I have already published the Italian version of this post here.
How important is age for an athlete? However good an athlete may be, sooner or later the moment of decline comes for everyone. He lose a little of speed, a little of physical resistance, the recovery from one day to the next becomes a little more demanding, and what previously allowed him to win at a certain point disappears. Nothing surprising in this. However, if a physical decline is normal, in a sport in which the opinion of the judges determines the result, age can become a problem if it is perceived as excessive to be able to compete at a high level.
After hearing so much talk about age, I decided to do some checking on the men’s figure skating competition. Thanks to Wikipedia, I easily made a table showing at what age skaters won an Olympic medal. I have not considered the team medals, and not only because they have only existed for three editions. A skater can be not that strong, and still win an Olympic medal because his teammates are strong. Let’s take the dancers Misato Komatsubara/Tim Koleto. They won a team Olympic bronze. In the individual competition they did not qualify for the free dance. Their best result at the World Championship is a 19th place, at the Four continents Championship a 9th place, in the Grand Prix (I do not count the autumn 2020 competitions, which had nothing to do with a real Grand Prix competition) at most they finished in 6th place. Their best results are two bronzes in two Challenger Series, they have never climbed on one of the first two steps of the podium in an international competition (if we exclude team competitions, the Olympics and the World Team Trophy). On the other hand Anna Cappellini/Luca Lanotte, world and European champions in 2014, capable of winning another three silvers and a bronze at the European Championship, a bronze in a Grand Prix final, a gold, nine silvers and five bronzes in Grand Prix competitions and to win another six international golds, including two in the Challenger series and one at the Universiade, and twice sixth in the dance competition at the Olympic Games, at most finished fourth two time in the team event at the Olympics. The fact that Komatsubara/Koleto won an Olympic bronze in the team event doesn’t mean they are stronger than Cappellini/Lanotte, or many other dancers I could mention. So I don’t consider team competitions.
These are the ages of the winners of an Olympic medal in the men’s event:
Nikolai Panin, who won gold in special figures in 1908, is missing, both because the competition dedicated to special figures was held only in that edition, and because it is too different from the more famous men’s competition, the one won by Ulrich Salchow in 1908, by Gillis Grafrstrom for the first time in 1920, and which then, over time, has become the competition we know.
There are some skaters who have won a medal, even at an age that we would now define as advanced (for a figure skater), but they are all medals awarded many years ago. This is why I decided to create another table with only the medals awarded after the World War II, and in any case it is a very long period, 20 editions of the Olympic Games, 74 years.
The period in which figure skaters are at their best, in general, is when they are between 22 and 23 years old, between 20 and 24 if we want to broaden it a bit. First they are young and inexperienced, then… I suppose they are too old to compete at a very high level? The only ones able of winning gold after the age of 24 were 25-year-old Scott Hamilton and 26-year-old John Curry. Hamilton did all the triples, except the axel, which he did only doubles, while Brian Orser, who finished second, performed a beautiful triple axel. As for Curry, he’s not famous for his jumps. Jumps weren’t crucial to Hamilton and Curry’s wins, and the athletic aspect wasn’t that important.
