Ritsuko Horiuchi (& friend)

Ritsuko Horiuchi is not one of those judges who stand out in a check on the national bias. I have to update my tables with the current season, but, since we know the identity of the judges and until the end of last season, she has judged her compatriots in international competitions on only three occasions. In the 2018 Amber Cup Men’s competition, a Junior Grand Prix stage, her bias was 5.95 points, not very low but not so high as to make one suspicious instantly. The following year she judged the short program of the Egna Junior Grand Prix, again the Men, with a negative bias of 0.91 points, which means that she was more severe with her compatriots than with the others. Also in 2019 he judged the Pairs at the NHK Trophy, and here too she had a negative bias, -5.85 points for her compatriots.

With numbers like these, I would normally ignore her, because other judges are clearly more partisans. At the moment I do not look at the Japanese regional competitions, however I put here the link to the list of those judged by her, because Ms. Horiuchi deserves attention, and not just because recently she was promoted from international judge to ISU judge.

With so little international competitions for judging the way in which she judge, it’s useful a look to the Japanese Championship, where she is always present.

She judged the Men and the Ice Dance competition in the 2016-2017 season, but I start from the Men’s competition in December 2018. With the Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu absent due to injury and Takahito Mura, bronze in the last two editions, retired, the favorites were the 2016 and 2017 champion, and Olympic silver medalist, Shoma Uno, Keiji Tanaka, silver in the last two editions, and Kazuki Tomono, fourth in the last national championship and fifth in the last World Championship. There was also a lot of attention on Daisuke Takahashi, who returned to competitions after a four-year hiatus.

The mark that stands out the most is in Takahashi’s free skate.

Just to clarify, the jump that the other judges didn’t like so much but that for Horiuchi was a good jump, is this:

That +2 stands out so much that it’s impossible not to notice it, but an accurate check takes a long time so, for the umpteenth time, I relied on Skating Scores.

Despite that +2, and the highest technical score of all those assigned by the nine judges, at the level of the rank it does not seem that Horiuchi has helped Takahashi, not from a technical point of view. She was just more generous of the others. But there is also the artistic score, and there she gave her best. Those marks are very high. According to Horiuchi, Takahashi was the best, and this artistic ability of him allowed him to perform the second best free skate, surpassed by only Shoma Uno.

Two other judges awarded Takahashi the highest score in the components, although for them the final result is a third place in the free skate. Of course, I checked their names. Judge 5 is Etsuko Azuma, Judge 8 is Ayako Shimode.

Oh.

I have already written about Ayako Shimode, here and here.

On at least one occasion I have noticed some mark very particular awarded by Azuma, but since I haven’t written about Azuma yet, for the moment I leave this detail alone and look only at Shimode’s marks. Both Horiuchi and Shimode have shown that they appreciate Takahashi, at least on this occasion, so I decided to check if by chance their opinions are similar in other programs as well.

I noticed a curious detail: in four of the last five seasons they judged the same competitions. In the only season in which this did not happen, Horiuchi judged Pairs, Shimode did not judge any competition. It can be a coincidence, of course. But some coincidences intrigue me, so I did a further check. I went back to the 2010-2011 season, although I haven’t included this season in my table. Neither of them was a member of a jury panel that year. From what I have seen, Shimode started judging the Japanese national championship in the 2012-2013 season, Horiuchi in the 2013-2014 season, even though she wasn’t there in the following season. In the five seasons in which both have been present, they have always judged the same competitions, as if they were two inseparable friends who always do everything together.

None of them judged the Men’s competition in the 2019-2020 season, but both of them judged the Ice Dance competition at the 2020-2021 Japan Championship.

In the last Rhythm Dance Horiuchi was judge 1, marks highlighted in red, Shimode judge 5, marks highlighted in orange.

