Is the problem the cap?

Posted on October 9, 2022 by Martina Frammartino

The cap in the PCS is one of the many rules that I would abolish. It is true that certain errors disturb the program, but there are so many different types of errors, and so many types of impacts in the programs, that a rule like that cannot cover them all. It is too rigid, and the competitions of recent years have shown us that it is applied arbitrarily.

In the last years of his career, say from the 2015-2016 season (we can’t judge the 2014-2015 season, he was never healthy) a Hanyu program with two falls still contains more transitions than the program of any other skater who is not named Patrick Chan. Giving him in Transitions marks lower that the marks of any other skater because he made some mistakes in the technical elements is a bestiality. Yes, when he was a kid he struggled to get up from falls, then he learned to get up quickly and a fall impact at most in Choreography or Interpretation, not in the other voices. At most, because for me the fall on the 4A in Beijing does not impact in any other aspect than the GOE of the 4A itself (obviously, in the score there also need to be the deduction). And his ability to grasp and express notes is such that, if the judges respect the rules, they can’t give him a low score, unless he really made a mess (and by mess I don’t mean errors in the technical elements, but to a whole subdued performance. In this sense, the free skate in Beijing 2022 is enormously superior to the free skate in the 2019 National Championship, regardless of the number of falls). There are also errors, such as the 3A in the SP of the World Team Trophy 2021, which deserve a low GOE, but which would deserve a higher mark in Skating Skills, because to be able to make that save, in addition to incredible courage, extraordinary skating skills are needed. So I would abolish the rule, but, as long as it is there, I acknowledge that it exists, which not all judges do.

According to the rule, with a fall (or a serious mistake, but I’ll see that later) the maximum score in SS, TR or CO is 9.75, in PE and IN is 9.50.

I highlighted the marks higher than the maximum possible in red, the maximum possible marks in light blue. In practice, the marks in light blue tell us that, without a fall, Papadakis/Cizeron would have received a 10.00.

This is a national championship and is it known that judges give higher marks in national championships? Actually it doesn’t happen in all national championships (and not with all skaters), and such a thing should not happen even in a national championship. However, to be sure that the judges know the rules, I also looked at some international competitions.

In the short program of the 2021 World Championship Nathan Chen received a mark higher than the maximum possible with a fall, and 12 marks which correspond to 10.00. I suppose that for the judges it was an extraordinary program. I must have been very distracted when Chen skated, because I didn’t notice it anything extraordinary in his skating.

If there are two falls, the maximum marks become 9.25 for SS, TR and CO, 8.75 for PE and IN.

This is the Team Event at the 2022 Olympic Games, and for Mishina/Galliamov only two judges remembered that there is a cap in the components. This is the most glaring case I’ve noticed, but judges forget the cap from time to time, as Jason Brown’s score at the 2019 NHK Trophy can testify.

In theory we should all know what a fall is, in practice sometimes in the protocols I have seen indicated as falls things that for me were simple (big) imbalances, and see judged as imbalances things that in my opinion are a fall. For this post I relied on the evaluations of the technical panel, without questioning them (although sometimes we should). If the technical panel called the fall, then there is the cap. What if he didn’t? Let’s try to understand what a serious mistake is. According to the ISU

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

Okay, let’s look at Nathan Chen’s protocol in the Skate America 2021 SP.

There is a fall, and this is not disputed. If there is only one serious error, only one mark (I used blue and not light blue for a matter of legibility) is as high as the maximum possible, the others are all inferior. However, two elements received a -5 of GOE, not one. The GOE is correct, Chen did a step out and then a single, so his program lacked the combination, and in the SP the GOE of a Jump element not according to requirements final GOE must be -5.

Could it be a serious mistake and thus have an impact in the PCS? According to the judges no, in green I indicated the marks that would have been too high in the presence of two errors, in orange the marks corresponding to 10.00. Two different conclusions can be drawn from a protocol like this, I leave it to you to decide which is the correct hypothesis. Hypothesis a: the judges do not know the rules and therefore assign marks that they cannot assign. Hypothesis b: according to the judges, that is not a serious error. If there are other hypotheses, tell me, they don’t come to my mind.

Let’s see how Chen performed the combination. I start from the landing of the 4F and stop before the take off of the toe loop. I’m sorry for the poor quality of the screenshoot.

And wouldn’t this step out have an impact on the fluidity of the program and/or on the correlation with the music? To understand if a mistake is serious, I pretend to be my mother. I’ve watched a few competitions with her, and I know that every now and then I comment on mistakes she hasn’t seen. If she do not see it, if the error is visible only to those who know the rules, in my opinion it is not a serious error, because the artistic aspect was not influenced by the error. Here, my mother would have seen this mistake. For me this is, without a doubt, a serious mistake. For the judges, no.

