Third program I watched at 25% speed. If you have no idea what I did, you can read my explanations at the beginning of the post dedicated to Shoma Uno‘s short program. So Nathan Chen. He has set a new world record, it should be an extraordinary program, right? Quite right?
0:30 start of the music. Chen remains absolutely still for the first 12 seconds, until 0:42. As I’ve said in the past, it’s a choice, and if he fits the music that’s okay. Let’s see what he does when he starts moving. In the beginning they are simple pushes. All the skaters start from standing, the first step can also be choreographic, but at least a minimum of speed must be obtained.
First movement on two feet, at 0:45 (screenshot 6 and 7) Chen rotates on himself on one foot.
After a crossover, Chen swings with his right foot (screenshot 3).
Nice outside edge, but he had just taken some speed. I don’t know how to skate, but when I ride my bike if I take a curve at speed I lean to the side. The edge is related to the fact that Chen bent right after giving himself a push, and his back is straight. I would fall if I tried to do such a thing, for a mid-level skater it is a trivial thing, but it’s something better than skating always on two feet as someone else.
0:49 (screenshot 6 of the previous image) ina bauer.
0:50 (screenshot 2 and 3) twirl on the left toe pick. Back straight, ok.
0:51 inside spread eagle (screenshot 4).
Chen turns, do a push, slides on both feet, stops on his toes (0:54, screenshot 5), then starts again with a push and a three. In screenshot 9 we can see the left forward edge.
I don’t particularly like the position of the back in screenshot 2, at the end of the three.
0:56 (from screenshot 4) twizzles.
0:58 little hop.
I don’t know why, but the position in flight (screenshot 5) does not seem particularly elegant to me.
0.59 three, good edge.
Still at 0:59 mohawk. Chen start to pick up speed.
In theory at 1.03 there is a three, it starts in the penultimate image you find above and ends in the last one but, if we look at the details, at the end his edge is flat.
There are some short glide in a simple position, which does not test his balance, a few simple steps that I struggle to define a three or mohawk because the edge is flat, at 1:13 Chen enters the three that precedes the 4F. It is 14 seconds of running, 10 if we start from the three of which I have put the screenshots. The short side of the rink plus the diagonal. Can we talk about long preparation? At least the PCS must take this into account.
A second after landing Chen puts his left foot down, someone should explain the concept of running edge to him, because I suspect he doesn’t know what it is. True, sometimes the skaters do a step with which they insert the jump into the flow of the program, but those steps aren’t a mohawk that feels more like a way to escape from the need to have a beautiful landing than anything else.
1:18 right backward outside glide.
The moment I captured is when Chen stretches his body the most. This is an attempt to confuse the judges’? Make them believe that he has a running edge while this glide only comes after he has changed foot several times? What was his coach saying when he talked about loopholes in the rules? Do the judges see Chen raise his leg a little, forget the time (and steps) between landing and this gesture and give him a high GOE for the 4F? Yes, it’s exactly what happened, the marks are eight +4 and one +5, and in my opinion we have a serious problem.
Chen does a mohaw – I’ll not mention every mohawk, or three or crossover, it will be long and boring – then, in screenshot 5 (at 1:20, for 1 second), he glide crossing the right leg ahead of the left. Flat edge, stable position.
1:22 mohawk. Good right inside edge (screenshot 2) when he swing his leg, just before the mohawk, not so good (really brief move) when he goes backward.
Several simple steps, nothing particolar.
1:26 twizzle (first line, I have some doubt about the elegance of the body in screenshot 3).
1:27 after a little glide backward (screenshot 5) Chen start to run. From time to time he changes foot and direction, in a simple way.
1:34 (after 7 second in which he only took speed) little hop, half turn (screenshot 5).
1:35 lunge (screenshot 7) followed by a three.
In the first line we can see the end of the three, started in the preceding screenshot, then Chen swing outside the left leg with a change of edge (screenshot 3). Roseline and Elisa noted the presence of a swizzle (screenshot 8), I wouldn’t have even noticed it because it’s nothing special. Of course, Chen does not stand still, he must does something during the time of the program, but the value at the level of transitions is zero.
1:39 mohawk (screenshot 3 and 4).
1:42 take off of the 3A. In the last 7 second he did only a mohawk, an easy step, but in truth it’s at 1:27 that stop doing anything that has even a minimal difficulty. Do you remember the common mistakes made by judges according Jenny Mast?
