Pre-rotation

CanadianSkaterGuy said:

...and judging panels especially do not have the endless time that those of us on the internet invest - such is the dedication of these fans! - into scrutinizing every frame and pulling out their protractors.

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Just wanted to say, that it's not that time-consuming actually . I watch all skating videos in Quicktime Player anyway, so if I wanna take a closer look at something that caught my eye (usually footwork or something like that, not necessarily PR or UR on jumps, unless I'm curious about a tech call), I literally only have to push the arrow buttons to go through it frame by frame, only takes a few seconds.
Not saying that this makes it viable for TPs, just wanted to point out that it doesn't require some exotic, high tech app or a lot of time . And the TP does actually rewatch 'suspicious' under-review jumps anyway, no?
(although I often can't tell anything for sure, because those videos don't have a high enough frame rate and low quality in general)

skatenewbie said:

But i think Shoma has had his 4F called because prerotation since he land backward.

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I assume you mean his 4F from this season's GPF? I've heard people wonder about that one, if the TP possibly took his PR into acccount, but actually, if you ask me, it did look UR in the replay (once again, as far as the low video quality allowed me to see). So yeah, my guess is that this was just a regular UR call.

annajzdf said:

Just wanted to say, that it's not that time-consuming actually . I watch all skating videos in Quicktime Player anyway, so if I wanna take a closer look at something that caught my eye (usually footwork or something like that, not necessarily PR or UR on jumps, unless I'm curious about a tech call), I literally only have to push the arrow buttons to go through it frame by frame, only takes a few seconds.
Not saying that this makes it viable for TPs, just wanted to point out that it doesn't require some exotic, high tech app or a lot of time . And the TP does actually rewatch 'suspicious' under-review jumps anyway, no?
(although I often can't tell anything for sure, because those videos don't have a high enough frame rate and low quality in general)

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Unfortunately with tech panels it does take more time to scrutinize than just looking frame by frame. Not to mention, you do a frame by frame scrutinization of 20+ skaters and you have to do it across the board, and that adds up.

Jumps are split second so it's a bit difficult for a tech panel to flag both PR and UR on a jump (along with correct edge calls if a lutz/flip!). From what I understand, tech panels take an innocent-until-proven-guilty approach and aren't looking for the error (based on a skater's history of UR or PR or edge calls), they only flag when an error may have happened as it happens, on that jumping pass, in that program, for that skater, on that day... or at least that's how a good judge SHOULD assess skaters' jumps.

A tech judge shouldn't be looking at a skater saying "Oh, they're a notorious flutzer/under-rotator so I'm going to get ready to nab them for it." And the best judges certainly aren't like, "OMG, I saw these fan videos and lengthy blog posts about skater X's edge call issues, and saw on online skating forums all these screencaps of skater Y's pre-rotation issues, so I'm totes going to take that into account the next time I judge them."

annajzdf said:

I assume you mean his 4F from this season's GPF? I've heard people wonder about that one, if the TP possibly took his PR into acccount, but actually, if you ask me, it did look UR in the replay (once again, as far as the low video quality allowed me to see). So yeah, my guess is that this was just a regular UR call.

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There is nothing in the rules about "pre-rotation". Like the term "pre-rotation" isn't even in the Handbook. There is a cheated take-off, but that is primarily with respect to toe axels. A "clear forward take off" isn't specific in terms of whether that's referring to the skater's feet, their toe pick, their whole blade, their torso, their leg, etc. And it needs to be made more clear and needs to be determined in regular real-time, according to the rules. Plus, when it comes to underrotation/downgrades, "In all doubtful cases the Technical Panel should act to the benefit of the skater." so that could explain why it's not a huge issue. While many of us tend to say that a more rotated landing can make up for a more cheated takeoff, I don't think a tech panel would look at a legitimately cheated takeoff and be like "Well, they had well under a quarter rotation on landing, so overall the jump was rotated sufficiently." Shoma's 4F UR calls at the GPF were absolutely correct, however, that's not the panel "finally" clocking him for a pre-rotation or anything like that... the landings were simply UR (he can and has done them better), and he deserved the UR call for those particular attempts. Clearly the jumps were being scrutinized, so if the tech panel deemed his 4F to have a "cheated take-off", then he would have received a downgrade on the jump.