Let’s look at other mistakes.

According to the protocol of Internationaux de France 2019 Chen did not fall. The 3A has a negative GOE, but there is no deduction. How did he do the jump? Is this a serious mistake or not? We see…

I remember that, according to rule 503,

A Fall is defined as loss of control by a Skater with the result that the majority of his/her own body weight is on the ice supported by any other part of the body other than the blades e.g. hand(s), knee(s), back, buttock(s) or any part of the arm.

I would like to ask the technical panel where they think the weight of Chen’s body is, because it seems to me that it is on his hands. But from the call of the technical panel I must deduce that this is not a fall, and from the judges’ marks I must deduce that it is not a serious mistake.

In the free skate of the last Olympics Shoma Uno fell once.

There is a serious mistake, we all agree on this. How did he perform the other elements?

Let’s go back to the situation of Skate America. Either the judges don’t know the rules (or they don’t care about respecting them) or for them this program contains only one serious mistake, the fall. There are other two elements with a negative GOE. How did Uno performed them? Let’s forget that the technical panel did not realize that there are very few jumps on which Uno has completed the rotation. Most people cannot tell if a jump is underrotated or not, so let’s limit ourselves to what is clear, since serious mistake must be something clear. The 4S:

Uno landed on two feet. So landing on two feet isn’t a big mistake. In this I agree with the technical panel, if the skater does not get too unbalanced (and Uno does mistakes at the landing of his jumps so often that he has learned to mask his mistakes, so I would often punish him with a low GOE, a low BV if there is a lack of rotation, because the mistake is there, but I would not punish him on the PCS), the mistake should not impact the components. Attention, if landing on two feet is not a serious mistake for Uno, this also applies to Yuzuru Hanyu’s 4A<< of the last national championship.

True, Uno was a little less unbalanced than Hanyu (although during the exit he touched the ice with his free foot) but Hanyu was much less unbalanced than Chen in the two previous cases.

Then there is Uno’s 4T. This is the landing:

Uno struggled to keep landing, he is clearly off balance and needed to do a three to regain control of his body. Would my mother have seen this mistake? Maybe, or maybe not. Is this a serious mistake? Let’s talk about. Because this is a mistake, but it certainly doesn’t have the same impact on the viewer as that fall on the 4F. So the rule is too stiff.

And then there is another element that had a positive GOE that I have some doubts about, the combination 3A+1Eu+1F. Uno wanted to do a 3F, we all know that. That jump is popped. Is a popped jump a serious mistake? In my opinion, it is a mistake for the BV and GOE, but as for the PCS it should have at best (at best!) an influence in IN, and only if the movement of the skater is clearly clumsy. Did Uno move awkwardly?

I could be wrong, but it doesn’t look that elegant to me. Sure, there is popped and popped. This is Hanyu’s 2T in the SP at Skate Canada 2015, and indeed the movement is ugly.

Hanyu’s 2S on the SP of the 2019 World Championship is much less disturbing. If at Skate Canada we could have applied the cap, if it existed, for me at the World Championship applying a cap makes much less sense than applying it in all the cases I mentioned when writing about Chen and Uno.

My mother would not have seen this mistake for sure, as she would not have noticed anything strange neither in the single salchow done by Hanyu in the short program of the last Olympics.

In almost all cases, a jump popped is not a good reason to apply the serious mistake rule. On the other hand, my mother would have seen this mistake, made by the skater who in Beijing skated immediately after Hanyu.

Uno was not awarded any 10.00, but the marks he received, for his standards are very high, as we can see thanks to SkatingScores, a sign that the judges did not feel they had to lower them due to a serious error:

Uno received his highest ever PCS marks one month after the Olympic Games, at the 2022 World Championship. Let’s leave that competition aside because it hadn’t been contested yet. If we do not consider one National Championship, that day Uno established his personal best in the PCS, so no cap was applied to him. Hanyu made one mistake (now we know that it was not a mistake but a lot of bad luck, but to simplify the speech I’m writing as it was a mistake) much more serious of Uno’s mistake at the level of BV, but that for the PCS has no relevance. This means that if the cap is not applied to Uno, it is impossible to apply it to Hanyu (and to Hanyu, however, in no case are there the extremes to apply the cap).