There have been only two skaters able of climb the Olympic podium at 27, Paul Wylie in 1992 and Evgeni Plushenko in 2010, both winners of silver. In 1992, there were very few skaters that could perform a quadruple. Kurt Browning landed what was officially recognized by the ISU as the first quadruple in figure skating history at the 1988 World Championship. He landed another in 1989, but touched the ice lightly with his free foot, a mistake that would have resulted in the ISU not recognizing the jump, had it had to say something on that execution. This is what happened to Jozef Sabovcik at the 1986 European Championships: he lightly touched the ice with his free foot, and the jump was not recognised. I could be wrong, but I don’t think Browning has landed any other correct quadruples in international competition (I remember a perfect one in a Canadian Championship and another perfect one in a pro competition, but officially those don’t count). At the 1992 Olympics Browning, injured in his back, made many mistakes and finished the competition in sixth place. In 1991 18-year-old Elvis Stojko had performed the first quadruple combination, 4T+2T, but Stojko wasn’t exactly very refined in skating skills and interpretation, and at the Olympic Games he finished in seventh place (although he probably deserved a better position ). There were also Alexei Urmanov, who landed his first quadruple in 1991, and Petr Barna, who landed only one quadruple in his career, at the 1992 Olympic Games. Urmanov finished the Albertville competition in fifth place, after two fifth places in the two segments of the competition. I haven’t looked his program for this post, but he’s never really been in a medal fight. Barna, the reigning European champion, won the bronze. True, he did a quadruple toe loop (although now we’d say it is under-rotated, and I’m under the impression that he even touched the ice with his free foot), but he wasn’t able to do the triple axel. The physical effort of the 1992 programs was not comparable to the current one. Training methods have changed, of course. Boots offer better support and skates are lighter. Even so, then a skater could hope for a longer career, because the technical demands weren’t as extreme as they are now.
The technical demands weren’t as extreme as they are now even in 2010. Plushenko performed a quadruple toe loop per program. Evan Lysacek, who won the gold, did not land quadruples. In the short program, apart from Plushenko, the only ones who performed a quadruple were Stephane Lambiel (another one who didn’t get along with the triple axel, although he did sometimes, and who eventually finished fourth), Adrian Schultheiss (finally fifteenth) and Brian Joubert (finally sixteenth). In the free skate there were a few more quadruples, not many.
The only “old” skater who won a medal in an era when so many quadruples were required was Javier Fernandez, bronze in 2018, at 26 years old. Lots of quadruples… Fernandez performed four, two in the short program and two in the free program. Many compared to previous editions of the Olympic Games, but only in the free program in PyeongChang (I’m not looking at the quality of execution) Nathan Chen performed six quadruples, Vincent Zhou performed five, Yuzuru Hanyu, Shoma Uno and Boyang Jin performed four .
Just to understand the acceleration that there has been in the evolution of quadruple jumps, I checked some years..
I have highlighted in yellow the occasions in which the number of quadruples presented in the two programs has increased. I have indicated the first execution for each type of quadruple, with the execution officially recognized by the ISU, while I have indicated only two combinations: the first time a quadruple has been executed in combination, and the first time a quadruple has been executed in combination with a triple. Once the road has been opened, with the addition of the combinations, or with the execution of new quadruple types, making a different combination is significant, but less than the data I have indicated. As for the increase in the number of quads, I listed some cases where not all quads had a positive GOE (in one case, Nathan Chen at the 2017 World Championship, there were even two falls). But even just trying so many quadruples is revolutionary.
The quadruple entered the programs in 1988, there was a slight growth in the 90s, with the first combinations and the addition of the salchow, then for a decade the situation remained fairly stable. The quadruple was part of the program, usually the best skaters performed it, but this was not always true. Todd Eldredge didn’t do it, he won the World Championship in 1996 and last stood on the world podium in 2001. In 2008 Jeffrey Buttle didn’t need quadruples to win the World Championship, just as Evan Lysacek for his gold at the 2010 Olympic Games. This meant that it was possible to envisage slightly longer competitive careers, because the physique was not subjected to extreme strains as it would have been later. From the following season the value of quadruples was increased and within a few years the number of quadruples performed increased, with very strong consequences on the scores.
The graph I made is very simple, I only indicated the highest score recorded during each season. I started from the 2003-04 season, the one in which the ISU Judging System was inaugurated. The judges had yet to figure out how it worked, the skaters too, and the system was only used for Grand Prix competitions. In the following season it was also used in the ISU Championships and in the junior Grand Prix competitions, then it became the only system used for all international competitions.
