sheesh, what a crybaby...

[acroyear]

Plushenko: Lysacek not a champion without quad | NBC Olympics:

"You can't be considered a true men's champion without a quad," the 27-year-old told Russian state television RTR.

Lysacek did not attempt a quadruple jump, considered the most difficult in figure skating, in either Tuesday's short or Thursday's free programs, instead wowing the judges with artistry and exquisite footwork.

"For someone to stand on top of the podium with the gold medal around his neck with just doing triple jumps, to me it's not progress, it's a regress because we've done triples 10 or even 20 years ago," Plushenko said.

Attention spoilsport: if triples are so "20 years ago", you should have nailed them.

Instead, we 1) got to see you wobble on them most of your attempts, and 2) see all of them in the first 2 minutes of your act, watching you prance around for the last.

With Evan, we got to see 1) very clean triples with only one wobble and no hack-landings, and 2) almost a third of them in the last half of his show, when others by exhaustion were dropping to doubles or falling.

In short: you kept your stuff easy by keeping it up front before you got tired, and still wobbled them, while he kept consistently difficult and good throughout the routine. If triples are the basics now and the quad the distinctiveness, then nail your triples before thinking having one flashy move is the decider.

[to give Plushenko some credit, it was a LONG night, and I think he'd have done better if he wasn't going last. He had to keep going through the routine all night on solid ground (worse: concrete) to keep his legs warm, and that certainly would be exhausting to them no matter how much went into automatic once on the ice. His recovery at the poorly launched triples was impressive, but they shouldn't have been poorly launched, and wouldn't have been if he hadn't had to wait so long to go on.]

Comments

[zammis.livejournal.com]

yeah- I was thinking that too. I wonder of the judges considered the message they'd send if they did give it to Plushenko- that one quad trumps consistent artisty and triples. Imagine future "performances" as a lot of quad attempts and lousy choerography. The scoring scheme now already leans toward that- and makes it less enjoyable to watch, IMHO.

Poor form on his part to bitch about it. After all, he was out of the game for a while- he's lucky to get a silver really.

Did it seem to you several of those guys did routines that didn't fit them at all? I'm thinking particularly of the one with the Charlie Chaplin routine- it didnt seem to fit him at all.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

actually he was one of the ones i liked.

choreography and artistry is hard for some guys (and even some women), and it is harder still to add that without giving up being a "man" (having "masculine energy" in the aesthetic sense). two ways to handle that if you can't: give up trying to carry the alpha-male appearance (Weir, Plushenko) by not being afraid of the feminine, or try to make a character out of being a "beta" male.

the artistry side is as much acting as anything else, and acting isn't really taught until it is too late. acting is building up experience in the world and presenting a life without actually having lived through it. words and movement go together, and just as most actors take dance classes even if they never dance on stage, most dancers (including ice skaters) should learn the emotions of words. the character is in the words even if the words are never spoken.

the chaplin kid could build it up a bit more by studying chaplin a little more closely - it needed more exaggeration, which can come once confidence in the routine is built up.

by contrast, take Phillipe Candelaro from '98, whom i posted earlier this week: in that routine there is no point in it where you don't know what he is *saying* even though he never says a word.

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

And some of the new rules were designed to bring some of the finesse and artistry back into the sport.

[dawntreader]

i'm still in love with Paul Wylie! he came out of "nowhere" when no one was talking about his potential as a medal contender. he rocked both the artistry and skill. you could just see it when he skated.

i jumped off the couch and cheered more than a few times watching him. :D

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

He didn't go through the routines all night, he and Evan arrived at the center at the same time, they seem to be giving skaters what almost counts as a second warm-up by giving them time to skate around a bit and do a single or two while the judges review the previous skater's scores. Also, I suspect that skating, similar to dressage, has scheduled start times and you can be asked to go early but you CANNOT be penalized for staying with your original start time. So, you set up a lot of your warm-up etc. based on that start time. I suspect that even if he was the first in the group he wouldn't have done much better and would have whined about "the people who go later got to recover after the main warmup ... and get advantages in the scoring".

Yes, he got tired but they were talking on Tuesday about how fortunate for him that the 2 competitions weren't in consecutive nights because he needed the day off.

His between the jumps skating wasn't that good and some of his jumps weren't very good.

I bet Evan could skate the figures better and that is what the sport is named for.

As for the 'technical details vs. athleticism' there are a LOT of sports where it is in the details. Luge has athetics at the front then it becomes highly technical.

