I spent a lot of time watching the short programs skated in Beijing. I did it because I really wanted to understand what the skaters had done, how they had skated. I have already written about it in several posts, when I looked at the criteria for the PCS, analyzing the programs of Shoma Uno, Yuma Kagiyama, Nathan Chen, Jason Brown, Donovan Carrillo, Deniss Vasiljevs and Yuzuru Hanyu.
For Uno, Kagiyama, Chen, Brown and Hanyu I got help from the beautiful analysis done by Roseline Winter and Elisa (who also analyzed Junwan Cha’s program, and which I ignored to save some time), for Carrillo and Vasiljevs I did everything by myself, and in fact they are much less complete analyzes and probably also contain some errors.
I also compared some details of the programs, such as carriage during the crossover, and again I watched carriage during crossover and glides, the spirals and the axis of the body, some connecting moves of various types and the way in which the skaters use the space up (hops and non listed jumps) and down (lunges, knee slides). I did the subdivision, in a somewhat approximate way, to try to compare the programs and understand if they contained variety, difficulty, and if the movements were effortless or not.
Obviously now all this no longer counts, with the new rules just approved by the ISU it is enough that the skater is fast, that he does not fall and that the judges like him, and the high mark is guaranteed. But until a few days ago there were specific requests. Maybe the judges did not always apply the rules correctly, but the rules existed, and therefore it makes sense to ask ourselves about Beijing’s programs.
Not everyone approved of my attempts to understand the correctness of scores. This is a comment that has failed my moderation.
To this person probably escaped the fact that I posted several screenshots of Hanyu’s fall on the quadruple axel attempt, and that, which although I have not posted screenshots of the fall on the quadruple salchow, I have mentioned it in the same post, so I have no difficulty in recognizing that in the free skate Hanyu fell twice, and also that I watched closely the quadruple salchow of the short program.
In the first post of which I inserted the link (and also in the analysis of Hanyu’s SP) there is, among others, this series of screenshots:
I too know, he didn’t do the quadruple salchow. I cursed at that moment. Let’s forget why he didn’t do it. The reason cannot change reality, namely that he didn’t do the jump and that he lost about 14 points on the technical element and that several judges used the absence of the salchow to apply a roof to his components that, rules in the hand, was not applicable. If you have doubts that the roof was not applicable, I refer you to the first post of which I put the link.
So? If my post is about PCS, let’s talk about PCS. If I go to buy fruit and ask for the price of apricots, the greengrocer doesn’t have to answer me by telling me the price of cherries. Not that, since it is always fruit, the answer is fine. If I am talking about PCS, I am talking about PCS, not BV, and not even GOE. I didn’t approve of the comment, and I ignored several others I’ve received here and on Twitter.
Someone was shocked that I had dared to compare Carrillo to other skaters. Where is the problem? He participated in the same competition, he respected the same rules, comparisons can be made. There were other absurd comments. Someone, a Team Champery fan, was outraged that I had watched Vasiljevs’ program. For this person it is evidently all right if we say that Uno is stronger than Vasiljevs, if instead I say that Vasiljevs is more elegant than Uno, I am committing some crime of treason.
Maybe they didn’t understand something. I have no right to meddle in their private life. It is their private life, what they do is only theirs. But when they are on the ice for a competition, they are practicing a public activity. They know they are being filmed, it is for what they do they have become famous, and comparisons can be made. I can write about their performances, and if I want, I can compare them.
So, thanks but no. I do not accept attempts to divert the conversation, nor any kind of senseless limitation. If I am talking about one topic (PCS), it is that and not another (BV), and I feel free to compare what all skaters do on the ice, regardless of their nationality, their international ranking or the rink they train on. I am looking at the movements, and the only disputes I accept are those on the movements, if someone points out to me that I wrote something wrong. Contradict me about the images, or about my statements, if I’m wrong, but change the subject, or refuse to look at something in the name of I don’t know which principle of superiority is not for me.
Then… PCS. For Chen I did something that I didn’t do for others. I compared Roseline’s analysis to the Olympic program, and I noticed two little difference. The first was before the combination. In the National Championship, from 1:16, Chen made a succession of two spread eagle, first outside and then inside, both of (less than) one second. In Beijing, at 2:10 am, he did the outside spread eagle. Outside … he starts outside, and then he goes on a flat edge. Overall his spread eagle lasts just over a second. Chen simplified the program a bit, doing a simple backward glide. The successive direction of his skating is slightly different, but what he does are always and only crossover, mohawk, chasse and change of direction on two feet.
The second is a lunge added in the step sequence. A lunge…
Carrillo lowers himself further, and also tests his sense of balance. Then someone is upset if I compare Chen to Carrillo.
The BV of Chen and Carrillo is not comparable. I do not argue on who, between the two, performs more difficult jumps. As for the rest, let’s talk about it. But let’s talk about it by looking at the steps they do and how they do them, not looking at their TES. The TES is something else.
For Chen the steps and turns are those of the National Championship, and at the National Championship it is not as if Chen has skated a difficult program. I am improving in the analysis of the programs, but at the moment I am not able to do analysis like those of Roseline and Elisa. So I can’t say how many difficult turns Carrillo did, and when he did them, but I can tell how many difficult turns Chen did, and it’s not that many.
