I am not a figure skating judge, nor have I ever thought of becoming one. For years my ability to understand what was happening on the ice, beyond seeing the most glaring mistakes, was so limited that I could not judge anything. Now that I understand much better what happens on the ice, I am also very aware of the limits of my knowledge, especially from the point of view of components. Not for nothing have I always written much less about them. But the fact that I don’t feel competent enough to be able to judge a competition – also because the judges have to assign their marks in a short time, without that possibility of looking at everything calmly that I have – does not prevent me from noticing that there are serious problems. Because there are serious problems.

Let’s start from the beginning: the ISU has established a table on the basis of which the marks in the components must be awarded.

I honestly do not remember if there was an update after May 2020, the ISU publishes so many documents that it is difficult to keep up with it.

Edit: there is a version of August 2021, here (if the ISU don’t delete it), but if I’m not wrong, is identical, word to word, to this one.

In

Communication No. 2334
SINGLE & PAIR SKATING
Levels of Difficulty and Guidelines for marking
Grade of Execution, season 2020/21

there is this clarification:

Let’s read this passage well:

Serious errors are falls, interruptions during the program and technical mistakes that impact the
integrity/continuity/fluidity of the composition and/or its relation to the music.

This means that in the absence of falls, or in the absence of imbalances that disturb the artistic aspect of the program, its fluidity, its link with the music, the maximum score that a skater can receive is 10.00, for each of the PCS items.

Now let’s look at this element. I took as many screenshots as possible to see the movement in its entirety. Hanyu begins the usual preparation for the quadruple salchow. This series of screenshots should be viewed from right to left, and the position held by Hanyu is perfect.

In the screenshot at the left we clearly see Hanyu’s left ankle strangely turned. His blade went into a hole in the ice and he had no chance to jump. But his body is composed, he is not unbalanced.

The body is in an open position. When a skater able of doing triple and quadruple jumps performs a single, is body is in an open position. Even in the delayed single axel Hanyu opens his body, and no one has ever had anything to say. In this case he didn’t do it on purpose, he opened his body because he lost his support, but he didn’t anything more than that.

He prepared the salchow, performed just a single without loosing his composure, landed and immediately performed the spread eagle. He did not go out of balance, he did not stop interpreting the program for a single moment. He lost about 14 points on that jump, he was unlucky but that’s how it went. But what does missing this jump, in this way, have to do with components?

And look, this is not just my opinion. In 2019, the ISU released a series of very interesting videos. Speaking is Jenny Mast, one of the most important ice dance judge – among other things she judged the ice dance competition in Beijing – and speaker in the training seminars for judges organized by the ISU. In the introductory video she talked, among other things, about serious error. From 16:35 minute Mast clearly says:

it has come up in past meetings that a serious error question is… well, is a -4 or a -5 in a GOE element a serious error, and the answer is… NO! Not necessarily. A serious error is something as serious equivalent to a fall, as disruptive as a fall. It could be an interruption that is more than just a second or two but something that is truly disrupting the program

Is Hanyu’s mistake something that takes away the viewer’s connection with the program? No. It is something that makes Hanyu lose a lot of points, but that doesn’t disrupt from the program. My mother, who does not know the rules, does not see a mistake like this. The next mistake, on the other hand, she sees it very well.

In my opinion, the rule on the maximum score in components must be abolished because the severity of the error depends on too many factors for such a rigid limit to be applied (without considering that the limit is applied in a very arbitrary way), but until it is abolished, in the case of Uno we can speak of impact on the fluidity of the composition and its relation to the music, therefore his components can be lowered. Can, not must.

I hate that rule. In the case of Hanyu there is no way to apply it, not if you want to respect the rules. Hanyu’s maximum score can be as high as a 10.00. For Uno there is more discretionality, we can apply it as no. In this case I decide to be generous and do not apply it, there is a mistake but not so serious, and the mistake affected Uno’s GOE of the combination, not so much Uno’s PCS. For me with that landing Uno lost something in PE, CO and IN (0.25, not 0.50), nothing in SS and TR. What marks did the skaters deserve?

Jenny Mast’s explanations are very interesting. We could discuss how Mast herself awards marks (for her the podium in Beijing would have been Papadakis/Cizeron, Hubbell/Donohue and Chock/Bates, with Sinitsina/Katsalapov fourth), but her seminars must be listened to carefully. Below the link of the individual seminars I insert the summary slides (I ignore those specific to Pairs, Ice Dance and Synchronized Skating).

Skating Skills

Transitions

Performance

Composition

Interpretation

After the explanations on the individual items of the components, Mast went on to explain the most common mistakes made by the judges. I think this is an important concept: the judges make mistakes, and the ISU is aware of it. Criticizing a judge is not necessarily an aggression against that judge or against the skater who received the wrong score, it is often the highlighting of a fact. There are mistakes, and if it is important to train judges better, the ISU should also find a way to reduce the risk of mistakes as much as possible. What mistakes are made? Mast lists several of them.

Common mistakes:

I remember again a few really important points.

Among the common mistakes there are rewarding components based on the number of quadruple jumps included in the program, evaluating components based on starting order or on the previous results of the skater.

Skating skills

Cleanness and sureness, use of deep edges, steps and turns, flow over the ice and from one position to another, control of the blade and body throughout the program, soft knee action, ability to vary speed, to accelerate and decelerate. Use of multidirectional skating, clockwise and counter-clockwise, backward and forward, with the body rotating in both directions and minimal use of two foot skating.

Among common mistakes there are forgetting to evaluate the changes of the direction of the skating as well as one foot skating, credit only speed and power, rewarding deep edges, steps and turns that are only done in the step sequence when it is placed near the end of the performance. This should be everywhere!

Transitions

Continuity of movement into a unit with no breaks, including entrances and exits of technical elements, variety, difficulty, moving the body off its main axis while gliding on a precise edge, harmony, elegance and quality.

Among common mistakes there is forgetting parts of the program with no transitions of very few transitions (E.G. in anticipation of a quad).

Performance

Understanding of the movement executed, connection with the audience, clarity of movement, personality.

A common mistake is forgetting that performance is related to more than just involvment and projection and includes carriage and clarity of movements.

Compositions

A well constructed program has a vision and a mood, balance in the distribution of elements, ice coverage, multi-dimensional use of space, movement of the body along with different levels, and match the musical phrase with a start, a grow and a conclusion to form a unit.

A common mistake is forgetting a part of a program where the skater is going back and forth in order to prepare jumps.

Interpretation

Movement in time to the music, awareness of the changes of the rhythm and expression of the music’s character.

It’s important to remember that musical sensitivity is the ability to hear and demonstrate an appreciation for the musical detail, character and structure of the music through appropriate movement.

It’s all clear? Ok.

This time I did something I had never done before. I watched some programs at 25% speed. For obvious reasons of time, I focused only on short programs and only on some skater. Every time the skater did something, I took a screenshot. The only thing I quickly went on was the jumps: one screenshot for the take off, one for the flight phase, regardless of the number of rotations, and one for the landing. For the spins I tried to take a screenshot every half turn, so that it was possible to count the rotations, but it is difficult to always stop at the same instant, and the video did not help because in all the spins at a certain point he abandoned the excellent framing he had to show us a framing from which we don’t understand anything.

However, as usual, my posts are very long, so I will publish my look at what the skaters have done in Beijing in different posts.