As someone noted, at the last European Championship Mark Kondratiuk received very high marks in components:
What kind of growth has Kondratiuk had? And could the high marks he received in the Russian national championship have influenced the international judges? To understand better, I checked his scores in components this season.
While I was there I also checked the progress of the scores assigned to Andrei Mozalev, who won the challenge for the Beijing ticket with Evgeni Semenenko. To compare what different skaters have done, I didn’t write the name of the competitions but the type. The indications I have used, for this graph as for the following ones, list an international competition (usually a challenger series, but not always), two Grand Prix competitions, the Grand Prix final (or, sometimes, another international competition, usually the Golden Spin in Zagreb), the national championship and the first ISU event, whether it is the European Championship, the Four Continents Championship or the World Championship (or, in some cases, the Olympic Games, even if they are not an ISU competition). I did not distinguish which competition it was, it was enough for me that it was the first in which each skater participated after the national championship.
After his Grand Prix competition Kondratiuk did not participate in any international competition before the national championship, so his line is incomplete. Not always all the skaters participated in all competitions. For easier reading of the graph I added the link between Kondratiuk’s scores using a thinner line.
In fact, during the season Kondratiuk’s scores have grown a lot, but even Mozalev’s are not joking. But when you do a check you really do it. I too did not do my check on all the skaters or all the competitions because I don’t have enough time. However, I do not limit myself to a partial vision, which points the finger at what others are doing, neglecting to verify if I behave in the same way. Not me personally, I am not a judge and have no influence on competitions, but if I criticize a behavior that favors a skater that I don’t care about, I have to be sure that those who I like aren’t aided by the same kind of wrong behavior. This is why I checked the performance of the components in the senior competitions of various skaters. First I post all the individual graphs, in alphabetical order by skater, so if you want to check all the scores of a specific skater you can do it with ease, then I move on to two graphs in which I have gathered what for me are the most interesting data.
For reasons of time I have limited myself to Japanese, Russian and American skaters who will participate in the next Olympic Games. I ignored Yuma Kagiyama because there is not enough data. In the 2019-2020 season, before the national championship he participated in junior competitions, and since often the judging meters are different – it shouldn’t be like that, but it is – that season is not relevant to me. The 2020-2021 season is not relevant for anyone, because it is not possible to define international competitions those four competitions that bear the name of Skate America, Cup of China, Rostelecom Cup and NHK Trophy. And this year Kagiyama’s last competition was the national championship, so I don’t have any score for after. On the other hand, I added Patrick Chan and Adam Rippon, present at the last Olympic Games, to my controls.
Jason Brown:
In most cases, Brown received his highest PCS marks in the national championship, sometimes with notable peaks.
Patrick Chan:
Looking at so many seasons, reading the graphs is a bit more difficult, this is the reason that led me to add the fine lines that we had already seen with Kondratiuk and Brown. If a score is isolated, I have highlighted it with a colored dot and linked it to the following score using a thin line. As with the previous graphs, I have reported all the scores. Some might be surprised that there is a gray box in the second Grand Prix competition of the 2015-2016 season. This is the Internationaux de France. The free skate was not skated because the day before France had been bloodied by those terrorist attacks that we all remember. We will find the same gray box in Shoma Uno’s chart.
As with Brown, Chan often received his highest PCS marks in the national championship. They are three different nations: Russia, the United States and Canada. That raising the marks in the national championship is a widespread habit?
Nathan Chen:
For Chen, the seasons are only three. He was a junior before, so I didn’t watch his scores. The 2019-2020 season ended ahead of time, and his last competition was the national championship. And, as with the other Americans and the Japanese, the last two seasons are not significant. In two of the three remaining seasons, Chen’s marks have risen considerably in the National Championship, and the growth has also affected international competitions. The exception is the Olympic season. Could this be due to the fact that Chen skated two bad short programs in PyeongChang?
Yuzuru Hanyu:
For Hanyu I have excluded three seasons from the chart. A flu and two injuries forced him to give up the national championship, I can’t do the usual comparison, so the numbers were not significant for me and I ignored them.
Mikhail Kolyada:
Adam Rippon:
Shoma Uno:
For Uno a clarification is needed. The last competition in which he skated in the 2019-2020 season, the only one he participated in after the national championship, is the Challenge Cup. This is the only case in which after the national championship I entered the marks of a minor competition and not of a ISU championship (or Olympic Games).
