2026 Olys Rhythm Dance PBP - Livin' La GOE Loca

clairecloutier said:
Just caught up & I feel like the judging was pretty on point, for the most part, although there a few things I’d quibble with, like Smart/Dieck’s and Lauriault/LeGac’s placements. Such a close event; a lot of great skating!

I am absolutely blown away that Emi/Vadym are in 6th and almost made the final group, considering that this is their first Olympics, they’ve never even competed at Worlds, and aren’t national champions. It’s just a stunning result. Their GP Final appearance could’ve been seen as a bit of a fluke, but this result proves it wasn’t. 🔥. They must be over the moon right now—what an amazing couple of months they’ve had!
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They also won 4CCs (in a depleted field), and were highly marked there.
 
Karen-W said:
This post is so misleading without the points the judge awarded to these teams:

1) Chock/Bates 90.18 +0.46
2) Fear/Gibson 86.68 +1.21
3) Fournier-Beaudry/Cizeron 85.57 -4.61
4) Reed/Ambrulevicius 84.92 +2.21
5) Lopareva/Brissaud 83.00 +0.75
6) Guignard/Fabbri 82.50 -1.78
7) Gilles/Poirier 80.08 -6.50
8) Davis/Smolkin 79.79 +2.64
9) Turkkila/Versluis 78.69 +0.73
10) Carreira/Ponomarenko 78.13 -0.02
11) Zingas/Kolesnik 77.93 -5.60
12) Bekker/Hernandez 75.52 +3.06
13) Mrazkova/Mrazek 74.59 +2.50
14) Taschlerova/Taschler 74.27 -1.06
15) Smart/Dieck 73.20 -5.33
16) Lajoie/Lagha 73.12 -6.54
17) Lauriault/LeGac 71.65 -2.70
18) Reitan/Majorov 71.32 +4.01
19) Val/Kazimov 68.34 +3.36
20) Lim/Quan 65.91 +1.22
21) Wang/Liu 65.59 +0.83
22) Janse van Rensburg/Steffan 63.88 +.21
23) Harris/Chan 60.68 -7.07

I challenge anyone to figure out the pattern to his scoring. It is pretty wild, for sure. For 13 teams his marks deviated more than 2 points from the panel's actual scores - of those, 6 were above the panel's scores (2 IAM, 4 non-IAM teams) and 7 that were below the panel's scores (5 IAM, 2 non-IAM).

Some of these teams, especially further down in the ranks, people were complaining in real-time in this thread about how they were under-scored (Reitan/Majorov) or over-scored (Harris/Chan, Reed/Ambrulevicius).

I'd love to hear his explanation of his scores, if only to try and tease out the depth of his knowledge & understanding of the current bullet points for ice dancing IJS.
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The British judges' PCS are almost all in the reference range. The differences came from the technical mark.

It seems to me like this judge was using the full range of GOE and did not (unlike other judges) give ridiculously high scores to elements that had visible errors.

E.g., I agree with only a +1 for FB & Cizeron's twizzles, which had sync issues throughout. Lajoie had a visible error on her twizzles, and the British judge gave them a 0.

If there's a pattern, it's that cleaner skates are placing above flawed ones because he actually penalized visible mistakes with his GOE. As much as I strongly disagree with the Lithuanians' scoring, they were clean / free of visible errors.

I had very different placements myself, but if I look at his GOE scores, I can see the logic behind most of scores. He was probably doing what judges are supposed to be doing with IJS -- marking what he sees without thinking about placemenets.

I hope he ends up on the panel for the free.
 
Just taking a look at these comments. I hope C/B squeak this one out. But they were a little ragged last night. Haven't seen the French couple.

What's the worst thing that could happen? One gets silver and the other one gets gold.
 
This morning I watched the rest of the competition. Still a bit sad that the Germans botched the twizzles. They had a good season. Why now?? Alas ReiMaj made the Free.

I'm really happy that ZinKol are in 6th place (I wouldn't mind 3rd). I watched them 2024 live at Nebelhorn and ever since I'm a fan (back then the final group was really interesting with FearGib, CarPon, Taschlers and SmaDie: you could literally hear (and see) the different levels of skating skills)
Never get the scores for R/A (saw them several times live), and here I definitely had them in the third group. Liked TurVers, LaLa and LopBri a good deal better.