I do not accept the assertion that the judges of Skate America 2021 are different from those of the internationaux de France 2019 or those of the Olympic Games 2022. A rule should be valid under any circumstances, not be applied depending on who the judges are. In tennis the line is always part of the court, a ball hitting the line is always valid, the ball can not be invalid if there is a different chair judge. Tennis players must always hit the ball before the second bounce. The rules do not change with the change of chair judges, in figure skating it should be the same, otherwise it is not a serious sport. And apart from that, Uno’s hand on ice during his combination was judged by the same people who judged Hanyu’s salchow, and almost entirely by the same people who judged the free skate.

I stay on Uno and go back to a competition that I have already watched a bit, the Short Progam of the Internationaux de France 2019. Uno fell twice, on the 4T of the combination, which he obviously didn’t complete

and on the 3A. The first line is the take off, my screenshots goes from left to right, Uno did a curve, at the take off he is going from the right to the left. The second line is the landing.

In the second (from left) screenshot Uno has clearly landed, the blade of the skate is horizontal, has already lifted a lot of snow, and we can see that he has his knee bent and that the weight is backwards, a position that inevitably leads him to fall. What I noticed immediately, already watching the competition live, was the direction he is facing: he is moving forward. Only after he landed, he turned backwards because his body continued to rotate. I saw it, will the technical panel have seen it? And if on the toe loop Uno got up in a second, he struggled a lot here. This fall is ugly, unlike the two falls made by Hanyu in Beijing, especially the one on 4A. I was afraid Uno hurted himself. How will this program have been judged?

I have no doubts in calling a downgraded and saying that Uno did a 3A <<, with a base value of 3.63 points, the technical panel did not even call the underrotated, 3A <, with a base value of 7.04 points. Uno was awarded a base value of 8.80 points. I must suppose that for Uno special rules apply, which do not require that the rotation of the jumps is completed in the air. As for the PCS, with two falls the cap is low, but not everyone has remembered it.

Let’s go to another problem. A no value can be assigned to elements where the audience doesn’t notice anything, such as the sit spin performed by Hanyu in the 2020 National Championship short program. Let’s pretend the spin cancellation is correct (which I don’t believe, but at the moment that is not the point).

Did the audience notice anything strange? Did anyone get the impression that Hanyu wasn’t interpreting the music when he “missed” the spin? No, therefore no cap can be applied.

Why this long premise? Because Hanyu noticed that after receiving very high scores in late 2015, his scores dropped, even as he got better. He had never made the considerations he did recently, and some say he shouldn’t have done them now. This is a fragment of discussion that I came across on twitter.

So he got low scores because of his mistakes? He made several mistakes, I’m not going to deny it. But what happened when he made no mistakes? Were the judges really so eager to award him 10.00 and didn’t they just do it because of his mistakes? I checked all the competitions from the 2015 Grand Prix Final onward. I started deliberately from that moment because in that competition Hanyu received very high marks. What marks were he awarded afterwards? This is my chart, but I guess reading all the numbers is boring. Below I have summarized the most significant data in some graphs.

I have listed the competition, dividing them by season. In column D I have indicated how many elements have received at least one negative mark, even if the overall GOE is positive. In column E I have indicated how many elements received a negative GOE. In column F I have indicated how many elements have been received a no value call. In column G I have indicated the number of falls. When I have not written anything in any of these columns it means that the program was perfect: there are no errors and the lowest mark(s) received by Hanyu was a 0. In this case I colored the boxes in gray. As we can see, there have been several perfect programs even from 2018 onward.

In column H I have indicated the number of 10.00 awarded to Hanyu. In column I I have indicated the number of 9.75. In column J I have indicated the number of marks. This is because if the PCS for all those years were 5, in some competitions (Autumn Classic International 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 and World Team Trophy 2021) the judges were 7 and not 9, then the skaters received only 35 marks and not 45. The next three columns indicate the percentages of 10.00, 9.75 and 10.00 and 9.75 added together received by Hanyu in each program. The percentages help us to compare competitions with 9 judges and those with 7 judges.

As we have seen with Chen and Uno, a big step out (complete with a call of of no value to the second jump of the combination, both because of the step out and because the second jump was only a single, and in the short program single jumps are not allowed), an imbalance that looks a lot like a fall, a landing on two feet, a jump popped with an awkward movement, and even a hand on the ice between the two jumps of a combination, are not enough to apply the cap.

I made my chart by counting how many 10.00 Hanyu got in the programs he didn’t fell. The red line separates the seasons until 2017-2018 season and the last seasons.

I have indicated the National Championships in light blue. At a glance, I’d say the number of 10.00 Hanyu received dropped a lot even when he didn’t fall. Further down there will be other graphics dedicated to a small number of programs, but to distinguish the programs I have looked at the protocols.

