Easily her best of the season, I have 8.7E, but instead gets 8.1...lower than Melninoka, who had worse pirouettes, worse van leeuwen, and her typical wonky bent arm jaeger. Just absolutely fraudulent reputation based judging.
To give more detail to this, judging each routine:
Skye has perfect cast handstands and full pirouettes and pak (which is very surprising given how it's been all season), no deductions there. The rest:
.1 feet .1 bent arm Church, .1 feet .1 amplitude Downie, .1 legs .1 feet Van leeuwen, .3 angle Toe 1/2, .1 legs L-grip giant, .1 legs .1 step .1 feet apart on landing (this is ultra strict and probably shouldn't be taken) Dismount. I could perhaps see a judge thinking .3 for legs on the dismount (.3 really should be reserved for more of a cowboy than this), but that's still 8.5E. You have to fabricate other deductions to get her lower. There was nothing wrong with her "flow" or some other bullshit reasoning.
Melnikova's routine has:
.1 angle Inbar 1/1, .3 legs Van Leeuwen, .1 legs .1 alignment Inbar 1/2 (and this is an example of something where you could actually deduct for a flaw in the flow, but I still don't think it's merited; someone holding a handstand is not an inherent flaw in the flow of a routine), .1 feet .1 legs, .1 amplitude .3 bent arms Jaeger (and a tiny grip adjust after), .1 legs .1 angle Giant 1/2, .1 legs .3 angle Toe 1/1, .1 legs Dismount (she also has a bit of crossed feet in addition to the leg separation, but I'm just taking 1 deduction). So that's 8.1E but could actually go under 8 if you apply the "standard" that is seemingly being used for most other people in the world by these judges.