I have already published this table, but I propose it again as a reminder. I looked at what precedes (top row) and what follows (bottom row) a difficult turn (difficult, column on the left) or an element (element, column on the left, box in light blue). The subdivision is between a push (power skating, PS, box in light green), a transition (tr) a difficult turn (D, box in yellow), and an element (E, box in red). What I was interested in seeing is if the skaters are able to do difficult things one after the other or if they do a difficult thing and then they need some time devoted only to easy movements, to stabilize the balance or to rest a little, before presenting something difficult again.. This table is about continuity of movement and risk.
Chen takes no risk. If he does a difficult thing, he does it isolated from the rest: he takes the run, executes the movement, then does something simple, and only when he is sure to have a stable balance does he do another difficult thing. And he does very few difficult things. I don’t care that the lutz is harder than the salchow. The base value of the quadruple lutz is 11.50 points, that of the quadruple salchow 9.70 points. There is a difference of 1.80 points precisely because the lutz is more difficult. The difficulty of the jump is paid for in the BV and, if well executed, also in the GOE, the PCS take care of the skating, and if the difficult turns are not there, they are not there, and the skater does not deserve to receive points for something he does not do.
Chen doesn’t do two difficult things in a row. Uno’s program is just a little more difficult, Kagiyama’s even a little more difficult, but none of them take much risk. Those presenting complex programs are Cha, Brown, and above all Hanyu, which is a separate category, currently unattainable for anyone else. This as a number of difficulties. And if we speak of quality?
Another of the comment I came across is this:
It is not a comment that I read because I looked for it. I never read the comments of the fan of other skaters, unless they comment on something I wrote, or I don’t happen to see them because someone in my contacts shared them. I let Chen live, what I criticize is the way the judges awarded their marks. The judges, not him, which has limited himself to exploiting at the maximum extent the loopholes of the rules and the mistakes of the judges. And if this means saying that Chen has received some medal that he did not deserve, it seems more serious to me what the judges did, award to him medals that someone else deserved, rather than what I do, to note that the judges assigned marks which have nothing to do with the rules.
I overlook the detail that Hanyu does the hydroblade in the choreo sequence and not in the step sequence, and that the rules did not require the execution of the hydroblade so no one has ever demanded it from any skater. I take note of yet another reminder that Hanyu fell. Yes, I noticed it too. I will write about it when I look at the technical elements of the free skate (and I will look at the technical elements of both programs). Until I do it, those falls will have no relevance to what I write. Let’s see how they skated. We look at skating skills, transitions (for Chen very few, as the table I published above tells us, and very far from each other), performance, choreography and interpretation.
A few days before reading these tweets, I did a little quiz on Twitter. I did my best to hide the identities of two skaters, erasing their heads and the details that could make their costumes recognizable (I will never be able to do this with Hanyu, there is no way to make his costume unrecognizable), and asked which of the two had the best posture.
I think almost everyone who answered correctly identified the right skater as Chen, some also understood that the left skater was Roman Sadovsky. For most of the people, the one who has the best posture is Sadovsky, for almost a third there is no particular difference, very few have considered Chen’s posture better. Among those who have considered that the skaters have a similar posture, almost all believe that the two skaters are equally mediocre.
Someone has also asked for an opinion from acquaintances who are not figure skating fans, and according to all these people (you can read some of the answers in the thread, I received later other similar comments) who has the best posture is the skater on the left, that is Sadovsky. I remember that carriage is evaluated in SS and PE. Among the SS criteria there are:
Overall cleanness and sureness
Flow and glide (Glide is the easy edge movement of the blade on the ice).
Among the PE criteria there are:
Carriage & Clarity of movement.
Carriage is not the only thing that matters, neither for SS nor for PE, but the fact that Sadowsky received 7.71 in SS and 7.36 in PE and Chen received 9.57 in SS and 9.71 in PE makes me think either Sadovsky was greatly underestimated o Chen was greatly overestimated. True, Sadovsky skated a bad program, but his were technical errors, of those that shouldn’t have a particular relevance in the PCS: he did a step out on the 4S salchow and popped into singles the axel and the flip of the combination, he didn’t fall. Probably his performance (and his interpretation) have suffered a little from the mistakes, skating skills not. And the fact that there are many more people who think they both have a bad posture than those who think they both have a good posture makes me think it was Chen who was overrated.
Anyway, I take note of the result of my little quiz, go ahead and watch the skaters, maybe they make me change my mind.
I tried to watch several skaters. Now, keep in mind that not everyone does the same things. It is the skaters (or their choreographers, but I suppose the skaters discuss this with the choreographers) who choose which movements to do. The only thing really in common in the short program is the triple axel, because everyone chooses the jumps they prefer, combines the steps as they like, has ample freedom of choice in the choreographic movements … in some cases it is possible to make comparisons direct, in others not. And then there’s the camera shot. The same gesture can be framed from completely different angles, making any comparison very difficult. Since I focused mostly on Chen, I looked at what he did and compared him to different skaters.
