re-iterate this one thing I still cannot get over.

 

The notion that someone PCs and TES need to balance. This idea seems to be one people cite alot for why PCS have inflated so much over the years.

 

And I've never understood why they must balance. Skaters for the most part are not perfectly balanced between TES and PCS, so why must it balance?

[hoodie axel]

Well, tbh, if we really want to go for "no trade-offs" definition for a masterful jump, then, well, I think there are zero jumps that have ever deserved perfect GOE. I can respect the approach, but I can find something to nitpick usually. I don't think that's where we should end up.

 

1 hour ago, Xen said:

And I've never understood why they must balance.

Well let's make it absurd to give that argument a chance. Suppose currently you were taking an average of the five components and giving people just PCS out of 10, when they were getting 100+ TES.  

(Unless you're saying why an argument someone somewhere else made to justify inflation, then lol agreed it was a stupid argument. But TES and PCS do need to be in somewhat of a balance) (ETA: I might just not get what you're saying here, anyway. Maybe you don't mean "why PCS refactoring should be done as TES achieved increases" which is how I took it)

[WinForPooh]

On 4/16/2019 at 11:46 AM, Xen said:

I also want to re-iterate this one thing I still cannot get over.

 

The notion that someone PCs and TES need to balance. This idea seems to be one people cite alot for why PCS have inflated so much over the years.

 

And I've never understood why they must balance. Skaters for the most part are not perfectly balanced between TES and PCS, so why must it balance?

 

Actually, very unpopular opinion, I think jumps in general are overvalued and stsq and spins are undervalued. Right now, if you have kinda-quads and you're below average on everything else, you will still beat everybody except the most extraordinarily skilled skaters, like Jason. The only way to keep younger skaters from prioritising learning to jump over everything else is if everything else comes with at least some kind of comparable reward. If a good StSq with speed, coverage, deep edges and so on could get as much as a 4Lz could, more people would be inclined to work on those skills. But you need to work as hard to get that, maybe even harder and longer with more drilling, as you do to get a quad and a quad gives you points, so... No-brainer. 

[Xen]

50 minutes ago, WinForPooh said:

 

Actually, very unpopular opinion, I think jumps in general are overvalued and stsq and spins are undervalued. Right now, if you have kinda-quads and you're below average on everything else, you will still beat everybody except the most extraordinarily skilled skaters, like Jason. The only way to keep younger skaters from prioritising learning to jump over everything else is if everything else comes with at least some kind of comparable reward. If a good StSq with speed, coverage, deep edges and so on could get as much as a 4Lz could, more people would be inclined to work on those skills. But you need to work as hard to get that, maybe even harder and longer with more drilling, as you do to get a quad and a quad gives you points, so... No-brainer. 

No, no that I get.

 

I guess the way I'd say is this- I don't get why we *must* make PCs balance with the TES for all skaters. Other than give a higher coefficienct for PCs, another way is to say, multiple the TES score by 0.8.  But back to what @hoodie axel mentioned about inflating PCs, I think people saying it's okay for the PCs to rise with TES for some skaters, is ludicrous, because not all skaters are that balanced. And it's perfectly okay. I'm just wondering why people think it's okay to give some quadsters around 85+ PCs when it's not warranted.

 

In regards to PCs scoring, there are some fans who insist on an absolute scale- ie 7 is above average, and there's no pt in raising it up just because someone is a senior vs a junior. Well the issue I see in some of the PCs scoring is while there is a bell-curve system going on, it's not like judges are truly scared to give below 8 PCs scores for senior skaters. If you look at the protocols, especially for some small fed skaters, 6's and 7's are quite common. Above 8.25 is not that common. And that raises the question how exactly are judges really judging PCs? If 7.75 is the avg for a senior skater, then any senior skater who does not stand out for their SS/TR/ etc should not be getting above that (certainly not above 8.25). In which case, it makes some scores of some quadsters extremely suspect. But now it's a bit of a mixed bag, where there's both a bell-curve system going on and an absolute system possibly mixed in. Smaller fed skaters do seem to be getting judged to an absolute standard, but there's also a weird bell curve system being used in some ways to justify others' scores (*ahem* big feds in particular).

[WinForPooh]

1 hour ago, Xen said:

No, no that I get.

