The ISU's New Set Of Judging Rules For Jumps

[SkatingIsLife]

ALL base values of all throws have changed in pairs.

Values for throws have NOT changed as far as I can see it.

 

[SkatingIsLife]

4Lz, 4F, 4Lo all have the same Base Value of 11.00 now.
Now a skater gets a donwgrad call << which means the Base Value of the triple jump.

4Lz (BV 11.00) 4Lz<< = BV 5.30 (3Lz) skaters loses 5.70 points of the BV
4F (BV 11.00) 4F<< = BV 5.30 (3F) skaters loses 5.70 points of the BV
4Lo (BV 11.00) 4Lo<< = BV 4.90 (3Lo) skaters loses 6.10 points of the BV

On the one hand ISU is telling us that the 3 quad jumps are all of the same difficulty and they give them the same BV.

At the same time if skaters do a mistake and do not fully rotate this quad jumps they get penalized more if they get a downgrade call on the 4Lo???

Where is the logic here??? Why a skater for the same mistake gets a bigger reduction in his score than other skater for the same mistake???

Cant be fair....

 

[Marco]

Well on the other hand, a skater gets more incentive to work on a 4loop because the increment from triple to quad is more.

 

[tony]

Values for throws have NOT changed as far as I can see it.

You’re absolutely correct- they just added the pointless lines for the q value which is the exact same as the regular value but with the notation that the judges should decrease GOE.

 

[Orm Irian]

Values for throws have NOT changed as far as I can see it.

There were changes to the BV of some death spirals, though, if I'm remembering right.

 

[misskarne]

First: my stance is and always has been that correct jump technique should be the endgame for rule changes. Therefore, I have always been on the side of punishing UR and <<, and e and !, even more harshly than they already are, because you do not get people learning correct jump technique when there is no incentive for them to fix the bad technique.

The q is an absolute joke. The ISU will be left red-faced the very first time a skater with a sheet full of qs beats a skater with cleanly rotated jumps. You rotate your jumps, or you don't. If you don't - if you land on the quarter, which is underrotated - you suffer the punishment, and it should encourage you to work on fixing your technique. The GOE reduction is only -2 - we could literally see q jumps getting +GOE. (But that'll only be for big country skaters. Little country skaters, I imagine, will be stuck in the negative GOE for q jumps).

The ISU's message to those skaters who have put in the blood, sweat and tears to rotate their jumps properly is: "We don't care about the work you've put in for proper jumps. We won't reward it." Congratulations, ISU.
(And may the poor Data Operators of this season rest in peace. Imagine, at the end of a 30+ group of Basic Novice ladies, when you've been in the rink all day and your tongue is frozen, reading back: 2Lzq-2Tq-2Loq. Not to mention the mess this will surely make of the screen. It's 2p-3p all over again.)

I have the same feeling about the equation of the flip and the lutz. The Lutz is and always has been the much harder jump for a reason. Where is the incentive for skaters to learn a proper Lutz, if they can get the same value from a flip? And don't get me started on the 4Lo-4F-4Lz equivalency; whatever your thoughts on the loop's place in the scale of difficulty, to compare it to a 4Lz is ridiculous. People weren't doing 4Lz because it was easier; they were doing 4Lz because it got the most points. Go big or go home.

And just do not get me started on the "full blade" lunacy. Of all the things the ISU chose to pay attention to in the fandom, that toxic bullshit from one whinging toxic crybaby group of fans is it?! It's not even a proper technical term - it's not even a proper thing - you try taking off a Lutz from the full blade you're going to eat ice quickly and hard. Skaters using the lower part of the toepick and front part of the blade is not, I repeat not, bad technique, and it's not using the full blade.

In summary: WHAT THE FCUK, ISU.


(edited for eloqence)

 

[SkatingIsLife]

still dont get the "q" sign thing either ... haven't we seen in the past many questionable calls for < and << which describe a range of missing rotation. So a Technical Panel couldn’t figure this out correctly or used different attempts to get this right or wrong ...

Now they make the Technical Panel to call on an exact measure point of landing "on the quarter" ... how is this possible for them to exact say this jump was missing 90° and gets the "q" sign and not only missing 89,99° or it misses 90.1° and will get a < ???

For sure we will wait even longer for the scores as they have now maybe to review all the 13 jumps to get it right if it was on the point of the quarter landed...