The first season is not really significative, then for six seasons the highest score fluctuated between 247.93 and 264.41 points, less than twenty points of fluctuation. Then there was a growth, decided in the 2010-11 season, when the value of quadruples and of triple axel was raised (and it was also allowed to perform two different quadruples in the short program, even if at the moment the best skaters have continued to perform one), more moderate in the following seasons, extraordinary in 2015-16, when Hanyu began to perform 2+3 quadruples of very high quality, and the values remained very high when everyone followed him starting to do two quadruples in the short program and four or more quadruples in the free skate.
Now, with the emphasis on jumps, it’s hard to imagine that a skater could do so many quadruples, and earn a high score, after a certain age.
What age are we talking about?
I looked at the age of the skaters who have been on the podium at the World Championships since 1989. Quads had entered skating the year before, with that toe loop completed by Browning at the 1988 World Championship. Browning finished sixth on that occasion, with the third free skate, so a jump he was the only one able to do at the time helped him only up to a point.
The next two screenshots are dedicated to the same data, with the table dedicated to the evolution from the jumps that I have already inserted above, flanked by the names of the skaters who, year by year, have reached the world podium. Next to the names of the skaters I have indicated their age. There are two skaters, Elvis Stojko and Takeshi Honda, who have a birthday around the time of the World Championship. I would have had to find the date on which the free skate was skated in each year to be sure of their ages. After having trouble finding one of the dates I gave up, and opted to pretend they both already had their birthdays. Maybe it’s true, maybe not, and they completed their years within a few days of the end of the competition. As far as I’m concerned, little changes, also because when in doubt, I decided to give them the older age. The difference between the first screenshot and the second is given by the colors, which I added to better highlight what interest me.
As mentioned, all the writings of the next screenshot are identical to the writings of the one above, the difference is in the colors. In the left area I have made more evident the moment in which the number of quadruples performed in the two programs increased. The green gets darker as the difficulty increases. In the right area I have divided the skaters by age groups. I colored in yellow the boxes of the youngest skaters, those up to 19 years of age. Orange is for skaters with some experience, although still young, between the ages of 20 and 21. Red is for expert skaters, who have reached the peak of their fitness (maybe someone reaches it at a different age, but these are rarer cases), between 22 and 24 years old. Purple is for “older” skaters, 25 and older.
If in the 90s, when quadruples were few, it was not uncommon to find skaters of a certain age on the world podium, since then skaters aged 25 and over have almost disappeared. The value of quads was increased after the 2009-2010 season, and as skaters realized the quad was an important weapon, worked to perfect it. In 2012, when Daisuke Takahashi won his last world medal, the most extreme skaters (Patrick Chan, Michal Brezina, Javier Fernandez, Kevin Reynolds and Nan Song) performed a quadruple in the short program and two in the free skate, seven skaters (between which Takahashi and Hanyu) performed two quadruples, three others performed only one. The quadruples were there, they were important, they weren’t as important as they have become since the 2015-2016 season, when it became the norm for the strongest skaters to perform two quadruples in the short program and at least three in the free program, at least five in the two programs. The first to score five quadruples was Kevin Reynolds at the 2013 Four Continents, and with five quadruples Reynolds won the competition, even though he made several mistakes. He paved the way, others followed. Since the beginning of 2016 when the number of quadruples of the strongest is less than 2+3, as in the case of Fernandez in PyeongChang in 2018, it is because there was a mistake and one of the jumps was popped.
With five quadruples, skaters over 25 almost disappeared from the podium. There is only one exception, Yuzuru Hanyu, winner of the bronze medal at the 2021 World Championship. And even getting on the podium at 24 is not so easy. Lately only Hanyu and Shoma Uno have done it, but Uno won his gold in a World championship which, as almost always happens after the Olympic Games, has been weakened by numerous important absences.