These are the protocols of the programs that entered the first graph. I have highlighted the 10.00.

The negative GOE on the 4Lo is linked to a big step out. Big, but Chen’s seems uglier to me, and in any case in the 2016-2017 season the only constraint on the PCS was the prohibition to assign 10.00 in case of a fall. But the 10.000 are only three, for a program at the same time really difficult and exciting.

In the Grand Prix final there was not even a step out, just a big imbalance. And he didn’t have to help with his hand to stay on his feet like Uno did in Beijing. Again three 10.00.

In the Four Continents Championship he popped a jump, but still managed to complete the combination and did a valid element. The GOE is positive, a sign that yes, the error has occurred (we are talking about 9.20 points of BV and, assuming that the marks would have been the same, of 0.30 points of GOE), so that error does not disturbed the artistic aspect of the program. But I see only one 10.00, and seven 9.00. I would like to know from the judges who else would be able to skate Let’s Go Crazy, even if only doing triple jumps.

In free skate he popped a jump, and actually the movement is not beautiful, although it seems excessive to me to assign a negative GOE for this. Okay, patience for the -1 awarded by three judges, but certainly this is not a serious mistake (which did not exist at the time). But I struggle to see 10.00.

The mistake was there, even if we could discuss its gravity since he did not put his knee on the ice and that the movement never stopped. His foot slipped, then Hanyu got up and did a 2T. This is a big mistake at the level of BV and GOE, but which has no relevance for the PCS (apart from the fact that the cap did not yet exist). Watch that program, and then tell me that he didn’t interpret the music from the first to the last second, that he didn’t drag the arena with him, that he didn’t perform a lot of difficult steps and at a crazy speed.

This was a World record. Watch the video, and then say to me that the PCS marks (and the GOE marks) are correct.

In this case I do not do screenshots, however on the 1Lo he was awkward, perhaps less than at SC 2015, certainly more than at WC 2019 and much more than at OG 2022. As for the 4S, he put both hands on the ice. The cap did not exist yet, but I recognize that they are two ugly mistakes to see, especially the second one.

Single salchow a bit ugly, not very ugly, triple salchow of the combination 4T+1Lo+3S with an exit a bit hasty but nothing more, for me award a negative GOE on this element is a mistake, and a bit ugly final axel. Nothing that really gives a bad impression. Yes, he could have skated better, but it is still a pleasant program to watch.

I remind you that with this program Hanyu has set a world record. He was perfect in all he did. Compare this protocol with the one (for the same program) at the GPF 2015.

In the table (and graph) above I have mistakenly indicated 2017 CoR SP. Actually I should have written 2017 CoR FS, in the short program Hanyu fell, so I ignored the SP protocol and the program was not in my graph. There is the FS.

There have been a couple of difficult landings, nothing really serious. The worst is the one on the 4S. Only he knows how he can get up from such a position without putting his second foot or a hand on the ice. The cap was not there yet, however, although there can’t be serious errors, this is not one of his best programs.

Chopin, again. True, with the PyeongChang program he scored 0.73 points more than in Barcelona. Let’s see the differences.

 BVGOEPCSTSS
2015 GPF47,4614,3649,14110,95
2018 OG49,0114,1748,50111,68
diff.1,55-0,19-0,640,73

Hanyu’s score grew because he raised the BV, but the GOE and PCS are lower. I must suppose his skating has gotten a little worse.

There are two mistakes in this program, two big step out. I don’t do screenshots, I suppose you all remember them, and if you don’t remember them I refer you to the video. Yes, there are two mistakes, but it’s a phenomenal program anyway. The choreo sequence would be enough to give a 10.00 in IN.

The second spin is definitely wrong. He entered slowly, he traveled, he did not hold correctly the position on the first foot. If I will always contest the call of no value on the spin of the 2020 National Championship, here the no value is fully justified. That said, would my mother have seen the mistake? No. At most she would have told me that she had seen more beautiful spins. So, no serious mistake.

Another World record.

This is the 4Lo. Did I write something about getting up from a very low position without putting down the free foot or the hands? My mom would have seen this mistake, so according to this criteria we could consider it a serious mistake. However, it is less serious than the two errors that were not considered serious for Chen. Different judges, of course, but when the arbitrariness of judgment is excessive, the competitions become a farce.

There is another not too good landing, the one on the 4T+3A sequence, in which he is clearly unbalanced (but not as much as in the 4Lo). In my opinion there are no serious mistakes, according to the judges of Skate America 2021 or the Internationaux de France 2019 not even, and according to the judges of Beijing 2022 not even (think of the hand of Uno in the combination). However, to avoid being influenced by the fact that I’m a fan, I consider this an imperfect program. Why is this clarification important to me? For the next graph, I’ll get to that later.