If they would maybe use some technology which measures for them exactly such things we would be moving the right way ... but with only the "q" sign how it stands now … it just will add more questionable calls and open up manipulations to play around with on the Technical Panel side and in a further consequence on the GOEs the judge can give…

 

[Marco]

still dont get the "q" sign thing either ... haven't we seen in the past many questionable calls for < and << which describe a range of missing rotation. So a Technical Panel couldn’t figure this out correctly or used different attempts to get this right or wrong ...

My guess is this isn't supposed to be groundbreaking, but simply a visible cue for the caller to let the judges know that this jump isn't UR enough to be called < but isn't clean enough to be home free and showered with GOEs. It's a cue for the judges to apply GOE reduction.

 

[Orm Irian]

My guess is this isn't supposed to be groundbreaking, but simply a visible cue for the caller to let the judges know that this jump isn't UR enough to be called < but isn't clean enough to be home free and showered with GOEs. It's a cue for the judges to apply GOE reduction.

I think it's also supposed to uninhibit the tech panel - weren't there some suggestions last seasons that panels felt leery of calling jumps right on the quarter UR in accordance with the rules because of the high BV penalty attached, which went against the long-established guideline of 'benefit of the doubt goes to the skater'? If the penalty is smaller and applied by the judges, the panels might feel freer to call jumps on the quarter.

I'm more leery, myself, of jumps within the quarter being subject to GOE penalties too, even if smaller ones. It might look like it's designed to push for perfectly complete rotation and give more scope for the judges to penalise incomplete rotations from everyone, but it doesn't take much to foresee that a Shoma Uno landing a wobbly 4T that's 88.3 degrees short of complete will still get waved through as within the quarter and have a -1 GOE at most applied while a Nicola Todeschini landing an identically wobbly 4T that's an identical 88.3 degrees short of being complete will get a q or even < call and every allowable deduction in the book thrown at him plus some more just because.

 

[gkelly]

The q is an absolute joke. The ISU will be left red-faced the very first time a skater with a sheet full of qs beats a skater with cleanly rotated jumps.

Theoretically, a skater with a sheet full of qs will have lower GOEs on those jumps than a skater with cleanly rotated jumps.

(Unless the skater who can rotate doesn't have much else going for him/her in terms of jump quality.)

In that case, for the skater with qs to win, s/he would need either to have more difficult jumps (a bunch of quads rotated to barely within 90 degrees will beat a bunch of better-rotated triples) OR the skater with qs will have better spins and steps and PCS (this is still a skating competition, not just a jumping competition).

Or both.

Why should it be embarrassing that the skater with better skating and harder jump content would beat a skater with easier but cleaner jumps and weaker everything else?

You rotate your jumps, or you don't.

That was the approach at the beginning of IJS when jumps that were over 90 degrees short were first called as if they were a full 360 degrees short (triples called as doubles, quads called as triples) and then when they were called as "downgraded" with the name of the attempted jump but the base value for a full rotation lower.

Is that what you want to go back to?

That wasn't fair to the skaters who were almost getting the rotation being penalized more than if they'd just stuck to easier jumps, so that's why the distinction between << and < was introduced about a decade ago.

There was a change a couple of years ago between not calling the jumps right on the quarter to including those in the < call. Which made things harsher on those who can just about get within the margin of tolerance, so now there is an added distinction for those who just hit the quarter vs. those who don't even get that close.

It would be simpler to just going back to no call at all on jumps right on the quarter and leave it up to the judges to penalize based on what they see, as was the case a couple of years ago.

The question is, can the tech panel do a better job at identifying those 90-degree-short than the judging panel on their own?

 

[Deleted member 221]

Just seems like greater precision for less accuracy....

This wouldn't have made any difference to Mao. She was competing against Yuna, who had correct edges on both.

The two double axel rule would've sunk Yuna (as it did in 2014). Or at least forced her to try a triple loop, or give up one of her triple-triple combinations. I wish there were a bonus for skaters who attempted triples or above from all six takeoffs.

Remember when Amber Corwin's 3toe3toe would be called a 2toe2toe in the earlier seasons of IJS?