Jumps aside, Chen doesn’t do particularly difficult things. Check out the posts I put the links at the beginning (or check out his short program). Chen doesn’t do any kind of spiral, pivot or any moves in the field that is more than a simple change from one position to another. He does some really brief ina bauer, but he doesn’t hold the position long enough to say he’s working with the edges. For who does not know it, the moves in the field, that are evaluated among transitions, are spirals, arabesques, spread eagles, Ina Bauers, hydroblades and flowing moves with strong edges. Chen’s best spread eagle lasts little more than one second, start from an outside edge (and a slightly sitting position) and end on a flat edge. In the whole program he is not looking for any positions that require great balance control. In the lunge he lowers himself very little, preferring to do knee slides, which are much simpler. His choreographic jumps are simple half-turn hops or trivial steps in which he just gave himself a little more push, turning the step into a little hop. And, beyond the combination of clusters of the step sequence, among the 7 skaters whose programs I have watched closely, Chen is the only one who does not remain for more than two seconds in a row on one foot. Of course, in the new rules this is no longer required (congratulations to the ISU geniuses for how they are debasing the discipline), but in Beijing, at least according to the rules, it was still important to know how to skate on one foot, and Chen did not skated on one foot, at least not in the short program. (I haven’t checked the times in free skate yet).
Chen doesn’t do many transitions and doesn’t make any difficult ones, look at Roseline and Elisa’s analysis if you don’t believe me. The only complaint I admit is that of someone watching his program and showing me difficult choreographic moves that I haven’t seen. For the rest … there is another important criterion to keep in mind when assigning marks in the PCS. As Jenny mast said,
transitions are not about the number of movements per minute. It could be fewer movements, but they could be done perhaps … very difficult way… a body off-axis held on a long edge can be very difficult. I’ts a sustained edge. It might only be one step, but it might be very risky and it could be a very high quality. So that’s something that could be recognized as well.
At 3:09:
And, at the beginning of the video, Mast had claimed that transitions
it’s also positions.
So, does Chen has a good position and make his movements in a difficult way and with a very high quality? Let’s see.
I start with something very simple, a backward glide.
Roman Sadovsky, at the left, is the one who has raised his free leg the most. He managed to do it because he bent the leg he is skating on. He is not particularly elegant. Next to him is Brendan Kerry. The leg is straight, the edge is much deeper, Kerry’s center of gravity is shifted forward and to the side. The execution is better than Sadovsky’s. The third skater, Adam Siao Him Fa, is straighter than the other two, is going slower, and is turned sideways, arm and head. He is playng a role, and we feel it. The gesture is better than Sadovsky’s, and if on a technical level Kerry has done something more, Siao Him Fa is superior to him on an interpretative level.
Hanyu is the most relaxed, a relaxation that is seen in the whole body, from the head to the shoulders and hands, particularly the one that is further back, to the lower limbs. His center of gravity is shifted forward: Kerry and Hanyu are the ones who are working the most on their sense of balance. For Hanyu I chose not the more complex position, the backward glide that precedes the second pivot, but a much more banal glide, to see the average quality of his skate.
The position of Jason Brown is similar to that of Hanyu, relaxed body (but in the shoulder and hand facing back a little tension can be seen), and simpler balance, because it is absolutely vertical. For the last one, Nathan Chen, I chose his best position. And despite this, it is Chen who has the lowest free foot. The edge is flat, the simplest position of balance among those held by these six skaters. And his left arm is dropped behind him, as if he has forgotten he has this arm, or he doesn’t know what to do with it. Or as if it was too difficult to do something even with this arm.
The order in which I put the skaters in the screenshot is not accidental: I went for PCS. Sadovsky was awarded 37.78 points, Kerry 38.86, Siao Him Fa 40.46, Hanyu 47.08, Brown 47.29, Chen 47.99. The judges don’t have these screenshots, but they have something more: they can see the complexity (or the absence of complexity) and the naturalness (or the absence of naturalness) of the movements made by the skaters, throughout the program, and they should understand who it is. the best. From these screenshots it does not appear they were have able to understand it.
Am I expecting too much in evaluating the skaters from these screenshot alone? No problem, I’ve done others.
Okay, I switch to a forward movement, with a leg swing, or otherwise a movement in which the skater is going forward or in a curve, and has raised the leg in front of his body or to the side. This time I ignored Jason Brown, but if you know him at least a little you know he has no problem doing high kicks or extending his legs in any direction.
Aleksandr Selevko’s, on the left, is a side kick. The movement is quick, the free leg rises above the height of the hips. Beside him is Konstantin Milyukov. His foot remains a little below the height of the hips, the leg he skates on is slightly bent, and his tension is perceptible. The third skater, Nikolai Majorov, raises his leg a little more than Milyukov, a little less than Selevko, and he is not relaxed either, although he is more relaxed than Milyukov. Next we find Kerry, again with a deep edge. Kerry doesn’t do the hardest things, but apparently he is aware that the blades have two edges and he uses them. His foot is not very high, it is the lowest compared to previous skaters, but again the deep edge leads him to have the center of gravity shifted. And the position of his arms tells us that he’s not just trying to stay upright, he’s interpreting the program. With Deniss Vasiljevs the TV direction has decided not to give us a good shot, and not only on this swing. The foot is not very high, as in the case of Kerry, but you have to watch the video to understand how his gesture fits into the flow of the program. The position of the head and arms, however, tell us that he is interpreting the music.