 

I guess the way I'd say is this- I don't get why we *must* make PCs balance with the TES for all skaters. Other than give a higher coefficienct for PCs, another way is to say, multiple the TES score by 0.8.  But back to what @hoodie axel mentioned about inflating PCs, I think people saying it's okay for the PCs to rise with TES for some skaters, is ludicrous, because not all skaters are that balanced. And it's perfectly okay. I'm just wondering why people think it's okay to give some quadsters around 85+ PCs when it's not warranted.

 

In regards to PCs scoring, there are some fans who insist on an absolute scale- ie 7 is above average, and there's no pt in raising it up just because someone is a senior vs a junior. Well the issue I see in some of the PCs scoring is while there is a bell-curve system going on, it's not like judges are truly scared to give below 8 PCs scores for senior skaters. If you look at the protocols, especially for some small fed skaters, 6's and 7's are quite common. Above 8.25 is not that common. And that raises the question how exactly are judges really judging PCs? If 7.75 is the avg for a senior skater, then any senior skater who does not stand out for their SS/TR/ etc should not be getting above that (certainly not above 8.25). In which case, it makes some scores of some quadsters extremely suspect. But now it's a bit of a mixed bag, where there's both a bell-curve system going on and an absolute system possibly mixed in. Smaller fed skaters do seem to be getting judged to an absolute standard, but there's also a weird bell curve system being used in some ways to justify others' scores (*ahem* big feds in particular).

 

Oh yes, absolutely! My tangent was basically going off like this: Well some of PCS is actually tech score, would it be possible to get those high TES if your SS, for instance, is not high enough to get at least 8s, and remember what Yuzu said about artistry coming from perfecting your technique. But then jumps are so highly valued and everything else is not, so you don't actually need to work extra hard on the tech skills that get evaluated in PCS, so high tech now just means proficient (to a point) jumping. And maybe if everything else was valued, then TES would reflect technical ability beyond jumps and then balancing TES and PCS would probably happen naturally.

 

But also, yes to everything you said about smaller fed skaters and the standards they're held to. I also do not buy the whole judges can't evaluate everything because camera and slowmo and so on and so forth quite as much because they seem to be capable of doing a far, far more efficient job with smaller fed skaters.

 

I think when I have some free time I'll take a look at scoring for smaller fed skaters across different competitions with different judges to see if the whole 'you can't compare different competitions because panels are different' thing actually holds up without big fed politics, too. 

[hoodie axel]

To be fair, I think everyone's PCS is 10+ points inflated nowadays. Judges should start using the 2s and 3s at their disposal more.

 

8 minutes ago, WinForPooh said:

Yuzu said about artistry coming from perfecting your technique.

I don't agree with this anyway.

[WinForPooh]

17 minutes ago, hoodie axel said:

To be fair, I think everyone's PCS is 10+ points inflated nowadays. Judges should start using the 2s and 3s at their disposal more.

 

I don't agree with this anyway.

 

Tat (and I think BOrser) said it, too - that what we see as artistry is often a matter of getting superior extension and developing blade skills well enough that you can allow your musicality to show, or something of the sort. But getting the extension and getting the skating skills means perfecting your technique. I can see where that's coming from. What Jeff and SLB have said about choreographing for Yuzu reminds me of that, too. That they don't have to water their artistic vision down in any way because Yuzu has the technical skill to make it work, or something along those lines.

 

ETA: But I do agree with the using 2s and 3s even among seniors. A 2 in senior does not mean the same thing as a 2 in juniors, like a 50% in algebra isn't the same as a 50% in calculus even if it's all math. Just because you get 7s at a lower level doesn't mean you keep those 7s when you move up a level, standards are supposed to be different and higher there.

 

ETAA: I think this is what Xen was talking about, not factoring. I wouldn't mind if total max PCS was put at total absolutely maxed out TES with the most insane highest point-getting layout (instead of an arbitrary 100), even, if scoring actually reflected the reality of what we see? 