[dawntreader]

i noticed that too!! the artistry and the technical seem to carry equal weight. you can complete the move and get points for it, but how WELL you complete it and how well you transition between moves earns you just as much if not more (since there are only so many "moves" you can put in a routine.) it's not just jump, skate, jump, skate, jump, spin spin, footie, jump, skate. TA DA. they have to carefully plan the whole routine with smooth skating, footwork, and artistry between all the jumps.

i also like that they don't divide publicly how each judge voted. i think the anonymity helps each judge judge more fairly. like they don't have to appear "loyal" to their country they can be loyal to the skating and the skater.

i've been extremely pleased with the judging for the pairs and men's skating. it's seemed very fair.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

i was actually happy in general that so many 19 yr olds are in it - 2014 is going to be dramatic as all that talent gets boosted with maturity and experience.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

i think the anonymity helps each judge judge more fairly. like they don't have to appear "loyal" to their country they can be loyal to the skating and the skater.

on the other hand, anonymity actually allows bias to be hidden better. they CAN be loyal to their country (or to a backroom deal as was alleged in '02) and get away with it.

I only think Weir was short-changed and should have been a little higher, and that Lambiel's short program was scored too low as well, which in the end only would have swapped Weir with Canada's Chen.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

by "all night", yes he arrived as the 3rd group was on, but he did keep up his warmups through much of the 3rd and then the entire 4th group (they kept cutting to him between each skater). that was still a good 70 minutes he was mostly standing and pseudo-spinning to keep warmed up.

[dawntreader]

in '02 (if you're talking about French Ice Dancing vs. Russian Pairs) the scores were public which is why it was so obvious.

but if a skate score was out of whack, or even in general, i'm sure the IOC knows who scored what. i would think they would keep tabs on it for that very reason. it's just not made known to the public what each judge scored. plus, since it's NOT public, how would you know that your "backroom deal" was even kept? lol

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, i prefer the openness to anonymity, and the best way to handle bias is to reduce an extreme position's impact on a curve. since the scientific means of accounting for standard deviation, while mathematically fair, isn't something easily grasped by those without the math's (and this includes the audience that certainly won't understand it), then the other technique that works, and is used elsewhere, should be done:

drop the high and the low

if you know that your attempt to over or under-judge someone is going to be thrown out anyways, then you don't do it. no anonymity required.

the issue is that human bias exists, either explicit or implicit. anonymity only partially protects explicit bias (and not completely, because the lack of exposure reduces fear of being caught), and does nothing to stop the implicit, the internal.

the way to reduce the impact of personal bias is to make it clear that its influence WILL be detected and addressed. dropping the high/low is such a detection mechanism.

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

Weir? Alpha male? Those two don't seem to match up to me...

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

I really liked what I did see from the 19 year olds. Lots of up-and-coming talent to fill in as the Wiers and Plushenkoes go away.

[dawntreader]

there isn't a way to do that. each person is judging a different thing and awarding points. so one judge marking a skater low on that one thing would be difficult to detect.

http://figureskating.about.com/od/competitionsandtests/p/officials.htm

it's also difficult and impossible to throw out the "high and low" because there isn't a single score given by each judge.

honestly though, in the new system they have crafted i think they did as much as humanly possible to weed out deal-making bias. personal bias? weell, there is probably always a tinge of slight personal bias one way or the other. but that is the same in every sport where there is judging going on.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

that was my point - rather than trying to fake the alpha-male, he embraces the feminine as being as much of part of his being and his show. plushenko does as well (watch his arm movements during the footwork sections), but probably wouldn't admit it if you pointed it out to him. :)

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

It didn't affect Shen and Zhao all that much to wait that long. Fact is, Plushenko struggled on his strength as a skater and didn't have much to fall back on.

Personally, I was rooting against him because he comes off as an ass. Even when he was on the medal platform you can tell he wanted no part of the ceremony. Never mind that he's won three medals in his career, which I think they mentioned was a record for men's figure skating.

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

Sorry, misread what you wrote. I disagree with you that Plushenko's mannerisms are all that feminine.

As for Wier, it just seems he does what comes naturally for him, rather than him "giving up" anything. It was unfortunate that he didn't score higher for his routine, but even he was a good sport about it, telling the crowd to calm down.\

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

If there are 5 judges giving scores for execution, if one is 'off' consistently on those marks sie might stand out. With only 1 person grading the technical difficulty portion, that could be corrupted but fortunately(?) the only open to interpretation for difficulty are spins and footwork.