Horiuchi was on the severe side both with Komatsubara/Koleto, 2.83 points less than the real score, and with Muramoto/Takahashi, 2.03 points less, and overall remained in line with five out of six judges: Komatsubara/Koleto first, Muramoto/Takahashi seconds. Who stood out, on the occasion, was Shimode, the only one to believe that the best were Muramoto/Takahashi. In the Free Dance Komatsubara/Koleto was, without doubt, the best team, so I watch the second, the third and the fourth team. I don’t know why Muramoto/Takahashi did only 9 elements and not 10, but the original protocol is this:

[Edit: someone (first comment) give to me this explanation:

It is because they have the combination lift (element 2). The other 2 couples don’t present the combo lift and so they execute 2 separate lifts

Even if I never studied the Ice Dance rules, I should have remembered the words of a commentator explaining that rule. I heard of the rule, but somehow my brain choose to don’t remember it.]

So, how the three teams skated?

Horiuchi and Shimode were the only ones to think that Muramoto/Takahashi deserved second place, even for three judges (Akira Sekine, Sho Kagayama and Yumiko Matsumura) Muramoto/Takahashi should have been fourth, also behind Rikako Fukase/Eichu Oliver Cho. Isn’t it that Horiuchi and Shimode have some sympathy for Takahashi? With this doubt, I watched the NHK Trophy 2020.

According to the ISU this is a Grand Prix competition, but with only Japanese skaters, with the exception of the Korean Young You among Ladies, and Japanese judges (and it’s not that in the other fake Grand Prix competitions things went much better), for me this is a local competition. Okay, let’s see the fake Japanese championship. Here are the official results, here the protocols analysed by SkatingScores.

There were only three competitors. For all judges the best were Komatsubara/Koleto. From a technical point of view there is no doubt, from the artistic point of view they were the best only for six judges, but for the judge 5 the best were Muramoto/Takahashi. Who was Judge 5? Ritsuko Horiuchi. A constancy of judgments that could lead someone to suspect that her support for Takahashi is not a coincidence but a constant. I also note that in the GOEs she gave very high marks. Yes, she was also generous with the other teams, but if with Komatsubara/Koleto she went 2.89 points above the average and with Fukase/Cho (not in my screenshot) she went 3.21 points above the average, with Muramoto/Takahashi the difference is 5.58 points.

Also Shimode judged the competition, and for her the best both in TES and PCS were Komatsubata/Koleto. However even if we are no longer in the old system, in which the rank was made by the placements given by every judges to the skaters, I note that for four judges, including Horiuchi and Shimode, Muramoto/Takahashi deserved the second place, for the other three the third, and when the judges who assign the marks in an original way are two, it is sure that at least the marks of one of the two (like that +2 of Shimode on the twizzles) enter in the score.

In the Free Dance Shimode, judge 2, was in line with the other three judges that placed Fukase/Cho second, Muramoto/Takahashi third. Judge 6, the only one that thought that Muramoto/Takahashi deserved the second place in the TES is Akiko Kobayashi. Horiuchi agree with five judges that put Murakami/Takahashi third in the TES, with all for the second place, only behind Komatsubara/Koleto, in the PCS. In the sum, she and two judges, Kobayashi and Sho Kagayama, put Muramoto/Takahashi second and not third.

Horiuchi is a Takahashi’s fan. Nothing wrong… until you are a judge. If you are a judge, you need to be able to put aside your preferences and give the marks accordig to what every single skater does in the competition you are judging. It’s difficult, but this is you must do.

For a few years Takahashi was without doubt the strongest Japanese skater ever. The results speak for themselves, up to the 2012-2013 season these are the Olympic and world medals won in the Men’s category:

After… the impression is that not everyone in Japan really appreciated Hanyu’s wins. For three years in a row, physical problems prevented Hanyu from participating in the National Championship. In 2019 Horiuchi judged the Ladies and Ice Dance competitions. Takahashi was still an individual skater, and while politics unfortunately plays an important role in skating, I still don’t understand Japanese domestic politics in the Women’s competitions. I only know that, compared to their standards in the competition, both Horiuchi and Shimode were strict with Rika Kihira and Mako Yamashita, and generous with Yuka Nagai, Satoko Miyahara, Tomoe Kawabata, Hinano Isobe and Chihiro Inoue, the first of the skater not qualified for Free Skate. Horiuchi, Shimode and Yoko Ando were the only three judges, out of nine, to believe that she deserved to also compete in the Free Skate. These can be only coincidences, I notice them and go ahead.

