There are still fans out there, who claim IJS is supportable and that it did provide the kind of concreteness that 6.0 could not. A skater can lie in as low as 8th place after SP and still medal. Yes, I agree, there are benefits to assigning values to each element and basing a score on that. I never dispute that. But instead of dissecting each element under IJS, just look at the big picture. I, as judge A, decide skater B is my favourite. I want to make sure he/she wins. Can I do that under IJS? Of course. I give him ridiculously high components and abundant GOE, while keeping other down. Because the subjective judging criteria has so much value, I can do that easily and still remain in the infamous "corridors". In fact, if you look at the average scores, 60% of the score comes from purely subjective judging, while only 40% is the objective base value. So, when you give skater B at least 10-15 points more PCS on the long programme alone, you pretty much give them the cushion the wipe the ice clean a couple of times and still win. And who's to dispute you? Who can argue effectively that those absolute numbers are wrong? It is after all purely subjective.
My boyfriend has this practice of announcing scores right after the skater finishes the programme. He announces both the TES and PCS purely based on the scores from previous skaters. And he is almost right every time, to the decimal. Because, the parts don't really matter at the end of the day. It's the placement that matters, that is how it is still scored. But now, for a change, judges have much more freedom to ensure those placements, because they have 150 points of PCS to throw in as they like and the GOEs on top of that.
So, for the sake of this argument, let us look at Tomas Verner. I could easily discuss the scores of the top men or the pairs for this exercise as well but I think Verner's case is so obvious, no further discussion is needed.
The judges are still proceeding with an image of Verner, that dates back almost to pre-historic times. Or more precisely, to 2007-2008. When they are judging Verner, they are still remembering this:
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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