Hanyu’s is a special case. I didn’t notice any swing, so in theory I should have left him out. So what is he doing? If you look at the leg pointing down, you see that he is in the air. Right now Hanyu is taking a choreographic jump, and since lifting one of the legs has a better effect, he lifts it. Hanyu is not skating, he is jumping, yet only Selevko and Majorov have raised their legs more than him, and not even that much. On the other hand, Hanyu’s body is completely relaxed, unlike the body of the other skaters. This gesture alone is enough to say that he is of an unimaginable level for the others.
Finally there is Chen. Chen is the one who lifts his leg the least. Not only that, his body is terribly stiff. It is as if he is afraid of falling. And to better understand how he moves, I decided to dedicate a series of screenshots to him.
Chen starts with a bent leg and does all the movement with the bent leg, moving the thigh first and then the lower limb. In this way it is very difficult to be able to raise the leg so much, and in fact his leg remains low, on the other hand it has a lower momentum and therefore risks much less of unbalance himself. Again, Chen is the one who does the simplest movement, and he does it worse than the others. Their PCS?
Selevko 36.50, Milyukov 36.57, Majorov 37.32, Kerry 38.86, Vasiljevs 42.22, Hanyu 47.08, Chen 47.99. I have a vague feeling that something is wrong.
Ok, perhaps Chen does not like swing. Let’s see a simplest glide forward.
How is it that Chen is at the same level of Carrillo when it comes to elegance, while everyone else is better off? Maybe a little, as in the case of Sadovsky, but with Kerry and Siao Him Fa the difference is much clearer, and with Vasiljevs there is really no way to make a comparison. Hanyu, for the umpteenth time, let us see the perfection in his gestures.
Carrillo 36.61, Sadovsky 37.78, Kerry 38.86, Siao Him Fa 40.46, Hanyu 47.08, Chen 47.99. Are we kidding?
I pass to the lunge. In this case the skaters are not in order of scores, I had already made the screenshots before deciding to use this order, and I had already published one of the screenshots.
Shmuratko bends the back leg, Chen is the one who lowers the least, with a position not too different from that of Britschgi and Siao Him Fa. Carrillo, Hanyu and Selevko have added a lateral inclination to the low position. For Hanyu I could not use the lowest lunge of his program because the TV director decided not to show it to us, we can only imagine it by looking at the movement made by Hanyu at the National Championships.
For the umpteenth time, Chen’s gesture is one of the ugliest and simplest. As for the components … Lee 35.95, Bychenko 35.99, Britschgi 36.40, Selevko 36.50, Carrillo 36.61, Litvintsev 37.01, Shmuratko 37.03, Sadovsky 37.78, Jin 39.36, Siao Him Fa 40.46, Hanyu 47.08, Chen 47.99.
Now, a skater can struggle to do one gesture and do everyone else well. However, systematically, we are seeing that Chen’s movements are worse, or at most at the same level, than those of skaters who took less than 39.00 points in the PCS. There is something wrong, also because we know that Chen has not made so many difficult moves to justify a high score anyway. If quantity, variety and even quality are lacking, what is left?
If we look at the whole program, we see that Chen actually lower himself on a couple of occasions. How? With knee slides:
This is Chen, and this is Britschgi:
Britschgi’s knee slide is better than Chen’s. Britschgi. Which received 36.40 points. Someone else also made knee slides better than Chen’s, but I didn’t take screenshots. Each screenshot takes time, sometimes I let go on something.
Chen is the king of jumps, right? Another one will come shortly, but let’s focus on the current one. Chen was the first skater to do five quads in one program, I think he’s still the only one who has done six, he was the first to do a quad flip in combination, and he is the one that make less mistakes. Just to say I know what he’s capable of, and I’ve never dreamed of denying it. He does a lot of quadruples. How he does them is another matter (recognizing that there are skaters who have a technique far worse than his does not mean that his jumps are beautiful, simply Chen’s jumps aren’t cheated and he almost always performs them without big mistakes). Okay, if he is very good at jumps, maybe he struggles to lower himself but with the choreographic jumps he has no problems.
For this post I haven’t looked at Kagiyama’s program, but Kagiyama does a lot of choreographic jumps. Brown does a lot of split jumps. Also in the programs of the skaters that appear in this post I have seen several choreographic jumps. I haven’t taken screenshots, but almost everyone takes at least one very particular jump. Chen no, he just does little hop, bunny hop and hop half turn. He limits himself to the simplest. Does he make them with simplicity? I just watch him and four other skaters.
This is Majorov, with a half turn hop:
He lands, and lowers himself. Simple movement, nothing particular.
Kerry did an euler. In some cases the screenshots are placed from right to left, to better follow the trajectory of the skater. In these cases I have added an arrow to indicate the reading direction of the image.
Nothing particular, not so bad, not so good.
Siao Him Fa made a slightly more peculiar jump: he landed forward. He repeated this jump in the program several times. Skaters are used to landing going backwards, not forward, so this gesture is a little more difficult. There is also a risk that, in he did a mistake, the toe picks will lodge themselves in the ice and cause a fall. Instead he makes the jump with the utmost naturalness.
For Hanyu I could have taken a more difficult jump like the saute de basque, which has considerable height and width, difficult leg positions and forward landing, instead I opted for an euler, to have a jump as close as possible to that of others.