On the last screenshot we can not see it, this is the protocol of the 2019 World Championship. Only one mistake, the salchow popped. The screenshots of that salchow are above, in my opinion it is not a serious mistake (apart from the huge loss in BV+GOE).

The free skate of the 2019 World Championship. Only one mistake, the salchow landed with his knee too bent and his foot touching a bit the ice. I never consider the call on rotation. That must be considered by the judges for the GOE, but my mom does not even see the downgraded, considering an underrotated a serious mistake in my opinion would be a serious mistake. This mistake is less serious than Chen’s mistakes, but my mother would have seen it. Let’s say it’s a little flawed program. But really, the GOE of this element deserves to be low, but what does a jump landed like this have to do with SS or TR? Or even CO?

Nice this protocol. Sooner or later I will look closely at those three toe loops, but the fact that the GOE, despite a deduction between -1 and -2 due to the sign <, is positive, tells me that those who have seen those jumps have seen some good jumps. The positives outweigh the negatives (which are limited to something the audience doesn’t perceive). The errors are in the first two jumps, concluded with a step out. And back to my earlier question, is a step out a serious mistake? This discretion should not exist. For Hanyu, judging by the marks, a step out is a serious mistake, for Yuma Kagiyama not, given that despite this step out in Beijing (with a hand on the ice, Hanyu didn’t touch the ice) he established the personal best in the PCS, as we can see thanks to SkatingScores.

The 2019 Autumn Classic International free skate wasn’t one of Hanyu’s best programs, I know it. Do we want to talk about the two Skate Canada programs?

Did Hanyu make mistakes? I feel the need to ask, because I don’t see all this desire on the part of the judges to assign him a lot of 10.00.

The screenshot may leave some doubts, but from the video it’s clear that Hanyu’s free foot does not touch the ice. True, the 4Lo has a difficult landing, but it is a minimal mistake that does not affect the beauty of the program, and that cannot in any way be considered a serious mistake.

These are also difficult landings, yet it doesn’t seem to me that these three landings (three, not one) have stopped the judges from awarding Chen the highest number of 10.00 he has ever received.

4S.

4T+1Eu+1F.

It should be noted that when Chen landed the 4T, he was so unbalanced that he did a very bad euler. The euler should have been downgraded, but that day the technical panel decided not to be interested in controlling the rotation of the jumps. But, beyond the bad landing and the missed call, the flip is popped. Chen had planned a triple, but performed only a single. Considering how unbalanced he was (in the video is clearer), Chen was good at attacking that single, but obviously for the judges a popped jump is not a serious mistake.

3Lz+3T.

There is also a level 2 spin marked with the V sign, but obviously this too is not a serious mistake. Note that the V sign is awarded when basic positions are not held correctly or are not held long enough. An error of this type in a short program leads to the cancellation of the spin, in a free skate at the sign V, and a lower BV and GOE. The error is the same, it is only the rule that has different effects. For the public there is no difference. So if in a free skate a spin with the sign V is not a serious mistake, a spin with no value in a short program for the same type of mistake, and without obvious imbalances, cannot be considered a serious mistake.

No serious mistakes done by Chen.

Ok, Let’s go back to Hanyu. Do you see any errors in this SP? And how many 10.00 do you see?

I suspect some judges have a tendency to punish popped jumps by awarding a negative GOE (although perhaps not to all, Chen’s 4T+1Eu+1F combination does not have a negative GOE despite a landing from the toe loop not exactly nice and a pop). Actually such behavior is a mistake. If the jump is done well, on the music, it is big … the positive bullets can be there. Did the skater make a mistake? Sure, and he gets punished with a lower BV, but marks must consider how that specific jump was performed, not how many rotations it has. Hanyu’s mistakes – one popped jump, one underrotated – are minimal, and shouldn’t have had any influence on the PCS.

While I was looking at the protocol, I noticed some weird marks awarded by Judge 4, American Doug Williams. I had started making some comparisons with the marks he awarded to Jason Brown (you can find the protocol as the fourth screenshot of this post), because Williams was able to give Brown higher marks than Hanyu in SS, TR and CO, even though Brown fell twice and therefore on his PCS there is a rather low cap, but it would have been a long speech, which I will do another time. But was Hanyu’s program really that inferior to what he did in 2015?

