I want to know your honest opinion. How should be judged these jumps? Since I don’t want the appreciation – or non-appreciation – for the skater to influence the judgment, in my screeonshots you can see almost only his legs.

This is a 4T.

This is a 4S. With a Salchow, it’s normal that a skater prerotate a bit, so I judge his direction from the first screenshot. But which direction is he facing when he lands?

This is a 3A.

I can be wrong, but on the toe loop for me the skater did only three rotations in the air. And every time when he land, he is facing ahead, only when he is on the ice he rotate backward.

These are the whole screenshots. The 4T:

The 4S is the first jump of the combination 4S+3T.

The 3A is the first jump of the combination 3A+2T.

As someone has recognized it, this is Vincent Zhou’s free skate at the Nebelhorn Trophy 2021. All this jumps were called q.

Really precisely 90° are lacking? The skaters try to do jumps in which are lacking less than 90°. Which is the probability to land exactly at the 90° mark? Not 85°, this is a jump fully rotated. Not at 95°, this is a jump underrotated. Exactly at 90°.

Sometimes happen to see things that defies the laws of probability. And what Zhou did is way beyond any law of probability that I know. Or perhaps members of the Technical Panel have serious problems with their eyes and doesn’t know what brobability means… This is the protocol:

I tried to do the screenshots for the other jumps but I wasn’t able to do a clear image of the landing. I didn’t tried to do screenshot for the short program, but this is the protocol:

I ignored the euler, which is a particular jump for which there is no call of q nor that of underrotated. The euler can be only or fully rotated, or, if the skater do a bad mistake, downgraded.

Zhou received the call of the q in 2 of 4 jumps in the short program, in 5 of 10 jumps in the free skate. The 50%. An incredible accuracy, I would almost say that he deserves an award for being so precise in his mistakes.

The Technical Controller was the Deutsch Anja Rist, the Technical Specialist the Japanese Shin Amano, the Assistant Technical Specialist the French Fernand Fedronik, and I would like that them will explain how Zou could be so precise. And… attention… only Zhou was so precise in the mistakes.

I checked all the jumps of the competitions. I didn’t watched if there was a fall, a step out, the edge of the flip and the lutz, if it was a single, or double, or triple or quadruple. I only watched how were called the rotations. The skaters are ordered in the rank of the short program, I started to work with this protocol and I wrote the names as I read them.

My table is divided, for the short program, in jump fully rotated (column KK. I know, I have really big files), q (column KL), < (column KM), << (column KN), invalidated (column KO). I did the same for the free skate (columns KP-KT). The column KU is the sum of the columns KK-KN and KP-KS, I excluded only the invalidated jumps because for them the Technical Panel say nothing about the rotations. The column KV is the sum of the column KL and KQ, that is the jumps that received the q call. The column KV is the percentage of q call. Zhou’s percentage is 50% (column KW and, again, KZ), all the other skaters together is only 6,15% (column KZ). To me is a really big difference. Under the table I’ll do some other reflections.

I said to me that perhaps I was a little unfair to compare Zhou with all the other skaters, so I excluded all the skaters that had zero calls on their jumps (columns LB-LF). Their percentage grew to 8,82%, still a really big difference. Again, perhaps I was a little unfair, so I excluded all the underrotated jumps with the reasoning that an underrotate is really different from a jump landed around the 90° mark (columns LG-LK). Their percentage grew to 9,02%. there’s no way to have a little difference.

Ok, I can’t compare him to all the other skaters. What, if I watch only the skaters with the highest number of q calls? Three skaters received three calls: the Canadian Roman Sadovsky, the Hungarian Andras Csernoch and the Hong Kong skater Harrison Jon-Yen Wong. I highlightened them in bold. Sadovsky did a jump less than the others. His percentage is 23.08%, less than an half of Zhou’s percentage.

But perhaps is I that see something wrong when there is nothing. So, even if the Technical Panels were different and a true comparison can’t be done, I watched also the Women’s competition and, suprise! There’s one skater with 5 call, the Hungarian Julia Lang. I did the same table for the Women.

Lang received more q calls than any other skater beside Zhou, her percentage is 35.71%. But 35,71% for me is a lot less than 50%, and the percentage of q calls is higher in the Women’s competition, is 9,67% (instead of 6,15%) if we watch all the skaters, 9,30% if we watch all the skaters except the worst, Lang. So among the worst male skater and all the other male skaters there’s a difference in precision on landing exactly at the q mark of 43.85% , among the worst female skater and all the other female skaters there’s a difference in precision of 13,78%.

I really would like that someone can explain to me how Zhou, and only him, can be so precise in his mistakes.