Chan fears for skaters' health/quads

karne said:

In CSG's defence, I found it particularly irksome in the WTT thread, when right after Hanyu skated his SP the Hanyu fans in there immediately erupted into "omg he must be sick/injured/omg he must be upset/someone must have said something to him right before he skated" and all manner of things. It did not seem to occur to any of those posters that Hanyu might simply have - gasp! - had a bad skate. There had to be some kind of excuse.

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I'm far, far from liking it when people are getting overly worried and think everything has to be a super dramatic bad thing (and have said so several times in the FF too ), but I'd like to point out that it isn't always about finding "excuses". There was a lot of talk already before Yuzu even skated, and a lot of fans basically expected him to bomb, because he had his "I'm gonna mess stuff up" face on. And then a lot of people were already worried what might be wrong before he made any form of mistake on the ice... the fact that Yuzu was always pretty injury prone and a firm member of the "I'm not gonna tell anyone and I'm not gonna rest but thickheadidly samurai my way though this" with bascially 100% succession rate of making things worse doesn't help. I get being annoyed with the dramatizing and the mother hens, but it's often really just people being worried and not necessarily trying to make excuses for why he didn't win with a dozen new World Records.

It's funny really. It's perfectly OK for Chan fans to excuse his bombing by saying the ice was bad (because he complained about it), while Hanyu fans shouldn't even mention the injury which kept him off the ice for nearly three months (because Yuzu never mentioned it before the competition or even afterwards, and we only learnt how bad it was from the Japanese media and by the fact he pulled out of all the shows for the summer).
Actually, it might be better for skaters to complain or show they're in trouble. Nathan's skates, D10's multiple injuries, Patrick's bad ice - all these constitute valid excuses for messing it up once in a while, but if someone just keeps mum about their pain and tries to persevere, their own pulling through the pain can be turned against them - as Yuzu's brilliant SP was.

Yuzu lost last year. Javi won, deservedly. What's the point of this argument, can anyone explain that?

-Back to the topic of the thread...
1. Do you think that Quads should be limited?
2. Or the scoring system changed to give more credit to other aspects of skating /less points for quads?
3. Or is the scoring system just fine as it is, no changes needed?

I'd love to hear about that.

Interspectator said:

-Back to the topic of the thread...
1. Do you think that Quads should be limited?
2. Or the scoring system changed to give more credit to other aspects of skating /less points for quads?
3. Or is the scoring system just fine as it is, no changes needed?

I'd love to hear about that.

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1) No
2) Yes
3) No

They should just give harsher deduction on flawed quads. Cheats take-off? -5, cheats landing? -5.

Less generous GOE.

Fayruza said:

It's funny really. It's perfectly OK for Chan fans to excuse his bombing by saying the ice was bad (because he complained about it), while Hanyu fans shouldn't even mention the injury which kept him off the ice for nearly three months (because Yuzu never mentioned it before the competition or even afterwards, and we only learnt how bad it was from the Japanese media and by the fact he pulled out of all the shows for the summer).

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Did you not notice that I did not approve of Chan's whinging about the Boston ice as much as I also did not approve of the Hanyu fans trying to find an excuse for why he didn't skate well?

I know what it is to have a skater who refuses to make excuses. One of my guys is a guy who did a whole competition with a piece of plastic stuck to his blade - which we only found out about over a month later - but claimed it was still his fault for skating poorly. The same guy also had hernia surgery last year and could not use his stomach muscles properly for the entire first half of the season - but refused to talk about it or use it as an excuse.

BUT! That does not mean that a skater can't just have a bad day. Those happen. To every skater. Yes, even to precious Godly Hanyu. It doesn't always have to be something. Sometimes it's nothing.

Interspectator said:

-Back to the topic of the thread...
1. Do you think that Quads should be limited?
2. Or the scoring system changed to give more credit to other aspects of skating /less points for quads?
3. Or is the scoring system just fine as it is, no changes needed?

I'd love to hear about that.

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1. No way.

2. No.

3. There need to be some changes. First: UR/DG/wrong edge/fall deductions need to be taken as a percentage of base value, not a fixed value, and they need to be cumulative. (eg: a fallen downgraded quad Lutz should be worth less than a fallen rotated quad Lutz). Second: WE NEED STRICTER TECH PANELS. UR/DG and PREROTATION need to be HARSHLY called. None of this soft fluffy marshmallow rubbish, we need to clone Shin Amano and just have TPs full of him but stricter.

karne said:

There need to be some changes. First: UR/DG/wrong edge/fall deductions need to be taken as a percentage of base value, not a fixed value, and they need to be cumulative. (eg: a fallen downgraded quad Lutz should be worth less than a fallen rotated quad Lutz). Second: WE NEED STRICTER TECH PANELS. UR/DG and PREROTATION need to be HARSHLY called. None of this soft fluffy marshmallow rubbish, we need to clone Shin Amano and just have TPs full of him but stricter.

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You know, I am thinking the current system will work just fine if the judges and specialists do their jobs in a more serious way.

Interspectator said:

-Back to the topic of the thread...
1. Do you think that Quads should be limited?
2. Or the scoring system changed to give more credit to other aspects of skating /less points for quads?
3. Or is the scoring system just fine as it is, no changes needed?

