When the result of a competition is controversial, there are always people who talk about the subjectivity of judice. In part this in true, but if the ISU has listed a series of bullets and deductions, the judges must try to give their marks according to these rules. The marks, more that the tastes of the judges, must say how an element was executed.

Until the 2017-2018 season, the highest possible mark was a +3, the lowest a -3. From the 2018-2019 season, the highest mark is a +5, the lowest a -5. Yesterday I listed all the elements in which Hanyu earned a perfect score by all the judges, all +3 or all +5. In truth is easier to receive a perfect negative score, it’s enough a fall in the short program, but I didn’t check this elements.

Today I’ve done another check. A lot of elements received only several +3, or +5 (or -3, or -5). So, how many of the highest (and lowest) marks received Hanyu in his eleven senior seasons? I checked only the international competitions. First I publish all the data with an explanation of my work, so you can know how I worked, under I publish a summary with a graph.

Column A: competition;
Column B: year;
Column C: program (short program or free skate);
Column D: number of +3 (or +5 depending of the season) Hanyu received from the judges;
Column E: number of elements performed by Hanyu. Usually it’s 7 for the short program, 13 for the free skate until the 2017/2018 season, 12 for the free skate from the 2018/2019 season, but if there’s an invalid element the number is lower;
Column F: number of the judges of the competition;
Column G: total marks. This number is the product given by the multiplication of the elements (column E) and the judges (column F);
Column H: percentage of the highest marks. For clarity, in the short program of the 2010 NHK Trophy Hanyu received one +3 among 63 marks, the percentage is 1,59%;
Column I: number of -3 (or -5) received by Hanyu;
Column J: percentage of the elements with the lowest mark;
Column K: the season that I’m considering;
Column L: number of the +3 (or +5) received by Hanyu in the whole season;
Column M: number of total marks received by Hanyu in the season;
Column N: percentage of the highest mark in the season;
Column O: number of the -3 (or -5) received by Hanyu in the whole season;
Column P: percentage of the lowest mark in the season.

The data, and the graph, are based on the columns K-P of the previous table.

Until the season 2014-2015 Hanyu didn’t receive a lot of +3. The 2014-2015 season was really unlucky with the incident at the Cup of China, that affected Hanyu for two competitions, and the problems with the urachus, so it’s normal that the marks aren’t very high. Before, the judges weren’t so accustomed to give high marks.

I checked the marks of Patrick Chan in the 2013-2014 season. Remember that at the Internationaux of France he fixed the new World records, and that both the scores that he received at the Grand Prix Final and at the Olympyc Games were higher than the scores with which he won his third World Championship in 2013, so at that time his marks were really high.

In a really good season, Chan received the 16,35% of +3, a percentage higher than the 10,77 of Hanyu, but much lower than the percentage earned by Hanyu from the 2015-2016 season. Before the highest marks were few, but in the 2015-2016 season that Hanyu broke the ISU judging system with perfect programs. In two season he earned a number impressive of +3. Only in the 2016-2017 season the numbers of +3 was lower (but much higher than before) because he struggled with the quarduple loop until the 2016 Grand Prix Final, and with the combination quadruple Salchow-triple toe loop. Two new elements lowered for a while his marks. Sure, we can also ask to ourselves how the free program of the 2017 World Championship earned only twentynine +3, the 24.79%, but we could talk at length about the marks of this program.

So the quality of the elements done by Hanyu improved, and rightly the judges has given to him high marks. What happened from the 2018-2019 season? The perfect marks almost disappeared. With the new scoring system Hanyu earned less than a third of perfect marks than the previous season. Elements that in the past earned a perfect mark, more often than not now earn a +4 and not a +5. Sure, there is also a +4 among the marks that the judges can give, but a perfect element must receive a +5, not a +4 ony because now in the the code of points exist the +4.

If we watch the bullets, Hanyu almost always accomplish the bullets from 4 to 6, the only one that sometimes he doesn’t accomplish is the 4 for the spins. And even so, if the mistake isn’t so big to deserve a deduction, there are five bullets, so it’s anyway a +5. It’s really, really rare that he don’t accomplish one of the other bullets. Sometimes he does mistakes, not always the jumps accomplish the 2 and/or the 3, and sometimes he deserves deductions. He isn’t perfect, I know it. But when he doesn’t make mistakes, he almost always deserves a +5, not a +4. So, where came from all the +4 in his scores?

The +5 are less than a third of his highest scores How it’s possible? Remember that for a 3A the difference from a +4 to a +5 is of 0.80 points, for a 4T is of 0.95 point, for a 4S is of 0.97 points. If we sums all the points that he deserves but the judges don’t give to him, the difference is big.

The last thing I looked at was whether for the other skaters in the transition from +3 to +5 the maximum marks for the GOE also decreased in the same way. I only checked three skaters, it takes time to make checks like this. I limit myself to posting the summary scheme. Alongside Hanyu, we can see the percentate of the highest mark for three skaters who were strong with the old scoring code and still are: Jason Brown, Nathan Chen and Shoma Uno (but Uno in the 2019-2020 season did some notable disaster). The 2020-2021 season was too short for a serious stat. All the percentage are lower than before (but for Hanyu if I watch the programs I don’t understand why. He did one bad program, one good program with some imperfection but some wonderful elements and two stunning programs with only one element that wansn’t perfect).

So in the first season with the new system Brown and Uno lost less than a half of the maximum mark, the percentage of Chen changed very little and Hanyu lost more than two third. We are sure that there isn’t something really wrong here?