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Showing posts with label IJS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IJS. Show all posts

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Happy Halloween!


The guilty pleasures of autumn: pumpkins and figure skating.

Welcome, dear Friends, to this blog on this particular day. Whether you are sitting on masses of candy already, or are still putting on your zombie makeup or brushing your fangs, whatever it is, you have come to the right place. Enter at your own risk and to your own delight...

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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 Tomáš Verner. I have especially always loved him for his dedication to good performance and interesting programmes. I think he is one of the best show skaters out there. And I think he is a great person off the ice. So while it may look like this post is a rant about Verner, it is actually fully on IJS and judging.

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.


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