Figure Skating Team Event

[Denn]

The figure skating world has an interesting scoring system. It has its flaws, but it works well in many ways.

What is a completely idiotic system, though, is how they figure out the team rankings.

Here's what the Figure Skating Team Event rankings would be so far (after the shorts) just by totaling scores. I posted this on Reddit, and more people liked a comment based on a misconception than my original post. People think that the higher men's scores are a problem. They're not, because they're ALL higher. What's a problem is the spread of the scores, and it's only a minor discrepancy among the 4 disciplines.



Of course, we gymnerds know more about this stuff because add scores across 4 or 6 events for AA and Team and discuss the issue from time to time. But I guess skating fans don't know that math.

 

[makam]

The interesting thing is that there is no benefit to winning your section by 5, 10, etc points, winning by .01 nets you the same points as destroying the field. And once you make the finals, just showing up nets you 6 points. You could just skate around waving at the crowd never doing a single skill and still come away with a decent haul of points for your team. (I mean, I realize no one would do that unless you had an injury to protect and knew you would be in last anyway)

I guess it is cool that it can be so close and not having a great ladies skater or pair or whatever doesn't totally eliminate you from the competition, but it would be interesting if the earned score had a multiplier on the points earned or something like that.

 

[Denn]

Yes, exactly!!!

 

[irichluck21]

If you go with total team score, South Korea was always going to finish last by default, they had no pairs team that qualified and the quota of skaters added was used up.

Japan is in silver medal position because of the quota, they didn't have an ice dance team qualified but where given quota athletes. Same with Poland.
Great Britain men didn't qualify so a quota athlete was added.

South Korea was unlucky because the 5 athlete quota was used up.

What would be the point of even competing if you'll automatically finish last?
South Korea still got 0 points for pairs but at least mathematically were in the team event. They finished 7th out of 10 teams, though they were never near the final, 7/10 is better than 10/10.

So I think points by ranking works better for this style of team event. Similar to the team event in Trampoline and Tumbling.

@Denn is that the correct total score for Japan? If so they should be in 3rd and Italy in 2nd.
Japan 437.58 to Italy 443.57.

 

[makam]

If you go with total team score, South Korea was always going to finish last by default, they had no pairs team that qualified and the quota of skaters added was used up.

Japan is in silver medal position because of the quota, they didn't have an ice dance team qualified but where given quota athletes. Same with Poland.
Great Britain men didn't qualify so a quota athlete was added.

South Korea was unlucky because the 5 athlete quota was used up.

What would be the point of even competing if you'll automatically finish last?
South Korea still got 0 points for pairs but at least mathematically were in the team event. They finished 7th out of 10 teams, though they were never near the final, 7/10 is better than 10/10.

So I think points by ranking works better for this style of team event. Similar to the team event in Trampoline and Tumbling.

@Denn is that the correct total score for Japan? If so they should be in 3rd and Italy in 2nd.
Japan 437.58 to Italy 443.57.

Only placement matters, not total score. As for why SK would compete, it is a chance to test the ice and shake out some nerves. Bet Malinin is glad he is getting some extra time- he seems like a very confident guy generally but it looked like the olympic atmosphere hit him more than he was expecting. Having a lower stakes chance to shake that all out...priceless.

It should be close for the final since Japan is last in dance but probably first in pairs (! Now i know i stopped paying attention for a few years) while the us is first in dance but probably last in pairs. So then it comes down to if Amber Glenn can put it together and stay in touch with whoever Japan is putting out and if Malinin can recover from a kinda lackluster skate. Could be exciting.

 

[irichluck21]

Right, placement is what matters and I think that is the right scoring system for this type of competition.

 

[makam]

Right, placement is what matters and I think that is the right scoring system for this type of competition.

Agree mostly because if you won 3 or 6 sections and have a skater who totally implodes, their tragic scores maybe shouldn't drag the whole team down. but maybe if you beat the next person down by more than 10%, you get a 1.1 multiplier on your points or something like that to reward truly superior performances.

Though, when it comes down to it, other than the US, Italy, and Russia if they were able to compete, no other countries really have world class skaters in every event (and us pairs are very much on the edge of world class definition still, right? I'vereally only been peripherally watching the last 4 years). And that is actually great because it means a few countries aren't totally dominating all aspects of the sport. But it does make the team event not really team--you have your stars/point getters and you have your warm bodies just trying to not be last. I don't know what you could do to fix it unless you let countries pick 3 events to count and skip one strategically. That could make things wild if only 2 or 3 went for pairs but all 10 tried for men's singles. Now that could bring out some strategy and gameplay. Like, "we can't guarantee a top 5 score in men's but with only 4 teams trying for pairs points, even a bad team could come in fifth, so we'll sit men's out in the qualis and nab more points with pairs. "