[italic] Caveat: I don’t care enough about any of these three to follow them so all these statements are in response to things I’ve read on forums [/italic]
R556 No, it’s the “reputation + high TES = High PCS boost”. Same reason Nathan gets the PCS scores. Not to mention, she skated really well at the Olympics. This is so obvious that I feel silly even writing this, but skaters’ PCS scores tend to be bigger when they actually look trained and skate cleanly. Also, the scores at the Olympics trended high in general. Multiple world records were set.
R552 Med’s PCS didn’t drop. She got several 10’s at the Olympics and had the highest PCS scores of the competition. Zag was only 3rd in PCS.
R541 Med didn’t even come close to claiming that Eteri tried to screw her over. This is the actual quote from the article about the jump layout:
[quote] “I understood it (fewer possible points) could be bad for my results in the future, but I trusted my coaches,” Medvedeva said. “My coaches cared about my health because they thought I was not strong enough to keep it clean.”
In Fernandez’s case, Orser ASKED him if he wanted to increase his difficulty layout and Fernandez thought it would be better to do what he does well. Orser has previously stated that he believes that at some point athletes need to take control of their own careers.
My guess for Med’s scenario is that she was probably concerned about being behind in BV but never spoke up about it. Her team believed that she could win with what she had so it wasn’t worth the risk to continue backloading. When her fears came to fruition, Med was probably resentful about her coach’s poor judgment and didn’t trust them to make the right decisions anymore.
It should be pointed out that, AFAIK, Med has never disputed the results and in this article, stated explicitly that they were correct.
At worst, she and Orser look stupid and defensive. This PR blitz came after she already received a lot of criticism. TCC has done a terrible job trying to spin this especially with that Doug Haw debacle. It’s amazing how unprepared they seemed - you would think that they would have crafted some better statements before talking to the media.
R542 I find that generally when people say that “x skater is always overscored”, they pick and choose what they learn of the scoring system based on the bias they want to support. I can’t comment on any of their other competitions since I don’t care enough about these skaters to want to study them, but I broke the Olympic competition down element for element at one point and the TES scores at the Olympics looked completely fair. People might not find the Eteri programs enjoyable, but that has very little to do with what the guidelines say should get high scores and Eteri knows how to work the system. Even with all the effort I put into studying the system, I often surprise myself with the results when I actually score the event vs. what I think before analyzing the elements
R541 r533 I don’t feel sorry for either of them. I’ve had IBS with a physically demanding job for most of my life. It is inconvenient and uncomfortable but not debilitating and manageable with proper diet and some medication. I’ve never heard of anyone knowing a week in advance whether they’re going to have a diarrhea day, I rarely know even 20 min in advance.
Her season debut was embarrassingly bad so it probably was for the best for everyone involved that she pulled out of the competition but why use such a ridiculous excuse? If this really is the reason she pulled out of the competition, then she might as well retire because unless she has a very minor version, she’s going to have to deal with it all the time. And if it is that minor, then double WTF!
Here, Nobu, Shoma, and Hanyu talk about their diarrhea issues at 3:30. Though this makes me wonder how a competitor having diarrhea when they’re supposed to skate would be handled in competition.