In the short program of the Grand Prix Final 2019 Hanyu made a mistake, he could not complete the combination. 3T is missing, therefore lower BV, and -5 of GOE as per rule, nothing to say about this. But what does this error on a technical element have to do with SS and TR? I deliberately kept the spread eagle, Hanyu didn’t lose transition due to the mistake. He only missed a jump. Did the judges apply the rule on serious mistake? I don’t know, from the marks I don’t understand it (with the exception of Judge 6, Walter Toigo, who clearly applied the cap and from the cap opted for the severity), because not even I would have assigned 10.00. If in doubt, I exclude the program from the next graph because I believe it contains an error. On the other hand, I did not exclude the short program of the 2017 World Championship because in that case the gesture was much more dynamic, because on that music that type of error did not bother too much, on the contrary, it matches the theme of the program just as it happened with the fall in Romeo+Giulietta in 2012 and would happen with the one on 4A in Ten to Chi to, while in Otonal the error (albeit less serious than a fall) was more perceptible, and also because in 2017 the serious error rule did not existed.

Let’s start with the element that received one negative mark, the final axel. We all know that Hanyu would have wanted to do a triple axel-triple axel sequence, and I’m sorry he was not able to do it because it would have been historic. But that simple axel is preceded by a step, a counter (+1), it’s wide (+1) and it’s on the music (+1), where do those marks come from? As for the triple flip of the 4T+1Eu+3F combination, it is concluded with a step out, but on a visual level the impact is less bad than that of the 4T+COMBO of the short program. And both Hanyu’s jumps are less ugly than Kagiyama’s step out at the 2022 Olympic Games, Chen’s step out at 2021 Skate America or his non-fall at the 2019 Internationaux de France. For them a step out is not a serious mistake, obviously for Hanyu it is, and in the future I will ignore this program.

In the National Championship there are one 0 (why?), three +2, all other marks are between +3 and +5. I had heard that in the national championship the scores are raised to excess, but obviously this does not happen with Hanyu. Mind you, I didn’t want absurdly high marks in the National Championship, I wanted the right marks. Are these the right marks? Has he worsened so much in PCS since December 2015?

At the Four Continents Championship Hanyu returned to Chopin. To better understand how this program was scored, I decided to compare it with the other perfect versions of Chopin. We are on the same music, there are some small changes in the way the program is structured, but the choreography and the technical elements are the same. Over time, have Hanyu’s interpretation and his technical skills on jumps and spins, but also on skating, improved?

For the PCS the comparison is simple, we need just look at the final score. For the technical elements, with the modification of the BV, the passage from 7 degrees of judgment to 11 and the consequent changes in the GOE, to make a comparison the data must be processed. A comparison, however, is possible.

I checked the percentage of Hanyu’s GOE compared to the maximum possible with the technical elements he performed. The table above contains all the values, for the graphs I decided to make two different ones because otherwise the graph would have been too large: the maximum PCS in a SP are 50.00 points, in a graph that has the vertical axis that reaches almost 100.00, the changes on the PCS would not have been seen well. So there is one graph for the PCS, one for the percentage of GOE, and evidently according to the judges in recent years Hanyu, when he skate a perfect program, got worse.

National Championship 2020. The screenshots of the canceled spin in the short program are posted above in the post. According to the technical panel, Hanyu would not have completed the two turns in the sit position, a claim contradicted by the images. Calling a no value on that spin was a theft made in plain sight. Other than that, the position is nice.

In 2017 the serious mistake rule did not exist, I use this spin (the call was level 1 because somehow she completed the two spins, the GOEs between -2 and – 3, I don’t think there were influences in the PCS) done by Carolina Kostner in the short program of the 2017 World Championship not to say that she had to be punished with lower PCS, but to notice the difference between a spin with a good position and a spin that contains a mistake clearly visible to the public.

In the video the error is really evident. As Kostner completed two turns, she was awarded a BV of 1.90 points, with negative GOE she scored 1.09 points. A no value spin brings no points. Even ignoring the correctness of the call, on a purely visual level, Hanyu’s spin is beautiful, Kostner’s is ugly. There is no way that Hanyu’s fake mistake impacted the music, or caused the program to lose fluidity. And, for Chen, a spin with a V sign in a free skate is not a serious mistake. Where are Hanyu’s 10.00? Did the judges really look forward to assigning them to him and they couldn’t do it because of his mistakes? Even the Japanese judges.

When Chen uses modern music, praise for how innovative he is are a lot. When Hanyu does the same (before and after Chen), the judges don’t seem to like it. It happened with Let’s Go Crazy in 2016-2017 season, it was repeated with Let Me Entertain You in 2020-2021 season.