Just to understand how strange it is to see a 26-year-old on an important podium, I decided to also look at the best among those who didn’t get on the podium. Finishing fourth is a disappointment, I suppose we can all agree. Maybe not for someone who expected to finish seventh, or eighth, or even worse, but in general, finishing fourth is not pleasant. Sometimes the gap between third and fourth place is big, but usually those who finish fourth have fought to get on the podium and have not succeeded. How old were the skaters who finished fourth in major competitions? The first table is a little broader, then I propose another one. In this I entered the ages of all the skaters who finished in the top four at the post-war Olympic Games.
The oldest is the twenty-eight year old (twenty-seven?) Karol Divin, fourth in 1964. At a competitive level, we are talking about another sport. There were the compulsory figures, there was no short program, the triple axel wouldn’t be landed in competition for another 14 years, and the number of other triples wasn’t all that high.
We come to more recent times. I looked at the ages of the top four at the Olympic Games and World Championships from the time the quads value was raised, i.e. from the 2010-2011 season. I highlighted Hanyu by coloring in red the year that refers to his result.
Hanyu was the only 27-year-old who fought for an Olympic medal. We had already seen in the previous table that the only older than him had been Divin, the only older as he had been Elvis Stojko in 1998. By removing the older competitions, it is even more evident that what Hanyu did is beyond out of the norm. And Hanyu really fought for a medal. In the end he scored 9.79 points less than Uno. The base value of a 4S is 9.70 points. If he hadn’t ended up in that hole in the ice, even a GOE of 0 would have been enough to finish ahead of Uno, because we can expect that his components would have been higher. It didn’t even need much, a 9.00 instead of one of the two 8.75 he received in Performance, and another 0.25 more in any of the other marks he received (with the obvious exception of those that were excluded from the average). Had he landed a jump that he missed out of sheer bad luck, the numbers say he would have won the bronze, looking at nothing else.
Let’s move on to the World Championship. We have a 30-year-old who finished fourth in 2018, two 27-year-olds who finished fourth in 2012 and 2022. Two of these World Championship have one thing in common. They are post-Olympic World Championships, which means there were a number of notable absences. Thirty-year-old Alexei Bychenko achieved his best result in 2018, in a competition that lacked skaters who won gold and bronze at the Olympics, as well as those who finished sixth and ninth. in PyeongChang Bychenko had finished eleventh, his best result in a World Championship, apart from fourth place in 2018, is tenth place in 2017. He finished 4th with 7th place in the short program and 7th in the free program, because everyone else skated one bad program. Sometimes these things happen, but that 4th place seems more due to luck than convincing performances from Bychenko.
In 2022 it was Morisi Kvitelashvili’s turn (with the 7th short program and the 5th free skate, he did better than Bychenko, but not by much). For him too it was the best result in a World Championship, he had never previously finished in the top 10 and in Beijing he finished tenth. And the 2022 World Championship was missing, in addition to the Olympic gold medalist, the skaters who finished 4th, 6th, 8th and 9th in Beijing, and the one who finished 5th, Jun-hwan Cha, withdrew due to boots problems. Kvitelashvili didn’t get the best result of his career thanks to experience, but thanks to the absences (and mistakes) of the others.
And then there’s 2012, when Brian Joubert finished fourth. We are talking about an important skater, world champion in 2007 and a total of six times on the world podium. Joubert deserved his fourth place, he didn’t receive it for free, but in 2012 quadruples were few, the scores were lower, and it was a little less strange to see a skater who is no longer very young occupy a high position in the rankings.
Why did I look at the skaters’ ages? To note that Hanyu stands out also from this point of view, that he has achieved results that in modern figure skating seem impossible for skaters of his age. But also to note a problem, which Hanyu himself recently mentioned in a conversation with Kohei Uchimura. They talked about age, among other things, and Uchimura said that due to his age, he is no longer able to compete at a very high level as in the past. Not that he still can’t do extraordinary things on a single tool, but if we talk about individual competition the physical effort is very different. However, the ability to remain at a high level even after a certain age varies from athlete to athlete, and from sport to sport, and this without considering that Uchimura is older than Hanyu by almost six years.
