Last program I looked at carefully to try to establish the correct BV (and if for almost all programs there is some difference, with Shoma Uno’s free skate the difference is huge), GOE and PCS. The introductory post with the rules and the explanation on how I did the checks is this:

The Beijing programs: the scores. Introduction

And these are the programs I looked at:

The Beijing Programs: the scores. Nathan Chen’s SP

The Beijing programs: the scores. Yuma Kagiyama’s SP

The Beijing programs: the scores. Shoma Uno’s SP

The Beijing programs: the scores. Yuzuru Hanyu’s SP

The Beijing programs: the scores. Yuzuru Hanyu’s FS

The Beijing programs: the scores. Shoma Uno’s FS

The Beijing programs: the scores. Yuma Kagiyama’s FS

I watched Nathan Chen’s free program in the official Olympics version:

4F+3T

As I already explained for the SP, I don’t give Chen bullet 1, his jumps are small. No problems on the edge of the flip, inside, and no problems of rotation, on both jumps. But between 0:48 3 0:56 Chen doesn’t do anything, and if you remember, from 8 seconds up I assign the long preparation (figure I fixed well before watching this program). This means that I give him the long preparation and I don’t give him the effortless. And it’s not like I give long preparation out of dislike of skaters. When for a perceptible time the skater does nothing, the program becomes empty, boring. If I want to look at a skater engaged in speed research, I look at short track, and since in that case there are more skaters on the rink, there is also the excitement of competition, absent when there is only one skater. There are bullets 2, 5 and 6. With a deduction of -1 the GOE is +2.

4F

If there are no particular problems I do not take screenshots. This jump looks like a photocopy of the previous one, with correct inside edge and rotation, and long preparation (nothing from 1:03 to 1:13). There are bullets 2, 5 and 6, with the deduction we get to +2.

4S

There is a step at 1:26, the preparation of the jump at 1:38. Too much time. True, there are two little glides, one at 1:29, too far from the jump, the other at 1:33. What he does at 1:33?

Chen is running, and a little awkward as well. At one point, in one of the steps, he slides for a second on the foot he placed on the ice, spreading his arms to make sure he doesn’t lose his balance. Then he starts running again. Too little. The long preparation is there again.

As for the rotation, this is not the best of shots. When is the take off, at 5? Before 5 it is impossible, it could be on 5 or, worse, between 5 and 6. In 10 he is already landed. For me it is underrotated. I’m pretty sure it’s underrotated, but that almost pushes me not to make the call. On the other hand, I’m sure on the bad landing.

With only bullet 6 and two deductions the GOE is -1.

CSSp4

The spin is slightly traveled. Not enough for a deduction, enough not to give bullet 3 (effortless) and 4 (centered). With bullets 1, 2 and 6 the GOE is +3 (same GOE as the Beijing judges).

4Lz

There is nothing between 2:18 and 2:30. That hint of a change of direction with two feet at 2:27 (I would have gladly done without the change of shot at that moment, because it makes it more difficult to evaluate the movement) is too little. With bullet 2 (good take off and landing), 5 (very good body position) and 6 (on the music) and the deduction, the GOE is +2.

StSq

Beyond what is required for level 4, Chen does nothing. I seriously thought about not assigning him any bullets, then I told myself that maybe it was me who was too strict, I picked up the rules and looked at the step sequence several times. Let’s say there is 2, matches the music, and 3, effortless. For the 5 I would have liked something more. GOE: +2.

4T+1Eu+1F

Chen lands badly from the toe loop and is not able to do a good take off for the euler. The euler has only two possibilities: either it is fully dotated or it is downgraded. There is no underrotated euler, not according to the rules. This is because all the eulers are slightly underrotated, it is part of the dynamics of the movement. However, when the skater lands forward, the jump is downgraded.

With that euler it is already a miracle that he managed to do a single flip, but of course there is also the deduction for Loss of flow/direction/rhythm between jumps (combo/seq.). The first deduction goes from -3 to -4, the second from -1 to -3. In both cases I award the littlest deduction. With only bullet 6, the final GOE is -3.

3A

Curiously with the 3A, not Chen’s favorite jump, there is no particular problem. With bullets 2, 3 and 6 the GOE is +3.

3Lz+3T

Not a good shot to see the lutz edge, but I assume that’s correct. But the jump is underrotated. The top row is the take off. The middle row is the landing. The last row… are the same screenshots. I noticed a particular thing. Do you see that in the second row the red line is exactly at the height of the skate? It is annoying, it does not allow us to see the landing well. But if instead of taking screenshots with full screen, I take them with the screen at a reduced size, the red line moves, and we see the skate. In the second screenshot Chen has already landed. The jump is underrotated.

