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. "

 

[MaryClare]

The gymnastics team event should definitely include all of the sport’s Olympic disciplines, just like figure skating does.

 

[makam]

The gymnastics team event should definitely include all of the sport’s Olympic disciplines, just like figure skating does.

It would be cool, but how many quota spots would they have to use to get enough teams to be able to compete? And if your country qualified everything but a women's team, would you get to bring a whole team?

I say see if the new team thing doesn't suck, see about expanding it, but my hopes are low for it.

 

[RichardL]

How many delegations qualify gymnasts to every single discipline? I would assume quite a few, right?

 

[MaryClare]

How many delegations qualify gymnasts to every single discipline? I would assume quite a few, right?

In 2021 Russia managed top 8 finishes in every discipline (MAG AA, WAG AA, RG ind, RG group, MTRA, WTRA). In 2024, China managed top 10 finishes in the same. Italy are only really missing a couple of trampolinists. The US will struggle to find a solution to RG group

 

[irichluck21]

I didn't look at Trampoline and Rhythmic if those two events were to be counted.
But if the team event was artistic only and MAG had 6 events and WAG had 4 events combined. One gymnast competes per event- gymnasts can be chosen to compete more than one event or just one event as long as they are on the team.

In Rio: 15 "TEAMS"
Full Teams on WAG/MAG (9): BRA, CHN, FRA, GER, GBR, JPN, NED, RUS, USA

Countries that qualified a full team for either MAG or WAG plus an individual for MAG or WAG (6): UKR, SUI, KOR, ITA, CAN, BEL

In Tokyo: 15 "TEAMS"
Full Team in WAG/MAG (7): CHN, GER, GBR,JPN, ROC, ESP USA

Countries that qualified a full team for either MAG or WAG plus individual(s) (8): BRA 5 MAG, 2 WAG, FRA 3 MAG 4 WAG, CAN 1 MAG, 4 WAG, NED 2 MAG, 4 WAG, KOR 5 MAG, 2 WAG, SUI 4 MAG, 1 WAG, TUR 4 MAG, 1 WAG, UKR 4 MAG, 1 WAG

In Paris: 17 "TEAMS"
Countries that qualified a full team in WAG/MAG (7): CAN, CHN, GBR, ITA, JPN, NED, USA

Countries that qualified a full team for either MAG or WAG plus individual(s) (10):
AUS 1 MAG 5 WAG, BEL 3 MAG 2 WAG, BRA 2 MAG 5 WAG, FRA 1 MAG 5 WAG,
GER 5 MAG 3 WAG, HUN 1 MAG 3 WAG, ROU 1 MAG 5 WAG, ESP 5 MAG 3 WAG, SUI 5 MAG 1 WAG, UKR 5 MAG 1 WAG

so it is interesting that Rio and Tokyo both had 15 eligible NOC and Paris had that plus 2 more (give the plus 1 for countries 13-15).

I did USA line up for Paris.

MAG
FX: Richard
PH: That Pommel Horse Guy
SR: Hong
VT: Hong/Juda
PB: Hong
HB: Malone

WAG
VT: Biles/Carey
UB: Lee
BB: Biles/ Lee
FX: Biles/Chiles

 

[irichluck21]

Yeah so few countries qualify for group, 14, and with countries like Israel, Bulgaria, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan at the top of the groups, it would be hard to include groups with the gymnastics mixed team because it eliminates many of the top countries in the other disciplines.

 

[Bob]

I would love to include all the diciplines for a team event. Especially if they added tumbling and acro. Not double mini I think it's a nothing. We could have 2 from each making 10 scores to count. I don't mind converting them to a points system based on rank as the scoring is so different in tramp artistic and acro for eg.

 

[Bob]

I would like to see someone try this at a continental level maybe first. I bet a european games might work for this.

 

[Denn]

Honestly, to deal with the sports quotas, you could just dump the team event for women-only and men-only, and do ONLY a mixed team event with all disciplines.

MAG get 6 apparatus, 1 per
WAG gets 4 apparatus, 1 per
rhythmic gets 2 gymnasts, 2 apparatus specified in advance
tramp gets 1 man, 1 woman
tumbling gets 1 man, 1 woman.

That also equalizes the number of men and women AND the number of disciplines, which has always been an imbalance between MAG and WAG.

That would be a super cool competition.

 

[Denn]

Sports acro is hard to include because there's so many variations...

BTW, I hate to say, but taking away Rhythmic group is also a place to recover lots of spots. I mean, it's cool, but it doesn't get the same attention...

Wasn't it 70 spots in Paris?

 

[Denn]

Beyond what @makam outlined several other relevant points, there's a HUGE flaw: the placement of a third athlete in between two competitors affects the contribution of those competitors to the team score. It's a completely asinine design.

And Korea SHOULD be high at risk of finishing last while missing 25% of the competition unless they had other events to super strong to compensate. My final tally has them in 8th and that makes perfect sense. The fact that they got 7th putting up literally 3 short programs is silly.

Honestly, they should either have been given a quota spot for pairs or they shouldn't have even qualified.