After watching this season's Grand Prix Final, I thought it would be fitting to revisit this thread. In discussing the proposed changes, I think the ISU should look at this event as one of its test cases.
Zagitova won this event solely on the strength of backloading her jumps in both programs to gain the 10% bonus on each. Part of the CH components is a balanced program. Zagitova's "time killing," as Ryan Bradley put it well, before the jumping frenzy in the last two minutes is clearly NOT a balanced program, yet she was scored close to a 9 here??
I think this, for sure, should be limited. Specifically, maybe limit the 10% bonus to just 4 passes -- with a max of 2 combos in this limit.
Similarly, Maria Sotskova racked up a lot of technical points because of the automatic positive Grades of Execution she received for the hand over her forehead variation. She received a 1.3 grade of execution on her 3flip-half loop-3Sal combo because of the variation, but I don't feel it was done particularly well enough to garner a +1.
RE: Base value of the quads. I'm torn here. I wouldn't want even the remote possibility of dumbing down the expected jump content among the top men a-la 2005 through 2010. The ISU proposal calls for the value of a 4toe to be relegated AGAIN to be equal to that of a 3flip-3toe, even though everyone has indicated that the former is just soooooo much more difficult than the latter. However, the three medallists here in Nagoya racked up massive technical points just by rotating the more difficult quads, i.e., 4loop, 4flip, and 4Lutz. I don't think a fall on a 4Lutz should be just as much as a clean 4toe. As such, I think the quad base values should start with 4toe and 4Sal as they are, 4loop be 11; 4flip be 11.5, and 4Lutz be 12. Automatic -4 GOE applied to falls on 4loop and up. The 11-point scale from -5 to +5 is excessive, IMO.
Kori Ade also pointed out that the bullet points for the Grades of Execution for jumps are being ignored for quads.
Then there's the long standing issue of applying PCS. Should Zagitova and Nathan Chen be getting such high PCS to tie in with the points they're getting for jumps?? In the SP here at the Final, Zagitova had the most juniorish SP, yet was less than a point behind Osmond, who truly and honestly superior in just about every way. Conversely, should Carolina Kostner always be earning 9+ across the PCS board even when she is clearly jumping tentatively??
Your thoughts...