Elegant, as always.
For Chen I watch an half turn hop. Before my screenshot there is a twizzle. My image starts with a mohawk, and I don’t wonder about the depth of the edge. So Chen is coming from an easy step and launches into this very difficult hop half turn in which the right foot probably does not come off the ice by more than 3 centimeters, while the left even reaches 5. So there is a three, which is a simple turn, and I stopped there. A mohawk follows. So… a very difficult sequence of movements, but which he does as if it were very easy, right?
Did he get distracted and put on two left skates? Because his awkwardness is remarkable, and I really would like the judges to explain to me how they was able to award to him the marks they awarded him.
Waiting for an answer that will not arrive, because unfortunately the judges are not required to answer even when they assign the most absurd votes, not to athletes and coaches, or fans and journalists, and usually when the ISU asks the questions they manage to get away with it saying that he didn’t any mistakes on purpose, I move on to watch a simple step, the mohawk.
I did my best to take the same shot for everyone, or as close as possible, taking screenshots of the whole step. Some skaters are heading to the left, others to the right. To leave no doubt, I have added arrows that indicate their direction. Some mohawks are performed with an inside edge, others with an outside edge. Unfortunately, having exactly identical images is impossible, but in my opinion the comparison is equally interesting.
To have a bit of variety compared to the previous screenshots, I put them according their score in skating skills. So every skater we see, according to the judges, is better than all those who preceded him.
Donovan Carrillo, SS 7.32.
By its nature the mohawk is not a beautiful step, and Carrillo is not elegant. Let’s leave the bent leg alone in the rightmost screenshot, that’s part of the choreography. Looking at the program we recognizes that it is a gesture, a way of moving, which he repeats several times by choice, so much so that in free skate this type of movement does not appear. However, in the passage from one foot to the other, he is a little seated.
Aleksandr Selevko, SS 7.36.
Selevko is more seated than Carrillo, his hands are sagging and his shoulders stiff. I haven’t looked at the rest of the programs in detail, but in this movement Carrillo is a little more relaxed than Selevko, he does a slightly better mohawk.
Nikolaj Majorov, SS 7.46.
Majorov is doing his homework. This is mohawk time, and he does a mohawk. Zero interpretation (or elegance). The other two, despite their limitations, have tried to give life to the movement, Majorov is solely focused on the technical gesture. It is possible that this is because this mohawwk precedes a jump, but Majorov isn’t the only one for whom I took a mohawk that precedes a jump (the thing I paid the most attention to was the framing, and in some cases not I had more mohawks to choose from). He is the one that has the least emotional involvement.
Brendan Kerry, SS 7.82.
The shoulders are stiff, although he tries to do something with his arms, but the legs are relaxed.
Adam Siao Him Fa, SS 8.21.
Not particularly elegant, but neither stiff. Good mohawk, not one that takes our breath away for the beauty of what we have just seen, but not one that makes us want to forget what we have just seen either.
Deniss Vasiljevs, SS 8.43.
Vasiljevs has a beautiful carriage, and we see it also on this occasion. Beautiful straight back, relaxed body, attention to interpretation. He is undoubtedly the best of these skaters. More or less the position of the skaters is correct. It is debatable whether Carrillo, Selevko or Majorov is better, a single step is too little to say for sure, but the difference between them is not great. That Kerry is better is evident, and the score confirms it. Ditto with Siao Him Fa better than Kerry, and with Vasiljevs clearly better than all the others. Let’s move on to the best. Uno and Hanyu got the same mark in skating skills, I look at Uno’s mohawk first because overall Hanyu’s PCS are higher.
Shoma Uno, SS 9.43 (PCS 46.85).
Vasiljevs’ elegance has been lost along the way, here we are more or less at the level of Siao Him Fa. Back not so erect, legs a little seated, arms that serve only as assistance to movement and not for interpretation. Mind you, he’s not a bad mohawk, but he’s not on the same level as Vasiljevs’.
Yuzuru Hanyu, SS 9.43 (PCS 47.08).
For the umpteenth time, perfection. Back straight, whole body relaxed, from the hand that rises up to interpret the music down the shoulders, back and legs, with also a tilt of the head that accompanies the music. We are on another level, and it also shows on a step as simple as mohawk.
Yuma Kagiyama, SS 9.50.
Kagiyama better than Hanyu? And on what basis? True, one step is little to judge, but if Hanyu is absolutely relaxed, Kagiyama is stiff. The moment he changes foot he is leaning back, as if he is struggling to keep his balance. Okay, it’s an outside edge, but the fatigue is evident all the same. His head is embedded in his shoulders, his entire upper body is rigid. Eventually he moves his arms for choreographic reasons, a movement he repeats throughout the program to remind us that he knows he also has upper limbs, even though he doesn’t do anything special with those limbs. In this case we are just below the level of Siao Him Fa and Uno.
Nathan Chen, SS 9.57.
I’m not saying goug out my eyes, but … I’m speechless. And would him be the best in skating skills? The body is stiff from start to finish, the torso hunched, when he changes foot he really seems about to fell, the arms pretend to have a choreographic purpose but seem more useful in maintaining a precarious balance. Here we are not even at the level of the various Carrillo, Selevko and Majorov. Don’t believe it? For all I have taken the moment when they are changing feet.