Frankly, I don't even think a tech panel is considering pre-rotation on a flip/lutz/salchow/loop (certainly not the way some folks do online)... I would love for a judge to flat out say "Yeah, we've got other stuff to care about, like the actual landings". IMO, tech panels are probably only looking for toe axels (which are super rare, except certain skaters like Nguyen/Meissner) and maaaybe seeing skaters who skid to a standstill on their axel takeoff foot and might be facing backwards -- although I've yet to see any example of a skater who does this egregiously, current or historically, so it's weird that it's mentioned in the rules - it would mess up the mechanics of an axel if the takeoff blade/pick were facing the opposite direction to the leg that's driving through). People are just interpreting the "cheated takeoff" section pf the Handbook the way they want to interpret it, some of them doing so because they yearn for certain skaters to get scrutinized/deducted more.

My personal advice is to just block/hide/not follow people whose opinions annoy you. Or who talk about things you don't find interesting. Don't get the fuss.

CanadianSkaterGuy said:

Unfortunately with tech panels it does take more time to scrutinize than just looking frame by frame. Not to mention, you do a frame by frame scrutinization of 20+ skaters and you have to do it across the board, and that adds up.

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But they already do spend time on reviewing some umps (and other technical elements) that looked ‚suspicious‘ in real time (usually when a landing was scratchy, looked somewhat hooked or created a lot of snow, I assume). And it averages out, because for some skaters there will be no jumps to review, with others maybe half of the jumps need to be looked at again…
Unless your point was to check every single jump of every skater, to make it as fair as possible and treat every competitor the same way? That of course would create quite a delay in the scoring.

Speaking of reviewing jumps, what are the current rules on that? I thought it said that they’re only allowed to assess jumps in real time (except for edge calls I think…) ? Did that rule change?

CanadianSkaterGuy said:

A tech judge shouldn't be looking at a skater saying "Oh, they're a notorious flutzer/under-rotator so I'm going to get ready to nab them for it." And the best judges certainly aren't like, "OMG, I saw these fan videos and lengthy blog posts about skater X's edge call issues, and saw on online skating forums all these screencaps of skater Y's pre-rotation issues, so I'm totes going to take that into account the next time I judge them."

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The best judges shouldn’t but funnily enough, I once sat with the TP at some local competition, and during ice resurfacing one of them said something along the lines of „Have any of you seen those videos where they showed how Shoma Uno prerotates his jumps“ (I’m paraphrasing of course).
This is just anecdotal of course, but I remember being amused by that remark and a little surprised, too. But then again, none of those TP members had ever attended a higher level international competition, except for one of them who had judged at europeans once afaik (not in singles though).

CanadianSkaterGuy said:

There is nothing in the rules about "pre-rotation". Like the term "pre-rotation" isn't even in the Handbook. There is a cheated take-off, but that is primarily with respect to toe axels. A "clear forward take off" isn't specific in terms of whether that's referring to the skater's feet, their toe pick, their whole blade, their torso, their leg, etc. And it needs to be made more clear and needs to be determined in regular real-time, according to the rules. Plus, when it comes to underrotation/downgrades, "In all doubtful cases the Technical Panel should act to the benefit of the skater." so that could explain why it's not a huge issue. While many of us tend to say that a more rotated landing can make up for a more cheated takeoff, I don't think a tech panel would look at a legitimately cheated takeoff and be like "Well, they had well under a quarter rotation on landing, so overall the jump was rotated sufficiently." Shoma's 4F UR calls at the GPF were absolutely correct, however, that's not the panel "finally" clocking him for a pre-rotation or anything like that... the landings were simply UR (he can and has done them better), and he deserved the UR call for those particular attempts. Clearly the jumps were being scrutinized, so if the tech panel deemed his 4F to have a "cheated take-off", then he would have received a downgrade on the jump.