Did that ever happen? I always thought it should have, but I don't think it ever did. In the first season of IJS, any underrotation of more than 1/4 was reduced to the lower jump on protocols, but somehow Corwin escaped (at least that I remember). At least I don't think she ever had the first "triple" called as a double. I thought there was an argument to call it 2A+2A+SEQ with negative GOE and no base value in the short program. It looked more like a toe assisted axel to me

 

[Miki89]

A proper lutz is damn hard and should be rewarded as such. I'm disappointed that the ISU has devalued a difficult and (when properly performed) beautiful jump. Brian Boitano is the ne plus ultra example - you can even see how the lutz is actually a jumped BO counter turn, performed in the air.

Beautiful jump! While American ladies in recent decades have been know for flutzing, I noticed that the top American women of the late 80s/early 90s had great lutzes. Tonya Harding's lutz was absolutely spectacular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_2zevo3bco Nancy Kerrigan had a pretty great one as well.

I tend to sympathize with the skaters because they were taught bad technique by their coaches at an early stage. It's incredibly difficult to correct technique for a senior level skater. I believe there is already enough incentive to correct it. A skater with UR and/or edge issues will always have a disadvantage against a skater who doesn't have these issues. As Tonywheeler pointed out, at 2013 worlds 8 out of 10 of the top women had an edge call. This shows that it's a systemic issue far beyond just one training camp. And it's still the case nowadays. Not only Eteri skaters, but some skaters in Hamada and Orser camps have jump issues as well. It seems that the judging tends to be more lenient in novice and junior levels, which baffles me because that's the time when they should call out these issues when they could still be corrected.

 

[starrynight]

Tonya Harding's lutz was absolutely spectacular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_2zevo3bco

Thank you very much for this video. It was excellent being able to see this jump so clearly. I think if they always played a front on slow-mo of the lutz it would be way easier for audiences to see that the correct edge is there.

That one video of Tonya made it really clear to be what the difference between a flutz and a lutz is!

EDIT - I just stumbled on a whole compilation of flutz videos on YouTube and it certainly seems like some pretty controversial judging choices have been made in the past in relation to this jump.

I vaguely remember some protest by Sambo 70 last season when some skaters got edge calls for their lutzes so it's a hot topic.

 

[VGThuy]

With today’s rules, she’d unfortunately probably get negative GOE for lack of steps and non-busy exits. And if she somehow started the rotation slightly later and hit the quarter mark she’d score less than a whippy lutz with much less airtime but gets slightly more rotation to be counted.

 

[caseyedwards]

Time to return to 6.0! They are going nuts with the most minute tiny distinctions of rotation! It’s going insane!! Every program will take half an hour to judge. FACT

 

[Coco]

This is mostly a bunch of fuss to do something without addressing the real problems, which are lack of camera angles for the technical panel and politically driven GOE and PCS.

As for lutz and flip having the same BV, it does seem like a cop-out. But hopefully for lutzes, a long BOE or visible counter rotation would garner a bullet point or two for GOE.

Would love to see someone do running three turns (one direction) on their non landing foot into a lutz.

Poor Elaine has had to live with the Zayak rule for decades. Can we call any of this the Scherbakova rule?

 

[Miki89]

Time to return to 6.0! They are going nuts with the most minute tiny distinctions of rotation! It’s going insane!! Every program will take half an hour to judge. FACT

There was something magical about the old 6.0 system. I agree with a return to the system with PCS because programs should be evaluated as a whole rather than sum of its parts. However, I do think skaters should be rewarded for correct jump technique. I thought the previous 1/4 range was pretty reasonable. The issue was mostly in application of that rule not the rule itself imo.

 

[MacMadame]

I don't know how the tech panel calls it, but if I see a skater setting up for the lutz where they wobble back and forth on their edges before takeoff, I consider it a flutz even if they accidentally were on the proper edge when they took off.

 

[kwanfan1818]

This is mostly a bunch of fuss to do something without addressing the real problems, which are lack of camera angles for the technical panel and politically driven GOE and PCS.

Especially when it's a strategy to place elements in places that deliberately obscure the judges' view of what should be major flaws, like crashes on twists, where the man's back is to the judges. All of these tricks are well known and the camera placement would be obvious.

 

[Deleted member 221]

Tonya Harding's lutz was absolutely spectacular.

