A day later. Were the results right?
Emotions were high last night at the 2013 World Figure Skating Championships after Canada's Patrick Chan won his third consecutive World title. That all sounds great until you factor in the fact that Chan made multiple mistakes, including falling twice, while the silver medalist, Denis Ten, made one less noticeable mistake and was brilliant in his free skate.
Opining on Worlds: The ladies
Men's free: Videos/Play-by-play
I had an urge to write this analysis of the event immediately. Like many skating observers, I felt Ten was the rightful winner last night - doing more than enough to overcome the almost seven-point deficit from the short program to Chan. But in the interest of level-headedness, I wanted to reassess it a day later. So walk with me while I dig.
It's all about components
Those who read my post-competition analyses know that I do tend to find the rational among the sometimes seemingly irrational outcomes that the ISU Judging System has delivered. Yes, component marks have a way of favoring the favorites. But the outcomes tend to be the correct ones, especially after factoring in the technical score, which are usually the marks that tell the story. And then there's the fact that people have short-term memories - the results from the short program also need to be factored in.
Nowhere in the IJS criteria for components does it explicitly mention that a fall equates lower component marks.
But one thing has to be noted - nowhere in the IJS criteria for components does it explicitly mention that a fall equates lower component marks. That's often the go-to line for those trying to dispute results that they don't like. More subtly, the only component that comes into play is in the Performance/Execution mark, where "clarity of movement," which takes about the "precise execution of any movement," can and should be interpreted as an area for consideration when it comes to falls.
Why? The idea was to clearly separate the technical side on the technical mark - so falls, poor landings, well-executed jumps, strong spins, etc., would be taken care of in the technical elements score. The program components score is more of a big-picture mark that takes the overall performance into account.
A fall that doesn't disrupt the program and the skater's performance of it? That doesn't - and shouldn't - do much to the components mark. That was precisely the conversation last year at Worlds when it was Chan vs. Takahashi. A fall that completely disrupts the program and takes the skater completely out of the performance of the program? That is what doesn't get addressed nearly enough.
Start from the short
Chan was the clear and runaway winner of the short program. No one came close to him when you combine his technical and component prowess there. His lead over Ten, a sizable one of over six points, was more than justified.
WATCH: Chan short program
WATCH: Ten short program
Ten, on the other hand, experienced what was a perfect storm of events that skyrocketed his components. The combination of underachieving favorites, skating late in the short program (he was 31st of 34 skaters), and a flawless program gave him component marks - deserved, mind you - that were the best of his career. But I guarantee you, had Ten skated before names like Takahashi, Fernandez, and Hanyu, his short program score would have been a good three or four points lower.
Judging the performance
So that leaves us to the free skates. In the technical department, Ten hit one quad and six triples; Chan hit two quads and two clean triples. Ten's sole mistake was doubling his triple flip. Chan, on the other hand, had two falls - one on a lutz and th other on an underrotated triple axel - a step out and hand down on a sal, and a doubled second lutz.
Judges are supposed to assess the current performance in front of them.
The margin of victory for Chan was 1.30. Had Ten not doubled the flip, we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now.
Going through the protocols, nothing seems particularly egregious or significant. There was one judge who mindbogglingly decided that the step out/hand down on Chan's triple flip-half loop-triple salchow combination was not worth a negative grade of execution, but otherwise, things looked fine.
So we necessarily have to look at the components - and that's where it goes awry. Judges are supposed to assess the current performance in front of them - not past performances, not practices, not the warmup that immediately preceded the skate. That practice, unfortunately, gets overlooked. It happened during the 6.0 era and it continues to happen today.
Watching the two performances again, it is clear that Ten skated a program that was unmatched in his emotional involvement, character expression, and dedication to music. His free skate component marks - once again, the best in his career by far - were more than deserved.
WATCH: Ten free skate
WATCH: Chan free skate
Chan started off wonderfully. But with each mistake, his performance diminished - shoulders started slumping, movements were not completely finished, the attention to the audience and to the music went away. It's not to say that he tanked. But he skated a program that, in the realm of Performance/Execution and Interpretation, were much more pedestrian than they were marked.
Ten won the night, and he did enough to make up his short program deficit. No doubt about it.
There's no taking away his Skating Skills, Transitions, and Choreography. Chan has taken great steps with this free skate this season in showing, and successfully so, a side of musical interpretation that he hasn't before. It's a wonderful program in choreography, but the actual performance of it last night was the second worst of the season. The only one that was worse was his debut of this program at Japan Open, where he fell four times.
So an 8.61 for Performance/Execution and an 8.96 for Interpretation (higher than Ten's 8.86)? Both marks should've been a half-point to a full point lower, which would have translated to two to four points in the overall score. Chan won by just over one point.
Ten won the night, and he did enough to make up his short program deficit. No doubt about it.
A separate debate
That the final standings would have been that close even with a proper marking of components is likely pretty stunning to many. I have written about this before - what is missing in the IJS currently is a better system of incentives and disincentives. Cleanness is not rewarded enough and mistakes aren't penalized enough. There just isn't enough of a range of penalties to properly separate the egregiousness of mistakes.
Mistakes are more logarithmic than linear. You have a slight hand down on the landing of a jump - ok, that's a slight mistake on the jump. You fall on a jump - that's a complete failure of the jump. The scale of GOEs right now is linear, but that's not how skaters and skater observers think. We need another round of revisiting the IJS, and this result could be the catalyst for it.
Not the first time this season
But overmarked components have actually undermined more than one result this season, only in Chan vs. Ten, this one was on the biggest stage with a large set of eyes. Mao Asada's victory at NHK Trophy over Akiko Suzuki was one such case, as was Tatiana Volosozhar/Maxim Trankov's win at Grand Prix Final over Vera Bazarova/Yuri Larionov. In both instances, the mistakes made by the winners severely impacted their overall performances - a fact that was lost in the component marks for those programs.
There are two more events happening today with the free dance and the ladies' free skate. Let's hope we don't have another explosion of outrage at the end of the night.
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