I'd love to hear about that.

Click to expand...

I personally don't think quads should be limited by anyone but the skaters themselves. And I'm not entirely sure the issue is the scoring system, though the difference between the potential TES and max PCS is now being markedly visible and the system doesn't seem to have been made with that possible difference in mind, so things will definitely need to change at some point in order to bring more balance to the scoring system again.

But most of the problems we see with scoring is not that the rules don't value things, but that the judges are extremely inconsistent with following bullet points and written rules. There are certain values of the PCS markings that are more subjective, like IN and CO and PE, that will have certain judges value something more than others, but SS and TR seem to me to be more objective markings. On the other hand, PCS are and will continue to be marked in a narrow corridor to facilitate the judging (you can't have someone give a great PE and have poor SS; you just average it out).

Then there's GOE, which is a whole 'nother can of worms. One thing I find interesting about GOE, at least in the men's discipline, is how triples are rarely allowed to get +3 GOE unless they're a 3A, no matter how many GOE bullets they may meet. BV seems to be influencing GOE a lot and it seems to me more difficulty tends to get those GOEs flowing more. Which is not what is written in the judges handbook, I don't think. I feel like a perfectly good 3Lz that meets enough bullets for +3 being done by someone without quads deserves getting those +3. And if someone with higher difficulty fails to land a quad properly, they still will get more points than that perfect 3Lz so there's really no need to withhold those +3 GOEs if the triple deserves it.

Edit: And yes on the more consistent tech panels also.

karne said:

Did you not notice that I did not approve of Chan's whinging about the Boston ice as much as I also did not approve of the Hanyu fans trying to find an excuse for why he didn't skate well?

I know what it is to have a skater who refuses to make excuses. One of my guys is a guy who did a whole competition with a piece of plastic stuck to his blade - which we only found out about over a month later - but claimed it was still his fault for skating poorly. The same guy also had hernia surgery last year and could not use his stomach muscles properly for the entire first half of the season - but refused to talk about it or use it as an excuse.

BUT! That does not mean that a skater can't just have a bad day. Those happen. To every skater. Yes, even to precious Godly Hanyu. It doesn't always have to be something. Sometimes it's nothing.



1. No way.

2. No.

3. There need to be some changes. First: UR/DG/wrong edge/fall deductions need to be taken as a percentage of base value, not a fixed value, and they need to be cumulative. (eg: a fallen downgraded quad Lutz should be worth less than a fallen rotated quad Lutz). Second: WE NEED STRICTER TECH PANELS. UR/DG and PREROTATION need to be HARSHLY called. None of this soft fluffy marshmallow rubbish, we need to clone Shin Amano and just have TPs full of him but stricter.

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True. Yuzuru has had his share of bad days - and will, no doubt. But in this case, it was a bad day + bad injury. And we Hanyu fans would have preferred him just to have a bad day in Boston, believe me. Because what followed was pretty painful wait for what transpires next.

Good lord, this thread really did descend into a mud slinging mess.

Fayruza said:

True. Yuzuru has had his share of bad days - and will, no doubt. But in this case, it was a bad day + bad injury. And we Hanyu fans would have preferred him just to have a bad day in Boston, believe me. Because what followed was pretty painful wait for what transpires next.

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I was referring to WTT, not Boston, where Hanyu just had a bad day, unless further news has come out that I haven't heard yet.

Interspectator said:

-Back to the topic of the thread...
1. Do you think that Quads should be limited?
2. Or the scoring system changed to give more credit to other aspects of skating /less points for quads?
3. Or is the scoring system just fine as it is, no changes needed?

I'd love to hear about that.

Click to expand...

I think the ISU is going to have to increase the multiplier for PCS - maybe 1.1 in the short and 2.2 in the free - to balance out the new higher levels of technical difficulties - that will keep skaters from going for too many quads because it will rebalance the need to improve the program.

lyverbird1 said:

Good lord, this thread really did descend into a mud slinging mess.

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You mean like every 2nd thread does?

karne said:

I was referring to WTT, not Boston, where Hanyu just had a bad day, unless further news has come out that I haven't heard yet.

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In this case it was an overreaction

It's been a while since he didn't end a season with an injury. So some of us have PTSD

(Yes, I know, other skaters have injuries too.)

i think this thread has had its course...

regarding injuries : Patrick injured his quad muscles last year revamping his 3A
This year, he skated in Helsinki with an injury as well.

He doesn't complain about that. So, perhaps people should listen when he says the ice is bad or when he says that quads are dangerous... Patrick speaks up when it's necessary... give him some credit, even if he is not your favourite skater.... the guy KNOWS what he is talking about.. way more than any of us.

but no... some people here are willing to turn anything he says into something else...

Interspectator said:

-Back to the topic of the thread...
1. Do you think that Quads should be limited?
2. Or the scoring system changed to give more credit to other aspects of skating /less points for quads?
3. Or is the scoring system just fine as it is, no changes needed?

I'd love to hear about that.

Click to expand...