Despite turning 28, Hanyu is at the peak of his physical condition. To do what he did in Prologue, he needs remarkable athletic stamina. There are only two quadruples in SEIMEI, plus the quadruples he performed in the warm up, but there are also many other jumps, especially many triple axels. On his show he expends far more energy than he ever expended on a competition program, and we’ve seen him run that show five times, on two occasions for two days in a row. He skated eight programs, and focusing, leaving one role and entering the other, is something that requires a lot of mental energy. In August in the SharePractice he skated SEIMEI with the Olympic layout. True, the first two times he made a mistake, like so many times he made a mistake in a competition. The third time he was perfect. Four quadruples. It’s just the simpler two, toe loop and salchow, and a single triple axel, but in the hour he’s spent on the ice we’ve seen him perform the quadruple loop in combination with the triple toe loop, something that isn’t yet been done in competition by anyone, and we’ve seen him perform several other quadruples, including a few attempts at quadruple axel. Therefore the easier two quadruples were a choice to re-propose the PyeongChang layout, not the physical impossibility of performing more difficult quadruples. And the PyeongChang layout means eight jumping elements, not seven as there are in current programs. In August, Hanyu proved that he can perform very difficult programs perfectly, just as he had demonstrated at the 2021 National Championship with Ten to Chi to. On that occasion the only mistake was a quadruple axel downgraded and landed on two feet. Nothing terrible, considering we’re talking about a quadruple axel. If he had opted for a quadruple loop he probably would have completed it perfectly, as he had done a year earlier, when he was already 26 years old. And in late August he performed Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso perfectly for 24-Hour, at 27 years old. The two quadruples are the simplest type, the transitions are really difficult, and at the National Championship in December with this program Hanyu scored 111.31 points. I recall that with this score code of point Hanyu twice exceeded 110 points in international competitions, performing quadruple salchow and quadruple toe loop. The only other skater who has succeeded (and we could talk about his scores at length) is Nathan Chen. Hanyu was 26 and 27 years old, the age in which a figure skater is considered old. And what the judges think, in a sport like figure skating, is crucial.
Let’s go back to the conversation with Uchimura. Sarah_sohma translated part of it:
The age part is not in this fragment, here is another very interesting (but not surprising) statement. Sooner or later I’m really going to have to write about cognitive biases. What Hanyu says is something I already knew, and it still hurts. This is a passage:
How much developed, improve, having different mind-setting, whathever happens, but once you can’t get expected points, then you can never get out from it. Once you got labelled, then that’s all, you can’t help it in a point-rating sport.
Marika also summed it up in one of her tweets:
Yuzu said in the talk that once you’re labeled, that’s it, you’re no longer able to win because of that label.
What is the label that has been assigned to Hanyu? Probably others have been assigned to him as well, but he has certainly been assigned that of old, at least for competitive skating at the highest level.
At SharePractice, 24-Hour and Prologue, after he turned pro, we saw that this is not true, and we also saw it at the National Championship in 2020 and 2021. Hanyu is able to deliver extraordinary performances, which skaters younger than he are not able to present. There are other problems that have affected Hanyu’s scores over the years, but I will dedicate other posts to the other problems. Let’s think about age. We’ve seen it in all the tables I’ve made, 25+ skaters are considered old no matter how they skate. Maybe this year the twenty-five Shoma Uno will win the World Championship because, among the absences by choice of Hanyu and Chen, that due to injury of Yuma Kagiyama, those forced by Russian skaters, the field of participants does not seem to me to be the highest. There is Ilia Malinin, who jumps better than Uno but skates worse. Others? Those who know how to skate do not do many quadruples, those who do many quadruples are not at the level of Uno in skating skills. At the moment the situation in the men’s field seems bleak to me, and someone will have to win.