The German judge put Piper and Paul into first :). They are not my favourite team, but I like, that they always come up with something special.
 
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I’m looking forward to LaLa’s FD because while I like them, I loathe that cheerleading RD. Also looking forward to both R&Js (Z/K and Swedes), the Scots Highland dance and Dune2. And Bjork!

I’m almost afraid of matador vs The Whale: the programs are so different that it’s very hard to compare. But at least they’ll be back-to-back tomorrow night.
 
I'll be the happiest person to eat my hat but it's pretty clear where the judges are leaning. FB/C's were conservative, lacking their usual speed/attack and had underwhelming twizzles and their score was clearly pumped up. C/B got a questionable downgrade on their pattern step and were really lowballed in skating skills (I think the gap would be justified if FB/C were skating with their usual power but they looked really tentative going into the elements). With two clean skates, the judges are going to decisively hand this one to FB/C.

How does the judge swapping work between RD and FD? Is that something they only do for the Olympics?
 
I think it’s very clear from this thread and elsewhere that many people are not able to get past their own national biases and/or their only personal dislike for what they perceive certain skaters to be through the lens of off ice events.

Last night Fournier Beaudry/Cizeron stepped up their game from the team event. You can criticise their costumes and say they look smug, but at the end of the day the skating quality is undeniable. Chock/Bates underperformed ever so slightly compared to how they skated on Friday. It’s as simple as that and clear as day whether you were in the arena or watching from home no matter how loud anyone booed.

Really enjoyed Bekker/Hernandez and Fear/Gibson think they could be ones to watch given the right programmes. Very much not my taste, but I have to give props to Zingas/Kolesnik who blew things out of the park and were unlucky not to be in the last group.
 
allezfred said:
Last night Fournier Beaudry/Cizeron stepped up their game from the team event.
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Disagree, and the scores were near identical. I think it's just the judging panel that changed. They basically had two judges on the panel to zero, with the highest scores coming from France and Canada.

allezfred said:
the skating quality is undeniable.
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I'll deny it. They can't seem to twizzle in unison, and there were unison breaks throughout the program with their vogueing arm movements often not matching. I'd have had them third, as the British judge did, based on the twizzles.

allezfred said:
Chock/Bates underperformed ever so slightly compared to how they skated on Friday.
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I do agree with this, and I'd say maybe more than "ever so slightly." But the difference was a downgrade from the tech panel and composition of the judging panel.

I'm not outraged by the result because I think ice dance criteria are vague, easy to debate and manipulate, and at best get you directionally accurate results. I've felt the fix was in since the GP in France, and all results this season would build to an "upset" at the Olympics.

What is the right result? Who knows. It's all too vague for me.
 

twizzles from my viewpoint - I don’t have any issue saying the third set was slightly off, she was like 1/4 of the rotation ahead. Give them the +3 instead of the +5. Unison issue. But I also think people were saying somewhere in this thread that their twizzles didn’t move either… hm.

But then those of you who watch Chock and Bates time and time again literally come to a complete stop with the forward momentum, which should be a reduction of the level and of the GOE, and say they are just as good as all other twizzles really baffles me. The twizzles have to keep moving. Chock and Bates are a team that look like they should be in the 18-23 range if you’re looking just at this element. 🤷🏼‍♂️
 
Regarding R/A: I have tried to understand their scoring, and while I disagree with what I perceive as overmarking, these are areas in which I think they excel and the judges’ appreciate:
-incredible unison. Their bodies are aligned in sync through their whole program
-smooth ease of movement
-musicality and timing
-performance quality which is consistent throughout the program; they don’t look tense or take performance breaks during their elements
 
I'm actually fine with the judging with the obvious exception of C/B being in the top three, but that has been my issue for some decades now, so why not.
I don't think Fear/Gib should be anywhere so high, I'd have them behind G/F, L/B, Z/K.
I thought LaLas were messy and underperformed, so their placement and marks make total sense to me (I am just hoping it's not the mandatory dumpage of second team to promote the top team to the medals position). As usual, I think G/F were underscored, but it's on the technical, so what do I know.
I was really impressed with Z/K, and glad they are clearly the US no.2 above Ponomarenko, which is totally justified.
Elsewhere, I really enjoyed the Mrazeks. One of the few RDs I don't detest this season.