There were no falls, but in the free skate of the 2021 World Championship Hanyu struggled a lot. Here lower components are justified, because as much as some moments were beautiful, there were too many episodes in which he made a mistake that made us forget the role he was playing, pushing us to perceive all the difficulty of the technical elements. So I agree, here there are serious mistakes even without a fall.

Ok, in the short program of the World Team Trophy 2021 Hanyu landed a really difficult 3A.

Considering he didn’t need to put his hand on the ice to save the landing, I would have raised his SS marks. And, precisely because he did not put his hands, it is a less serious mistake than that of Kagiyama in the Olympic free skate (among other things Kagiyama made a step out, Hanyu concluded the movement with a high kick), or of Uno in the Olympic short program (beyond the hand, the combination ended with the free foot crawling on the ice).

Is there no 10.00 in Uno’s or Kagiyama’s protocols. So? It does not seem to me that in his career Uno has received many 10.00. If I have not missed any (I used SkatingScores to check programs from the highest PCS), for Uno there are one in the FS of the Coup du Printemps 2017, three in the FS of the 2017 World Championship, three in the SP of Skate Canada 2017, one in the SP of the 2018 Olympic Games, one in the FS of the 4CC 2019, two (by the Japanese judge) in the Olympic team event 2022, two in the FS of the World Championship 2022 (despite an underrotated 4T, so an underrotated jump is not a serious mistake). There are 13 in all, Hanyu on four different occasions has received more than thirteen 10.00, on seven occasions he has received at least ten 10.00. If Uno does not receive 10.00, it is normal, also because he almost always skates on two feet (unfortunately skating on one foot is no longer required by the rules) and to prepare the quadruples he needs a very long time. Kagiyama received only one 10.00, in the Olympic SP (in which he stumbled in the step sequence).

The seriously mistake rule clearly says that

Similar limitations must be applied to all levels of Skaters from extremely poor to outstanding.

This means that if a skater deserves 9.50 in skating skills when he skates at his best, if he makes a serious mistake he cannot deserve more than 9.25 (but he may deserve a lower score, if the quality of his skating is not at his best).

In the FS the salchow is popped, but we have already seen that a popped jump is not a serious mistake, and in any case the GOE is positive (and should have been even higher. For the score it changes little, but the marks should always be correct). And then there’s the last combination, which a judge surprisingly give a negative mark in a good combination for an exit slightly rushed, but better than the exit of a good half of Uno’s jumps. Really, sometimes it doesn’t seem like judges are using the same criteria for all skaters. The overall GOE is positive, the two World Team Trophy programs do not contain serious mistakes. 10.00? None.

Ok, here there are the 10.00. Could it be because it is the pre-Olympic national championship? However, the beauty of this program is such that it leave me breathless. When I watched it live, on the step sequence I was amazed, and amazed, and amazed again, for everything he was doing beyond what was required by the rules to have level 4. For the program he performed, these marks are even low.

If landing on two feet isn’t a serious mistake for Uno, then it doesn’t have to be for Hanyu either. And, 4A aside, all marks are between +3 and +5, a sign of the quality of what Hanyu has done.

At the Olympic Games an element deserves a no value but, as the screenshots show, Hanyu hasn’t gotten out of balance and hasn’t lost fluidity, and we’ve already seen that a popped jump is never considered a serious mistake. There is a slight travel on the first spin, but it is a really small mistake that only impacts the GOE. The program does not contain anything that could be called a serious error according to the official definition provided by the ISU.

In terms of musical interpretation Hanyu has been extraordinary, and a program full of transitions like this has never been skated by anyone, not even by him (with the exception, of course, when he skated the same program at the 2021 National Championship), Every aspect was perfect. Did the judges notice this? The marks themselves were high, but compared to what Hanyu usually receive, how does this program fit in? I checked with SkatingScores.

I drew a thin red line above the national championships. According to the judges, in 14 international competitions Hanyu skated better.

With the protocols I’ll stop here, since in the last program Hanyu fell twice. In the graph above I had entered 39 competitions, now the number has dropped to 28 because I have excluded 11 competitions, believing that they contained a serious error. In some cases (NHK Trophy 2016 SP, a jump with step out; GPF 2017 SP, big imbalance on one landing, WTT 2017 FS, some small inaccuracies but nothing big; CoR 2017 FS, one step out; GP Helsinki 2018 FS, one step out and one rushed landing; WC 2019 FS, one imbalance; GPF 2019 SP, one step out; GPF 2019 FS one step out) Hanyu’s errors in terms of fluidity, connection with music or transitions have had a less impact than the errors I reported for Chen, Uno and Kagiyama, but I excluded these programs anyway. Only in three cases in my opinion the program was really subdued. The criteria should always be the same for everyone, but let’s pretend that the judges have correctly applied the cap. The programs that remain are these:

I can be wrong, but it seems to me that the number of 10.00 has decreased.

