In the midst of the drama around the hypothetical age increases, people have generally agreed that figure skating scoring needs to be tweaked so that artistry and presentation are valued more equally and so that the ladies field isn't dominated by pre-pubescent girls whose skating's sole selling point is the number of quads. A potentially controversial idea came to mind:
What if PCS was, like GOE, one big final multiplicative factor? Convert the PCS percentage to a multiplier. For starters, it provides an alternative scoring mechanism for skaters to whom quad jumps don't come naturally. Here's some numbers.
Then, consider a fairly strong 7-triple skater with a TES of 76 and strong components of 70/80, or a multiplier of 0.875 to give a total score 67.5. Compare now with Trusova scoring a TES of 100. Suppose her components are judged a bit more harshly; 60/80. This would give her a total score of 75. Now, she still beats the 7-triple skater, which is reasonable, but the margin of victory is much smaller than under the current system, and suggests that if you want to go for just quads at the expense of presentation/artistry, you better hit them all to win. I.e. if Trusova falls on one quad, her TES drops by around 6, fall deduction of 1, presentation score will drop a bit, and so she likely isn't going to win. Thus, it would then be better for her to work on raising that component score first.
Pros:
1. More incentive to balance out work on TES and components
2. Skaters that are prodigiously talented in either aspect can still compete and score well
Cons:
1. PCS scoring can be opaque, to say the least, and easily manipulated. We would need separate PCS judges
2. Scoring at lower levels might be disproportionately affected by PCS, when tiny changes in PCS become much larger multipliers
Thoughts? Would love to hear people's comments!
What if PCS was, like GOE, one big final multiplicative factor? Convert the PCS percentage to a multiplier. For starters, it provides an alternative scoring mechanism for skaters to whom quad jumps don't come naturally. Here's some numbers.
Then, consider a fairly strong 7-triple skater with a TES of 76 and strong components of 70/80, or a multiplier of 0.875 to give a total score 67.5. Compare now with Trusova scoring a TES of 100. Suppose her components are judged a bit more harshly; 60/80. This would give her a total score of 75. Now, she still beats the 7-triple skater, which is reasonable, but the margin of victory is much smaller than under the current system, and suggests that if you want to go for just quads at the expense of presentation/artistry, you better hit them all to win. I.e. if Trusova falls on one quad, her TES drops by around 6, fall deduction of 1, presentation score will drop a bit, and so she likely isn't going to win. Thus, it would then be better for her to work on raising that component score first.
Pros:
1. More incentive to balance out work on TES and components
2. Skaters that are prodigiously talented in either aspect can still compete and score well
Cons:
1. PCS scoring can be opaque, to say the least, and easily manipulated. We would need separate PCS judges
2. Scoring at lower levels might be disproportionately affected by PCS, when tiny changes in PCS become much larger multipliers
Thoughts? Would love to hear people's comments!