LITTLETON, Colo. — The thing about the Olympics and sports most of us only watch every four years is trying to keep up and and keep score can be confusing.
The women's figure skating competition is underway, and sure, NBC puts a scoreboard in the corner of the screen, and sure, NBC pays commentators to explain the event, but do you really know the figure skating equivalent of a three-yard run versus an 80-yard touchdown?
"My mother, God bless her, she didn't know anything about skating, but she knew if I was horizontal or vertical. And vertical is good," said Gerry Lane, skating director at South Suburban Parks and Recreation. "One of the problems that we're struggling with this system, is when an audience looks at it, a score that comes up, they don't know if it's good or bad,"
Video above: Lane, with the help of skaters Jenna Cope and Hayden Heitmann explain and demonstrate what to watch for when trying to keep up and keep score during a figure skating event.
"They're looking at the correctness of the takeoff. The edge of the takeoff. They're looking for the landing to see if the jump is fully rotated. They're job is not to say that was a good one or a bad one," said Lane.
Figure skating is judged in two sections: executed elements and program components.
"[Previously], when you were standing there waiting for your music to start, you were starting at a 6.0 and working backwards, whereas with this new judging system, you're starting at zero and it's additive. Everything you're doing is adding to your score," said Lane.
Technical Score
Executed elements are the spins, jumps and sequences performed by the skater.
Each element has a base value, meaning a score that if you just did OK, you would get that score. There are nine judges that give you a grade of execution on a scale of minus-5 to plus-5. That means if you do really well, you can have five additional points added to the base value.
"It can go all the way up to a plus-5 if it had great speed, a great height, great distance, a good air position, maybe a difficult entry, going from turns or steps, with maybe a variation in the air," said Lane.
The top and bottom judge scores are thrown out and the remaining seven scores are averaged together and added (or subtracted) to the base value.
"They're looking for fast rotations, the speed of the spin. They're looking for the correctness of the takeoff," said Lane. "You want the rotation of the fly to be in the air."
Each spin or jump has its own criteria. You do not need to be an expert to spot good from not so good.
"You're looking for a good arch. I always tell the skaters think of like a banana, making a banana out of your body," said Lane about a layback spin.
Even how hard the skates are digging into the ice can be judged.
"You look for quiet spins. The blade should be upright to the naked eye. It is on an edge, but it should not be a discernable lean to the body to create it," said Lane.
When it comes to the spin itself, it is pretty obvious when you see a good one.
"The spin rotation should be tight. The tighter you can get them, if you can get them down to the size of a golf ball, you're an excellent spinner," said Lane.
When the score on screen turns green, it means they are getting a higher score than the base value (judges are giving up to plus-5). When the score on screen turns red it means they are getting points deducted from the base value.
Sometimes the score has a yellow "review" tab listed with the score. Usually that is to determine if a jump had the proper number of rotations.
"They go back and look at it in slow motion and they look to see which way the blade was facing," said Lane. "Ideally, you want the heal of the blade facing the exit of the landing. If the toe is pointing towards the landing direction, that's completely under-rotated."
All of the element scores -- base value and judges grade of execution -- are added together to determine the technical score.
The skating between the jumps and spins is not just skating between jumps and spins.
"You're looking here for difficult turns. You're looking for difficult steps. Toe steps. Twizzles," said Lane. "It's where you show your skating skills. Your ability to do turns. Your ability to skate There are a lot of skaters that are really good at jumping, but their skating from element to element in a program are very labored."
Program Components
The second part of figure skating scoring is based on five program components.
"They range from 0 to 10 and the top skaters in the world will be in the nines," said Lane.
The five program components are:
- Skating skills
- "Skating skills would be how well they skate, how easily they move in and out of elements, speed into things," said Lane. "When you're there in person and you see how fast these skaters move, you go, 'Wow, TV doesn't show me that.'"
- Transitions
- "How they link their elements. It shouldn't be skate-skate-skate-jump. Skate-skate-skate-jump. It's a fabric that has to be woven," said Lane.
- Performance
- "How well they did it. When they're in the air, did they have good air positions with their legs? Did they have classical looking camel positions or nice sit positions?" said Lane.
- Composition
- "How they develop their arrangement of all their program," said Lane.
- Interpretation
- "How do they relate everything they're doing in their program to their music," said Lane. "I really like to watch whether their feet go to the music."
Just like the technical score, the five components have nine scores from judges. The top and bottom score is thrown out and the rest are averaged. The five component scores are added together for the total program component score, which is then added to the technical score for the final score.
Judges are also limited in how they can score if a serious error occurs.
In the technical score, if a skater falls, lands on two feet, steps out of a landing or uses the wrong edge, judges are limited to a maximum score of plus-2.
In the program score, if a skater falls, has an interruption during the program or have technical mistakes that impact the continuity of the composition or its relation to the music, the maximum score cannot be a 10.