Chen is, without a doubt, among the worst.
I pass to something else. I wrote that 3A is the only common element, right? I watched the landing. Now, the 3A is a technical element, it has its BV and its GOE, however, as Mast stated,
must have continuity of movement from one element to another. Common mistakes as we all know is that is as we have a few steps, skaters think that they’ve checked that requirement and now it’s time to get ready for the element. They go back to looking like maybe they’re in practice. They do the element, they come out, they do a little step, and they get ready, stop doing transitions, it’s time to get ready, they’re setting up, do the next element, and the pattern continues. We need to recognize the difference between those who have taken the risk… because it is a risk to have continuous movements from one element to another, that is seamless.
(It’s in the video I linked before, at 0:43).
Now the ISU has decided that all of this no longer matters, but in Beijing it should have been considered. Are jumps inserted in a continuity of movement or are they something isolated? Again I only looked at a few skaters. I purposely chose jumps performed correctly, so no call of q, underrotated or downgraded, popped jumps, step out, touch down with hand(s) or the free foot, or fall. These jumps have no particular problems.
Actually I’m not entirely sure if Carrillo’s 3A is fully rotated (but I haven’t looked at it carefully, it’s just an impression), however there have been no calls, so as far as I’m concerned I consider it correct. To Kagiyama I would assign a deduction for poor take off, if you look at it well, it has a very accentuated skid, in the moment of the take off he faces backwards, but the technical panel never makes this call, even with skaters who have a much worse technique than Kagiyama’s, so let’s pretend the jump is correct. Chen, it seems to me appropriate to specify, in this case had a correct take off. In the team event he did the take off when he was facing back, in Men’s competition he didn’t. So we can consider the take off and the correct flight phase for all.
The skid, Kagiyama and Chen’s take off type, prevents them from having a big jump. When the blade rotates on the ice, it loses speed, and obviously the jump is small. The official figures also tell us. The average length of the 3A whose measurements have been released is 2.22 meters, the 3A of Kagiyama is 2.09 meters. Without bullet 1, very good height and very good length, the final GOE can’t be higher than +3. While we are pointing out, Brown’s 3A is 1.90 meters, I would give him a -1 for Poor speed, height, distance, or air position (and I remind you that I root for Brown). The largest 3A, needless to say, is Hanyu’s, 2.58 meters. We don’t know the amplitude of the other jumps that I have looked at.
Lukas Britschgi and Brendan Kerry do absolutely nothing before their 3A. Jason Brown, Donovan Carrillo, Nathan Chen, and Shoma Uno do nothing particularly difficult (a change of edge, or a change of direction on two feet, or a three). Deniss Vasiljevs does … I think it’s a counter, but he does it three seconds before the take off, in my opinion a bit too much to assign bullet 4, steps before the jump, unexpected or creative entry. Both Yuma Kagiyama and Adam Siao Him fa do a counter (Siao Him Fa’s is also a counter, right?) 2 seconds before the take off, so they deserves bullet 4.
Hanyu, as always, is a case in himself. The counter immediately before the take off would be enough to make him deserve bullet 4, but he also adds some crossrolls. Not being able to assign bullet 4 more than once on the same jump, I keep in mind that Hanyu deserves a higher mark in transitions. As if he already didn’t deserve it for everything we’ve seen above.
Ok, let’s remember that there are no errors in the take off and in the flight phase, that bullet 4 can only be assigned to Hanyu, Kagiyama and Siao Him Fa, that bullet 1 cannot be assigned to either Chen or Kagiyama, while Hanyu and probably Britschgi deserve it (his 3A in FS was 2.43 meters, we can imagine that his 3As are normally wide) and, on the contrary, Brown deserves a -1 for poor distance. We see the landing of these jumps, knowing that bullet 3 is effortless throughout, and that any transitions after the jump increase the value of the transitions themselves. In this case I look at the jumps in the order of their GOE.
Lukas Britschgi, GOE 0.57, average mark 0.78, SS 7.39.
Probably the only positive thing about this 3A is the width, certainly there is no flow, and not even a good position at the landing.
Donovan Carrillo, GOE 0.91, average mark 1.11, SS 7.32.
After landing he spends over 1 second to work with the edges. He won’t be very elegant, but he has no problem controlling the jump and, assuming the rotation is complete, his 3A is much better than Britschgi’s.
Adam Siao Him Fa, GOE 1.36, average mark 1.78, SS 8.21.
He did a difficult step before the jump, has no problem controlling the landing, and spends two seconds working on the edges before doing anything else. His 3A is a good jump.
Deniss Vasiljevs, GOE 1.49, average mark 1.78, SS 8.43.
As said, I would not give him bullet 4 because for me it is too far from the take off, but at least he tried to make a good jump, and the landing is simple but with a good flow, he controls it well.
Brendan Kerry, GOE 1.71, average mark 2.22, SS 7.82.
Kerry lands, slides for a moment, and then does a half turn hop like it’s nothing. It is a simple jump, true, but after a landing he has the necessary fluidity to make this hop with the utmost naturalness.
Jason Brown, GOE 2.17, average mark 2.78, SS 9.29.
