Battle of the Sexes: TES analysis at NHK Trophy and beyond

[andromache]

If judges were directly comparing ladies to men when issuing the scores, I think we would see the ladies' PCS drop a bit, largely due to skating skills.

Men have some GREAT skaters - Hanyu, Shoma, Kolyada - are all kind of on another level compared to the top ladies as well as the other top men.

 

[tofuetoffee]

If judges were directly comparing ladies to men when issuing the scores, I think we would see the ladies' PCS drop a bit, largely due to skating skills.

Men have some GREAT skaters - Hanyu, Shoma, Kolyada - are all kind of on another level compared to the top ladies as well as the other top men.

I disagree. Some of the Japanese ladies like Satoko have excellent skating skills, they just haven't been given the proper scores for it and that's also on the judging. Uno has exquisite skating skills and use of edges, but does a lot of crossovers and less busy work compared to Alina, but he gets good PCS. And yet in ladies doing that somehow isn't enough in order to rack points - somehow ladies skaters with good skating skills need busy programs like Alina to get to that score level. Even Nathan somehow has caught up to Satoko on PCS scores.

But I also think some elements are incomparable in men and women. Some ladies and a few men are great spinners, and what gets the levels and GOE for men isn't sometimes passable in ladies.

 

[andromache]

I disagree. Some of the Japanese ladies like Satoko have excellent skating skills, they just haven't been given the proper scores for it and that's also on the judging. Uno has exquisite skating skills and use of edges, but does a lot of crossovers and less busy work compared to Alina, but he gets good PCS. And yet in ladies doing that somehow isn't enough in order to rack points - somehow ladies skaters with good skating skills need busy programs like Alina to get to that score level. Even Nathan somehow has caught up to Satoko on PCS scores.

But I also think some elements are incomparable in men and women. Some ladies and a few men are great spinners, and what gets the levels and GOE for men isn't sometimes passable in ladies.

I think Satoko is the only one who comes close to the best men in terms of skating skills, but I think she lacks the speed compared to the men. But I do agree that judges seem to care much less about transitions/complexity for the men than they do for the ladies.

Good point about the spins though! The bar for what makes a good spin is just lower for the men.

 

[Mrs. P]

I think Satoko is the only one who comes close to the best men in terms of skating skills, but I think she lacks the speed compared to the men. But I do agree that judges seem to care much less about transitions/complexity for the men than they do for the ladies.

Good point about the spins though! The bar for what makes a good spin is just lower for the men.

It's interesting that a man having exceptionally good spins is usually downplayed and the comparison to a lady there can sometimes be pejorative. Like if you're a good at spins or at step sequences, you're not taken seriously cause those are skills "ladies" are good at. Which is funny cause they are part of the TES score too.

 

[andromache]

It's interesting that a man having exceptionally good spins is usually downplayed and the comparison to a lady there can sometimes be pejorative. Like if you're a good at spins or at step sequences, you're not taken seriously cause those are skills "ladies" are good at. Which is funny cause they are part of the TES score too.

Are you thinking specifically of Jason Brown? That's who your post is making me think of.

 

[Mrs. P]

Are you thinking specifically of Jason Brown? That's who your post is making me think of.

Sure, he’s one example. But I was trying talk generally and not really make it about any one skater.

And here’s the thing, if a lady do a bad spin, people generally don’t go and say, oh look how bad the spin is, so-so male skater did it so much better.

All that said, I get why someone being exceptionally good at spins or steps, man or woman, doesn’t compare to ladies completing super difficult jumps, but I’m lamenting that good spins and steps aren’t appreciated more. I’ll probably start a post!

 

[Caustica]

Sure, he’s one example. But I was trying talk generally and not really make it about any one skater.

And here’s the thing, if a lady do a bad spin, people generally don’t go and say, oh look how bad the spin is, so-so male skater did it so much better.

All that said, I get why someone being exceptionally good at spins or steps, man or woman, doesn’t compare to ladies completing super difficult jumps, but I’m lamenting that good spins and steps aren’t appreciated more. I’ll probably start a post!

I remember a while back there were quite a few comments about how Adam Rippon's layback was better than many ladies'.

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

I always enjoy watching the girls catch up and in some cases surpass the boys!!!

