Have you ever noticed that in the PCS table there is the Category entry? To distinguish my words, which may not be accurate because English is not my language, I write the terms used in the official documents of the ISU in italics. To simplify the thing – seminar for judges, or also discussion after a competition – the ISU has linked each category to a color and to a specific band of marks. For example, Gold marks are considered excellent marks, Good or Very Good. They cannot be assigned to anyone, for those with average skills there are the Green band marks, Average, or even Above Average, for those who are slightly better than the Average. Which marks do these bands correspond to?

This table is dated May 2020, but since the ISU Judging System exists, if we exclude the cap in the components in the presence of serious errors, no significant changes have been made. The bands have always remained the same, save for the 10.00 that now is clearly reserved for Outstanding components.

A mark between 8.00 and 8.75 is a really high mark, according to the definition of the ISU, the skater must be Very Good. 8.00 is Very Good. 8.00. I know, I’m repeating myself. I want to be sure that you have read correctly the number. The mark must be assigned for Skating Skills, Transitions, Performance (and Performance does not mean doing a lot of quadruples and standing, read the definition of the ISU if you don’t believe it), Composition and Interpretation. Jumps and other technical elements are part of the base value and the GOE, not the PCS.

The ISU judging system is really unbalanced. The best skaters receive for the TES marks unattainable in the PCS. Thanks to SkatingScores I checked the highest TES achieved in the short program by all the skaters in the international competitions that took place this season. The screen I found is this:

The screenshot is not complete. In the following lines appear Morisi Kvitelashvili (51.12), Sota Yamamoto (50.75), again Morisi Kvitelashvili (50.63), Sota Yamamoto (50.50), Shun Sato (50.21) and Kao Miura (50.13). 39 TES higher than the highest PCS achievable. The highest achievable, not the highest ever achieved. PCS record belongs to Yuzuru Hanyu with 49.14 points, there have been 45 TES higher this season alone. PCS record this season is 47.99, I have no idea how many higher TES there have been because the SkatingScores search stops at 50.

Equating the value of the two scores is not difficult, the ISU only need to change the factorization. A simple thing, but obviously for the ISU it is too difficult since it has not yet done it. Someone noticed it, given that this proposal was made at the ISU 57th Ordinary Congress Sevilla – 2018:

I no longer remember where I read it, but the proposal was rejected with the explanation that further studies were needed. If they want, I can do the study for them, and I don’t even need a lot of time. Probably in half an hour I can check all the programs of the four disciplines and provide reasonable numbers. ISU, I will give you the numbers for free, it is enough for me that the competitions are judged correctly.

All I want is competitions judged correctly, something that is lacking by a lot of time.

In my previous post I looked at how GOEs changed from the +3/-3 system to the +5/-5 system. This time I focus on Components. There have been no changes in the rules, so there shouldn’t be any changes in the way marks are assigned either, right? I did some checks.

The theory can be a beautiful thing, but when practice contradicts it, you need to ask yourself a few questions. I asked myself the questions, and while I was there I also played a bit with the protocols. Maybe sooner or later I’ll publish a few more, for now I will limit myself to three short programs, which I have treated in such a way as to make them unrecognizable.

I deleted not only the name and nationality of the skaters, but also all those elements that could help to understand what competition it was, what skaters it was. I have removed BV and GOE, so that it is not possible to understand if these programs have been skated with the code of points +3/-3 or with the +5/-5, and I have censored the jumps. I left the triple axel, that is the same for everyone – maybe not the way it was executed, but the type of jump yes – but for the solo jump and the first jump of the combination I deleted both the type of jump and the number of rotations. I also eliminated any calls on the jump, both on the edge (because this would have made it clear that it was a flip or a lutz) and on the rotations, because any q would have indicated the season with a certain approximation. I also took the trouble, in the case of a loop or a lutz, to move the indication relative to the second jump of the combination a little, so as not to make it clear that there were two letters written there and not a single one. As a last detail, I have standardized the writings relating to the components.

As I wrote, I played with the protocols, but I didn’t fake anything, I just hid. I also added some information. To understand if the skater skated well or badly, I calculated the percentage of GOE he earned compared to the maximum achievable. The higher the percentage, the more the skater performed quality elements, if the percentage is low the elements were poorly executed, in one case there was a fall, and that indication I left it. The protocols are sorted by score in the components, from lowest to highest. There isn’t a big difference in the scoring, but the quality of what the skaters presented on the ice seems very different to me.