[hoodie axel]

43 minutes ago, WinForPooh said:

Tat (and I think BOrser) said it, too - that what we see as artistry is often a matter of getting superior extension and developing blade skills well enough that you can allow your musicality to show, or something of the sort. But getting the extension and getting the skating skills means perfecting your technique. I can see where that's coming from. What Jeff and SLB have said about choreographing for Yuzu reminds me of that, too. That they don't have to water their artistic vision down in any way because Yuzu has the technical skill to make it work, or something along those lines. 

Well, with this I think of skaters like Sasha Cohen. Not the best skating skills, still the most artistic skater of her era, and holds up very well no matter whom we compare her to. Technique can help artistry (it's not like you can put a non-dancer against a dancer and expect them to be equally artistic when it comes to dance), but it's not the only part of it, and there's a lot more to it. Not to mention, technically simpler pieces can be more artistic than the ones that are more difficult, in terms of expressing music and having good performance ability; plus as you grow older you lose some of your technical ability (when it comes to how flexible you are, for instance), but your own artistic vision grows (Kwan comes to mind here). Better technique CAN give you a greater range of motion and more confidence to your skating, allowing you to care more about peformance and expressing yourself better while doing the technical aspects, though (but here again skaters like Cohen, Kwan, and Lu Chen come to mind who never had a HUGE range of motion, or the best technique, or were at their best in their later years, or combinations of the three.)(sorry for lack of examples from men, I usually find ladies to be more artistic, the current era being an anomaly).

 

It's too complicated to properly discuss it here, and there's a lot to it. But, yeah, I don't agree that artistry comes from technique, at least not solely; it's not that simple, IMO. "Understanding of the music" isn't a technical aspect.

[sallycinnamon]

 

[anski]

For my own convenience I want Euros 22 in Sheffield and Worlds 22 in Budapest or Montpellier 

[sallycinnamon]

11 minutes ago, anski said:

For my own convenience I want Euros 22 in Sheffield and Worlds 22 in Budapest or Montpellier 

 

Helsinki/Espoo or Tallinn would be close for Russian fans, the UK hasn't organized Europeans since 2012...or Bulgaria since 1996. Ostrava had Europeans two years ago so I find it a bit unlikely that they'd organize it again. 

 

Worlds '22 will be interesting. I would be surprised if Italy organizes it after 2010 and 2018. France also organised Worlds seven years ago. Bratislava has the Nepela Arena, which is big and very comfortable, I think they could organize the event. The city is also easy to access. Minsk could be another option maybe. Budapest doesn't have a big arena yet - they're building a new ice rink complex but it will only be ready in 2022, most likely later in the year. My vote would go to Slovakia.

[anski]

7 minutes ago, sallycinnamon said:

 

Helsinki/Espoo or Tallinn would be close for Russian fans, the UK hasn't organized Europeans since 2012...or Bulgaria since 1996. Ostrava had Europeans two years ago so I find it a bit unlikely that they'd organize it again. 

 

Worlds '22 will be interesting. I would be surprised if Italy organizes it after 2010 and 2018. France also organised Worlds seven years ago. Bratislava has the Nepela Arena, which is big and very comfortable, I think they could organize the event. The city is also easy to access. Minsk could be another option maybe. Budapest doesn't have a big arena yet - they're building a new ice rink complex but it will only be ready in 2022, most likely later in the year. My vote would go to Slovakia.

Yea, I don’t think the UK has the infrastructure to hold anything rn haha skating is kinda dead here unfortunately. But one can dream! 

 

I think Minsk could be an option because of how smoothly everything went in Euros regarding organisation, but that’s not so convenient for me so I would prefer it were somewhere else haha 

[sallycinnamon]

4 minutes ago, anski said:

Yea, I don’t think the UK has the infrastructure to hold anything rn haha skating is kinda dead here unfortunately. But one can dream! 

 

I think Minsk could be an option because of how smoothly everything went in Euros regarding organisation, but that’s not so convenient for me so I would prefer it were somewhere else haha 

 

Well the last Europeans in the UK was also in Sheffield. It could be an option imo.

Minsk could organize Europeans smoothly but that can be said about Budapest ('14) and Bratislava ('16) too. The city would be better for Russian fans but for others Central Europe would be a better option maybe. I think flight tickets are more expensive to Belarus for example, or Belarus requires visa for most countries while Slovakia or Hungary not. But overall ticket prices would be cheaper in Belarus than in EU countries.