As for the toe loop, by rules the jumps must be landed on the outside edge. If a jump is landed on the inside edge, the skater must receive a deduction for weak landing.

CCoSp

Impossible to judge, I keep the official score.

ChSq

I refuse to rate this stuff. I’m serious, I better not write what I think about this choreographic sequence. Let’s pretend that the judges’ evaluation is correct and I spare myself from reading the complaints of those who think that I am unable to understand a modern program.

FCCoSp

At some point the shot changes, so a complete evaluation of the spin is impossible. I have the impression that at 4:31 there is a loss of control, but I’m not quite sure. But there is another thing I don’t like.

Not wanting to be influenced by my tastes I almost never assigned the deduction for unaesthetic position, but if you drop your head, I’ll give to you the deduction. There is no bullet 2, I’m not sure about the others because of the shot. The GOE is blocked at most at +3, with the deduction I stop at +2.

PCS

Chen skates badly. We have seen this abundantly in the short program. This is a post in which I looked at his movements, of other posts you can find the link in the post dedicated to the analysis of the SP that I inserted at the beginning.

PCS in Beijing: the new Olympic Champion and the others

And it is not a problem of the modern style of the program. Let’s take crossovers. Look at how bend Chen is (first row) and how little Hanyu is bend (second row) in Raison. Raison is a modern program, and definitely more innovative than anything Chen did. Yet you can be modern with a straight back.

Chen is preparing a quadruple and Hanyu is not? In the third row Hanyu is preparing a quadruple in Ten to Chi to, and his back is straight. The difference is not the style of the program, but the skater’s ability to skate with elegance.

I really tried to make a comparison between the movements of the skaters in the two programs, but it is impossible. They never make the same movement, at least not with the same type of shot and going in the same direction. I settled for something vaguely similar.

Here, starting from the right, they go backwards (Chen immediately after landing from a jump, Hanyu after a mohawk). Chen bends his back to turn around, as if he is going to do something very difficult, then turns with a (low) hop half turn and starts running. Hanyu is much straighter. He’s also leaning slightly forward, but his butt doesn’t stick out because he bends his legs. And while Chen has his head up, Hanyu has it bend. It’s an important difference: Chen tries to stay erect, but to move he bends his back, it’s a clumsy gesture. Hanyu stoops, because he is interpreting suffering. So Hanyu, who is already in a better position, is also interpreting.

Hanyu glides back briefly, then turns and does a much difficult and higher jump than Chen’s, never assuming the bad stance Chen has taken. And with Hanyu the shot is ugly, from below, so it’s easier to look awkward. Nevertheless…

And after the jump, Hanyu don’t run. No, he does a flying spin. After there is another jump, a split jump, and not even in this case Hanyu hunches over.

And after the jump, Hanyu leaves with a twizzle, not running.

I compare only one other movement, both of which lower in a lunge.

Chen is stiff. The back is in line with the leg, the head is not. The position is forced, and the balance is never tested. In the fourth screenshot from the right we see that the torso is central to the legs, and only moves slightly forward when Chen is straightening up. The movement is done with caution, so as not to risk losing balance.

Hanyu begins by throwing his head back, an unnatural position that tests his sense of balance, but which makes sense from an interpretation point of view. This means that he works on two aspects at the same time: on technique and on interpretation. Then he moves, with a circular and soft movement of the torso that can also be perceived from the screenshots, up to the sixth from the left. He too has his head down. But he has a low head with a low torso, this is clearly an interpretative choice. And his shoulders are beyond his knees, so he’s testing his sense of balance.

I don’t watch what they do next, their glides are different, with a different position of the torso, and their subsequent movements are also different. What interests to me is that they both do a lunge, but they do two very different movements.

Taking screenshots is a long job, and at the moment I don’t have the time. I do a few, only at the beginning of the program, to see Chen’s carriage. I notice, in the bottom row, that where he is most inclined both feet are facing forward, so it’s not that difficult a position and, next to, that I’ve seen better exits from a spread eagle.

The SS score necessarily remain low, as for the TR it was the Chen’s coach himself who said that in Chen’s free skate there are none:

Nathan and I were criticized for quite a long time, for example, that in a free program we have jumps and no transitions. So I asked a counter-question. I asked: “Do you want Chen to perform all his quad cleanly and wink to the judges at the same time?” Well, yes, we almost did it in the short program, but there you can afford it, because the program is short and with the jumps which Nathan does with a very high degree of reliability.

The article is this:

Rafael Arutyunyan: If a person is a fool, there is no difference whether he is a kid or adult.

