When I read comments like this I stop dead in my tracks, realizing how fruitless these debates can be.
I have to remind myself that people are commenting with respect to how much a skater appeals to them rather than based on a strong desire to connect their opinions to their insight on the IJS rulebook.
To me, Osmond's program was loaded with transitions. I went back to her long program and started counting while also taking into account the rulebook's requirement that there be variety, complexity and difficulty in the transitions, using all parts of the body...among other things. She was racking up tons of points throughout the program to the point where you could almost use her program (or prob Miyahara) to educate judges on the mark.
Having said that, I'm willing to accept that maybe I have no idea what a transition is. I'm open to being educated and I actually crave to be. But I can at least say I have read the rules and have tried as best I can to lay a critical eye on programs by objectively considering what I know the criteria to be.
Makes the debates pretty challenging when it's clear there is such a range of perspective on how scoring is achieved. The conversation so often seems to descend into "I liked this skater, so therefore she was really good and therefore she should have won". It's great to love a skater and people should happily rave for the ones they like, but to connect that love to results in very surface statements leaves me with quite the empty feeling.
People will frame this debate in terms of whether Medvedeva did enough to get the PCS/GOE to catch up to Zagitova's overall total, but the real question is whether Zagitova should have gotten those monstrous PCS in the first place, esp. in the SP, and the answer is of course not.
With her SP skate order between Kostner and Osmond, I was shocked at how juniorish she looked and the PCS she still received. Her tech scores were well-deserved, but her PCS scores were a gift.
If Sharpie had a panel of members who skate or coach and judge the top six in real time I wonder how closely "our" judges would be to the actual judges. In some ways Osmond reminded me of Dorothy all of those years ago: Such pretty jumps, a fine, straight back, so much flow and a warm, winning smile. And a great skate on a most important night.
Yeah ... and was still treated generously (I am being euphemistic here) with no edge call on lutz as she actually received 2.1 points more on her flutz than Zagitova's on her technically correct first lutz even if admittedly not her best one in Free Skate. With fully deserved e call on lutz the difference in points would be so big that there would be much less arguments in favour of Med.
Evgenia also received higher scores for her double axels (what the hell?). That's why her score ended up so close.
There's also an additional factor - program components score and its suspiciously rapid rise for Zagitova but I've already given up on that so I'd rather not delve into that in detail. It's more like Political Clout score than anything else at least from 2013/2014 season onwards and both Zagitova / Medvedeva are overscored here - Alina more. But I'd have Miyahara & Osmond virtually tied in 1st place there in Free Skate when it comes to that with considerable points advantage.
Miyahara was beautiful in both skates. I'm usually very decisive with my opinions but, I would be torn to bits between who to place higher, Sotoko or Osmond. Obviously Kaetlyn has a huge tech advantage from jump GOEs alone. I think Sotoko is the more artistic skater and personally enjoy watching her more, but Kaetlyn is also very strong and mature, so I don't think Miyahara's edge there would be enough to overcome Osmond's better TES. But then you have Kaetlyn making a mistake in the FS and Miyahara was perfect, so that evens it out. Damnit, I don't think I could choose.
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