Mock judging panel

[Murieleirum]

9 minutes ago, robin said:

You are very very welcome to join

 

I have to say, after doing the test round today, what's most difficult is judgung StSqs and PCS

 

 

Yay! Thank you c: 

I think I'll be doing a test round tonight, but first, have another read at the sacred Handbooks xD I could recite the GOE bullet points at heart probably, but my knowledge of StSq's GOE is a bit more vague 

[Murieleirum]

3 minutes ago, Xen said:

Hmm....SS. Well-go with the standard that figure skating should look "easy". This easy is defined by aspects such as does the skater look balanced (ease of movement), does this skater have good speed and coverage of ice, does this skater seem to gain speed out of nowhere. Then you figure in stuff such as whether the skater used harder movements, such as rockers/counters/choctaws as part of their linking movements instead of normal 2 foot skating and gliding, and whether the skating still looks smooth and "easy" despite the difficulty levels thrown in. 

 

There is a reason why difficulty of TR movements and the quality of the TR movements can be somewhat correlated with SS, and why people joked about quality crossovers. The harder TR movements usually are 1-foot skating, with complex turns that require you to go counter-intuitive on your balance. You should be able to gain speed off of turns and deep edges alone due to knee and ankle action, but to do it consistently, maintain speed/gain speed, and hold your balance is hard.  And now you know why I tend to get pissed when JPN skaters get worse SS scores.

 

Thank you! Yes, can I take the controversial case of Shoma Uno for example? 

I have troubles judging his Skating Skills. Because he looks balanced, has great upper body movements and is smooth with his knees, right? He has great ice coverage (better than Nathan's of Jin's) and speed, so if you consider these elements, he should get excellent scores. But, he spends a lot of time doing crossovers, which aren't considered hard, so he's not "putting his Skating Skills to test", or how should I say, he is not daring in his Skating Skills. So why should he get a 9.5 from me, when I can clearly see there are other skaters (although, very few) who try and do harder things, more one-foot skating, and are as smooth, if not even smoother, than him? 

If I tried to score Shoma's SP in WC 2018, for example, I couldn't for the life of me give him more than 8.5 in Skating Skills. He even tripped there at some point, although of course he wasn't in the best of shapes. 

[Xen]

9 minutes ago, Murieleirum said:

 

Thank you! Yes, can I take the controversial case of Shoma Uno for example? 

I have troubles judging his Skating Skills. Because he looks balanced, has great upper body movements and is smooth with his knees, right? He has great ice coverage (better than Nathan's of Jin's) and speed, so if you consider these elements, he should get excellent scores. But, he spends a lot of time doing crossovers, which aren't considered hard, so he's not "putting his Skating Skills to test", or how should I say, he is not daring in his Skating Skills. So why should he get a 9.5 from me, when I can clearly see there are other skaters (although, very few) who try and do harder things, more one-foot skating, and are as smooth, if not even smoother, than him? 

If I tried to score Shoma's SP in WC 2018, for example, I couldn't for the life of me give him more than 8.5 in Skating Skills. He even tripped there at some point, although of course he wasn't in the best of shapes. 

Hmm. Well I actually do score fairly close to you. Though I'm definitely considered generous. And if anyone disagrees, I'm all ears. =)

 

9.5+: Yuzu and Patrick-both are able to gain speed out of nowhere, using deep edges to gain momentum. Patrick looks way better in fancams-you really get a much greater sense of his speed and absolute stability as he goes from element to element. His skating reminds me of water-it is just a neverending flow. Yuzu gains speed from nowhere, and is incredibly fast. But I would rather say Yuzu is like the wind-he doesn't so much flow, but "breezes by" gently from element to element. It's pretty healing watching both of them (when they are not falling of course).

 

9.0-9.25 range: Javi, Jason Brown (Jason brown could go higher actually, on a good day, he has really nice flow in his skating). They're both solid, and quite fast, but not quite at Yuzu/Patrick level when it comes to ease of movement.

 

8.75-9.0 range： Mikhail, Dimitri Aliev and Shoma (Shoma has nice edges and flow to his skating, his knees are quite good). Majority of Japanese skaters are probably in this range. Cha Junhwan is also IMO, in this range, though judges don't acknowledge it, and Dennis V is also in this range. More 2 foot skating, but quite good when they do 1-foot, pretty good edge use and decently deep edges.

 

8.25-8.5: Boyang, he's improved a lot, but some of his movements aren't fully extended enough to go beyond 8.5 yet. 