In 2020 in addition to judging the Ice Dance Horiuchi judged the Men’s competition. Shimode also judged the Men’s competition. In December I had wondered why she had been so strict with Hanyu in the FS, even if she had not been so severe in the SP. I can be wrong, but watching all the competitions it seems that, to get less noticed, this time Horiuchi and Shimode shared the role of stern judge. In the short program it was Horiuchi, in the free skate Shimode. None can knew in advance that Hanyu will skate an excellent Short Program and an overwhelming Free Skate.

I already wrote about Shimode, so I don’t do it again. For Horiuchi I watch only the Short Program.

I calculated how strict, or generous, Horiuchi was with each skater. She was a litte over the average, her marks are 0.77 points higher in the TES, 0,67 higher in the PCS, 1.43 higher in the sums. But how she judged any single skater?

In the table on the left the skaters are listed in the ranking order of the short program. We can see their base value, the TES and consequently the GOE that has been awarded to them. In the yellow columns I marked the TES according to Horiuchi, which allowed me to calculate her GOE. The third yellow column indicates the difference between the TES that the skaters actually had and what they would have had if Horiuchi had been the sole judge. I did the same thing with the components, first the real ones, then those of Horiuchi and finally the difference. In the last column, again in white, there is the overall difference considering GOE and PCS. I ignored the deductions because those are not decided by the judges and enter in the score beyond GOE and PCS.

In the table on the right I have listed the skaters in order from the one with which Horiuchi was the most generous to the one with which she was the most severe. I remember that on a single skater 1.50 points more or less than the final score, which can become 3.00 considering the judge who raises the score of a skater and lowers that of his opponent, are a greater difference than the one that costed the suspension to Feng Huang for the Pairs competition in PyeongChang. So if someone has had generous marks of over 1.50 points, and his opponent strict marks of over 1.50 points, there is clearly something wrong. But in this competition this didn’t happened, right?

Ehm…

I start to watch her marks from the TES.

Horiuchi was the only one to give the first place to Yuma Kagiyama and not to Hanyu. Kagiyama with a GOE higher than Hanyu? Since when is Kagiyama able to add more qualities to his elements than a Hanyu who doesn’t make mistakes? Sure, in Kagiyama’s score there is also the sit spin which was canceled in Hanyu’s score. I will not enter into the merits of the correctness (ahahaha) of the cancellation of the spin because I should write about the technical panel, I just take away from the +14.19 of GOE of Kagiyama 0.90 points, that is what Horiuchi gave to Kagiyama’s spin with her +3. There are still 13.29 points of GOE earned, against 11.57 points of Hanyu. Even with the same number of elements, for Horiuchi Kagiyama he deserved 1.72 points more than Hanyu.

Two other judges, Akio Sasaki (J3) and Hideo Umetani (J4) considered Kagiyama better at least from the technical aspect. I don’t know if sooner or later I’ll look closely at them too, there are too many judges compared to the time I can devote to these posts, for now I only notice that despite Kagiyama’s highest technical score, for them the best was Hanyu. The rank of the SP remains correct, even if for Sasaki the difference was really small.

In the step sequence Horiuchi assigned three +5, to Hanyu, Kagiyama and Uno, with the other skaters she settled on marks ranging from +2 to +4, with the only exceptions of Kao Miura (+1), Tsunehito Karakawa (0) and Tatsuma Furuya (-1). Three +4 for the Axel, again for Hanyu, Kagiyama and Uno, +3 for Keiji Tanaka, Kazuki Tomono, Sena Miyake, Kazuki Kushida, and Kento Kobayashi, but the latter performed a double, not a triple.

