IF all ladies skated cleanly in Calgary '88 ....

[Maximillian]

Personally I hated Witt's Carmen both technically and artistically. Too much posing. I am in the minority that would even prefer her mismatch choreographed program of 84-85, it was odd but it had a lot more skating and showed all the presentation requirements of variation of speed, utilization of the ice, etc...However I am not a judge, and it was clear what the judges thought of Witt's Carmen artistically, haha.

I do think Thomas improved her artistry a good deal in 88, and I personally loved her Carmen, but she still lacked somewhat in speed over the ice compared to other top skaters, particularly Manley, Witt, Ito, maybe even Trenary, which is a big factor in the 2nd mark.

Someone made a good point that Witt's triple salchows were a lot smaller than 87 which I noticed too. Her triple salchows used to big and squarely done, very nice, much less so in 88. That could be another factor to the judges if Thomas had skated better, it had been a better skated event, Manley had done better the earlier programs, etc...It could be another reason her technical marks were so low, along with skating first, obviously not doing the triple loop and having less content planned than Manley and Thomas at that point, and maybe the excess posing too.

While I would not be the biggest fan of Witt's Carmen, particularly as it relates to its construction as a competitive program and like you agree that there is, indeed, too much posing. However, I would agree with @Louis in that it was groundbreaking in presenting a singular character within the context of a competitive piece, something which would become the norm in the mid-'90s.

I'm a huge Trenary fan and yes her speed was superior to Thomas and at least on par with Witt. Jill also had terrific glide and nice deep edges and was definitely ahead of Thomas in those areas.

I hadn't thought about Witt's salchows in '88, but they were small and not nearly as impressive as her 3ts which were huge and gorgeous. Witt also had a pretty good axel if memory serves, which is surprising considering that most Mueller skaters had terrible axel technique.

 

[olympic]

My favorite Witt LP was WSS in 87 and no. 2 would be the Gershwin medley of 84 and 85. Witt has good speed and power but Carmen didn’t showcase that. It was reflected in her tech mark

JMHO, I am skeptical that she would have had a 3R in Calgary. Sadly, her Fed put extra pressure on her: If you want to leave the country and make $$$ you need to win. One usually doesn’t execute an iffy jump well under that pressure

 

[LarrySK8]

We have not really discussed the impact of a clean Mdori Ito - who was actually clean in Calgary. Placing her between any of Witt-Thomas-Manley-Trenary could affect the placements, instead of her being 5th or something.

 

[VGThuy]

I’m not objective. I clearly placed Ito first in the LP so she wouldn’t be playing spoiler by being wedged in-between anyone.

 

[LarrySK8]

I’m not objective. I clearly placed Ito first in the LP so she wouldn’t be playing spoiler by being wedged in-between anyone.

I understand fully. However, if you give Midori 5.9s across the board, I would truly agree. One could argue 5.6 or 5.7 for presentation. At total of 5.9 + 5.6 = 11.5. That could tie a 5.7/5.8 Witt or a 5.8/5.7 Thomas leading to a tie break. A clean Manley could get 11.5; as could Trenary. But the technical mark and higher placements in the FS were the tie breakers.

It's really tough with the magical if. It would come down to a tie breaker.

 

[bardtoob]

I understand fully. However, if you give Midori 5.9s across the board, I would truly agree. One could argue 5.6 or 5.7 for presentation. At total of 5.9 + 5.6 = 11.5. That could tie a 5.7/5.8 Witt or a 5.8/5.7 Thomas leading to a tie break. A clean Manley could get 11.5; as could Trenary. But the technical mark and higher placements in the FS were the tie breakers.

It's really tough with the magical if. It would come down to a tie breaker.

If Midori numerically tied Witt, Thomas, Manley, and Trenary, then you just preserve the placements established by the CFs and SP.

 

[gkelly]

I understand fully. However, if you give Midori 5.9s across the board, I would truly agree. One could argue 5.6 or 5.7 for presentation. At total of 5.9 + 5.6 = 11.5. That could tie a 5.7/5.8 Witt or a 5.8/5.7 Thomas leading to a tie break. A clean Manley could get 11.5; as could Trenary. But the technical mark and higher placements in the FS were the tie breakers.

The first/second mark tiebreakers were a way for judges to rank many skaters with similar numbers.

6.0 judges knew how they were using the marks to rank the skaters. In that system it was the rankings that counted, not the actual scores. Barring the rare mistake or accidentally getting boxed in, judges would decide how they thought the current skater should rank and then choose the marks available to slot them in between the previous skaters, while leaving room for those yet to come.

If a judge gave one skater 5.9/5.7 and another skater 5.6/6.0 or 5.8/5.8, they knew what order they were putting them in, and that's all that mattered. Sometimes that meant giving a higher tech score to a skater who was stronger on presentation, or vice versa, just to get the rankings where the judge thought they belonged.

So if you're thinking about how you personally would have scored each skater, then yes, you might end up using the first mark tiebreaker. You'd also have to look at how you had scored all the other skaters before making that decision. Skate order mattered.