Anna Gasser just did that earlier today with a triple cork on a massive booter :shocked:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqIiRIYF3yh/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=12oi90mnsbbf4

I don’t care what sport it is...I pull for the girls!! Anna literaly flipped the world of snowboarding upside down

 

[NymphyNymphy]

You can totally see the men's field struggling. The quad-fest really destroys the body. What if a guy wants to keep to do triples instead but give us a gorgeous spiral sequence? He would drop to 25th for not having a quad. Just sad. If I had a son, I would never let him skate competitively. The women's field is edging toward quad-fest too. Arthritis at 15 is not healthy. ISU seriously needs to chill with the quads.

 

[Spirals for Miles]

Jason won the bronze medal at 4CC last year without a single quad in sight...

 

[Raomina]

Since my post was moved here even though it wasn't meant as a comparison between ladies and men, I thought I might as well just share the rest of the plots for other skaters and events here so that full comparisons can be made. As raw scores are used to calculate these measures, I guess they can be directly compared between men and ladies as well.

Skate America	Men	Ladies
Skate Canada	Men	Ladies
GP Helsinki	Men	Ladies
NHK Trophy	Men	Ladies

Std = standard deviation (measure of variation of raw scores between judges).
Mean = average of raw scores between judges

 

[yume]

You can totally see the men's field struggling. The quad-fest really destroys the body. What if a guy wants to keep to do triples instead but give us a gorgeous spiral sequence? He would drop to 25th for not having a quad. Just sad. If I had a son, I would never let him skate competitively. The women's field is edging toward quad-fest too. Arthritis at 15 is not healthy. ISU seriously needs to chill with the quads.

This. Seems like people forget that it's usually harder for men. While having a 7 triples program is excellent in ladies, in men you will just struggle to qualify for the free skate in major competitions. Mostly if you come from a little fed. That's why a skater like Julian Yee worked hard to get a quad. He was a surprise 3rd in SP at SA (with the highest TES), and even if he didn't skate so well in the free, i'm sure judges noticed that he exists, and the guy can get some pretty scores if he does well at rostelecom.
You have to come from a big fed like Jason Brown, and have some luck too, to get something without quads.

 

[Mrs. P]

You have to come from a big fed like Jason Brown, and have some luck too, to get something without quads.

And it comes full-circle! It also helps that Jason has top-notch elments outside of the big jumps (and that his jumps outside the 3A/quads actually garner really good +GOE) and his skating skills/choreography is also top-notch. Certainly being from a big fed helps, but you need to have something that garner points that make up the lack of quads.

And even so, Jason's gone as far as he can without one, which is why he made the coaching change and all that jazz. Yes, he got bronze at 4CC with Boyang and Shoma there, but there were still a lot of top skaters missing.

I do think you make a good point regarding the "standard" in ladies vs. men. The lower score in men relative to the ladies simply reflects that a larger gap between those who are close to the curve to those who are far below it. In the ladies, it's just that more ladies are able to do a 7-triple, 3-3 program, so a program like Rika or Sasha Trusova is noteworthy because it's far above the curve that most ladies are at.

 

[gravy]

This thread brought a non-sequitur (sort of) thought to mind: why are men's PCS still factored at a higher rate than the women? I thought the whole point of giving them more points was to reward them for doing a longer program with more jumps. But since this season eliminated 30 seconds and a jumping pass for the men in the free skate, they're exactly the same now.

Then again it's not like the ISU is known for making well-informed and rational decisions.

 

[Baron Vladimir]

^^^
It really doesn't make sense to me. If you looking at the scores from this season, mens TES is generally lower than their PCS, while with ladies is the opposite. And Mens free programs look like they have less Choreo and Performances than ladies programs now (because of the shorter FP and longer preparation for the harder jumps). When they obviously work more for TES, why PCS now weight so more in Mens skating comparing to the ladies (which programs generaly look like their PCS should be higher than their TES) is really unlogical :confused2:

 

[lesnar001]

This thread brought a non-sequitur (sort of) thought to mind: why are men's PCS still factored at a higher rate than the women? I thought the whole point of giving them more points was to reward them for doing a longer program with more jumps. But since this season eliminated 30 seconds and a jumping pass for the men in the free skate, they're exactly the same now.

Then again it's not like the ISU is known for making well-informed and rational decisions.

I believe it was/is an attempt to balance the TES and PCS scores.

Although there are skaters whose TES can exceed the max PCS score.