+4 to Hanyu’s triple axel? And why? The jump had good take-off and landing (bullet 2), effortless throughout (bullet 3), steps before the jump – he entered from a counter! – (bullet 4), very good body position from take-off to landing (bullet 5), element matches the music (bullet 6). As for the bullet 1, I didn’t find Uno’s SP, if someone find a video I can change the screenshot. These are Hanyu’s and Kagiyama’s axels:

There are three possibilities: both jumps deserved bullet 1, neither of them deserved it, or only Hanyu’s jump deserved it. Seeing that all Hanyu’s marks range from +4 to +5, all judges evalued bullet 1 present. Two judges gave Kagiyama a +3, I guess that for them the bullet 1 wasn’t there. In height the difference between the two jumps is 3 centimeters, but in length it’s 24, it’s possible that a jump deserved the bullet and the other not.

Edit: Nymphea found Uno’s 3A. Uno’s jump was really wide, 3.48 metres, but also low, 56 cm. So for bullet 1 the width is more than enough, the height no. I made a comparison with the short program of the 2019 World Championship, the only one of which I have all the data. I added to those numbers those of the Japanese National Championship. To distinguish the two competitions, I highlighted in yellow the jumps performed by Hanyu, Kagiyama and Uno at the National Championship.

In the right table the jumps are listed in order of height, in the left table by amplitude. Hanyu’s triple axel is smaller than other triple axels he did in the past, but still it is larger than most of the triple axels performed by other skaters. On the other hand, the triple axel of Uno, very long, is really low.

Now… since for Hanyu surely bullet 1 is there (it must be there for a mark higher than +3, all the judges agreed on that), how did be able Shizuko Ugaki (J1), Akio Sasaki (J3), Ritsuko Horiuchi (J8) and Ayako Shimode (J9) to give only a +4? It is a mark that clearly does not respect the rules.

I ignore the solo jump and watch the combination. +2? Same mark of Takahashi’s 3F of the first screenshot?

The only thing I can see is the absence of bullet 2 because after the second jump the left leg is very low (but in the video we can see clearly that the skate did not touch the ice) and the speed is not high, even if on similar lands of other skaters the bullet was recognized. This blocks the mark at +3, not +2. The other bullets are there.

+3 for the combination spin against the +4 of Kagiyama and Uno. Also Tanaka, Yamamoto, Tomono, Miyake, Kshida, Hino, Lucas Tyuoshi Honda, Hasegawa, Kishina, Kunikata, Yamakuma, Yamada and Ishizuka received a +3. +2 for the camel spin, worse than Kagiyama and Uno (+4), but also Tanaka, Yamamoto, Tomono, Kishina and Sugiyama (+3), and on the same level as Sato, Shimada, Ryoma Kobayashi, Hasegawa, Kento Kobayashi , Kunikata, Yamakuma and Yamada. In practice for Horiuchi (in both the spins) out of 29 skaters, only 14 deserved a mark lower than Hanyu’s, 15 deserved it equal to or higher than him. With the doubt that Hanyu’s spins must be really mediocre, I did a table.

I only looked at the two spins that entered in Hanyu’s score. I didn’t care about the level, something the judges don’t know when they give their marks. I ignored the fact that the spins were flying or not, something that counts for the BV but not for the GOE. To three CoSp spins, of Tomono, Nakamura and Osihima, were assigned a V, a sign that the technical panel detected some problems, while Shimada’s spin was judged as invalid. For the other spin, 29 skaters performed a CSp, one, Kento Kobayashi, a USp, which for convenience I have included in the CSp table.

I wrote the BV and the final GOE of each spin, but the ones that really interest me are the next boxes. The GOE is linked to the marks, but also to the BV of the element, a +2 for a spin of 3.50 points is worth 0.70 points, a +2 for a spin of 2.80 points is worth 0.56 points. The points are different, but the quality of execution is the same. For this, for each spin I marked the number of +5 that have been awarded, of +4, of +3 and so on. The light yellow box indicates which was the mark assigned by Horiuchi. Mean indicates the average. As we know the final GOE is based on the marks of seven judges, the highest and lowest marks aren’t considered, but I am interested in the impression that all the judges had of the spin. With two +5, three +4 and four +3, Hanyu’s average combination spin rating is 3.78. For Kagiyama five +4 and four +3 give a slightly lower average rating, 3.56. All calculations are done this way.

