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4 - 10 December 2024
Grenoble, FRA
Photos Copyright 2024 by George S. Rossano
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Senior PreviewJunior PreviewSenior ReportJunior ReportFrench Team Press ConferenceMalinin Free Skate, What went Wrong?One of the more surprising programs at the Grand Prix Final was Ilia Malinin's frees skate. Surprising, but for the wrong reason, with all seven of his jump elements called with missing rotation. When the protocol was posted we were all in shock. Was it really that bad? Making use of a new higher performance camera at the Final, we photographed Malinin's free skate with 24 Mpixel images - equivalent to 11K video resolution, if such a thing existed - 25 msec temporal resolution, and a 1/1250 shutter speed. We captured part or all of his jump elements, and have used that to compare analysis of the photographic record to the calls given for each of the jump elements. To do this we measured the line of flight of the jump and the angle of the blade with respect to the line of flight, taking into account perspective correction. We also measured the time in the air for each quad. For each jump element we provide next the call and the result of our measurements. Images of the jumps can be found in the following YouTube video.
By our analysis Malinin was robbed of points on the 4A and gifted points on the 4F, 4T combination and the 4S sequence. The difference in base value points is enough to erase most of his lead in the event. Depending on what the judges would have done for GoEs with the correct calls he might well have ended up second overall in the event; however, we can only guess at what the judges would have done and make no prediction on what his final score would have been. One can also, of course, question whether the calls for Kagiyama were equally flawed. We did the same analysis for Kagiyama's jumps and found no differences between our analysis and the official calls. So why were Kagiyama's jumps all fully rotated and Malinin's not? To answer this we measured the height of the jumps for both skaters. While the height of Kagiyama's jumps were what one typically sees for quads and triples and his past performances, Malinin's jumps in the Final free skate were distinctly lower than other performances, except for the quad Axel, which was near his usual height for that jump. For whatever reason, in the Final, Malinin did not achieve the time in the air that he usually does, and thus could not complete the rotations in the lesser time available. We also note that as the program progressed, the time in the air for the quads decreased after the first 4Lz, being less than 0.6 sec by the end of the program. The average time in the air for Kagiyama's three quads was 0.71 sec. [In contrast, in the short program, the time in the air for Malinin's triple Axel and quads averaged 0.71 sec.] Another takeaway from this, though the sample is small, is that it appears when jumps are fully rotated the technical panel gets it right, but when jumps have missing rotation technical panels make numerous errors. For Malinin's free skate the accuracy of the calls was 3/7 = 43%. We attribute this to the inadequate capabilities of the replay system used by technical panels, a subject we have discussed in depth in the past. Finally we observe that these jump examples suggest that determining the missing rotation in a jump might be better determined by an accurate measurement of the time in the air together with the average rotation rate. We note that quads with < are about 0.7 sec in the air or less and quads near << are about 0.6 sec in the air or less. Comparison with clean examples elsewhere have quads with less than one-quarter missing rotation in the air 0.7 sec or greater. Clean examples of Malinin quad Axels have 0.8 sec in the air or greater. Common Air Time for Missing Rotation,
for Quads other than Axel
David Sanchez Interview |