 

[bobbob]

This is not really a good comparison. First of all, NHK featured several top women skaters, while the men's field was rather lacking in depth. Additionally, as mentioned, while men's PCS is factored as 2.0/1.0 instead of 1.6/0.8, the PCS is not evaluated in the same way--men's PCS emphasizes speed, power, jump difficulty etc. more, while women's PCS probably heavily emphasizes flexibility, grace, etc. If Alina were a man she would not receive the equivalent of 93 PCS (higher than everyone except --maybe-- Yuzu) simply because her jump content was far too weak and her speed across the ice is not adequate compared to other men. Perhaps just the technical score can be compared, in which case the women did do well but overall still trail, understandably so.

 

[eppen]

Looking at the TES and PCS in the juniors this season is interesting in the discussion between TES/PCS and who gets what. The connection between the two seems to exist to a certain extent - ie more technical difficulty gets also more PCS. But only to a certain extent.

In the junior series men and ladies are doing very similar things, because there are no quads in the short and relatively few of the guys attempt quads or even have stable 3As in their programs. In the short four different boys have the Top 4 TES scores and then its Trusova with two scores, Scherbakova fits in the top 10 as well. Kostornaya is a little lower, but still in the top 15 despite not having quads or a 3A. In the PCS, Camden Pulkinen gets around 36 for his performances to match his second best TES scores. The highest TES score for Mozalev gets 33+ for PCS. In the ladies, when you factor the scores equally to men, you get 38.47 for Kostornaya, 38.35 for Trusova and 37.36 for Scherbakova, all better than any of the men. So, I don't really know how these girls would be scored if they skated in the same competition with the boys. The younger guys tend to be pretty terrible in the PCS department IMO...

In addition, there are male skaters who don't have quads and whose 3As are shaky also, most notably Jason Brown and Deniss Vasiljevs. Their PCS are very high compared to their TES - just look at the plots that were posted earlier for each GP competition this year. Both guys bombed their FSs especially and still scored high. So, TES is part of the equation, but not absolutely necessary for the PCS score. In addition, I don't think there are any rules separately for men and women in the ISU rulebooks on judging, so they would have to be judged equally and on the same criteria.

During the last Olympic cycle, the PCS madness was high as we all know. It started with Patrick Chan in the fall of 2013 (before that he did get fairly high scores compared to the others, but not anywhere near as high as that TEB FS score of 96,50) and then extended to Hanyu in the GP final and went on from there until this summer. But if you look at the list of high scorers (eg Rink Results has that data at your fingertips with just a few clicks) before the change of rules this year, the top 20 in PCS in both SP and FS consists of basically just three names: Yuzuru Hanyu, Javier Fernandez and Patrick Chan. Shoma Uno gets one score in both cases, 18th and 20th respectively. In Top 50 SP, Jason Brown is in 39, otherwise it's the four guys mentioned before. In Top 50 FS there is a bit more selection with Daisuke Takahashi, Evgeni Plushenko, Jason Brown and Nathan Chen with one high score each in addition to the top four. What this indicates is that there are some men who get very high PCS scores, but there are not very many of them. Each of the guys has high technical difficulty, but if you look at the highest TES score in FS, then you have Nathan Chen on top, Boyang Jin in the Top 10, even Vincent Zhou in the Top 15.

In the ladies, the similar historic record features a lot more variety - Medvedeva and Kostner dominate somewhat, but there are ten other ladies in the list of Top 50. The top and lowest scores in that list are just slightly below the men's when factored in the same way. So, more ladies get high PCS scores than men with Sotnikova and Kim as the only ones who did not continue after Sochi. In the TES side, until this season, Zagitova ruled.

Because of the technical stagnation in ladies - everybody really has the same layouts - ladies have had to make sure that the overall quality and the PCS is high in order to be competitive. In men, the quads have made the TES more important apart from some some old school guys. So, overall, I would think that the current ladies would do just fine in the PCS side if they were competing with men.

E

 

[Shanshani]

On the ladies vs men's PCS discussion, I actually found that outside of the top ladies, ladies do in fact receive lower raw PCS scores, or at least they did at 2018 Olys. I refactored ladies PCS scores to match men and then ranked them by order of average PCS score between the short and the free (with the free being weighed twice as much as the short). You can find the rankings here. Men and women go back and forth near the top, but the man with the lowest PCS score still scored almost 9 points higher than the lowest scoring woman (out of those who qualified for the FS anyway), and higher than 11 women in total. Non-top men are clustered around the low 8s, whereas non-top women are clustered much more around 6s and 7s

 

[lzxnl]

It is curious that Rika's scaled FS score would have won the FS at Rostelecom. Then again, Yuzuru essentially had 5 jumping passes.