The first skater did not do anything wrong, on the contrary, all his elements were of quality. Only one spin didn’t get at least 50% of the maximum achievable score, but the steps and the solo jump were remarkable. Yet his PCS are the lowest. The second skater has performed an ugly triple axel, he does not know what means “quality” since he has obtained six GOEs out of seven positive, but none that reaches 50%. But his components are higher than 0.20 points. It’s possible? Yes, it is possible.

Let’s imagine for example Daniel Grassl skating at his best and performing quality elements. And then let’s imagine a Deniss Vasiljevs who messes on the triple axel and skates worse than usual, receiving marks that are low by his standards. Vasiljevs’ skating skills are however superior to Grassl’s, his transitions more numerous and complicated, he interprets music better. Even in a very good day for the Italian and a bad day for the Latvian, it is the Latvian who deserves higher PCS. Obviously these two skaters are neither Grassl nor Vasiljevs, I chose two names almost at random to be able to explain what I had in mind. So presumably that with higher marks is definitely better than that with lower marks, because his skills compensated for the imperfect execution.

And this is even more true with the third skater, who scored higher PCS marks than the other two despite a combination and triple axel that couldn’t have been worse (he actually could have done worse, falling on both elements). and a solo jump that, judging by that percentage, must not have been very nice. The overall GOE is negative. So who is the best skater from a PCS point of view?

Among other things, looking at the protocols for this post I noticed that the first skater got a 10.00 and a 7.75 in Skating Skills. 2.25 points of difference? I hope the ISU had a good chat with these judges, but for some reason I doubt it.

How correct these scores are I leave it to you to judge, in fact they are a more than evident testimony of how the marks have stopped reflecting what is done on the rink by skaters, something that I will write about shortly. Who received 41.54 points is Patrick Chan for the best short program at the 2011 World Championship, the year of his first world success. The 41.74 is what Morisi Kvitelashvili has just been awarded for the 5th short program at the Olympic Games, and in my opinion Chan has every right to take offense for such score. The 41.88 was obtained by Nathan Chen for the program that earned him the provisional 17th place at the 2018 Olympic Games.

Once again for my check I relied on SkatingScores. Proposal for the ISU: hire the person who created SkatingScores and entrust him with your computer system, he will help you to make analyzes of all kinds, even of things that have not occurred to you, maybe he will provide you with useful ideas to improve the judging system, and he will make a site infinitely better for you than the one you have.
Okay, I started since ISU Judging System was born and I checked, season by season, what were the scores above 40.00 in the short program PCS.

For the first two seasons the ISU Judging System was used in a limited number of competitions, but it is remarkable that a score of more than 40.00 points was almost never achieved. Over time, the number of skaters able to cross this threshold has increased, and the scores themselves have become higher. My screenshot stops at the 2013-2014 season, which we see only partially, but from the 2016-2016 season the programs whose PCS exceed 40.00 points are over 50, so the search is not able to show them all.

Starting from these numbers I made a graph. Some of the graphs I’ve made for this post are illegible. Me neither have tried to follow the trend of the various lines, and I have the numbers on which the graphs are based, which makes the controls easier for me than for you. No, let’s leave the detail alone and look at the whole. When the detail becomes important, the graphs will be smaller but more clear.

In this case I checked the names of all the skaters that appear in my table and for each of them I checked what was the highest score they obtained in each season. There are 50 skaters, as you can see the graph is a mess.

I could be satisfied with just one illegible graph? No, I could have done worse and I did. Did you notice that a number of important names are missing? Jeffrey Buttle, 2008 world champion, is not there. And if you want to know how Buttle managed to win the title, read Buttle’s world gold comes without quad; Weir takes bronze. I report only a few phrases:

Buttle was brilliant in adding the men’s title at the World Figure Skating Championships to the 2006 Olympic bronze medal he already owns, with a program that was the perfect blend of artistry and athleticism. His footwork was whimsical and his spins thrilling.

But he had no quadruple jump — while all the other top contenders at least tried.

