Thursday, January 28, 2010

formspring.me

What do you think about the recent talk of inflated scores?

I'm one of those people that have been bringing up these inflated scores...

I've learned this season that each competition is in it's own 'Scoring Bubble' if you will. It is impossible to compare scores from one competition to the next because the range of scores change so drastically.

We can't look at, for example, Patrick Chan's score from the recent Canadian Nationals and compare it to, say, Jeremy Abbott's from U.S. Nationals. Patrick's score was higher than Jeremy's, but Jeremy skated much better. If they were in the same competition, I think Jeremy's score would have been higher than Patrick's.

This inconsistency in scoring is one of the greatest problems with the judging system.

So, there have been lots of inflated scores and I don't think they really mean anything. They serve no other purpose but to give skaters false optimism and a media bump.

Have a skating question?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes, unfortunately this scoring system makes subjectiveness of figure skating as a sport even more evident. Before you have 5.8, 5.9. On average, skaters in general get the same scores throughout the season. But with this "new" scoring system, we see people unjustly raking in high or low scores. But even with the flaw, I still like the new scoring system better except I think certain jumps such as Van der Perren's triple triple triple should worth a lot more than the credit it is given now.

Anonymous said...

Well if anything it's obvious the national competitions dish out gratuitous points to the top skaters - Plushenko, Rochette, Asada, Flatt - and conveniently disregard technical downgrades that will come back to bite them in full force at the international level.

It's not so much the system itself as it is the inconsistent application of the judging system. The judges themselves need to reconcile the double standard between national and international competitions. And hasn't that been a problem for the previous system too? You can have a skater scoring 5.9s in national competitions as opposed to 5.7s in international ones. The gap or "inflation" just seems to be bigger with the new system because there are a lot more and bigger numbers involved, but it's pretty much the same difference in terms of how you'll be ranked. Besides, the scores in international competitions this season, the ones that really matter, have been reasonable and consistent for the most part; you just can't compare national with international levels.

Anonymous said...

Looks like Mao Asada landed 2 triple axels in the long program at 4CC, her technical is almost 69, but program component is 58ish. When was the last time she skated clean and got PCS that low?