But individual judges, at least after 1981, were ranking the skaters in individual programs (or figures), not across the competition as a whole.

If Midori numerically tied Witt, Thomas, Manley, and Trenary, then you just preserve the placements established by the CFs and SP.

"You" in this case would be the overall scoring system, the way the accountants crunch the numbers?

At the level of the panel for one competition segment, only the ordinals mattered; the first and second marks that judges used to keep track of their rankings were no longer relevant.

Ties and tiebreakers at the level of the panel as a whole for individual competition segments were all about ordinals and majorities.

And then for the competition as a whole, what mattered was the factored placements.

So yes, if there was an unbreakable tie in the freeskate, then the standings from the earlier segments would determine the results.

 

[olympic]

My presuppositions were that Midori hit a ceiling; her marks were not going any higher than they were because she went as clean as possible in the SP and LP. However, the biggest movements in the standings (if any) would come from Thomas and Trenary because they made the most mistakes.

BTW. had Trenary hit a clean 3F that season? I can't recall. I know she doubled it in Calgary then had a horrible splat at '88 Worlds ...

 

[briancoogaert]

In a perfect World, clean Ito should have finished 1st in the LP.
But she was clean, and probably couldn't have skated any better. So, I sadly don't see her winning the LP.

 

[Erin]

In a perfect World, clean Ito should have finished 1st in the LP.

This is really the most important thing in this thread.

Sadly, even if she won the short and long, she still would have finished fourth.

I did a lot of playing around with factored placements and the only way I could get her on the podium was with some really weird placements for other people. I hadn’t realized until I did that playing around how much Midori needed the change in figures weighting from 30% to 20%.

 

[Coco]

Factored placements in Calgary were 30% figures, 20% SP and 50% FS, right?

Were Ito's figures really that bad or was it more of a political thing? Her skating skills seemed better than overage, so I'm not sure how that translates to such a low placement in figures.

 

[sonsofanarchy]

Ito deserved her low figures placings I am pretty sure, but the judges could have also helped her or held her up and did none of that. Witt's figures were probably nearly as bad as Ito's and well...

 

[Foolhardy Ham Lint]

I think being injured at the 1985 World Championships really cost Ito a lot of momentum leading up to the Calgary Olympics.

That season she won both Skate Canada (beating Tiffany Chin and Natalia Lebedeva), and the NHK Trophy (beating Debi Thomas, Claudia Leistner, Cynthia Coull and Elizabeth Manley). All of the skaters listed finished in the top ten in Tokyo.

Using her figure placement in 1984 as a guide against the same skaters who competed at the 1985 World Championships, Ito would likely have placed eighth. Had she won the short and free, given her superior technical content, Midori could have won bronze.

 

[LarrySK8]

I think being injured at the 1985 World Championships really cost Ito a lot of momentum leading up to the Calgary Olympics.

That season she won both Skate Canada (beating Tiffany Chin and Natalia Lebedeva), and the NHK Trophy (beating Debi Thomas, Claudia Leistner, Cynthia Coull and Elizabeth Manley). All of the skaters listed finished in the top ten in Tokyo.

Using her figure placement in 1984 as a guide against the same skaters who competed at the 1985 World Championships, Ito would likely have placed eighth. Had she won the short and free, given her superior technical content, Midori could have won bronze.

Really? Midori was 19th in figures at 1986 Worlds - not very good at all. That hurt her going into Calgary more than missing 1985 Worlds.

 

[Maximillian]

BTW. had Trenary hit a clean 3F that season? I can't recall. I know she doubled it in Calgary then had a horrible splat at '88 Worlds ...

Not sure, certainly not at Nats., Worlds and Olympics. She competed in two fall internationals in Germany and France, finishing second in the former and winning the latter, but Jill was not exactly known for being a strong Summer/Fall skater so I have my doubts.

 

[Maximillian]

Factored placements in Calgary were 30% figures, 20% SP and 50% FS, right?

Were Ito's figures really that bad or was it more of a political thing? Her skating skills seemed better than overage, so I'm not sure how that translates to such a low placement in figures.

I do know that she came to a complete stop in one of her figures at 1990 Worlds, hence her low placement there. I suspect her figures scores were generally accurate, because she wasn't just held down, she was BURIED in figures.

 

[Foolhardy Ham Lint]

Really? Midori was 19th in figures at 1986 Worlds - not very good at all. That hurt her going into Calgary more than missing 1985 Worlds.

At her senior debut in 1984, Ito placed 16th in figures, and shot up to 7th with excellent results in the short and free.

The story goes that Tiffany Chin, who placed 2nd in figures at the 1985 World Championships and 12th at the 1984 Olympics, admitted that her figures were no better since Sarejevo.

This is a judged sport after all.

 

[LarrySK8]

At her senior debut in 1984, Ito placed 16th in figures, and shot up to 7th with excellent results in the short and free.

The story goes that Tiffany Chin, who placed 2nd in figures at the 1985 World Championships and 12th at the 1984 Olympics, admitted that her figures were no better since Sarejevo.

