Figure Skating Thread (Olympic Spoilers/Discussion starting at post #16)

[onodian]

I understand this, I was thinking whether this might be a raducan sort of situation where the substance was taken from the banned list in 2001, if I remember correctly?

 

[tsarinajen]

International Testing Agency-Beijing 2022: The ITA informs on figure skater Kamila Valieva

ita.sport

So here’s the updated timeline.

• Valieva positive test came from Russian Championships back on 12/25. Apparently it just came back 2/8. The IOC suspended her. Her suspension has been lifted — Russian Championships isn’t their jurisdiction. The IOC is appealing to CAS. A decision should be made before start of women’s competition.

So technically she’s not suspended and can practice and my assumption is compete unless the IOC wins their appeal.

 

[onodian]

I must say I just went a mini youtube rabbithole with figure skating controversies and now I feel like gym judging is laser precision almost.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I really envy the FS lot all the drama, cheats and shitstirring, plus I’m now a fan of having worlds five minutes after the Olympics finish. But I just can’t get into it.

 

[onodian]

for me it’s just too rigged from the beginning. I mean these people have multiple falls and they drop like one position. I don’t know that I’m very interested in a sport where the actual performance of the day seems to count for relatively little. Plus I hate 90% of what goes as “artistry” there. Although, just to be sure, I don’t plan on sending them our olympic fx champion as an example to follow

 

[Doug1233]

They need to devalue the quads. It’s crazy that a quad lutz with a fall earns more than a clean triple salchow. The -5 GOE + 1.0 for the fall isn’t enough of a discentive when the base value is so high.

I suppose the same could be said of VT finals. Simone could have easily won a medal even with a fall on the Double Pike.

 

[makam]

Yeah, but we all pretty much agree that vault scoring is whack. Figure Skating thinks everything is all cool with their system. But the program component scores are where the real cheating happens. Some skaters could go take a poo on center ice and still be given nearly perfect pcs.

 

[onodian]

I used to think we were the craziest fans but I mean this is EVERYTHING:

 

[onodian]

I suppose the same could be said of VT finals. Simone could have easily won a medal even with a fall on the Double Pike.

It’s definitely a problem all across these sports with this difficulty-execution distribution, I mean I was very critical of Simone’s win in 2018 exactly because of that too, regardless of how much better she was than the competition, which she was, I’m still not happy with people faltering on the day and coming out on top tho.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Yes, I have a feeling that would lead to us logging off with our tails between our legs. We might do better with worlds!

And I guess we do sometimes have that problem in gymnastics as well, just by the sound of things not as prevalent. People have won AA titles with falls, sometimes more than one, and others could’ve but didn’t. Less common in EFs but there have been cases where a gymnast has medalled with a fall, and others where they were far ahead enough of the competition that it could happen. I suppose it’s an outcome that can be difficult to guard against with an open ended system, especially as there’s controversy over whether we should be guarding against it.

 

[Doug1233]

No one had a problem with Maroney winning silver. Like, it wasn’t even a discussion that she shouldn’t.

And she was like, fractions away from gold. I’m sure THAT would have been discussed.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Yes, iirc if anything there was more annoyance that she hadn’t won outright, although I reckon a lot of that was disappointment mixed with Izbasa not having really done her best work. I don’t know if anyone still thinks that now.

The most controversial EF medal with a fall I can remember is Li Shanshan on beam in 07. It was a real novelty then.

 

[irichluck21]

No one had a problem with Maroney winning silver. Like, it wasn’t even a discussion that she shouldn’t.

And she was like, fractions away from gold. I’m sure THAT would have been discussed.

No one had any problem with Biles winning 2018 AA gold when she fell on vault and also fell again on beam. She still won by 1.7

 

[onodian]

I remember being very critical of Simone’s win in 2018 and that I wasn’t the only one. Where was that? was wwgym still up?

I think for gym the comparison to quad-triple maybe, that we had discussed to death come Maroney in 2012, was why can you not compete anymore with a DTY. We all kind of know at this point: not even Andrade sticking a DTY is going to outscore an Amanar. That’s why I don’t think there was any discussion as to Maroney. We all knew what the base game was, and that part of the discussion was done, because it was just the way that was. Once you accept that, there’s no argument against Maroney medalling as she was clearly better than everyone else below her chucking sub-par hard vaults. I still think it’s unbalanced and someone like Andrade for ex should be able to do a clean DTY and still feel like she has a chance at gold. Specially seeing the Amanar she won with. Yet we all know that that’s not the case, even if she had stuck it. I feel the problem in FS is the same, but waaaay more so because the whole programm revolves around this one ability, the jumping ability. Gymnasts can still kind of make up here or there with different abilities, it’s harder to see the problem although I definitely think there’s a little of that too in ag.