Frankly, I don't even think a tech panel is considering pre-rotation on a flip/lutz/salchow/loop (certainly not the way some folks do online)...

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When I used the term ‚PR‘ in my post, naturally I was referring to PR as defined by the posters here, within the context of this thread’s topic.

All I wanted to say was, that Shoma’s 4F at GPF looked indeed UR to me, so there’s no reason to suspect that the TP took any type of ‚PR‘/cheated take-off into consideration.

annajzdf said:

I assume you mean his 4F from this season's GPF? I've heard people wonder about that one, if the TP possibly took his PR into acccount, but actually, if you ask me, it did look UR in the replay (once again, as far as the low video quality allowed me to see). So yeah, my guess is that this was just a regular UR call.

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It was a normal UR call. If the TP were to call a jump excessively pre-rotated, the jump would be downgraded, not marked UR.

As far as I know, no TP has ever downgraded a jump based on PR rather than being short on the landing.

Metis said:

It was a normal UR call. If the TP were to call a jump excessively pre-rotated, the jump would be downgraded, not marked UR.

As far as I know, no TP has ever downgraded a jump based on PR rather than being short on the landing.

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I think this happened a few times early in IJS, but the problem is it’s hard to identify through protocols, since they only had “<“ calls and downgrades were actually just downgraded to the lower jump, until after the 2009-2010 season.

The 2009/2010 tech handbook had this interesting bit:

The quarter mark of landing is the border line to identify a cheated jump. There needs to be more than 1⁄4 revolution missing.
The Technical Specialist will identify any jump that is cheated by more than one quarter turn on the landing as the downgraded jump. For example, a triple Lutz that rotates 2.5 turns by the foot placement and 2.75 turns of the upper body will be called as a triple attempt and then downgraded.

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where distinguishing between the amount of rotations based on foot placement vs the upper body seems reminiscent of the current PR arguments about where counting rotations should start. But the question is considered separately from the “forward takeoff” section.

cohen-esque said:

I think this happened a few times early in IJS, but the problem is it’s hard to identify through protocols, since they only had “<“ calls and downgrades were actually just downgraded to the lower jump, until after the 2009-2010 season.

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Yeah, that’s why I said “as far as I know” — until ISU began separating URs and downgrades, it’s hard to infer much from protocols. :/

The 2009/2010 tech handbook had this interesting bit: where distinguishing between the amount of rotations based on foot placement vs the upper body seems reminiscent of the current PR arguments about where counting rotations should start. But the question is considered separately from the “forward takeoff” section.

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Given that the toe loop in combination is identified as the most commonly cheated jump, I wonder if the guidance on forward takeoff wasn’t written with it specifically in mind.

Anyone able to help me find the current handbook/guidelines regarding Jump GOE and BV?

I swear I was using this link recently but now it’s giving me an error 404 message?
https://www.isu.org/inside-single-p...ting-2/17594-tp-handbook-singles-2018-19/file


What I’m trying to clear up if judges are still are able to apply “lack of rotation” and then what the amount of GOE they should reduce. I swear it was -1 GOE but also no sign given in the protocols. This is where I was assuming pre-rotation was covered under this rule but now I’m questioning if I’m misrembering. It would explain why we don’t always see it but could explain +1 or +2 GOE on jumps with noticable pre-rotation.


Anyway.....any link to the current guidelines for this season would be greatly appreciated.

Sam-Skwantch said:

Anyone able to help me find the current handbook/guidelines regarding Jump GOE and BV?