Skating Skills: 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: Among common mistakes there is forgetting parts of the program with no transitions of very few transitions (E.G. in anticipation of a quad). Ok, this isn’t a quadruple but a triple, but I suspect that for Chen a 4T is easier than a 3A. Mast’s explanation is equally important.
Composition: A common mistake is forgetting a part of a program where the skater is going back and forth in order to prepare jumps.
We could discuss the good position held by Chen in screenshot 9, but I’ll look at the the GOEs in another occasion.
1:44 inside spread eagle (1 second, screenshot 6 and 7).
Spin.
At the end of the spin Chen do a mohawk.
A three at screenshot 2-3.
At 2:04 Chen do a choctaw. I’m not good with the identification of the steps, every now and then I reread my notes and sometimes I need to go over the movements at the replay several times. Judges don’t have that option, but they should be a little more experienced than me. I am not able to establish the level of a step sequence, they do (I know, the technical panel does, not the judges, but there are still people who can do it, and the judges are more experienced than me), so I suppose they should be able to see the quality of what skaters do. Here I had a doubt so I took four new screenshots.
Ok with the right backward outside edge, but the left forward edge is almost flat. Only for a really brief fraction of second he goes on an edge slightly more inside. For me this choctaw isn’t really good.
For a while Chen moves with simple movements, crossover and mohawk. The
SPECIAL REGULATIONS & TECHNICAL RULES
SINGLE & PAIR SKATING
and
ICE DANCE 2018
as accepted by the 57th Ordinary Congress June 2018
in the rule 612 contain an interesting statement. The rule refers to the free program, at the short program is dedicated 611 rule, but the fact that this statement is dedicated only to the free program does not make much sense. I suspect it is more a poorly way in which the rules are written than an indication reserved for a single program.
So, All elements are to be linked together by connecting steps, with the clarification that forward and backward crossovers are not considered to be connecting steps. Sooner or later in all the material I have read or watched I will also find the statement that too many crossovers must have a negative impact on the components. When I find it I add it, I know I have read or heard it in an official ISU document, but I have read too many to be able to find everything easily.
Crossovers don’t count for anything, on the contrary, they can even decrease the score. Mohawks are connecting steps, but they are simple, and it’s something judges should be aware of.
2:10 outside spread eagle, 1 sec.
I redid the screenshot because I wasn’t entirely happy with what showed the firsts I took. Elisa is publishing many very interesting tweets on the technique. She writes from the point of view of physics, and her considerations are perfect for helping to understand the difficulty of certain movements. Let’s take the spread eagle. For the feet, making an inside spread eagle and an outside spread eagle is the same thing. For the body no. We all lean more naturally forward than backward. If we try to unbalance backwards we are afraid, it is not easy. Therefore an inside spread eagle (like the ones made by Shoma Uno in his short program) is easier than an outside spread eagle. In theory, the movement made by Chen is more difficult. But is it really? Let’s take a good look at his body. The edge is not very accentuated, and even if this is not the best point of view, it can be understood that Chen keeps his back very straight, in practice there is an angle between the lower limbs and the upper part of the body, because he is afraid of unbalancing. Theoretically this spread eagle is more difficult than those performed by Uno, but performed like this I have serious doubts. And if sometimes in the screenshots it is difficult to understand the direction of the inclination, if you’re interested the indication of the seconds – referring to the official video, then something that will not disappear due to copyright problems, and of which I have placed the link at the beginning of the post – allow you to easily watch the movement.
At the National championship Chen did two spread eagle in a row, in Beijing (2:12) he does instead a backward glide on two feet, so he simplified the program.
One could talk at length about the depth of Chen’s edges, or rather the lack of edges. Made his glide on two feet, he does a mohawk and starts running.
2:21 mohawk.
2:24… what he does? Right backward outside edge, makes a hint of a mohawk, or maybe a choctaw, the foot doesn’t stay down long enough to tell on which edge it is, I’d say flat, then he turns back again to prepare the combination. Chen does just enough to avoid the long preparation deduction, but nothing more.
2:26 combination 4Lz+3T.
Quick mohawk (1 second between the moment when the right blade touches the ice and when the left blade does the same) so as to forget about the running edge, then a crossover, a hop with half rotation, and start of the step sequence that, as for Uno and Kagiyama, I watch very quickly.
2:32 knee slide. It is a simple movement, done for choreographic reasons. Nothing against the choice of doing some simple movements for choreographic reasons, it becomes a problem only when a skater, beyond the steps required to obtain the level, only makes simple movements. The GOE of the element, but also the components, should testify to the difficulty of what the skater did.