 

8.0-8.25: Nathan,  still higher than avg, but not quite there yet. His knees truly kill everything for me, and from fancams he always comes off as more slow, labored, and lacks this certain lightness/agility that Boyang and Shoma have. 

[Murieleirum]

14 minutes ago, Xen said:

Cha Junhwan is also IMO, in this range, though judges don't acknowledge it

 

Reminds me of 2013-2014 Yuzuru 

15 minutes ago, Xen said:

8.0-8.25: Nathan， still higher than avg, but not quite there yet. His knees truly kill everything for me, and from fancams he always comes off as more slow, and lacks this certain lightness/agility that Boyang and Shoma have. 

 

Yes, in both cases I've seen him live (Worlds 2017 - Worlds 2018) he hasn't improved this a bit. He is very slow as much as he was a year ago. :c 

[Nuitsuki]

@Xen thank you for explanation! 

I agree with you mostly, but also have some things to share:

- i agree with the range you’ve given, but only when skaters performed at their best. For example, I won’t give Nathan higher than 7- 7.5 for SS and TR for his FS at Milan. Most of what he did were crossovers, he didn’t show multidirectional skating so i dock off some points.

- Shoma is a hard case for me too. Smooth skating, good knee action, but sometimes i notice that his turns weren’t executed well. Especially for the turns going into jumps, he tends to performed them in flat edge, and sometimes the curves were unreadable (this could be because of my poorly trained eyes, but i saw other ppl discussed about this too). I’d give him 8.5 to 9 depending on his condition. And i won’t give him more than 9 for his past performances, for the same reason with you: 9-9.25 is for JBrown who has similar quality but superior in quantity of one-foot skating and multi directional skating.

 

What do you think? 

[Xen]

24 minutes ago, Nuitsuki said:

@Xen thank you for explanation! 

I agree with you mostly, but also have some things to share:

- i agree with the range you’ve given, but only when skaters performed at their best. For example, I won’t give Nathan higher than 7- 7.5 for SS and TR for his FS at Milan. Most of what he did were crossovers, he didn’t show multidirectional skating so i dock off some points.

- Shoma is a hard case for me too. Smooth skating, good knee action, but sometimes i notice that his turns weren’t executed well. Especially for the turns going into jumps, he tends to performed them in flat edge, and sometimes the curves were unreadable (this could be because of my poorly trained eyes, but i saw other ppl discussed about this too). I’d give him 8.5 to 9 depending on his condition. And i won’t give him more than 9 for his past performances, for the same reason with you: 9-9.25 is for JBrown who has similar quality but superior in quality of one-foot skating and multi directional skating.

 

What do you think? 

For the most part, I'd agree. I am a pretty generous judge, but perhaps a tad harsher than protocols. In general, I tend to prefer staying relatively stable on SS and even TR, since short of significant change, those 2 sets shouldn't theoretically fluctuate much. But I would probably fluctuate my IN, PE and lesser degree CO scores.

 

I almost forgot multi-directional skating. OMG, I'm horrid!  But yes, that's another thing- skaters tend to have preferences on which direction they do things. Most skaters, if they are right-handed, tend to prefer skating counter-clockwise direction,  part of this is just natural, and part of it is because most skating rinks you will primarily skate that direction, and will need to do extra work to practice the opposite. Pay attention if the skater has ease going in the counter-intuitive direction. 

Even with Yuzu, you can kind of tell which side he favors. One day, go look at his twizzles in the Chopin StSq. He's faster doing twizzles going counter clockwise, but his twizzles going clockwise are noticeably slower to me (still faster than others, but slow for him). I love Mai Mihara's twizzles btw. 

 

And I hope that Boyang brings back Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon when his SS finally hits 9.0 status. That StSq at the end would be scary-he felt a tad behind the beat and tempo now, but one day if he hits it, wow. 

 

Edit: you guys made me go watch fancams at midnight =P Okay, after watching the WC2018 fancams, I think Shoma may have gained a bit of speed this season. 

[robin]

My eyes are still untrained and during my test run today I ended up going by a general feeling. I rewatched each StSq to pay extra attention to how deep the skaters lean into their edges and how smooth their knees are and if they slide a bit sometimes and if there's any flat edges... but it requires so much focus that at the end I couldn't pay attention anymore. Maybe in the course of this experiment, with more practice, I can improve on that a bit

[Nuitsuki]

8 minutes ago, Xen said:

Pay attention if the skater has ease going in the counter-intuitive direction. 

