Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Human Error

I've been watching and rewatching figure skating - US Nationals, Canadian Championships, European Championships, but
Prince Regent and Guardian of the Sovereign
Steve Bannon
mostly I've been watching the end of the United States. I thought the U.S. had a shot of lasting as long as the Roman Empire (507 years) but the world has speeded up (both "sped" and "speeded" are correct).

From following Europeans on the skating boards, I realized a lot of P/C fans couldn't spot these errors:






I felt the judges were prepared to leave P/C third if not for rocky outings from Cappellini Lanotte and Bobrova Soloviev in the fd. P/C are still protected some, what with being out of sync, non-matching lines/angles and slightly off time (most of this happening during direction changes) still being viewed as a feature with them. As well, there was a lot of peculiar two-footing from Gabriella in P/Cs fd, but, bygones.

Eric Radford and Meghan Duhamel think their TES should get higher scores, myopic to the fact that if their TES actually showed off their skating or was at least accompanied by skating, it might. Their quads don't do that, not to mention their quads are more jumps than throws. That said, I found this quote from Eric interesting:
......"I believe there are specific people in the skating world and the [International Skating Union] who are afraid of a runaway effect — of a skater coming along that can do so much technically that they're going to beat the most artistic. But if you eliminate that aspect of it and you say 'Oh no, the artistry has to be the most important,' I would be the first person to say that you should take figure skating out of the Olympics. Because it's not a real sport if you take that away."
Let's set aside the part about "artistry". There is no "artistry". There is TES and skating skills and it's really ok if skating skills are the most important part of the sport of figure skating.
This part:
......"I believe there are specific people in the skating world and the [International Skating Union] who are afraid of a runaway effect — of a skater coming along that can do so much ...
*I* suspect a reason Davis White were railroaded to gold is because specific people in the skating world disliked that Scott and Tessa were in another universe of ability than anyone else in the sport and, if scored correctly, would have run away with every gold medal for ensuing ten years. These specific people did their utmost to let Scott and Tessa know their showing off was unwelcome, which is why VM now have the programs they have, with TES that accessible to other skaters, but it's ok if VM win on execution. When an ice dance team had unobtainable, unreachable TES, as VM had, seamlessly wedded to nearly unreachable execution, as VM had, the sport saw that as a problem. It didn't want the team to run away with everything, even though that was what VM earned on the ice.

As to the recently concluded European Championships, I believe the French Fed complained, either inside the hour that the rules allow or perhaps outside the time limits, that the judges had failed to properly deduct for an over-rotated choreographic lift from Cappellini and Lanotte's score. I read this:
4. Protest restrictions
A. Figure Skating
i) No protests against evaluations by Referees, Judges and the Technical Panel (Technical Controller, Technical Specialists, Data & Replay Operator) of Skaters’ performances are allowed;
ii) Protests against results are permitted only in the case of incorrect mathematical calculation. A wrong identification of an element or of a level of difficulty, although it results in a lower or higher score, is a human error and not an incorrect mathematical calculation;
Even if it's 8 years where in every single competition a particular team that skates two footed on wobbly edges and just as often on flats is scored higher than a team that is brilliant, do not protest. It is human error. This must be why we don't get to see the video the judges use.  If a skater consistently is scored as if he/she made the key point when they didn't, it doesn't matter. It's human error, so it's really pointless for fans to see the that video.

The regulations were posted by a fan on one of the skating forums. I'm taking them at face value and will be very happy if that's a mistake on my part.


1 comment:

  1. Okay, that twizzle was out of sync; she put her free leg down earlier than he did. And in that first gif, the contrast between their free legs is annoying--his is clearly off and away from the ice, hers barely off the ground. V/M's return was certainly a kick in the butt for them, because people can't give P/C the usual pass despite mistakes.

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