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Saturday, March 16, 2013

The Scoring of Tomáš Verner: The Epitome of The Failings of IJS

First, let me clarify something. I love












Once upon a time..

So, last night when he skated his usual repertoire of 5 popped jumps and 2 completed triples with terrible landings, mediocre spins and almost zero commitment to performance and execution of a mediocre long programme, they decided to award him with a PCS of 72.5. That is almost twice as high as his TES of 39.8. In fact, he got the worst TES among 24 skaters but only 11 skaters scored higher than him on PCS. Does one's skating skills diminish over night? No. But one cannot be expected to skate like this (and has been doing so for 2 years straight) and still score better than half the field on PCS. What justification is there really for giving him such a score apart from what he could have done and did in the distant past? For that reason alone, Tomas Verner is given a boost of 15-20 points in PCS over the skaters he ranked among. 15-20 points are no joking matter. It is exceedingly difficult to make up in TES alone.

So does the system need a major overhaul? Yes. But, in my opinion, more important is the matter of how much weight the subjective criteria has. Because that is something that will always be misused, no matter how different the intentions were or how tight the controls are.

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