Figure skating: yeah, I thought Flatt was a little flat.

[icarus]

Yes, I thought Rachel Flatt's gold-winning performance at Nationals was a little ... flat.

How did she win? Apparently there was a long, complicated explanation at Nationals that NBC didn't air.

The new scoring system has many, many critics. How does one score art? I agree with Evan Lysacek that Nagasu (silver) had the passionate firey performance. I blinked when Flatt won. A definite "Huh?" moment.

Still, both Flatt and Nagasu both proved they are the top women in skating, beating the old guard, Emily Hughes and Sasha Cohen, who made a play for the Olympic seats. Sasha's program was not technically difficult enough, and Emily isn't in top form.

I don't follow women's skating but Nationals was a great show. For the first time I think we're sending our best to the Olympics.

Comments

[florahart]

NBC did, in fact, talk about this at some (possibly too much) length in the subsequent broadcast of the exhibition stuff the next night.

[icarus]

Aha. I didn't catch the exhibition broadcast, thank you.

Too much length? Oh dear... *chuckles*

[lannamichaels]

That problem, and one Scott&Sandra don't seem to care about, is that Nagasu underrotates a lot. Flatt doesn't. That gave Flatt the win.

Also, Phil Hersh can **** my ****, honestly. He's written good factual articles about the sport, but his opinion pieces are full of shite and misinformation and panic-mongering. His problem is with ABC/ESPN/NBC, not with the scoring system, but he's never called on the broadcaster to change, or for the commentators to know what they're talking about, he just hates on the scoring system. In what other sport do they keep employing commentators who don't know a damn thing about the scoring and keep spreading misinformation about it and...and if I hear "there's no box for magic" one more time, I will tear my hair out. PCS is PCS, and there wasn't a box for magic under 6.0, either. And how quickly they forget that no one understood 6.0 either. Talking about standings flip-flopping? Talking about strange obscure tiebreakers? Talking about judges getting themselves into boxes with ordinals? COP is basic addition. If the general public can't understand the basics of it, that's a problem with the commentators and the broadcasters, not the system, which finally rewards what you actually do and deducts for mistakes. How many times have we heard that judges could just "ignore" something under 6.0? Well, were they ignoring that consistently, or just from the skaters they liked? How many skaters won with triples that were severely underrotated? There's an argument to be had about the way deductions are applied, but there's nothing wrong with deducting for underrotation. It keeps the sport honest.

[icarus]

Aha. Underrotating jumps is a serious problem that Evan also has on his triple axel. I'm told that's what took Kimmie Meissner out of the picture, that trying to fix her chronically underrotated jumps this late in her career caused her to completely fall apart.

And how quickly they forget that no one understood 6.0 either.

LOL. True. The COP critics say the 6.0 system made it easier for the audience to understand. Deceptively simple.

I do admit that my mom (who's an Olympics-only skating viewer just encountering the COP now) puzzles at the screen. Says she can't tell what these scores mean. At one point Scott Hamilton said, "Anything over 160 is excellent" and she perked up. But it wasn't enough. Right now the mainstream audience has no clue. Hersh is right about that.

The announcers are doing a terrible job explaining the system. It's also very complicated for the Joe Schmoe viewer and even if you can explain it to them, they lose interest halfway through.

I don't think it's the death of the sport. Figure skating is still pretty to watch. But COP comes off as a random number. It does lose and confuse people when it comes to who to root for and how their guy is doing.

Imagine I throw a paper ball at a trash can, hit the rim, but miss. Then someone tells me I got a 132.75.

A 132.75 of what? 200?

Wait, no, George in the next cubicle throws a paper ball, it goes in, and he gets a 204.6. Okay, clearly George did better than me. But what is this number?

Someone tries to explain how the scoring system takes into account my form and all these variables. My eyes glaze over.

Finally someone across the room throws me a rope, "The top score so far is 250."

Oh.

Wait. I'm still confused. What's the bottom score? I have no frame of reference as to how I did. That's what COP is like for my mom and the average viewer.

Emphasizing a skater's season's best seems to help.

I keep thinking NBC needs a simple chart with the record score for X figure skating event, the current skater's season's best, and maybe an average score for today's event. The viewer doesn't need to know the whole system, just a frame of reference as to how the skater is doing.

Skaters don't need that frame of reference. They know where they stand in the overall picture. They just want to know where the deductions came from.

[lannamichaels]

The season's best and the personal best are great for letting you compare that skater against themselves (with the caveat that there can be issues with comparing across competitions), but broadcasters tend to go, um, a little wrong about that, when they talk about nationals scores being a new personal best. They're not. Nationals scores tend to be inflated and, anyway, they don't count as personal best scores.

If you're online right now, check out http://www.isuresults.com/results/fc2010/SEG003.HTM, which is the live results from the 4CC ladies short program (and if you're not, 4CC is ongoing, so the live results pages will all have that). The ISU just put in a new kind of scoreboard, which lets you know what the skater's SB is, (if it's the LP) what their short program score is, and how much they need to beat the current skater. It's great. I wish the broadcasters would do that. "And now to skate, Mao Asada. Well, Scott, she's had a shady season so far, but as you can see, her season's best is good enough to put her into first place. She'll need a score of 60 to go into first, and remember that any lead greater than 5 [or whatever, this is ladies] points is essentially a run away." "That's right, Sandra, that's how Yu-Na Kim does it, she builds up huge leads in the short, which takes the pressure off in the free skate."


Says she can't tell what these scores mean.

The scores themselves actually mean a lot, which they didn't under 6.0. A 5.5 and a 5.7 could be the same thing under 6.0, because it was the ordinal that mattered, not the number itself.

There are threshols for good score vs. bad score vs. holy mother of god unbeatable score. ABC had a graphic about it a few years ago, where they showed thesholds for the LP, I believe it was. I wish they'd bring it back.

But it's difficult to compare scores across competitions, that's true. But that's why the protocols are so great. You can see "oh, she got a 53 when it looked so amazing? there must have been a problem with something" and see that, yeah, she downgraded a jump and didn't hold her spiral sequence long enough." And then you can look at the protocol from her next event and see that she's still downgrading, etc. Protocols are amazing, and them alone are the perfect reason why COP > 6.0. Under 6.0, you had no idea why one skater beat another skater, if it was close. You just had to trust that the judges were judging what they saw on the ice. Under COP, you can actually see the process.


What's the bottom score?

Oh, I shouldn't joke, but every time someone gets an abysmal score, it's actually kind of amusing, in an "I can't believe someone can score that low". The worst teams generally go first. If the broadcaster was any good at giving a general idea of how the competition is going, we'd see the scoreboard a lot more often (like, ever). Or, better yet, do what Eurosport does, and show the entire competition, low-scoring skaters and all.