Vincent Zhou:
I published all the data so you can check them whenever you want. The last two graphs are dedicated one to the short program and one to the free skate, and contain the data of all the skaters. Not all of their scores, otherwise the graphs would have been incomprehensible. Only the most significant. Which? Those that corresponded to two precise characteristics:
- the national championship score was to be the highest that skater received that season. If even in a single international competition, skated before or after the national championship, it made no difference for me, the skater received a higher score than that of the national championship, I excluded it. Why, if the high score came later? Because in that case the international judges judged the skater better than his compatriots, a sign that during the season that skater has improved.
- the score following that of the national championship had to be the highest after that of the national championship. Because? Because if he had received even a single higher score before, it means that that skater was already at that level. His scores weren’t inflated because he received high scores in the national championship, because he had already received those scores.
Considering these two characteristics, in my graphs there are only those seasons in which the last international score received could have been influenced by the national score. I wrote the numbers at the top. The last line, in bold, indicates the difference between the last and the first score received by the skaters in that specific season.
In my opinion, the two seasons with the lowest scores, one for Hanyu and one for Kolyada, are not significant. Those scores are so lower than all the others that it gives the impression that the skaters were underestimated at first, then the judges realized it and upped the marks. The biggest growth was that made by Uno in the 2019-2020 season but, if we think about it, that Autumn his competitions were truly disastrous, far below the usual level of the skater, so it is normal that he received low marks. The curious detail came after: the greatest difference between the first score of the season and the last, in seasons in which the maximum peak was at the national championship, occurs with a certain consistency with US skaters. But it’s only a curious detail, nothing worrying, otherwise someone able to do real, level-headed, accurate figure skating coverage would have noticed it, right?
| Uno | JPN | 2015-2016 | +8,73 |
| Chen | USA | 2016-2017 | +5,79 |
| Rippon | USA | 2015-2016 | +4,87 |
| Brown | USA | 2013-2014 | +4,58 |
| Zhou | USA | 2018-2019 | +4,55 |
| Hanyu (likely not significant) | JPN | 2010-2011 | +4,21 |
| Kolyada | RUS | 2016-2017 | +3,76 |
| Kolyada (likely not significant) | RUS | 2013-2014 | +3,60 |
| Kondratiuk | RUS | 2021-2022 | +3,47 |
| Hanyu | JPN | 2013-2014 | +3,13 |
| Chan | CAN | 2012-2013 | +2,96 |
| Chan | CAN | 2008-2009 | +2,55 |
| Chen | USA | 2018-2019 | +1,78 |
| Brown | USA | 2019-2020 | +1,68 |
| Mozalev | RUS | 2021-2022 | +1,44 |
| Hanyu | JPN | 2014-2015 | +0,86 |
I did the same graph for the free skate.
| Chen | USA | 2016-2017 | +14,00 |
| Kondratiuk | RUS | 2021-2022 | +10,18 |
| Zhou | USA | 2018-2019 | +9,18 |
| Kolyada | RUS | 2016-2017 | +8,20 |
| Mozalev | RUS | 2021-2022 | +7,60 |
| Rippon | USA | 2015-2016 | +7,54 |
| Chan | CAN | 2010-2011 | +7,38 |
| Uno | JPN | 2019-2020 | +7,20 |
| Chan | CAN | 2009-2010 | +4,50 |
| Zhou | USA | 2017-2018 | +3,98 |
| Chen | USA | 2018-2019 | +3,84 |
| Chan | CAN | 2008-2009 | +2,70 |
| Chan | CAN | 2011-2012 | +2,52 |
| Chan | CAN | 2017-2018 | +2,22 |
| Chan | CAN | 2015-2016 | +1,98 |
| Brown | USA | 2019-2020 | +1,88 |
Kondratiuk’s growth has been remarkable, and the suspicion that the Russian federation has inflated his scores is inevitable, with him but also with other Russian skaters, even in the past years. But apparently the American federation behaves in exactly the same way, and indeed is sometimes able to assign scores that Russia can only dream of.
One last detail. If you read this list carefully, you will notice that a name is missing. It’s Hanyu’s. If you want, you can go and check the graph I published above. On two occasions Hanyu’s score in the national championship is lower than what he had received in at least one of the previous competitions. On two occasions he received his highest score in the national championship, but in the next competition his score is lower than what he received in the previous international competition (the Grand Prix final). On two occasions his highest score was obtained in the last competition of the season, not in the national championship (and on one of these occasions the national championship score is even lower than that of the Grand Prix final).
Pointing out that the scores of the national championships are inflated and distort the results of the international competitions is important, but we must look at all the skaters benefiting from this system, not accuse others and ignore it when it is we who receive unjustified help. Otherwise what we do is not a technical analysis, it is propaganda.