If someone thinks that age considerations are not relevant, I invite you to read something about the aforementioned cognitive biases, in particular about anchoring. Right now I’m reading You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake! by Olivier Sibony, and on pages 86-87 (pages of the italian edition, the explanation is in chapter 5) Sibony tells of an experiment done with some judges (not figure skating judges, here we are talking about the law, something a little more important, so these judges should be careful what they do). The judges, all experts, received documents relating to a shoplifting case. Only one piece of information was missing, the length of the sentence requested by the prosecutor. The experimenters gave the judges a pair of loaded dice (of course without telling them that they were loaded). The result was always 3 or, with other judges, always 9. The judges were asked to pretend that the number indicated by the dice was the sentence required by the prosecutor. Is the initial situation clear? All identical informations for all judges, except for a number indicated by the dice. While the judges were told to consider that number to be the number of months in prison requested by the prosecutor, the judges knew it was a random number. It was they who had rolled the dice. Result?
On average, judges who scored a 3 sentenced the shoplifter to 5 months, those who scored a 9 sentenced him to 8 months. A difference of 3 months, linked to a fact that everyone knew was irrelevant. So even data that shouldn’t be relevant ends up influencing the judgment of even expert people. They do it on more important things than a figure skating competition, it’s quite likely they do it in figure skating too, even if the judges don’t realize it.
Therefore, even if it has never been used by anyone from the ISU, how the label of old was reflected on Hanyu? It’s probably easy to think that an old skater isn’t explosive on quadruples, he performs them less well than in the past. We see that there are no old skaters among the multi-quadruplists. So maybe the judge doesn’t give him a +5 because after all, that skater’s best moment has passed, right? So if before that skater had deserved the maximum mark, now it is no longer possible to give it to him. And then a +2 is assigned, maybe a +3, a +4 if the judge really feels generous, to a perfect combination.
Let’s look at the short program of the 2021 World Championship. The 4S landing is not effortless, I have no problem recognizing that. But the combination is perfect. What was missing from this combination to not assign the +5? Was there, in the minds of the judges, the label of an old skater? The label of not-fit skater because the 4S was good but not perfect? The label of a skater who hadn’t been able to train well, and who hadn’t had the coaches by his side due to COVID? The protocol is here, and there isn’t a single +5. What was missing from all the elements, 4S excluded, to not deserve the +5? I’d like to know it. I have already written about the jumps here. And it’s not just GOEs that are low, PCS are too. They’re the highest of the day, but in eight international competitions since the 2015-16 season, Hanyu had received higher marks. Does that mean it’s gotten worse over the years? Also because there have been judges capable of assigning the same mark, or a higher mark, to Nathan Chen, and this even if Chen fell and his PCS had to have a cap (9.75 in SS, TR and CO, 9.50 in PE and In). That Chen deserves higher marks than Hanyu in components is heresy in itself, but that he receives them despite a fall is something difficult to explain. I’m not able of it. I looked at the scores in the PCS on SkatingScores:
I’ve circled the two cases where Chen received a higher mark than Hanyu in blue. Isn’t two votes a lot? Given the difference in their skating, in my opinion it’s two marks too many, but let’s move on. I’ve circled the cases where Hanyu and Chen received exactly the same mark in green. It happened 10 times. Considering that Chen’s components were capped and Hanyu’s were not, it’s as if the judges gave Chen a higher mark. And then I moved on to the fact that Chen fell on the first jump, and that this that the judges have deducted 0.25 (or should have deducted) from the marks Chen would have deserved if he hadn’t fallen in three of the component items, they deducted 0.50 points in the other two. I have circled in light blue the cases where Hanyu received a mark higher than Chen’s by 0.25 points in SS, TR and CO, and a grade higher than Chen by 0.50 in PE and IN. In practice according to these judges the skaters deserved the same mark. On 18 occasions the difference between Hanyu and Chen is related to the cap in the components. basically with these marks the judges told us that the quality of Chen’s skating is equal to the quality of Hanyu’s skating. And then I circled some marks in orange. In this case the difference between Hanyu and Chen is 0.25 points, but since the cap is 0.50 points, it is as if these judges awarded Chen 0.25 points more than they awarded Hanyu. This happened 7 times, combined with the two votes I circled in blue and the 10 I circled in blue means that in 19 cases Chen received a better grade than Hanyu. There are 8 votes left that I haven’t circled: these are the cases where a judge felt that Hanyu skated better than Chen.