Buttle’s gold disproves — this time, at least — the notion that a man has to do a quad to win the big titles.

“I started skating because I watched Kurt Browning and Brian Orser and it was about the program. And the most memorable programs in skating, you remember the program and you don’t remember what elements they did,” said Buttle,

I agree with Buttle, I remember the programs, less the elements. Ok, for some programs I can say all the elements one by one, but I love the elements because they are a part of a whole. Buttle is Canadian, he remember Brian Orser and Kurt Browning. In 1993 Browning won his fourth gold at the World Championship. Another Canadian, Elvis Stojko, won silver. I remember that Stojko jumped a lot. Stojko jumped more than Browning, more than any other skater that day. Browning skated Casablanca. I remember Casablanca, and the less than perfect lutz isn’t so important. Browning was Bogart that day. Stojko was a great jumper. There was no competition.

Evan Lysacek missed that World Championship due to injury, but the anonymous columnist lets us know that

Some, like Joubert and U.S. champion Evan Lysacek, say the quad is an essential part of men’s skating.

Oh. So in 2008, according to Lysacek, quadruples were fundamental? We are talking about the same skater who in 2010 won the Olympic gold without quadruples, ahead of a skater who made two quadruples, one per program, because quadruples are not everything? I could be wrong, but I have the impression that this is not coherent, it is a way of saying that only what he can do is important.

Others, like Buttle and Weir, say the quad is an important element, but it is only one element in a long list of what makes a great performance.

“I was fortunate to skate a clean program today. I concentrated very hard to do that, but it is not just the jumps. We work whole sessions on spins and stroking and all those things in between because that is figure skating,” Buttle said, sitting serenely next to Joubert.

“It’s everything that happens in those four and a half minutes. It’s not just about the jumps and … those in-betweens don’t mean anything at all.”

those in-betweens between jumps are spins, steps, but also transitions. In components Buttle was not scarce, yet he isn’t in my table. This is why I decided to make a new graph by adding Buttle and all those skaters who, from 2003 onwards, have reached the world podium at least once. Among the skaters I have added there is, for example, Takeshi Honda, world bronze for the second time in 2003. And, for the 2022 season, I checked all the skaters who have reached the podium of a Grand Prix competition at least once. If at least once their PCS was above 40.00 points, I added them. This is the case, for example, of Shun Sato. The new graph is this:

Let’s face it: if the whole graph is a mess, there is a large area on the right that is really illegible. What does this mess tell us? That it mainly occurs for scores between 37.00 and 42.00 from the 2015-2016 season onwards. The scores have grown. Skaters now receive higher marks. Both good skaters, those who at a World Championship are placed in the center of the ranking, and the best. Until the 2010-2011 season, only Evgeni Plushenko, on one occasion, was able to receive a component score higher than 41.00.

To try to have a readable graph I was more strict, I only checked who has exceeded 42.00 points at least once (hello Buttle, it was nice to remember your existence, even if for a little while, but it’s already time to see you go. When you competed, I cheered for you). The graph continues to be too complicated to be worth making the effort to read.

Ok, let’s look only at the best skaters, who have obtained a score higher than 44.00. The number of skaters becomes much smaller. And, to make things easier for me, I shorten the graph. Both Patrick Chan and Javier Fernandez started skating in the junior category in the 2004-2005 season, but since the scores were low I ignore the first seasons and start with the season following the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, the 2010-2011. Three of the skaters who had been among the strongest up to that moment disappear, in addition to Lysacek and Plushenko it is another skater I cheered for, Stephane Lambiel. The strongest become Daisuke Takahashi and Patrick Chan. Takahashi scored over 42.00 points for the first time in the 2010-2011 season, Chan does it the following season, so what I eliminated is the part of their career where they got the lowest scores.

Until the 2010-2011 season, no skater managed to obtain a PCS score of 45.00 points, which corresponds to 9.00 in each component item. In the 2011-2012 season only Chan succeeded. Two years later, in the season of the Olympic Games in Sochi, he was joined by Hanyu, Javier Fernandez and Takahashi. Four skaters in all. In the last season (a season that is not over yet, the World Championship will be held this month), six have managed it. The marks have risen. I have already written it, but it is useful to repeat it. This is a problem. Why? Because the marks cannot be raised indefinitely.