Even at a glance it is clear that Horiuchi has been strict with Hanyu and generous with almost all the other skaters. To make this even more clear, I made another table. I deleted almost all the data and beside the mean column (CD column) of the previous table I wrote the marks assigned by Horiuchi (CE column). In the first bloc of columns the data are still in order of ranking of the short program. In the second block I sorted the data from the best performed spin to the worst performed spin according to the average (column CH). I highlighted Hanyu in red simply to make it easy to notice him. In the third, the data are sorted according to the marks assigned by Horiuchi (CM column).

In the combination spin, Horiuchi was exactly on the average with Uno, strict with Hanyu (0.89 points below average) and Oshima (0.44 points below average) and generous with everyone else.

In the Camel spin, Horiuchi was strict with Kagiyama (0.56 points below the average), Hanyu (1.11 points below the average), Nakamura (-0.33 points), Nakano (-0.11 points), Oshima (-0.11 points), Miura (-1.78 points) and Kushida (-1.00 points), seven skaters out of 30, with Miura being the only treated worse than Hanyu. Apparently, despite Horiuchi’s perplexities, most of the judges felt that Hanyu’s spins were of excellent quality.

After the TES, I watch the PCS. According to seven judges the best was Hanyu, according to two it was Uno. Distinguished from the others were Judge 1, Shizuko Ugaki, and Judge 8, Ritsuko Horiuchi. Yes, her again. Now, how skated Uno? This is the landing of the first jump of the combination:

To me it seems a major mistake, and when there is a major mistake, the components are capped. According to the ISU’s rules

Serious errors are interruptions during the program and technical mistakes that impact the integrity/continuity/fluidity of the composition and/or its relation to the music.
Similer limitations must be applied to all levels of skaters from extremely poor to outstanding.

In the table for the components it’s clearly written that a fall is a serious mistake, so the highest possible marks for SS, TR and CO is 9.75, for PE and IN is 9.50.

This is true for Uno with his fall, not for Hanyu with his invalid element. His spin was judged no value because, according to the technical panel, Hanyu did not complete the two rotations in the sit position. Something that none of the spectators, and not even of the commentators, noticed (also because it is not true, but let’s leave it alone). It’s not that there can’t be serious mistakes in a spin, the one invalidated to Dmitri Aliev at the end of his 2019 Grand Prix final free skate was really bad, and we all noticed it instantly. At that moment I felt sorry for Aliev, and usually I don’t care what he does. So Aliev did a visible mistake meritorious of a deduction, Hanyu not. Since the limitation on the maximum mark in the Components must to be applied to any level, it follows this table:

49.00? I must have missed something, because I didn’t get the impression that this was the best short program ever skated. I must be really distracted.

In fact, severe evaluations for Hanyu and generous for Uno kept Shoma in the competition. We all remember the national championship from the previous season. Maybe sooner or later I will look at those judges, however in the short program exactly the same thing had happened: low marks for Hanyu, high for Uno, a small gap. In 2019 both skated badly in the free skate, the judges judged even worse than they skated, and the title went to Uno. In 2020 Hanyu had spent 10 months alone, without a coach, who could have imagined that he would have had a perfect performance? Too low marks have left open the possibility of a comeback for Uno or also for Kagiyama.

In the free skate Horiuchi was generous with Hanyu, it seems as the role of the strict judge was on Shimode, with perhaps some other collaboration, but I go on to the last week, to the most important competition judged by Horiuchi so far. She will not be able to judge the Olympics, she has to judge two ISU Championships before she is qualified, so we will not find her in Beijing.

Someday I’ll really need to watch the q, but not today. Let’s pretend that the call at Skate America 2021 are all correct even if it’s difficult. I swear, I wanted to watch the transitions in Nathan Chen’s short program, not the rotations of the jumps, but I couldn’t help but notice this quadruple lutz who didn’t get any calls. The four screenshots above are of the take-off, we see the perfect outside edge and the absence of prerotation. So far the jump is excellent. The last four are of the landing. In the first he is still in the air, in the second he is already on the ice, with the blade horizontal and the snow rising, testifying to the contact. From this moment on, the rotation is on the ice.