 

[RedBirdie]

Yeah, 2018 would have been WWG.

I didn’t love Simone’s win in 2018, but that’s a problem with the code, imo. (My longstanding frustration with the decision to focus on difficulty over execution by Landi aside) They’ve still not figured out how to weigh difficulty and execution evenly, nor are they properly separating execution well. We see great execution not rewarded, or, conversely, poor execution not being hammered. Poor execution can be completely negated by high difficulty, but exceptional execution can rarely (sometimes, but rarely) overcome difficulty.

But FS is so damn frustrating to me. Strong jumpers are getting insanely high PCS scores regardless if it accurately reflects what they’ve done. Yes, you can be a great jumper and have great artistry, skating basics, etc. But we see time after time that great jumpers who lack in the areas that PCS covers are getting scores that have no basis in reality. Throw in that difficultly is so overvalued, and it’s just not something I enjoy watching these days.

 

[ucrgirl]

Last year an American pairs skater missed Worlds and sat out for 6-8 months waiting for a doping violation to be cleared. (It came down to something in her makeup metabolized into something else . . . . I didn’t pay attention the the explanation.) But she was out of competition and lost her funding while she worked on her appeal. And that is how these things are supposed to work. I don’t think there is a provision for competing while waiting to be cleared.

In 2015-ish a figure skater was banned for 2 years related to doping. Her boyfriend was a speed walker and it turns out HE was doping. The testers turned up at their apartment to get a sample from him and he asked her to lie and say he wasn’t home. She was not allowed to compete for two years.

 

[KristyJ]

Thoughts on figure skating PCS, since that’s a topic above-
I really feel like the ISU did everyone a disservice when they allowed judging to be anonymous. Yes, it keeps judges from being accountable to outside extortion or threats (potentially a real issue as shown in 2002), but it also means that judges also don’t have outside accountability. We’ve seen over and over again that higher ranked figure skaters routinely get the best GOE and PCS across the board. Some of that makes sense given that they are the higher ranked skaters for reasons, but there are many areas in which that falls down. There are skaters who excel at edges and flow but just don’t interpret their music very well, or who interpret well but are give bum choreography. Rarely do you see high skating skills scores, but low performance and execution, or high performance and execution but low on scores affected by choreography. I feel like judges should be able to differentiate between the various PCS but they just don’t often. It becomes a glorified ranking system, 6.0 by another name.

For all of the above, that’s why I like gymnastics judging better. As much as I like the concept of positive GOE, and as much as I think the ROV bonus had some merit, overall I much prefer seeing deductions tied to actual reasons that can be spelled out.

 

[onodian]

There are skaters who excel at edges and flow but just don’t interpret their music very well, or who interpret well but are give bum choreography. Rarely do you see high skating skills scores, but low performance and execution, or high performance and execution but low on scores affected by choreography.

that’s precisely the point, the system in the way it is implemented now is meant to have a back-up plan that will give you a rather large influence in results, regardless of performance. At least that’s what it looks to me as a casual, yet slightly nerdy, observer.

ETA: I actually think theoretically speaking there could be arguments in favour of the pcs structure, but the implementation is just a) stupid and b) obviously not working if you’re aim is to adequately separate skaters.

 

[cats]

I do think there is merit to having scores that connect back to elements on the technical side. Gymnastics does its athletes a real disservice by not letting them see that their switch ring is a net loss, and by letting all the “different pen” issues just hide in the shadows.

I’m curious about the snowboarding system. I don’t know anything at all about that sport, but the commentator was totally apoplectic about the score given to the ultimate winner’s second run. He had done some kind of triple salto thing that sounded like it was on the level of the YDP and went clean but didn’t get a particularly great score.

 

[JDB]

I think IJS skating is a great spectator sport. The ISU outperforms the FIG on that front. I mainly pay attention during worlds and Olympics and skate at public outdoor rinks. But I need reminders to do arm conditioning. So I’m less interested in it than some other sports.