"Inevitable" Winners vs. Rule Changes

There's always a tension:

The intangible qualities, qualitative qualities, wholistic impact of a whole program, etc., are often what makes a performance special, makes it transcend the technical sport, not only for fans but also for judges.

But they are the most subjective aspects being evaluated, and there will be more disagreements between judges, between fans, and between judges and fans as to which performance was best in these areas.

Speedskaters and other officials from other sports may want figure skating to downplay the qualitative, subjective aspects of the scoring. Many skaters and coaches may also want to downplay those aspects and focus on the more objective technical feats that no one can deny if they are in fact executed.

Meanwhile, others in the skating community and skating fan community want to reward the qualitative, artistic, and wholistic areas more, and of course some skaters (often beloved of fans) want to emphasize those areas of their own performances.

How can more rewards for these aspects be built into the rules without making the scoring overly subjective and subject to judges' personal preferences?

(Assuming the absence of national bias, which brings in a whole other confounding factor.)

One thing you maybe could do in singles is add Timing as a separate PCS component. Moves that are executed in harmony with the music's structure have more artistic impact for me.

And add a scored spiral/mitf sequence, with levels and GOEs dependent that at least two of the moves be held.

maya1985 said:

It's strange to think of changing a rule just to disadvantage someone in particular:sarcasm:

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Ever hear of the Zayak rule? Also, the rules regarding backloading were changed to avoid totally backloaded programs like Zagitova's DQ free skate.

dorispulaski said:

One thing you maybe could do in singles is add Timing as a separate PCS component. Moves that are executed in harmony with the music's structure have more artistic impact for me.

And add a scored spiral/mitf sequence, with levels and GOEs dependent that at least two of the moves be held.

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I agree that well skated program with excellent timing can be observed as 'more artistic'. But not always and not necessarily. For example, Alina had perfect timing in her Don Quijote program, and her skating still looked as it is projecting more technical than artistic excellence. I think skaters with very good skating skills won't have a lot of problems to express timing of the music in theirs programs - to skate and move on the right time (unless they start to make mistakes with the required elements). Expressing the musical structure or musical phrasing is part of the Composition component and it is more 'artistic' than 'technical' requirement of the Composition, i would say. Use of finesse to reflect nuancies and detals of the music (part of Interpretation) is probably the most 'artistic' category in components. (While holding the movements longer is just a personal preference of a skating style, and nothing more).

On timing: look at Sui/Han and their second throw in the FS. Now, that's timing. To the music, within the performance and everything. Point just made to illustrate some earlier comments.

The more I am reading of this thread, the more I think it was a bad decision to quantify the judging into points and world record scores. The ISU acknowledges this by not wanting to speak of WR's any more and just turn older scores into 'historical' ones and just change BV's.

I sympathise with dear old Elvis Stojko who is very much in favour of a non mathematical system. The 6.0 system led to some political disasters too (I am not going to mention which), but at least the artistic part of the sport - the part which makes it a sport to watch because I'm definitely not interested in speed sports or ball sports - got valued. Having said that, most coaches and former skaters like to know where exactly they can improve, and the 6.0 system gave nobody any handholds on that. But the 6.0 system did help in preventing rules to change to the disadavantage of one particular skater - whatever the change is intended to do officially. Well, admittedely, apart from the Zayak rule and the dress code.

Going back to P/C: I love them. Why should I want a rule change in place to put them at a disadvantage? They're good skaters, they're beautiful to watch, and technically they're pretty perfect too. Sorry for all the other teams, but I would love them to stay on top this whole quad, not to see a rule change to disadvantage them and their skills.

I don't agree with less quads but I do want them to reduce the number of jumping passes in the FS! Five would be nice, then we wouldn't be in a situation where the SP is actually more free than the free skate. Politically, this would mean valuing skaters who can think of stuff to do actually between the elements rather than merely in and out of the elements, which is what TR amounts to currently in the way too packed FS. That way "transitions in and out of elements" (a GOE bullet point) and TR (a program component) would also become easier to distinguish and less prone to double scoring. This double scoring as well as TR's tendency to influence SS is what TCC and Tutberidze both excel at exploiting, so politically speaking this probably won't change, since there's no incentive for big federations to want this.

dorispulaski said:

One thing you maybe could do in singles is add Timing as a separate PCS component. Moves that are executed in harmony with the music's structure have more artistic impact for me.

And add a scored spiral/mitf sequence, with levels and GOEs dependent that at least two of the moves be held.

Click to expand...

Timing is so subjective though. It's like the "element matches musical structure". A biased judge can easily say an element did or didn't match musical structure or had good/poor timing depending on how they felt about it. I guess that subjectivity is the same with essentially all the PCS categories but IMO timing seems to be particularly nebulous quality to assess unless it is a compulsory sequence with set timing.

gkelly said:

There's always a tension:

The intangible qualities, qualitative qualities, wholistic impact of a whole program, etc., are often what makes a performance special, makes it transcend the technical sport, not only for fans but also for judges.

But they are the most subjective aspects being evaluated, and there will be more disagreements between judges, between fans, and between judges and fans as to which performance was best in these areas.

Click to expand...

It's true .... And Yet. I agree with a former skater who said a few years ago that the IJS points system has only succeeded in multiplying the disagreements and conflicts after the fact. In the 6.0 system, this skater said (paraphrasing), fans and skaters just blamed the judges.

For myself as a fan, in 6.0 it seemed that when there was controversy, unless it was blatantly political, I could nearly always understand the POV of the majority of the judges. It seemed that in my feelings and my mind, at least, the best skater or team usually won. Even if I couldn't quantify it or didn't like it, I could see the argument. For instance, when Oksana Baiul won the Olympics over Nancy Kerrigan, I could accept the explanation that for some judges (Russians, eastern Europeans), Oksana was a warm skater engaging the emotions, while Nancy was cool and her performance was more technical. Which is ironic, considering how values have now flipped.

ladyjane said:

On timing: look at Sui/Han and their second throw in the FS. Now, that's timing. To the music, within the performance and everything. Point just made to illustrate some earlier comments.

The more I am reading of this thread, the more I think it was a bad decision to quantify the judging into points and world record scores. The ISU acknowledges this by not wanting to speak of WR's any more and just turn older scores into 'historical' ones and just change BV's.

..... , but at least the artistic part of the sport - the part which makes it a sport to watch because I'm definitely not interested in speed sports or ball sports - got valued. .....

Going back to P/C: I love them. Why should I want a rule change in place to put them at a disadvantage? They're good skaters, they're beautiful to watch, and technically they're pretty perfect too. Sorry for all the other teams, but I would love them to stay on top this whole quad, not to see a rule change to disadvantage them and their skills.

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We're on the same page, ladyjane.

CanadianSkaterGuy said:

Timing is so subjective though. It's like the "element matches musical structure". A biased judge can easily say an element did or didn't match musical structure or had good/poor timing depending on how they felt about it. I guess that subjectivity is the same with essentially all the PCS categories but IMO timing seems to be particularly nebulous quality to assess unless it is a compulsory sequence with set timing.

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I find timing the least subjective PCS component. Do you step on the beat or not?. The time signature of your music is known. The skaters I like best mind the beat.

I guess I am a child of American Bandstand, where the most frequent things the kids would say about a song was, "It has a good beat, and you can dance to it."