Hanyu was not there, the Japanese were two, Shoma Uno and Shun Sato, and with them were the two most important American skaters. That Nathan Chen is aiming for Olympic gold is no mystery, as for Vincent Zhou after a complicated period he definitely seems to be fighting for important medals, at least if we don’t look at the rotations of his jumps and accept that the components grow with the increase of the number of quadruples which the skater is able to land.

For an in-depth look at the score, I refer you once again to SkatingScores. This time I used numbers to do some calculations. In October I published two posts in which I was trying to figure out whether judges from one country help judges from another country. The first post concerns the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons, the second one the seasons from 2018-2019 to 2020-2021. I deliberately split the two periods not so much because the rules has undergone a huge change, but because several skaters who previously fought for important medals have retired, and certain balances of strength have shifted. The posts are in Italian, it is difficult for me to write in English, I am slow and I make a lot of mistakes, but if you are interested in the first post I explained the method I used for my statistics.

I explain something again. For each skater I checked the final score he had in the competition segment and the score that each individual judge gave him. By comparing the judges’ score with the final score, I checked how far the judge had deviated, with higher or lower marks. I made a difference in the averages, since I used to grant everyone the subjectivity of judgment. One judge can be strict and another not, within certain limits the rules accept it, and if the severity is used equally with everyone they should have no problem. Sooner or later I will explain why this is not entirely true, but there are too many things to explain for my time. The average is the last line, in bold.

Okay, based on the judge’s subjectivity, I checked if each judge was being severe or generous with each skater. I deleted the score and kept only the difference for every skater and every judge, then I calculated the difference for every skater from the average of each judge. I hope that my explanations are understandable, but if you compare the numbers you can understand what I did.

For every skater I keep only the last line. This number say if a judge was severe or strict with a skater. Why didn’t I just use SkatingScores numbers? Because they are a value extrapolated from the context. Let’s take Miroslav Misurec, the Czech judge. He awarded Vincent Zhou 97.78 points, against the 97.43 he actually received. So he was generous with him? Not too much. This is the SkatingScores table.

SkatingScores use for the averages all the marks, so nine judges, I calculated it on the final score, then the marks of nine judges minus the highest and lowest mark, so even if the marks are the same our averages are not the same. Beyond this, it is evident that Misurec was generous with seven out of eleven skaters, and with six skaters he was more generous than with Zhou which means that, in practice, with Zhou he was strict, albeit not by much.

My table summarizing for the short program how generous or stern each judge was to each skater is this:

I did the same calculation for the free skate too, in this case I only place the final table because every screenshot require time.

At this point I added the difference between the free program and the short program and made the sum. So for each judge I made a ranking, from the skater who he helped the most to the one who penalized the most. In the next screenshot you see all the rankings, first of the short program, then of the free skate, then of the total.

I apologize to Adam Siao Him Fa, his name is too long, in the two tables above it is cut, in the one below I used a smaller font. In both cases I don’t like the result, but widening the columns meant making a table too wide to fit in a single screenshot.

Ok, what do we see? If you want you can check many results, for questions of time I focus on some. American judge Wendy Enzmann helped Vincent Zhou, evidently in Beijing the Americans are now aiming for two medals, she did not help Nathan Chen. These are averages, so it goes without saying that if a name is at the top on one side it must be at the bottom on another. Who was Chen helped by? It can also be a legitimate help, in the sense that the judge honestly felt his marks were correct, however it is always a help. The judges who stand out are two. One is the Japanese judge Ritsuko Horiuchi, the other the Russian judge Lolita Labunskaia. I will write about Labunskaia another day, because I noticed a curious detail about the Russian judges, but as usual I am writing longer than I would have liked. I stop on Horiuchi.