I just went down a lovely rabbit hole of old Tonya video clips. Most of her jumps were spectacular: her lutz; her flip (out of an Ina Bauer); her loop had air time (allegedly, she did a quad loop, possibly in harness, for a Texaco commercial?). The triple axel usually leaned, but her double axel was straight up and could clear most compact cars. Her death drop had hang time. Her spins, especially her forward spins, were amazing in the early 90s. Sigh....

I just don't talk about any technically great skaters from the 2000s or 2010s the way I talk about Tonya Harding or Midori Ito. Or, before them, Denise Biellmann.

 

[Theoreticalgirl]

I have Lutz technique fairly similar to Tonya's (and at one point, I was landing 2Lz). This is not to say that a good one can't be done with more modern technique. IMHO, a Lutz gets easier—and nicer—the more you simplify it.

All the GOE bullets that skaters are trying to hit in addition to the jump make this more challenging. You wind up having to prioritize one or the other and hope that the preferences of the judging panel fall in line.

 

[Miki89]

I just went down a lovely rabbit hole of old Tonya video clips. Most of her jumps were spectacular: her lutz; her flip (out of an Ina Bauer); her loop had air time (allegedly, she did a quad loop, possibly in harness, for a Texaco commercial?). The triple axel usually leaned, but her double axel was straight up and could clear most compact cars. Her death drop had hang time. Her spins, especially her forward spins, were amazing in the early 90s. Sigh....

I just don't talk about any technically great skaters from the 2000s or 2010s the way I talk about Tonya Harding or Midori Ito. Or, before them, Denise Biellmann.

If we are solely talking about athletic prowess, it's hard to find better examples than Harding and Ito, and that's including ladies and men.

 

[vesperholly]

Beautiful jump! While American ladies in recent decades have been know for flutzing, I noticed that the top American women of the late 80s/early 90s had great lutzes. Tonya Harding's lutz was absolutely spectacular. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_2zevo3bco

Fantastic. I could watch Tonya jump all day. The height, the delay, easy full rotation, the speed on the landing. +10

I do not care for Ito's jump technique. Slammy toe picking, leg wrap. She did have great power and height, though.

Would love to see someone do running three turns (one direction) on their non landing foot into a lutz.

You won't. Nearly impossible to be rotating one direction (would be LFI 3 turns rotating clockwise) multiple times and then stop and rotate the other.

As a loop girl, I always loved Slutskaya's running 3s into a triple loop.

 

[tony]

@vesperholly @Miki89 - Here's something you might also enjoy. Viktor Pfeifer was so highly underrated IMO, and he was always coming up with creative entrances into his Lutz

Nice 2012 ICE - MEN SP -14/31- Viktor PFEIFER - 30/03/2012

Segment score: 60.61 TUTTO in sezione SKATING de La Riserva forum http://lariserva.forumcommunity.net

www.youtube.com

ISU ZAGREB 2013 -18/31- MEN SP - Viktor PFEIFER - 24.01.2013

Segment score: 67.34 TUTTO in sezione SKATING de La Riserva forum http://lariserva.forumcommunity.net

www.youtube.com

That second one is one of my absolute favorite bits of choreography into a jump in the IJS era, but both are extremely complex and unique!

 

[starrynight]

Poor Elaine has had to live with the Zayak rule for decades. Can we call any of this the Scherbakova rule?

What would the Scherbakova rule be about? (sorry if that's a dumb question)

 

[skatingguy]

What would the Scherbakova rule be about? (sorry if that's a dumb question)

A GOE deduction for the full blade assist on the Lutz.

 

[muffinplus]

A GOE deduction for the full blade assist on the Lutz.

Yeah except Shcherbakova doesn't use the full blade, she simply drops it, so.. I have no idea what they are looking to target, as it's such a nonsensical term.

 

[starrynight]

Yeah except Shcherbakova doesn't use the full blade, she simply drops it,

Another dumb question. What’s the difference between dropping the blade and using a full blade assist?

 

[VGThuy]

The thing that makes me laugh about Koola King types is that I seriously doubt she's a good enough skater (or a skater) to make these flat out declarations about what elite skaters do with their jumps.

 

[muffinplus]

Another dumb question. What’s the difference between dropping the blade and using a full blade assist?

Not being rude.... but ask ISU what they are talking about. I'm just saying this term sounds beyond nonsensical as the skaters who are often criticized for full blade don't actually have their blade on the ice during take off and are not rotating on "full blade"