1. No - technical difficulty should never be limited.
2. I think spins should be worth a bit more, to encourage better quality spins from the field. A backloading limit (e.g. you must have at least 2 jumping passes in the first half of the program) would help balance programs.
3. GOE and PCS need to be stricter - I would like to see mandatory DEductions (like how "final GOE must be -3" for the Combo-less jump in the SP) imposed on touchdowns/falls/step-outs (i.e. no matter how good a jump is in all other aspects, a fall should be -3 and a hand-down should be -1)... any element with an obvious, significant technical error (and these can be pre-determined so it's cut and dry: e.g. hand-down, foot-down, "e" entry, step-out, UR, fall), as deemed by the technical specialist, must not get more than 0 GOE. REductions can be for things like a lean forward on the landing, landing on the wrong edge/scratchy landing, poor height/distance, that are not major visible errors but should still reduce the GOE of the jump compared to a clean jump. In senior ranks, any jump that is turned into a double (save for a 2A) must immediately have 0 GOE or less.

I would like to see the top TWO and the bottom TWO scores for GOE and PCS be thrown out, instead of just 1 top/bottom GOE or PCS thrown out -- i.e. only 5 out of 9 judges count for each GOE or PCS calculation. And there should be a report about which judges got the most scores thrown out by the end of a competition. This will discourage potential block judging and encourage judges to score more consistently. Literally, scare the judges into judging consistently and without blatant favouritism.

Any judge who gives a 10.00 in any PCS category for a performance with a major visible error (fall/pop/two-hands down) must be held accountable. Any judge who gives 9.5 or higher for a performance with 2 major errors must similarly be held accountable. And no 9's allowed for 3 major visible errors. Better yet would be if the technical specialist determined the number of major errors after a program, and after that, the judges' scorescreens only permit them to give maximum PCS scores (e.g. if there's 2 major visible errors, the judges are restricted to giving no more than 9.25 on any PCS category).

4everchan said:

i think this thread has had its course...

regarding injuries : Patrick injured his quad muscles last year revamping his 3A
This year, he skated in Helsinki with an injury as well.

He doesn't complain about that. So, perhaps people should listen when he says the ice is bad or when he says that quads are dangerous... Patrick speaks up when it's necessary... give him some credit, even if he is not your favourite skater.... the guy KNOWS what he is talking about.. way more than any of us.

but no... some people here are willing to turn anything he says into something else...

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This thread "bit it" pages ago. I had also stated pages ago about the state of the ice in Boston, it got worse as the week and the competition went on and was very bad for the mens (esp in the one patch). But like usual, no one wants to read something like that and just want to keep their mudded observation of what they "think" happened. Typical. :sarcasm:

Ic3Rabbit said:

This thread "bit it" pages ago. I had also stated pages ago about the state of the ice in Boston, it got worse as the week and the competition went on and was very bad for the mens (esp in the one patch). But like usual, no one wants to read something like that and just want to keep their mudded observation of what they "think" happened. Typical. :sarcasm:

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Just to be clear, I don't care whether Patrick was right or wrong, was whining or not, for the most part I am fairly indifferent to Patrick.

But you want us to believe that you know more than other folks who were at the same rink at the same time, and saw the same ice that you did, but have different opinions?

To coin a phrase, Typical.:sarcasm:

I don't think it's a matter of believing what one person says - the problem with ice in Boston is visible on videos from the competition:
Javier Fernandez's Free Skate https://youtu.be/7nrbg87qH9k?t=60
Whether it affected a skater's performance or not can be hard to judge because it could as simple as it caused a skater to think about it which led to a lack of confidence or concentration - I'm inclined to believe the skater when they say they had a problem with it.

tennisguy said:

I don't think it's a matter of believing what one person says - the problem with ice in Boston is visible on videos from the competition:
Javier Fernandez's Free Skate https://youtu.be/7nrbg87qH9k?t=60
Whether it affected a skater's performance or not can be hard to judge because it could as simple as it caused a skater to think about it which led to a lack of confidence or concentration - I'm inclined to believe the skater when they say they had a problem with it.

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exactly.:agree:

el henry said:

Just to be clear, I don't care whether Patrick was right or wrong, was whining or not, for the most part I am fairly indifferent to Patrick.

But you want us to believe that you know more than other folks who were at the same rink at the same time, and saw the same ice that you did, but have different opinions?

To coin a phrase, Typical.:sarcasm:

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This is all relative. There are skaters who get used to certain conditions and are not affected by the conditions of the ice. Patrick trains in good facilities and though he's seen bad ice, he's probably not used to training, or competing on it. Growing up in Santa Barbara, our dance facilities were fantastic and when we'd travel to competitions, we were often caught off guard by warped dance floors and poor dressing rooms. I remember competing on a temporary dance floor and getting a large wood splinter in my calf during our performance. It put a hole in my tights and by the time our piece was over, there was enough blood showing that the judges talked about it in their critiques.

Bad ice is dangerous for any skater and we all know Patrick to have the deepest edges in the business. Pairs and Ice Dancers, especially with their dangerous, rotating lifts, should be echoing his comments. He has been skating at the top of the sport for a decade and I can't imagine anyone having a problem with his show of concern for himself and his fellow athletes.