Comments | mosca: Olympic preview part 1: figure skating FAQ.

mosca

Olympic preview part 1: figure skating FAQ.

Feb 11, 2010 21:11

I love the Olympics. I love the stupid pageantry of it, the strange sports being shown on prime-time TV, the patriotic outfits and politically correct mascots and people crying with their hands on their hearts when they hear their national anthems ( Read more... )

skating, olympics

Comments 71

kindkit February 12 2010, 03:07:37 UTC

Thanks so much for this! I've always enjoyed watching figure skating in an "oooh, pretty" kind of way, but I feel much better informed now. Looking forward to the rest of the series--and to the Olympics.

mosca February 12 2010, 04:36:26 UTC

You're welcome! It's fun to watch just for the pretty, but I think the sport makes a lot more sense if you understand the basics.

leftbrained February 12 2010, 03:37:28 UTC

I loved this! Thanks so much for writing it, it's obvious alot of effort and love went into its creation.

It's a very good, easily understandable look at the various parts of skating. Other people probably don't have the time to spend hours on Wikipedia looking at the various disciplines and components (not that I spent three hours reading about different spin positions) and this is a great intro.

Also, I laughed for probably way too long when I got to that picture of Patrick Chan. My doofy national champion!!

PS: I believe Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are romantically involved, but have been very discreet, with only a few mentions in interviews.

mosca February 12 2010, 04:39:55 UTC

Most people don't have time, and I find that most of the explanations are very technical even when they're aimed at non-fans.

Chan is not my favorite, but I love that picture of him. He is a force of personality sometimes.

PS - I am hesitant to discuss unconfirmed skater relationships in an unlocked post, but Virtue and Moir are not currently involved; he's been linked to another female skater.

shetiger February 12 2010, 03:42:17 UTC

Toe pick!

Cool post, thank you! I was especially wanting to know the differences between all the jumps. (Hubby: What's the difference between the jumps? Me: I don't know, dude. Same answer as last Olympics.)

Question: Can Jeremy Abbott do a quad? I keep thinking he did one in the Nationals program, but then I doubt my memory.

Oh, and also thank you for the schedule stuff. :)

mosca February 12 2010, 04:52:46 UTC

There is a running "toe pick" joke in one of the first skating fics I ever wrote.

I was a figure skater for most of my childhood, and I can physically feel the differences among the jumps, but on TV I still call them wrong frequently.

Jeremy Abbott has a lovely quad toe loop, which he landed at Nationals. He's planning to do it in his free skate.

callmesandy February 12 2010, 03:55:41 UTC

Can you defend the code of points more? Because some fuckers just make me angry!

Also, Plushenko is the best argument for, you know, skating as a sport, because god knows, there's not much art there. /bitter fan rant

mosca February 12 2010, 04:54:02 UTC

I think the fact that I explained the whole thing in 3 paragraphs is defense enough.

Plushenko is the best argument for changing the channel and watching snowboarding. Douche.

skywaterblue February 12 2010, 03:57:02 UTC

YES! I feel like I now understand CoP, so I brand this post total win. I wish NBC would stop saying it's difficult math, because it's totally fucking not - they're just screwing with my gendered math issues.

I'm never ever going to know the differences between the jumps though, I fear.

mosca February 12 2010, 04:56:21 UTC

Wow! If you feel like you understand CoP, then my job here is done. Seriously, it's not hard math. If commentators said things like, "That was a clean triple axel, so he should earn at least 9 points for that," nobody would be confused.

As I said in another comment, I used to skate myself and have physical memory of the jumps' differences, but it's almost impossible even for me to call the jumps right.

skywaterblue February 12 2010, 16:26:06 UTC

Let me try and explain it back!

So there are two scores, a technical one and a pretty one, and they are both out of ten. On the technical one, the technical people look at it and decide what how many points it was worth then hand it off to the judges. The judges then decide how pretty it was for an additional value out of three.

The pretty points are just the judges deciding artistic merit and stuff and that gets averaged as the whole to make the second number.

Then the final technical number and the final pretty number get averaged together for ONE FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN. Am I right?

If I am right, is it basically impossible to get a 10/10 for technical points? Because if the hardest jump gets you 6 base technical points and you can get 3 for making it look really good, that's only 9/10.

mosca February 12 2010, 17:20:37 UTC

Not quite. And this explanation is going to go a number of steps beyond Math Barbie, so let me know if it gets confusing.

The technical elements score is the sum of the point values of all the elements a skater does. So if, in his short program, a men's skater does jumps worth 10.5, 8.5, and 7.0; spins worth 3.5, 3.7, and 4.0; and footwork worth 3.8 and 4.0, his technical elements score for his short program will be 42.0. (I actually didn't consciously make them add up to 42. Somewhere, Douglas Adams is grinning ( ... )