I swear I was using this link recently but now it’s giving me an error 404 message?
https://www.isu.org/inside-single-p...ting-2/17594-tp-handbook-singles-2018-19/file


What I’m trying to clear up if judges are still are able to apply “lack of rotation” and then what the amount of GOE they should reduce. I swear it was -1 GOE but also no sign given in the protocols. This is where I was assuming pre-rotation was covered under this rule but now I’m questioning if I’m misrembering. It would explain why we don’t always see it but could explain +1 or +2 GOE on jumps with noticable pre-rotation.


Anyway.....any link to the current guidelines for this season would be greatly appreciated.

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https://www.isu.org/docman-document...munications/17142-isu-communication-2168/file


Nothing about PR is explicitly covered. If a judge was so inclined, I would think they’d go for “poor takeoff” over “lacking rotation (no sign).” (I’ve always personally interpreted the point of the “no sign” bullets as giving the judges leeway to say “screw that” in response to the tech panel missing an obvious error.)

cohen-esque said:

https://www.isu.org/docman-document...munications/17142-isu-communication-2168/file


Nothing about PR is explicitly covered. If a judge was so inclined, I would think they’d go for “poor takeoff” over “lacking rotation (no sign).” (I’ve always personally interpreted the point of the “no sign” bullets as giving the judges leeway to say “screw that” in response to the tech panel missing an obvious error.)

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Thanks...I see it specifically mentions the Euler which is why I sort of assumed it addressed PR. Looks like lack of rotation is a -1 or -2 from any positive GOE. So you think this is just for hooked landings then?

I agree they could apply PR to poor takeoff too.

Donthe judges know when UR’s are called though at the time they are inputting the GOE?

Sam-Skwantch said:

Thanks...I see it applies memtions the Euler to which is why I sort of assumed it addressed PR. Looks like lack of rotation is a -1 or -2 from any positive GOE. So you think this is just for hooked landings then?

I agree they could apply PR to poor takeoff too.

Donthe judges know when UR’s are called though at the time they are inputting the GOE?

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I mean I suppose it depends on how the individual judge views it, but to me it’s because of the association with errors that are called by the panel (bad edge but no call, under but no call) that I think it’s about the more standard types of errors.

I think some skaters don’t really jump the Euler at all so much as they just sort of hop over onto the other foot while turning. It’s actually really, really common to see Eulers being short on the landing: they tend to rack up lots of “<“ and “<<“ calls.

Yup...Eulers and 2t. I think the PR on we see 2t in combos is probably the worst that people get away with consistently and considering the difficulty I would think there would be more outcry over it.

Now I’d like to see some examples of these jumps slowed down and analyzed just for fun

This pre-rotation debate looks funny at this point. First of all, its physically impossible to 'pre-rotate' that amount of degrees someones claim here and to make a jump with that. Jumps which look good in the air and on the landing can't be prerotated that much. Second, 'pre-rotation' doesn't exist as a legitime concept and i never heard someone in official figure skating community used it except British Eurosports commentators once for some of Satoko's jumps. Third and the most important thing, those jumps which look more prerotated are just judged by other merrits. They are often lacking in other qualities as a product of that so they are awarded with less GOEs as a consequence. And some judges may even give negative GOE's if take off of those jumps didn't look acceptable enough.

CanadianSkaterGuy said:

IMO, tech panels are probably only looking for toe axels

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That's my impression.

(which are super rare,

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Less rare at lower levels.
But for skaters who usually have acceptable technique, occasionally they might toe axel to get a required combination on a bad landing of a first jump.

maaaybe seeing skaters who skid to a standstill on their axel takeoff foot and might be facing backwards -- although I've yet to see any example of a skater who does this egregiously, current or historically,

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Again, this is rare. Skidded takeoffs on triple axels are not that rare, but more than a quarter turn on the ice, so that the blade actually glides backward before taking off, is not something typically seen.

It's more likely to be seen with low-level skaters turning before jumping beginner single axels. Or turning forward from back inside to forward outside before leaving the ice for an intended double salchow.
I've seen very occasionally this from some adult skaters . . . including myself.