Horiuchi must hate the Japanese skaters that aren’t Takahashi, because this time she was almost perfectly on her average with Sato, strict with Uno and really generous with Chen. +8.15? This is really a big difference. Probably I should not be surprised that someone that seems to like a lot Takahashi and hate Hanyu, a strong contraposition in Japan, like the only active skater that ended a competition ahead of Hanyu more than one time. With those marks it almost seems that in Beijing she will root for Chen. This is Chen’s protocol:

I highlighted in purple when someone has given a higher mark than Horiuchi, in red when the highest rating was her, in orange when it was her along with that of another judge. On two entries, the 4Lz with a fall and the combination with only one valid jump, the -5 was mandatory. Every so often some judge forgets the rule according to which if an element of the short program does not meet the requirements of the rules the final mark must be -5. There is no other possibility, any different vote is a judge’s mistake. In this case the judges’ marks are correc, 10 items remain (7 technical elements, 5 program components) in which the judges have a certain discretion.
In 5 entries Horiuchi was the most generous. 5, the half. In one, the combination spin, she was the second most generous. Only the Canadian judge gave to Chen a higher mark than Horiuchi did, but the Canadian judge was kind to Chen on that mark alone. In another, 3A, Horiuchi was the most generous along with the French judge. The French judge tends to have high marks, but he is always in the company of someone else, he is never the only judge who awards the highest mark. In yet another, SS, only one judge, the Italian one, awarded a higher mark than Horiuchi. Her was the second highest mark, along with that of the Russian judge. Only in TR did two judges assign a higher mark than Horiuchi’s, while in the first spin three other judges assigned her same mark, naturally the higher of the two marks Chen received for that spin.

Horiuchi’s marks don’t really stand out at all. But… wait a moment. In the components I have already seen these marks assigned by her. Combined differently, true, but the sum is the same.

Ok, this was an experiment, it was the first time that I ever put aside two protocol as this. I must find a different way to do a comparison, I don’t like much this. Anyway, same PCS as Hanyu at the 2020 Nationals? The competition are different, but the rules are the same. The programs, the quality of the skating and also the way in which the technical elements were executed, not so much.

The 4Lz deserved to be called underrotated, base value 9.20 points and not 11.50. This is a mistake of the technical panel, the Russian Julia Andreeva (oh, another Russian), the Deutsch Claudia Unger and the Korean Sung-Jin Byun. The commentator said that the jump was under review, so the TP said that the jump was fully rotated even with a video really clear. Perhaps a new pair of glasses isn’t enough, they need an operation to remove a cataract. Other hypothesis?

As for the combination… My screenshot starts from when he is flying in the 4F. I watched the landing with a huge step out and stopped when he was almost doing the take off of the single toe loop, a jump that, by rule, is no value.

Can this be called a major mistake? The relation to the music got lost somewhere during the step out. This mistake is very different from Shoma Uno’s flip. Uno would have liked to do a quadruple but he did only a double, an invalid element in a short program. But his movement remained fluid, an inexperienced spectator does not see the mistake. But let’s be generous with Chen, the program contains only one big mistake. Since the maximum possible mark is not 10.00 but 9.75 (SS, TR, CO) and 9.50 (PE, IN) let’s see what marks Horiuchi has assigned.

Just to clarify how high these marks are, on SkatingScores with the tools option it is possible to make many interesting statistics. I looked for Components in the short program in all Men’s international competitions. I drew a red line to better see which programs received a lower rating.

Let’s not talk about Hanyu, I’m a fan of him and I can be prevented. Apparently Nathan Chen skated better than Patrick Chan ever did. I even made the mistake of looking under the first screeenshot, and I might feel sick. Even without considering the maximum possible value for the components, how high is a 46.50? Who remembers the short program skated by Patrick Chan at the Internationaux de France 2013?

Bleah!

But really some judge isn’t ashamed of the marks they gave?

If we want we could talk about many other things, as Chen’s sit position in the spins, a spin that, for Horiuchi, deserved a +4, and illustrated in this tweet:

https://twitter.com/intelligentYuzu/status/1451906617440550915

or we could talk of the huge number of crossover in this program but also in his free skate, the emptiness of the choreography. No, I have run out of energy. I could also write about the free skate, but I don’t have enough time. The ISU judges need urgently a better preparations, because a lot of them doesn’t understand what they sees, they need better technology to aid them to judge in the correct way, the skaters deserves to be judged for what they do, nor more nor less, and Ristuko Horiuchi should be suspended until she really learn the rules because, at the gentlest of hypotheses, she is unable to judge the competitions correctly.