Brown doesn’t like 3A, and it shows. He does the bare minimum. He lands without particular difficulty, and leaves. His 3A is better than Britschgi’s … and that’s it. Carrillo, Siao Him Fa, Vasiljevs and Kerry deserved a higher score than Brown’s, and this without even considering that Jason deserves a -1, from a starting mark low (he hit only bullet 6?). I agree that Brown has remarkable skating skills, but this 3A has been paid far too much.
Nathan Chen, GOE 2.29, average mark 2.89, SS 9.57.
For me the landing is at the same level of Britschgi, but at least Britschi’s jump is big. Why this difference in score? It almost seems that the judges decided they wanted a world record and that in order to get it they were willing to assign freely marks at the skaters able to do two quads, the only important thing was to perform all the jumps. How they did them? It’s not important!
Yuzuru Hanyu, GOE 2.63, average mark 3.44, SS 9.43.
Hanyu lands with one arm deliberately bent, which is very unbalanced (never seen anyone do such a risky thing), raises his arms in an asymmetrical position and do a twizzle. I stopped at the only push that he does before starting a spin. For this landing alone he deserves 10.00 in skating skills.
Yuma Kagiyama, GOE 2.86, average mark 3.67, SS 9.50.
Like Kerry, Kagiyama also makes a hop. His landing is sure, nothing to say, but why a higher score than Hanyu? (Two highest marks, if we look at both the GOE and the SS).
Hanyu’s 3A has more difficult entry and exit and is wider. If we want to be hypercritical (but with the other skaters the judges don’t even see details like this), when he lands Hanyu has his leg a little too bent.
But if we are hypercritical, Kagiyama deserves -1 for poor take off, and missing the first two bullets he can’t receive more than +2.
Shoma Uno, GOE 3.20, average mark +4, SS 9.43.
Technically correct jump, but unlike Hanyu he doesn’t have the steps before, and like him he has a non-effortless landing, his back is too low, the center of gravity too far forward, even if there is no comparison with everything Hanyu does before and after the 3A.
Uno’s jump is good, but we see that he works to control it. Siao Him Fa and Kerry had better landings. If the judges give the effortless to Uno, they must also give it to Hanyu, otherwise they use two different weights.
3A is not Chen’s best jump, I know. That landing was mediocre (and he got marks he didn’t deserve) but does Chen land better in the other jumps? Not really. These are all jumps performed without any particular problems.
Britschgi’s 4T+2T:
Nothing special, but not even a bad landing. Average mark (not GOE, since they are different jumps I only look at the marks): 1.00.
Carrillo’s 4T:
Average mark 1.22. As usual, not elegant, but no problem.
Litvintsev’s 4T:
A good landing, effortless, followed by a turn. Nothing difficult, but well done. Average mark: 2.44.
Jin’s 4Lz+3T:
Good flow, good combination, good body position, average mark 2.78.
Chen’s 4F:
Chen is stiff, his landing has no flow and as soon as he can he puts his second foot down and escapes from the landing position, I suppose because he doesn’t feel sure. Why is average mark is 4.11? I don’t care that, with the exception of Jin, the others did a 4T. Chen has a higher BV because the jump is more difficult, but he’s the one who has the worst landing and at least doesn’t deserve bullet 3 (or even 4). He was not supposed to be able to receive marks higher than +3, instead all his marks are +4 and +5. Why?
Hanyu’s 4T+3T:
For Hanyu I did more screenshots because he is the one who spends the most time on one foot, also doing difficult work with the edges, I was sorry to interrupt his ballet. Yes, because what he does, when the combination lands, is dance, with breathtaking elegance. He should have received unanimous +5, instead his average mark is 4.22, with five judges who managed to assign +4 to both Hanyu and Chen and one, the Israeli Anna Kantor, who managed to assign a +5 to Chen and a +3 to Hanyu. Kantor, if by chance the ISU has not yet noticed it, should be investigated for national bias, but I would ask myself about all her marks, because there are so many oddities.
Chen’s landings are always a standing and walking away from the landing position in a somewhat awkward way. Jumps aren’t just landing, true, and components aren’t just skating skills and transitions. For interpr3tation it is important that the skater interprets the music all the time. If during the preparation of a jump we could drink a coffee because the skater is not doing anything, here is that his mark in interpretation cannot be too high. When is the preparation too long? Well, for example for 11 seconds before 4F (from to 1.03 to 1:14) Chen just does mohawk and kind of various pushes, I’d give him a -1 for long preparation and a lower IN score. Uno before 4F does nothing for 16 seconds, from 0:44 to 1:00.
For a change, I wrote a lot more than I had imagined at the beginning. I limit myself to two more screenshots, without comparison, just to see the elegance of Chen, but I need to write at least another post. Here Chen just did a twirl and is doing a two-footed change of direction. Elegance …. this time I leave every comment to you.
And no, this is not a modern style. This is someone with a stiff back, tight shoulders and a great fear of falling. If you want to see a modern style watch Hanyu’s Let’s Go Crazy (SP 2016-2017 season) or Let Me Entertain You (SP 2020-2021 season), then let’s talk again. Chen moves worse, or at least in the same way, of skaters who have obtained PCS marks of less than 8.00 points. If this gives me so much, and considering the low number of transitions Chen made, the low flow and the amount of time he needs to prepare the technical elements, he too should have received PCS marks below 8.00.