Doing the math, and considering the cap, the result is this:
8 highest marks for Hanyu;
18 identical marks;
19 highest marks for Chen.
The marks in the PCS are accompanied by an absence of +5 on the combination, few in the rest of the protocol, two 0 on the 4S, a judge who considered Chen’s 3A better than Hanyu’s, another who considered them at the same level. Is it possible that these marks were influenced by the belief that Hanyu was old and past his prime?
The free skate went as it went, Hanyu was sick, we know that asthma is also related to emotional conditions, and after those marks I doubt Hanyu’s emotional condition was the best. Let’s move on to the World team Trophy.
Hanyu did a mistake on the triple axel in the short program. What was missing in all the other elements to not deserve a +5? Perhaps two labels weighed on Hanyu, that of being too old and that of having skated a bad free skate at the World Championship. I wrote something about the GOE of this program here:
A similar argument applies to the free skate. Hanyu received only seven +5, on the step sequence, on the choreo sequence and on the last spin. None on the jumps, and I would like to know what was missing at least on the combination 3A+2T, on the 3Lo and on the final 3A, in order not to assign the +5. Perhaps there was the label on him of being too old, after all the previous free skate had been of poor quality, and here too he had missed the 3A in the short program, he missed the 4S in the free skate, therefore in the following jumps he could not have the energy, the naturalness, to execute them in the best way, right? It’s possible, but I’d like to hear from the judges. They’ll never tell me he received those marks because he was old, but I wish they’d tell me which bullets were missing. And then there was Beijing.
In the short program Hanyu didn’t perform the quadruple salchow. Now we know that there was a hole in the ice, but the judges can’t knew there was a hole. Who knows if Hanyu didn’t do the quad because he was too old, because it was unthinkable that a twenty-seven-year-old skater could get on the podium. I didn’t save them, but I saw tons of comments on Twitter related to Hanyu’s age way before Beijing. I would like the judges who didn’t give the combination a +5 to explain why. The program is this:
I’d like to know what is missing even in the step sequence, what is not perfect, and difficult. These are all the +5 awarded by the judges that day:
Claudia Brambati awarded four +5, on three step sequences and one spin, none to Hanyu (and she would not have awarded any to him even in the free skate). Dan Fang awarded one also to Hanyu, on the triple axel. Not on the combination, nor on the step sequence. On the other hand, the give a +5 on Kagiyama’s step sequence despite a stumble (at 2:20, the video starts a few seconds before the stumble), and I remember that a mistake like this causes the skater to lose bullet 3, effortless, and deserves at least -1 for the mistake, therefore the maximum mark cannot be higher than +2, even if no judge has remembered it. For Anna Kantor none of Hanyu’s elements deserved the +5, on the other hand Chen‘s 4F deserved it, a jump with a very long preparation, from 1:03 to 1:14. Kantor, incidentally, didn’t award any +5 to Hanyu in the free skate either, but she awarded several to Chen, Kagiyama, Uno, Brown, Cha and Messing. Masako Kubota awarded several +5, even to some jumps. For her, Hanyu’s combination didn’t deserve it, Shoma Uno’s 4F deserved it, a jump that not only has a long preparation, but which also has a take off made with the full blade and an excessive prerotation. The other marks I leave up to you.