But if the judges have for years awarded Chen marks he didn’t deserve, giving him who knows how many medals, I evaluate his performance for what he does and how he does it. Remember that the IN mark cannot be high in the presence of long preparation, because the skater spends a lot of time doing nothing.

The next screenshot is ddicated to the protocol. The left side is the simple transcript of the protocol, which you can find here. Beyond the green band there are the bullets assigned by me, and that I have listed above, then some important notes, the correct BV, the mark in the GOE taking into account bullet and deduction, the score of the GOE, and the total value of the element. Adding all the values of the technical elements with those of the PCS, found in the section below, this is the result:

What ranking would we have had if the judges had assigned correct marks? On the left I have transcribed the official ranking. On the right, above, there is the ranking based on my scores. Below I indicated the difference in the score between the official one and the one recalculated by me.

As I said, you can dispute everything. Explain to me where and what I did wrong, and if your explanation is based on facts, because did you notice something that escaped me, I correct the marks and posts. My ranking is not complete. I’ve only watched four skaters, eight programs in all, and for seven programs my score is lower than the official one. Chances are that if I watched the other sprograms I would lower the marks of the other skaters as well. With Brown and Cha I’m almost sure that I would keep the PCS they received, but even just looking at two elements from Brown’s short program (the 3A and the step sequence), and two from Cha’s free program (the 4T and the combination 3Lz+3Lo), their scores dropped slightly. What would happen if you looked at all of their elements? I do not know. I know with certainty that I would lower the PCS of Grassl and Kvitelashvili, and that to Kvitelashvili I would cancel two jumps because he broke the Zayak rule. But it would really be needed a control of all the elements and all the PCS. So I will limit myself to saying that Uno did not deserve a medal, that Kagiyama would have placed ahead of Chen – to say if he would have been on the podium, however, one would have to look carefully at Cha, Brown and Semenenko – and that Hanyu was the victim of a sensational theft. Despite the mistakes, the best programs are his.

Edit:

It seemed to me that I made it clear that I never said Junhwan Cha and Jason Brown deserved to be on the podium at Beijing, but evidently I wasn’t so clear. I saw two people on Twitter who reported the last screenshot I put above stating that, if the marks were awarded correctly, Cha should have won the silver, Brown the bronze. I’ve never written this. I wrote that I checked the programs of four skaters, Chen, Kagiyama, Uno and Hanyu, but I ignored the others. Of the other programs I have looked at some single element, or maybe the skating skills and the transitions to evaluate the components, but I have not made accurate checks. I noticed a couple of calls about the rotations that the tech panel should have done in Cha’s free skate but he didn’t, I hadn’t looked at the rest of Cha’s program. I have now quickly looked at his short program. Suppose the marks in the PCS are correct (and it seems to me that more or less they are, although to be sure I would have to look at the program better), as well as the GOEs, at least if we do not make any calls. I have strong suspicions on the combination, on the edge of the lutz (at the beginning it is outside, then it is always less deep, I am not sure how it is at the moment of the take off) and on the rotation of the loop, but the shots do not help, so I go in favor of the skater and I don’t call anything. However, the quadruple salchow is underrotated. The take off is in the penultimate screenshot of the first row, in the first screenshot of the second row Cha is already landed.

The BV falls from 9.70 to 7.76. Bullet 2, good take off and landing, impossible to assign in the presence of an underrotated, is missing. Let’s say there are three bullets and start with +3, the maximum possible without one of the first three bullets. The deduction for underrotated ranges from -3 to -4. I assign the minimum deduction, -3. The final GOE is 0. The value of that 4S drops from 13.03 points of the official score to 7.76.

Now let’s look at the step sequence. A turn is hopped (fifth screenshot from left, in the video we can see it better than in the screenshots), the sequence drops to level 3, the BV drops from 3.90 to 3.30 points.

Maintaining the marks assigned to Cha by the judges, but with a level 3, the GOE drops from 1.56 to 1.32 points. With two elements correctly scored Cha lost 6.11 points. Now let’s remove these points from the total of 278.49, the one I calculated after having watched just two of the twelve elements of Cha’s free skate. The final score is 272.38. With a less accurate control than I did for the other four skaters, the score I assign to Cha is lower than the 272.74 I assign to Kagiyama. If I looked elsewhere, the score could go down even more, and probably with careful checks, which I just didn’t, Brown’s score would go down too. Hanyu deserved gold, Kagiyama probably deserved silver, as for bronze I have no idea, we should look carefully at the programs of Cha and Brown, remembering that Chen too is not so far.