Or for very beginning jumpers, turning toward forward before jumping on a single salchow as well as a single toe loop.

Sam-Skwantch said:

Thanks...I see it specifically mentions the Euler which is why I sort of assumed it addressed PR. Looks like lack of rotation is a -1 or -2 from any positive GOE.

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Or from 0, or in addition to negative GOE for any other reason.

Donthe judges know when UR’s are called though at the time they are inputting the GOE?

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During the program, the tech panel just calls the jump as attempted (and one of them says "review" if they feel the need to review it) and the judges input their GOEs based on what they saw in real time.

After the end of the program, the tech panel reviews the jumps that were flagged for review and adds the < or << (or ! or e) calls at that time. The judges can see the added symbols on their screens and should adjust their GOEs as necessary before finalizing their full set of marks.

Sam-Skwantch said:

Yup...Eulers and 2t. I think the PR on we see 2t in combos is probably the worst that people get away with consistently and considering the difficulty I would think there would be more outcry over it.

Now I’d like to see some examples of these jumps slowed down and analyzed just for fun

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When I first started watching skating, I can remember being distinctly confused about why doubles only turned once, lol.

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I’m almost positive that I’ve seen double axel-salchow morphs once or twice on the JGP, or even maybe a novice competition.

I have also, once, seen a double flip that began like a salchow, went heavily on the inside edge until facing forwards, and then put the foot down and pushed off. Looked very similar to a toe axel with the feet reversed, with an awful lean. (But in hindsight, it might have actually just been an attempt at Salchow using the other entry, and something very weird happened.j

Sam-Skwantch said:

Yup...Eulers and 2t. I think the PR on we see 2t in combos is probably the worst that people get away with consistently and considering the difficulty I would think there would be more outcry over it.

Now I’d like to see some examples of these jumps slowed down and analyzed just for fun

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Yes, but thats why 2T and Eulers have very low Base Value, they are the jumps which require much less time and rotations in the air

Baron Vladimir said:

Yes, but thats why 2T and Eulers have very low Base Value, they are the jumps which require much less time and rotations in the air

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It's more that if you get caught UR a 2T, whatever high value jump you're doing loses value in GOE. If you do a 4T-2T<, for instance, your overall GOE is going to be lower than without the UR and that's costly.

Metis said:

It was a normal UR call. If the TP were to call a jump excessively pre-rotated, the jump would be downgraded, not marked UR.

As far as I know, no TP has ever downgraded a jump based on PR rather than being short on the landing.

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After some searching, I'm reasonably sure that Mai Asada got 3Lz+2T< calls due to her forward takeoff at 2007 Skate America SP (also under on the landing, but that was ignored on other jumps) and almost certainly at 2006 Cup of China SP (where the landing was fine). Both of those being blatant toe axels, not toepick PR.

annajzdf said:

But they already do spend time on reviewing some umps (and other technical elements) that looked ‚suspicious‘ in real time (usually when a landing was scratchy, looked somewhat hooked or created a lot of snow, I assume). And it averages out, because for some skaters there will be no jumps to review, with others maybe half of the jumps need to be looked at again…
Unless your point was to check every single jump of every skater, to make it as fair as possible and treat every competitor the same way? That of course would create quite a delay in the scoring.

Speaking of reviewing jumps, what are the current rules on that? I thought it said that they’re only allowed to assess jumps in real time (except for edge calls I think…) ? Did that rule change?




The best judges shouldn’t but funnily enough, I once sat with the TP at some local competition, and during ice resurfacing one of them said something along the lines of „Have any of you seen those videos where they showed how Shoma Uno prerotates his jumps“ (I’m paraphrasing of course).
This is just anecdotal of course, but I remember being amused by that remark and a little surprised, too. But then again, none of those TP members had ever attended a higher level international competition, except for one of them who had judged at europeans once afaik (not in singles though).