A full check on marks is long, and also includes the components. I already did it a few months ago, explaining why Hanyu’s marks are too low. The first posts I wrote were an analysis of the skating, something that helped me evaluate the components, also making comparisons with other skaters (criteria, later I returned to the discussion of the cap in the components here, Uno, Kagiyama, Chen, Jason Brown, Donovan Carrillo, Deniss Vasiljevs, Hanyu), but without assigning any marks, then I looked at some details (carriage, transition 1, 2, 3, 4, comparisons, mistakes, rules), then I assigned marks to the short programs skated by Chen, Kagiyama, Uno and Hanyu. Were the skaters really evaluated in an objective way, or the judges, even unconsciously, thought that one was the reigning world champion, another a very promising youngster, the third is always there among the strongest, and the fourth is too old, so much so that he didn’t make one of the quadruples? The impression is that the skaters have not been evaluated for what they have done but for the label that has been attributed to them, whether it is that of a champion or that of a skater now past his best period and on the downward path.
In free skate the situation is similar.
These are the +5:
I have included in this table also three elements that have not received any +5: the combination 3A+2T, the combination 4T+1Eu+3S and the final 3A. Hanyu received eight +5, as at the World Team Trophy they are on the step sequence, choreographic sequence and final spin, none on jumps. What’s missing from those jump elements? What is missing from the choreographic sequence? For a +4 two bullets should be missing among
4) good ice coverage or interesting pattern
5) good clarity and precision
6) excellent commitment and control of the whole body
and it seems to me difficult to say that even one is missing.
By assigning a +5 to those five jump elements, plus the choreographic sequence, Hanyu’s score increases by 5.24 points. Looking at only six out of 19 items, ignoring the PCS,
| Element | GOE awarded | GOE +5 | difference |
| SP 4T+3T | 4,07 | 4,75 | 0,68 |
| SP StSq4 | 1,78 | 1,95 | 0,17 |
| FS 3A+2T | 2,40 | 4,00 | 1,60 |
| FS 4T+1Eu+3S | 3,12 | 4,75 | 1,63 |
| FS 3A | 3,20 | 4,00 | 0,80 |
| FS ChSq1 | 2,14 | 2,50 | 0,36 |
| tot | 5,24 | ||
I also looked at the free programs. I didn’t do as much in-depth work on the components, the skating skills don’t change much from one day to the next, transitions at most are less in the free skate because there are more jumps, the other aspects cannot be evaluated with the screenshots. However, I recalculated the scores of the four skaters in the free skate too: Hanyu, Uno, Kagiyama and Chen, and it is clear that the wrong marks deprived Hanyu of a medal which, considering what they all did on the rink, he deserved. And not just any medal.
What Hanyu has done, at the age of 26 and 27, is nothing like what other skaters have done. Yes, Chen is younger, we don’t know what he will do when he is 26. For now we know that he stopped to study, while Hanyu graduated after winning two Olympic golds, a few months before winning his seventh and final world medal. Seven, after the World war II only Jan Hoffmann won seven, between 1973 and 1980 (when there were no quadruples, with 3A which officially entered figure skating in 1978 and which began to be performed by a strong skater only in 1979, thanks to the very young Brian Orser) and Hanyu. With Hanyu missing the 2018 World Championship, as reigning Olympic and world champion, due to an injury, and with the 2020 World Championship not being held. There were other injuries, one (actually, two) that relegated him to fourth place in 2013 and one that prevented him from competing in the 2022, and I remember that at the National Championship a few months earlier Uno and Kagiyama had finished behind him , with a huge gap.
We don’t know if Chen will return to compete and, if he does, at what level he will be able to do it. Barring injuries, I expect to see 25-year-old Shoma Uno on the next world podium, probably on one of the top two steps. Right now the situation in the men’s field seems to me to be stagnating, despite the execution of the first 4A in the history of figure skating a few months ago. I doubt that Uno will still be competitive at 27, but that we will only find out in the future.
What Hanyu has done in recent seasons is extraordinary, but seeing his athletic condition now, seeing what he’s able of doing, and seeing how the marks have been awarded, I wonder if the fourth place in Beijing is linked, other than to bad luck for the hole on the ice and the injury, to some judges’ preconceptions, including that it’s impossible to be competitive beyond a certain age.