2:41 Are we really sure that on this counter his blade always maintains the contact with the ice? Because if the blade doesn’t, if it goes up all completely, the step sequence drops to level 3. My impression is that Chen does a little hop and then the level has to go down.
Moment of maximum extension for Chen. I might decide to compare this position for different skaters, just to see their posture.
The posture, immediately after.
Chen’s fans talk a lot about his skills as an interpreter. In homage to them, here is a moment in which the expression on his face shows how much he interprets the music. The expression is there, I suppose this is enough to make us forget those long runs that characterize the first part of the program.
Bunny hop.
Three whit the arms in a choreographic position. I don’t do the screenshot, but immediately after there’s another knee slide, and a third knee slide after a bracket. Ok, I have grasped the theme of the program. For Kagiyama it’s the little hops, for Chen it’s the knee slides.
Another knee slide.
3:04 spin (screenshot 6).
A few days ago I did a twitter poll. I am a fan and I do not hide it. Am I able to analyze things objectively or do I only see what I want to see? It is a beautiful question, which I cannot answer. If I’m biased, how do I know I’m biased? One of the reasons behind my analysis of numbers was precisely the desire to have an impartial view. I decide what controls to do, but I’ve never invented any number. I may have written a few wrong – I hope not, but I cannot rule out this possibility – but those are impartial data. Then?
I can ask others for an opinion. To who? On twitter most of my contacts are fanyu, they can be as biased as me. The only way to have an opinion not influenced by personal opinions was to hide the identity of the skaters, as I did in the jumping quiz I posted on the blog not too long ago. I took six skaters, even though I was really only interested in Chen. Yuzuru Hanyu is necessarily in the poll, if I excluded him someone might say that I don’t want to look at any mistakes made by him. Then Shoma Uno and Yuma Kagiyama, because I had already taken the screenshots for the two previous posts, even if at that moment I did the poll I hadn’t published them yet. Having the screenshots already, meant less work to do. And then Keegan Messing and Donovan Carrillo, because their spins did not receive the level 4 call, and therefore could raise some doubts. With the identity of the skaters hidden as much as possible, I asked if the sit spin position had been held correctly by every skater for at least two turns. You can see how many people responded and how they responded.
The technical panel (and very few people) judged this spin as valid, and assigned it a level 4. For me, and for almost everyone who responded, this spin should have received no value. Little more than 4 points kindly gifted to Chen.
Some simple steps and the last spin.
I would have something to say about the elegance of the position, but forget it.
End.
I hope you appreciate the effort I did, I have watched the program three times to write this post. An analysis of Chen’s steps – at the National Championship, not the Olympic Games, and as we have seen there are some small differences – was made by Roseline Winter and Elisa on Twitter.
I made some comments on their analysis, and on what the ISU could do, in the post dedicated to Uno which I have already linked to at the beginning of this post. Also for Chen I made the same table and the same graphs that I did for Uno and Kagiyama.
In the table on the left there is the number of steps performed by the skater between one element and another. In the three columns there are the number of steps in which the skater limited himself to looking for speed (power skating, PS), to simple transitions (tr.) and difficult steps (diff. Tr.). The yellow line indicates the step sequence. There I counted only the difficult steps that aren’t linked to the level of the step sequence itself. The graph in the center is based on this table. The graph on the left just shows the total, not the way the different types of steps are distributed in the program.
Chen moves a lot, takes a lot of steps, but they are almost all simple steps. Let’s see how he distributed the steps in relation to the difficult steps or technical elements.
The right column, difficult or element indicates the difficult steps and elements performed by the skater. The other three columns indicate, for each difficult step or element, whether that movement was preceded (top row) or followed (bottom row) by a push (PS), a simple transition (tr) or a difficult turn (D).
Beyond what is mandatory for the step sequence, which I have not considered, there is not a single time when Chen does two difficult things in a row. I have a vague suspicion that he takes time to prepare the hard stuff and make sure to don’t do any big mistake. It’s a choice, and he’s free to make it. Judges should understand what he has chosen to do, and award the marks accordingly.
Taking the screenshots I also counted how much time Chen spends on two feet doing easy things or doing simple steps (crossover, mohawk) whose sole purpose is to gain speed, and how much time he spends in transitions that have a value for components. 24 seconds for the transitions, 55 seconds for running. Not bad.