Is it me who, as a fan, am not able to distinguish a serious mistake? Ok, in the next graph I have excluded all the programs that have received at least one negative GOE (and I remind you that in the SP of Skate America 2021 Chen had two negative GOEs, but his protocol testifies to the existence of at most only one serious error, that in the Olympic FS Uno had three negative GOEs, but the protocol testifies only one, while in the SP he had a negative GOE, and his protocol does not testify it, just as the protocol of the Olympic FS of Kagiyama does not testify that GOE negative). For them a negative GOE may not be serious, for Hanyu it is, so I don’t consider those programs.

For the next graph I excluded the FS of 4CC 2017 (even if I don’t think that negative GOE was deserved, and if at that time the rule on serious mistake did not exist), the SP of the World Championship 2017 (a mistake on the combination, not as big as Chen’s mistake at Skate America 2021, and the rule did not exist), the FS of the 2018 Olympics (there are two errors, but the atmosphere of the program is such that I was never really bothered by the mistakes, and the rule did not yet exist), the SP of the Autumn Classic International 2018 (actually there is an element that received one negative mark but not the negative GOE, but the spin that received a no value call is a little ugly), the SP of Skate Canada 2019 (a bad landing but no step outs or hands on the ice, and GOE only slightly negative, certainly nothing as bad as the mistakes I have reported for Chen, Uno and Kagiyama), the FS of the NHK Trophy 2019 (GOE only slightly negative, and considering that the jump was judged to be underrotated, visually it must not have been bad, the marks are linked to a technical error not perceivable by the public), the SP of the World Team Trophy 2021 (even if I would raise the scores for that 3A – all excluding the GOE – and the GOE is only slightly negative) and the FS of the 2021 National (one landing on two feet, a thing that Uno did in the Olympic FS, without consequences on his PCS). In total I excluded eight programs.

In these programs all the GOEs are positive, even if one program (FS WTT 2021) contains two elements that have received one slightly negative mark (a -1), but the GOE is equal to 0 in the first case, while in the second the marks are one 0, three +1, one +2 and one +3. And then there are three programs that have a no value on one element (the solo jump in the SP of WC 2019 and OG 2022, and here Hanyu actually did a mistake, and the SP spin at the 2020 National Championship, and here was the technical panel to make a mistake cancelling a correct element, so Hanyu’s disappointment is fully justified). In the other 16 programs there was not the slightest problem.

In the 10 perfect programs (so now I’m not even counting the two programs that contain popped jumps, even if they are in the graph) that he performed in an international competition after the 2015-2016 season, he no longer came close to the number of 10.00 he was previously awarded. Overall, limiting to the last four seasons, in the nine best international competitions (so there are two popped jumps, not a serious mistake for the other skaters) Hanyu received twenty-four 10.00, as many as he had received in his best program, the free skate of the Grand Prix Final 2015. The best according to the judges.

After the season in which he won the second Olympic gold, the maximum number of 10.00 he received was six at Skate Canada 2019. He had received 13 in the free skate of the NHK Trophy 2015, a competition that did not enter the my charts. He had received two in the free skate at the 2014 World Championship, as many as he received in the short program of the 2021 World Championship. Evidently, from March 2014 to March 2021, in seven years, Hanyu has not improved. Indeed, the numbers say that he had improved in the 2015-2016 season, then he got worse.

Let’s leave national competitions aside and focus on international ones. 10.00 is the highest mark. What happened with 9.75? I remind you, among other things, that with only one serious mistake, for SS, TR and CO it’s always possible to award a 9.75, if the judge believes that the skater has performed everything else perfectly.

What does this graph tell us? That not only the 10.00 has decreased, but that the overall number of high marks has decreased. Most of the 10.00 has become 9.75, and the 9.75 has become 9.50. This in programs that are perfect, or that contain imperfections that, according to the rules, cannot be considered serious mistakes. Imperfections that are not considered a serious mistake for Chen, Uno or Kagiyama, and this after excluding from the chart programs that contain errors that are serious only for Hanyu but not for the other skaters.

There are two possibilities: either the judges have used different standards of severity for years, or according to them Hanyu’s skating has really gotten worse in recent years. And this are not fans disappointed by the results to say it, but the numbers.

Only theories of conspiracy made by the fans?

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