One last image, to close with elegance: here we are at the entrance to the flying spin.
Yikes! It’s as if the judges purposefully discount Yuzu because he’s so damn good, they don’t want to acknowledge it. (“Well, he’s won everything, everyone knows he’s excellent, but we must give other skaters a chance to shine now.”) Pisses me off. I see fans raving about Chen and wonder why. He has no grace or elegance I can see. Yes, he jumps. A lot. And he mostly manages to land them, but so what? Figure skating is more than jumps. After these recent ISU changes, I’m terrified to watch Yuzu in his first competition with these changes. I also wonder how he’s going to address them in his programs.
I too have the impression that some judges want to replace him. He has won a lot, why do he keep competing? And this while they complain that among women there are very few who compete at a high level for more than four Olympic years. Then there are also other factors, errors, poor ability to evaluate programs, personal interests, fear of getting noticed if they assign marks that are not in line with those of judges who, for different reasons, assign wrong marks, external influences that affect the judges even if they don’t realize it (which is why I comment Kahneman’s or Taleb’s books)…
The amazing thing is that many don’t realize (or don’t care) how much their claims are tied to personal interests. If you’ve read the Edge of Glory comments I posted recently (May 27, May 31, and June 6) you see that in the United States of the 90s just being able to jump was not considered enough to be the best skater, and similar talks in the US were also made to justify Lysacek’s success on Plushenko in 2010. Now, of course, it’s all forgotten, and they even managed to make Chen look like a skating master, while his level is mediocre. Many are unable to distinguish what is difficult and what is not, or what is done well and what is not. Several times watching the competitions with my mom or my mother-in-law I made a cry of disappointment seeing an error, but they had not noticed anything and I had to explain what had happened. The average spectator does not understand, and if the reporter praises the great champion, they are convinced that that skater is a great champion. I heard my mom and my mother-in-law repeat statements made by an Italian journalist who exalted some skaters, as if the journalist had made some kind of technical comment, while her words were partly banal and partly false. Those unfamiliar with sport rely on journalists, and if the journalists make a wrong narrative, it is easier for them to convince themselves that they have not understood the beauty of the program than they think that the journalist is only doing the interests of the television that pays him/her (and if the ISU doesn’t like a reporter’s comment, the ISU can always sell the television rights to someone else, and the television is not happy). In addition, if you appreciate someone, you always tend to minimize his defects and enhance his talents, so at least in the case of the citizens of the United States who cheer for their compatriot I understand blindness. I don’t understand Chen’s flaw blindness by non-US people that should know figure skating, but these also exist. Chen is one of those skaters, like Lysacek, that in a while will not be remembered by anyone, and who will only be mentioned in the statistics. In the meantime, however, they managed to make him win everything. I am deeply disgusted by the politics present in sport (even by politics in general, but it would be a long speech that I don’t want to make it).
You explained Chen’s popularity astutely, but there are some, like me, who might not know what’s wrong but recognize it when they see it. Before reading your posts about the Beijing male skaters, I didn’t know what made skating good, bad, or excellent, but I knew, watching Chen, that he was not very good, and it bothered me that he won Olympic gold this year. It elevated him to a level he does not deserve. I say this as an American who should be supporting him, but I just can’t. He’s not an adequate representative of what figure skating should be. That honor belongs to Yuzu. He IS figure skating and has been for a decade.
There are always those who use their brain, or their eyes, and see things for what they are, even if those around them try to convince them that they are wrong and that they must adapt to the beliefs of others. In recent years I have read several sociology books, as well as several figure skating books, and this has helped me to think more about many things.
Before I started taking screenshots, I didn’t even realize how bad Chen’s skating was. I saw that he was stiff, I saw that he did a lot of crossovers, but I noticed many details while writing. Wanting to make an evaluation as objective as possible on the PCS, I have looked at him many times. At first I used only the Carrillo as a reference point, then I said to myself that maybe I was wrong. Maybe Carrillo had been underestimated, and if I had lowered Chen’s marks to equate them with Carrillo’s, I would have done him a disservice. For this I have looked at several skaters who have received marks in PCS between 7.00 and 8.00, and everything I have seen has confirmed that Chen belongs to this band. The others skate better than him, even though Chen deserves a higher TSS than theirs because he has a higher BV. But he deserves a higher TSS only for the BV, not for the PCS.
Until the 2013 GPF Yuzu was the best on jumps, at least since his second senior season, but Patrick Chan was more complete than him, he was not so much inferior to him on the TES and he was superior to him in the PCS. Since the 2013 GPF the strongest has become Yuzu, thanks to a much better TES and a not so worst PCS. After, he continuously improved his skating and he remained the strongest, even if he has not won all the competitions. Sometimes he was damaged by injuries, sometimes by the judges, but regardless of the result, he has been the strongest for years.
The United States has a skater who knows how to skate: Jason Brown. He can’t do quadruples, but I prefer to watch Brown and his triples rather than the three who made it to the podium in Beijing. At Skate Canada 2019 I liked Camden Pulkinen, but afterwards he made a lot of messes. Now he has gone to the less suitable coach to grow up, who will make him jump and that’s it, Pulkinen has the right passport, so I don’t have much hope that he will fully exploit his potential, even if maybe he will win more than if he had gone to train by some other coach.