When did the judges award the highest PCS? In the 2015-2016 season. I already wrote about what happened in the fall of 2015, in the previous post. At that moment I was looking at GOE, but exactly the same thing happened in the PCS. I made a graph on the evolution of PCS in the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 seasons. Short program only, Grand Prix competitions, ISU championships and World Team Trophy.

For two competitions Hanyu dominated, then his scores dropped and he never returned to those values. Has he gotten worse? And while he has gotten worse all the others have gotten better? Perhaps it is appropriate to remember the words of Alexander Lakernik, when he declared

it was inevitable: International Skating Union technical committees are all abuzz with what to do with the scoring system after Yuzuru Hanyu’s record-breaking exploits from his past two competitions.
In an R-Sport interview in Russia, Alexander Lakernik, a Russian who is chairman of the technical committee for everything but ice dancing, said that changes need to be made

Hanyu dominates, and according to Lakernik the rules must be changed. Does that mean his domination is unwelcome? In a sport like figure skating, until more objective judging methods are introduced, it is easy to prevent someone from dominating: the judges only needs to lower his marks, and at the same time raise those of the opponents. And there’s no danger of getting caught, you can do it all out in the open, just don’t say you’ve done it. For example, assigning 9.25 instead of 9.50 is not a big difference. A judge can always said that he did it in good faith. And according to many it is such a small difference that it is insignificant. In my opinion it is not, in 2014 Cappellini/Lanotte won the World Championship with an advantage of 0.02 points over Weaver/Poje, and the Olympic and World medals linked to a difference of less than 1.00 points are many.

If all the judges assign a score lower than 0.25 points in each item of the components, the skater’s score drops by 1.25 points in the short program, 2.50 in the free skate, 3.75 in total. If 3.75 points are given to his opponent at the same time, the skater who receives unfavorable marks is disadvantaged by 7.50 points (I am focusing on Hanyu, but this can happen with all skaters, at any level). If to the wrong marks in the PCS (and in the most important competitions of the last four years the marks of the best skaters are wrong by far more than 0.25 points, in both senses) we add wrong marks in the GOE, missed calls on the spins or on some other technical element, here is that the results are completely distorted. And no, I don’t think that Nathan Chen didn’t need any help to win only because, with one exception, he has won every competition he has entered. Read this beautiful article by M.G. Piety to understand what has happened in men’s competitions over the past four years. She wrote about the gold won by Davs/White ahead of Virtue/Moir at Sochi. Piety was a member ot a Yahoo group of skating fans, and she wrote that

Davis and White didn’t need any help to win the gold was the constant refrain of most members of the group. They’ve been winning everything in the last few years. That is sadly true, but it begs the question of whether Davis and White needed help by tacitly assuming that they had not had help with these other wins.

The wrong marks have been repeated competition after competition, year after year, and we have seen the result, even if those who have been benefited by the wrong marks do not notice or pretend not to notice them.

I did another check on the progress of the scores. In this case, knowing that a complete graph would be illegible (as well as long to make), I didn’t look at all the skaters but just a small group choose by me. These are all the skaters who have reached the world podium at least once in the last two Olympic four-year-olds. To them I added three skaters who have reached the podium of at least two important competitions (ISU championships or Grand Prix final): Dmitri Aliev, Jason Brown and Junhwan Cha.

For all of them I looked at the first and last score in the components of the short program in all their senior seasons. This means that for almost all seasons of almost all skaters there are two scores. If in one season a skater participated in both junior and senior competitions, I only watched the senior competitions. The first score of the season is indicated on the darker vertical axis, the last on the lighter one. In the first graph I focus only on one detail, for the rest I have made a more clear graph.

Skaters who started their senior careers before Vancouver for years have received scores that now look low. In 2010 Patrick Chan, world silver medalist in 2009, was awarded 40.40 points for the short program of the World Championship. And it’s not that the program was poor, it was the second best short program of the competitions. As for components, Takahashi alone received a higher score than Chan. Fernandez, author of the thirteenth short program (15th in PCS), was placed in the Green band, Above Average for SS, PE and IN, Average for TR and CH.