When I used the term ‚PR‘ in my post, naturally I was referring to PR as defined by the posters here, within the context of this thread’s topic.

All I wanted to say was, that Shoma’s 4F at GPF looked indeed UR to me, so there’s no reason to suspect that the TP took any type of ‚PR‘/cheated take-off into consideration.

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Yup this is what I was referring to. You would spend ages scrutinizing jumps. And if a tech caller flagged a jump as pre rotated but didn't do it to anyone else that would be shady. Tech callers flag jumps based on realtime full viewing - I don't think they're watching a cam of just the skater's skates in closeup. So a pre rotation would be hard to spot unless you were looking for it like Miyahara's flip, but in that case you're predisposed to looking for an error which is fine if you're a fan but not if you're a judge. On the flip side, when a judge is judging Tomoe for example they can't automatically assume none of her jumps will be pre rotated (eg she could mis-place her pick or something). Judges should mark jumps as they are done on the day, not based on previous competitions and reputations.

Can you imagine having to slow down every skater who jumped to check for pre rotation? Especially in the ladies events where so many ladies rely on some pre rotation to complete their flips and lutzes. You'd never finish a competition lol.

It's hard enough to hold tech specialists to task but pre rotation assessment adds an unnecessary layer of complexity. I'd much rather just see it reflected in lowered GOE and the < or << or clean rotation be determined by the landing.

The talk about assessing pre-rotation as "taking too long" is nothing but incompetence. If you aren't able to do it, then you aren't a skilled enough judge for the job. There are people who can do it, and it SHOULD be done at the same time as assessing landings anyway, because you need to measure the amount of rotation between takeoff and landing. Trying to ignore the fact of where a skater leaves the ice and then lands is like trying to decide how long it would take to drive somewhere, without first looking at where you are leaving from. For example, it might normally take you 30 minutes to drive to work from your house. But if you drive there from a friend's house or the grocery store, it might take 20 or 40 minutes, depending on where those places are in relation to where you work.

As I've said a million times, excess pre-rotation on a jump is like competing in a 500 meter race without actually beginning at the starting line. If you walk up to the 50 meter line before the race starts, then you are only actually running 450 meters, rather than 500 meters that everyone else is doing.

The difference is very clear in looking at jumps from the past as compared to the present. If you look at skaters from the 1980's or early 90's, there was virtually nobody with excessive pre-rotation, or even any pre-rotation at all. Jumps generally looked more majestic back then, exactly because people were not cheating the entrances and were first jumping UP before rotating, completing the rotation properly in the air and creating a more pleasing picture with the jump. Jumping techniques have changed for a wide variety of reasons since then, but the main reason for the excessive pre-rotation now is because the rules of the sport have been unclear and people have been getting too much credit for these lesser quality jumps.

Baron Vladimir said:

This pre-rotation debate looks funny at this point. First of all, its physically impossible to 'pre-rotate' that amount of degrees someones claim here and to make a jump with that.

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Not true at all. There are skaters who frequently pre-rotate 3/4 of a turn and it's very possible to pre-rotate even more and do the jump. The ability to jump comes from pushing with your legs and anyone can do a jump from a standstill, on the ice or off it. You won't get the same amplitude jumping in this way, but you get enough to complete rotations for a triple, since you are cheating the rotation to begin with and swinging yourself into the rotation faster, rather than first jumping and then turning.

I can put my toepick into the ice and do a full turn before jumping, same for off the ice. It's extremely rare that anyone in competition has done a full turn cheat like this, but in weird circumstances after a bad landing and trying to go into a toeloop, you may see people do a wonky takeoff like this as they reach their toepick around from a standstill and spin off the ice for the jump. Or for example Mai Asada had this kind of extremely cheated toeloop entrance, where you can see they really do leave the ice a full turn into the jump with their toepick, as they step over completely to the other foot and actually turn all the way around, back to where they started, before leaving the ice - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ97p7BAxbY&t=30s