That's Mirai Nagasu,
who's competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
Got the triple axel, triple triple,
another triple toe combo. There's a checklist, I'm checking them all.
which is why so few women ever
attempt it.
But for how many points it's worth,
At the 2018 US Figure Skating Championship in San Jose, California,
Mirai failed to cleanly
land a triple axel.
right here
While her Olympic teammate Bradie Tennell perfectly completed the easier double axel,
despite the stumble Mirai's jump was
worth almost two points more than Bradie's.
Figure skating scoring is complicated.
When the score comes up and it says 127.48
I have no idea if I should be excited or not. I don't know what that means.
And the new scoring system has changed how competitors skate and how they win.
Here's how the current scoring system works.
Skaters perform two routines, the short program and the free skate and they
receive two sets of scores for each.
The technical element score evaluates the
difficulty and execution of a skaters jumps, spins, and footwork.
Each element
has a base value and a panel of nine judges provides grade of execution
scores which range from +3 to -3.
The highest and the
lowest scores of the judges are ignored and average of the remaining seven scores
is added to the base value.
The program component score judges a skaters
presentation or artistry. Judges award points from 0.25 to 10 on the main
program components, including skating skills, transitions, performance,
composition, and interpretation of the music.
Altogether, the combined total
score of the short and free skate determine the final standings.
The goal
of this new system is to make every element accountable for.
And while it has,
the system has also had a huge effect on the sport and the skaters themselves.
You're seeing a lot more skaters now try all these quads and the program becomes
messy because maybe they're not so consistent on it, but they're hoping that
because it's a good base value that they can up their technical score and then
their artistic score starts to to lag behind.
That's Tara Lipinski. In 1998 she became the youngest person to win an Olympic
gold for the ladies single event.
Some of the skaters are losing the artistry,
because they're trying to cram in everything when they're not prepared for
it yet.
Merely attempting a difficult jump can earn a higher score than perfecting a
slightly simpler jump.
Skaters can increase their grade of execution scores
and earn bonus points for things like placing jumps into the second half of
the program.
Now this is an amazingly challenging program.
Every single jump pass is in the second half.
Or completing a jump with your hands in the air, but arguably it
seemingly gives less incentive for skaters to simplify the routines and
perform elements cleanly.
If they do, they won't be able to win.
At the 2017 Four Continents Championship
in Gangnam, South Korea
Mirai's fellow Olympic teammate Nathan Chen won gold and became the first and
only skater to complete five different types of quadruple jumps in competition.
That's five, the first time ever.
Based on the difficulty of his elements Nathan's technical score was 32.97
points higher than Jason Brown, who had no quads in his routine.
Unlike the program component score, there is
but artistry is still important, as it can be the
difference between two skaters competing with similar technical elements.
Pushing the difficulty envelope is not an inherently bad thing, as it helps the
sport to evolve,
but I also think at the same time we have to figure out a way to
make these skaters have a clean skate.
Because at the end of the day when
you strip the drama and the politics of the sport, skaters, like all athletes,
dedicate their lives training and working towards this one specific goal.
And they just want to be able to skate knowing they've been judged fairly.
It's why we have the new system in the first place.
When it was revealed that a French
judge fix the results of the 2002 Olympic pairs event so that the Russians
would win, the new system was created as a step towards accountability and
decreasing subjectivity.
Figure skating has always been a subjective
sport and it's not like racing or basketball or hockey where it's
easy to see, but you know performing is something I really love and I love skating and so
I try to follow the rules to the best of my ability and to garner as many points
as I can.
The International Skating Union which governs the sport, says it wants to
close the gap between the artistic and technical aspects of the sport. There are
proposals to reduce the base value of quad jumps or have three different
medals, one for technical, one for artistic, and one for all-around.
And scoring changes have already been approved, like increasing grade of
execution scores to range from negative 5 to +5 and standardizing those intervals.
These changes won't be implemented until after the 2018 Olympics
and whether they will produce more artistry, remains to be seen.
We have evolved so much and it is harder and it is going to continue to
get harder, but that is the beauty of sport and I can't wait to see what
what'll happen no guts no glory right?
you