For Chan it was the third season totally senior (in the 2006-2007 season he competed among the seniors in the Grand Prix but participated in the Junior World Championship), for Fernandez it was the first in which he participated only in senior competitions, but it was the his fourth participation in the World Championship.

Denis Ten and Hanyu, who made their senor debut not too long after, also started with low components scores. To have high scores these skaters have worked year after year, continually improving. All of them needed several seasons to overcome the 40.00 points, the 8.00 average, and be considered Very Good, and they only succeeded after winning at least one medal at the World Championship.

To be able to better look at the trend of some scores, I have deleted some data from my graph. I deleted the first four seasons, so much also from the graph above it is evident the evolution of the scores of Chan, Fernandez, Hanyu and Ten. I also deleted some skaters: Aliev, Cha, Jin, Kolyada and Ten. This is what’s left:

It took Chan two and a half seasons (starting from the 2006-2007 season) to exceed 40.00 points, eight and a half seasons (plus a season off) to exceed 45.00. He got the best PCS in the third last season, but in the last one he was not that far from that score, his difference is 0.79 points. It took Fernandez six and a half seasons to exceed 40.00 points, nine and a half seasons to exceed 45.00 points. He also got his best score in the third to last season.

Hanyu was faster, to overcome the 40.00 points it took him two and a half seasons, to overcome the 45.00 three and a half. He was the second skater to cross that threshold, and the one who went higher. Among those who came later, however, some were faster than him. Chen, who started from a high score, close to 38.00 points, surpassed 40.00 points in the middle of his first senior season. Let’s repeat the concept calmly, and think carefully about the meaning of the words: in the middle of his first senior season Nathan Chen has achieved a score in the PCS higher than that obtained by Patrick Chan to win his two world silver. And in his third senior season Chen surpassed 45.00 points, the threshold of absolute excellence. Only one skater was even faster: Yuma Kagiyama.

In the 2019-2020 season Kagiyama participated in junior competitions. His only senior competition was the Four Continents Championship, where he scored more than 39.00 points. Was he really at this level already? And has he really improved that much? Abundantly above 40.00 in his first full senior season (complete so to speak, with the pandemic there were very few competitions, to make the graph without too many holes I also used the data of those sort of autumn 2020 Grand Prix competitions), well above 45.00 points now.

Let’s go back to Hanyu. After setting record high scores, for the next five seasons he could no longer come close to that score – his current score is lower not only than five seasons ago, but also lower than four seasons ago, and that of the last season. According to the judges, he is the only active skater that now skates worse than he skated five years ago.

I took the final ranking of the Olympic Games, the best 24 skaters plus Vincent Zhou who, had he not tested positive for covid, would almost certainly have qualified for the free skate, and probably would have also fought for a medal. For all of them I checked the PCS of the short program. In the table I have indicated those PCS in bold (obviously for Zhou the data is missing, and since in the Team Event he skated the free skate I cannot even use that data). Beside, in the third column, I have indicated the highest scores that the skaters have ever obtained in the PCS. In the next column I have indicated in which competition the skater obtained that score. The column “diff.” indicates by how much each skater’s best score is lower than his best score. In 10 cases out of 24 the difference is 0.00, because the skater got his best score at the Olympic Games. I have highlighted the Olympic score with a yellow background. I did the same type of control with the second best score, third and fourth ever obtained by any skater.

For 21 skaters that of the Olympic Games was one of the three best scores ever obtained. Remarkable. The exceptions are Hanyu, Boyang Jin and Kevin Aymoz, while Zhou couldn’t do it for obvious reasons. For Hanyu the Olympic one was the 15th best score, for Jin the 24th, for Aymoz the 7th.

The light yellow background indicates when the score was achieved this season. All the skaters, with the exception of Hanyu, Jin and Aymoz – and this time Zhou joins the others – have achieved at least two of their highest scores this season. In light green I indicated when the skaters got the score last season. Aymoz scored two of his best scores ever in Spring 2021, so not too long ago, less than a year. I left the scores obtained in the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 seasons with the white background. One of Jin’s scores has a white background, at the Four Continents 2019 Jin got one of his best scores.