In general I am still :swoon: about Browns, Mouaden/Bigot and French teams in general and would much rather watch them on loop than this retirement house scrawling their way to the least inspiring podium since Navka and Grushina.
 
tony said:
I got moved to front row after the original seats I bought last minute were partially obstructed by a wall. The ushers told me to go ask so I did! And then Boitano happened to be just a few seats away so we moved up a few rows to sit with him!
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It just means the arena is half empty.
Really boooo to IOC.

I'm hoping I would be able to move around at the s*t seats I got "randomally".
 
Andrey aka Pushkin said:
It just means the arena is half empty.
Really boooo to IOC.

I'm hoping I would be able to move around at the s*t seats I got "randomally".
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The arena was pretty full. Just those very first seats have the handle bars that kind of obstruct views so I think people avoided them
 
tony said:
The arena was pretty full. Just those very first seats have the handle bars that kind of obstruct views so I think people avoided them
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Fair enough. For the pairs SP currently there are more than 200 tickets for sell...
While I got myself a short side upper corner as category B. F*k this.
But Men LP and Pairs LP are full.
 
her grace said:
Regarding R/A: I have tried to understand their scoring, and while I disagree with what I perceive as overmarking, these are areas in which I think they excel and the judges’ appreciate:
-incredible unison. Their bodies are aligned in sync through their whole program
-smooth ease of movement
-musicality and timing
-performance quality which is consistent throughout the program; they don’t look tense or take performance breaks during their elements
Click to expand...

Yes to all this. I think what R/A do very well in this RD is they don’t make it look like work. Which can’t really be said of most of the other teams (even when it’s good, it looks effortful and difficult). I find their interpretation of “I’m So Sexy” to be just the right degree of vibes/low-key humor (much better than P/G) and the “Funky, funky” section is even better. They make it look relaxed, and everything keeps flowing.
 
tony said:

twizzles from my viewpoint - I don’t have any issue saying the third set was slightly off, she was like 1/4 of the rotation ahead.
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First set was also mostly out of sync. I think they had the worst unison on the twizzles of any team in the competition who didn't stumble.

The GoE criteria are so vague and subjective that one could argue +3 by coming up with enough positive criteria, but one could also easily argue +1 or even 0 for that element given two twizzles with unison issues. I believe loss of unison can count for up to two negative features on each twizzle, right? I feel like a non-top / favored team would have received a 0 or 1 for that element.

I acknowledge that people questioning the level (e.g., Bev Smith) are wrong. Although I think loss of unison should be a mandatory reduction, that's not how the rules are written.
 
Private Citizen said:
Disagree, and the scores were near identical. I think it's just the judging panel that changed. They basically had two judges on the panel to zero, with the highest scores coming from France and Canada.



I'll deny it. They can't seem to twizzle in unison, and there were unison breaks throughout the program with their vogueing arm movements often not matching. I'd have had them third, as the British judge did, based on the twizzles.



I do agree with this, and I'd say maybe more than "ever so slightly." But the difference was a downgrade from the tech panel and composition of the judging panel.

I'm not outraged by the result because I think ice dance criteria are vague, easy to debate and manipulate, and at best get you directionally accurate results. I've felt the fix was in since the GP in France, and all results this season would build to an "upset" at the Olympics.

What is the right result? Who knows. It's all too vague for me.
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In Sheffield I thought their SD was really not all that and was very underwhelmed. They were slow, not projecting and just meh. I thought they were overscored. That was from a front row seat.
Their FD was much better but I only saw it on screen.
I agree yesterday that the panel probably made the difference but Chock and Bates are not the best skaters ever and were flawed yesterday. Nobody is dominating the field.
I like them as a team but it's just not a great era for ice dance.
 
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