Even with Yuzu, you can kind of tell which side he favors. One day, go look at his twizzles in the Chopin StSq. He's faster doing twizzles going counter clockwise, but his twizzles going clockwise are noticeably slower to me (still faster than others, but slow for him)

Wow I didn’t realise until you say it. It’s hard for me though, since skaters do many change of direction during the program, i might need to watch the 3rd time with reduced speed like 0.5x to notice them  but that’s what needed to gain more experience, so...

 

@robin try this video 

the video cut for each skater includes their mandatory combo turns in stsq. I watch it like 10-20 times then i start noticing the difference in knee actions, speed, precision of footwork and agility. 

[Xen]

7 minutes ago, Nuitsuki said:

Wow I didn’t realise until you say it. It’s hard for me though, since skaters do many change of direction during the program, i might need to watch the 3rd time with reduced speed like 0.5x to notice them  but that’s what needed to gain more experience, so...

 

@robin try this video 

the video cut for each skater includes their mandatory combo turns in stsq. I watch it like 10-20 times then i start noticing the difference in knee actions, speed, precision of footwork and agility. 

BTW, I find it easier to tell from fancams than TV broadcasts, especially if the TV broadcast doesn't have the full body moving and fail to capture the full entry and exit edge of transitions (this is pretty important for counters and rockers). 

[Nuitsuki]

@Xen i still struggle with those two  every time i question whether the turn is rocker or counter, i have to watch it multiple times then draw it on paper. 

(This sounds stupid but i can’t tell twizzles apart from 3turn sequence. They look so similar to me )

[Xen]

2 minutes ago, Nuitsuki said:

@Xen i still struggle with those two  every time i question whether the turn is rocker or counter, i have to watch it multiple times then draw it on paper. 

(This sounds stupid but i can’t tell twizzles apart from 3turn sequence. They look so similar to me )

Twizzles are faster, as you don't check. Think about it like a traveling spin, and usually skaters have their arms pulled in to maintain balance. Where for 3-turns, arms are usually more out, since you need to check with each turn. Twizzles also have a more linear entry. 

 

Rockers and counters: both are S shape curves, but rockers are the ones that look like they are heading into a 3 turn, only instead of a 3, they look like they did a gliding S shaped curve. =)

(that's actually how I differentiate them...)

[Nuitsuki]

3 minutes ago, Xen said:

Twizzles are faster, as you don't check. Think about it like a traveling spin, and usually skaters have their arms pulled in to maintain balance. Where for 3-turns, arms are usually more out, since you need to check with each turn. Twizzles also have a more linear entry. 

But Yuzu’s 3turn seq is so fast  Like the 3turn seq entry for 3F, and for 3A2T combo in seimei 1.0 (3A-lo-3S for seimei Olympics), they look like mini twizzles 

 

thanks for sharing tho, i think i need to watch more. It takes time to identify those moves, and it’ll even take more time to tell their quality.

[robin]

13 minutes ago, Xen said:

Twizzles are faster, as you don't check. Think about it like a traveling spin, and usually skaters have their arms pulled in to maintain balance. Where for 3-turns, arms are usually more out, since you need to check with each turn. Twizzles also have a more linear entry. 

 

Rockers and counters: both are S shape curves, but rockers are the ones that look like they are heading into a 3 turn, only instead of a 3, they look like they did a gliding S shaped curve. =)

(that's actually how I differentiate them...)

Hmm is there an example for a 3turn sequence? I might or might not have never differenciated between the two... eta: If they're just done before jumps and not during StSqs I think I know the difference tho!

 

That's still so hard for me in real time. To tell counters and rockers apart I stop the video before the turn and based on the edge I imagine the direction the skater would have to turn for it to be a rocker/3turn and then I press play and compare lol 

 

@Nuitsuki btw I have gotten dizzy from that video at this point lol

[Xen]

4 minutes ago, robin said:

Hmm is there an example for a 3turn sequence? I might or might not have never differenciated between the two... eta: If they're just done before jumps and not during StSqs I think I know the difference tho!

 

That's still so hard for me in real time. To tell counters and rockers apart I stop the video before the turn and based on the edge I imagine the direction the skater would have to turn for it to be a rocker/3turn and then I press play and compare lol 

 

@Nuitsuki btw I have gotten dizzy from that video at this point lol

I am trying hard to think who does a 3 turn sequence, the closest being probably Yuzu's entry to the 3F. 

[robin]

Just now, Xen said:

I am trying hard to think who does a 3 turn sequence, the closest being probably Yuzu's entry to the 3F. 

 

I was just concerned for a moment that there was something I didn't know about but I know what they are now, thanks!