The only one for which all the boxes have a light purple background, which I have reserved for the scores established until the season of PyeongChang, is Hanyu. Everyone’s scores have risen, Hanyu’s have dropped, despite the fact that, in the short program, he has set three world records (Helsinki GP 2018, Rostelecom Cup 2018, Four Continents Championship 2020). Of course, even before he set several world record, seven in the short program alone, but two of the scores that appear in the table are from programs with which he did not set the record. Record or no record, according to the judges Hanyu skated better until a few years ago, now he is good but without exaggerating, so much so that Chen (47.99), Brown (47.29) and Kagiyama ( 47.21) have received higher marks than him (47.08), and Uno (46.85) is not that far away.

And no, as I have already written, the fact that Hanyu did not executed the quadruple salchow is not a valid reason to give him lower marks in the components. A jump not performed, but not even without an obvious imbalance, is not a fall or something that has an impact on musical interpretation. In the nine quadruple salchow he has successfully completed in the short program since the +5/-5 scoring code was introduced, Hanyu scored from 11.92 points in the last World Championship to 14.16 in the last World Team Trophy. Let’s say that the program is missing about 13.00 points from a technical point of view. Okay, Hanyu was unlucky, I take note. What I do not accept are the too low marks in the components, and the too high marks received by skaters who make much less transition than him, who unlike him do not give life to every note, and who do not propose something that is a single flow and not a succession of technical elements interspersed with long runs.

Hanyu has earned high scores in PCS improving year after year, and despite this his marks have been dropping in recent years. Skaters who perform simpler programs than his (but also those who in their time performed Chan or Takahashi) receive freely high marks just because they can complete a certain number of quadruples and it seems bad to give to them PCS so much lower than the TES . Now the scores no longer have any relationship with what the skaters did on the ice, the only thing that matters is to jump and stay standing. If steps are not taken to give correct marks, we might as well cancel figure skating from the Olympic program. This is no longer a sport in which the best wins, it is a show where those who are liked by the judges are rewarded.

Edit:

Some considerations after reading some criticisms of my post:

• I haven’t written about Women because every post takes time, and I don’t have time for everything. Doing these kinds of checks is not my job. It is the ISU who should control everything, not me. I know that the problem also exists in Women’s competitions. I point to a problem, I don’t say that it is limited to what I have checked. Anyone who wants to do checks on other competitions is free to do them.
• Since the ISU table is now the same as 10 years ago, comparisons must be made. In athletics, a time obtained now by a sprinter is easily compared with a time obtained ten or even twenty years ago, and the same goes for the height or length of a jump. If the rules and equipment do not change, comparisons must be able to be done.
• Scores cannot go up for everyone. There is a ceiling on components. If the score had risen in proportion for everyone there would be no problem, but that now average level skaters get high scores is wrong. Someone noticed that I didn’t dwell on Jason Brown (who, incidentally, has been my second favorite skater in the Men’s category for years, it’s from his Riverdance at 2014 National Championship that I cheer for him). Ok. Brown in Beijing received 47.29 points in the PCS of his short program, Kvitelashvili received 42.29. Is Brown really only worth 5.00 points more than Kvitelashvili? And only 0.08 points better than Kagiyama? Brown has a right to take offense at these assessments. I don’t watch carefully all the scores because it takes time. I have done some checks, everyone can do all the checks he wants. While we’re at it, Vasiljevs scored 42.22 points in the same program. Vasiljevs less than Kvitelashvili? Vasiljevs worse (and not even slightly) than Kagiyama? Are we joking? In this case I am not comparing two different competitions, the competition is the same for the four skaters, the judges are the same. In many cases the judges have raised the PCS because the TES is higher, and that means paying the jumps twice.
• Solutions? One of the things to do is change the factorization, I wrote that it must be done. If anyone hasn’t noticed it, I advise them to re-read my words. However, this is not enough, the judges must also assign marks that reflect what the skaters did on the ice.
• The results of the competitions are not only distorted by the wrong PCS but also by the wrong GOE and the wrong calls from the technical panel. The difference in scores, when looked at carefully, is enormous. It is time to introduce better technologies that reduce the possibility of errors of the technical panel, but also to reduce the discretion of the judges. The more power the judges have, the more they can manipulate competitions. And whoever manipulates the results should not be suspended for a short time, they should be banned for life.