This is a judged sport after all.

Again, I believe this gets interesting, and we could possibly do a historical research on the topic, but I am not the one with this precise and may I say, obscure, data.

Tiffany Chin did say in a TSL interview that she did not understand her placements at Sarajevo in 1984 being 12th, followed by her placement of 2nd in 1985. As she was injured, she did not go to Worlds in Ottawa and so we do not know what she would have done there in figures.

I shall look again at vids but I recall that the Oly figures were the counter, bracket-change-bracket and the loop figure.

What Scott Hamilton said in 84 interviews was that he practiced and trained six figures for that season alone, and the three of the competition were drawn out of a hat at random.

Does anyone know - was that also true for the ladies? Did the random draw of figures change the 3 figures they did from Oly to Worlds? What were the figures in 1985, 86, 87? Did each skater have a particular set of great figures, and others not so good (which is likely! I believe you had to master 10 of them or something for the highest level) which meant their success in figures depended on the figures chosen?

I believe in TSL and up-close-and-personal 1984 interview Peter Burrows (RIP) alluded to Elaine's lack of a left outside foot/toes, which would impede her from mastering certain figures requiring a left forward and backward outside edges as major components. Can't feel the foot and toes if you have no foot or toes. Once Elaine placed 4th in figures, and at Oly 13th (!) and maybe it did depend on what figures were chosen and skated. Plus politics.

Maybe it was like the triple jumps, mastering the different types. Maybe some skaters had a particularly strong and a particularly weak figure. Researching this would be fun, but as we know there were always judging shenanigans, it would only be of esoteric interest.

 

[Foolhardy Ham Lint]

I believe in TSL and up-close-and-personal 1984 interview Peter Burrows (RIP) alluded to Elaine's lack of a left outside foot/toes, which would impede her from mastering certain figures requiring a left forward and backward outside edges as major components. Can't feel the foot and toes if you have no foot or toes. Once Elaine placed 4th in figures, and at Oly 13th (!) and maybe it did depend on what figures were chosen and skated. Plus politics.

I believe in an interview once that Marylynn Gelderman, Elaine's secondary coach, implied that when Zayak was in favour with the judges, she was ranked 4th at the world level. When she was not, she was 13th. Gelderman went on to say that in all honesty, her figures were worth about 7th place.

 

[LarrySK8]

I believe in an interview once that Marylynn Gelderman, Elaine's secondary coach, implied that when Zayak was in favour with the judges, she was ranked 4th at the world level. When she was not, she was 13th. Gelderman went on to say that in all honesty, her figures were worth about 7th place.

Correct! The ubiquitous judging shenanigans. But was Elaine 7th in all the figures she learned? This we do not know unless we can find the results archive.

 

[Foolhardy Ham Lint]

Correct! The ubiquitous judging shenanigans. But was Elaine 7th in all the figures she learned? This we do not know unless we can find the results archive.

A quick snapshot overview. Thank you Wikipedia.

1981 World Figure Skating Championships - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

1982 World Figure Skating Championships - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Figure skating at the 1984 Winter Olympics - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[VGThuy]

It’s always hard to argue figures because they were hardly televised and when they were it almost always seemed like fluff pieces. And even if they showed them off well, most of us who didn’t grow up skating and doing figures ourselves or at least watching them wouldn’t even know what to look for. That then multiply that by three or however many figures the skaters had to do at each major competition.

 

[LarrySK8]

A quick snapshot overview. Thank you Wikipedia.

1981 World Figure Skating Championships - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

1982 World Figure Skating Championships - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Figure skating at the 1984 Winter Olympics - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Yes, this of course, I have looked at. However, what were the marks and ordinals for each of the individual figures? Was there a pattern of, "oh no! it's the counter! I will be 10th!!!" or "Oh YES!!!!! The counter!! I will be 3rd!"

See what I mean?

 

[sonsofanarchy]

It’s always hard to argue figures because they were hardly televised and when they were it almost always seemed like fluff pieces. And even if they showed them off well, most of us who didn’t grow up skating and doing figures ourselves or at least watching them wouldn’t even know what to look for. That then multiply that by three or however many figures the skaters had to do at each major competition.

Agreed, but from the clips they did show of Witt's figures I would already strongly suspect she was held up to even be 3rd, and even be sitting 2nd going into the last figure. What they showed was not good at all.

 

[Brenda_Bottems]

At best,Miss Witt had mediocre compulsory figures. If they were judged accurately and devoid of politics,she would have been fortunate to touch the top 8. Same with Liz "Wobble" Manley. Most slovenly presented.

All three Americans had strong compulsory figures—fabulous technique,controlled clean curves with consistent speed.

Miss Conway and the Soviet girl with the rather offensive free skating also had consistently competent compulsory figures.

-BB

 

[AngieNikodinovLove (ANL)]

At best,Miss Witt had mediocre compulsory figures. If they were judged accurately and devoid of politics,she would have been fortunate to touch the top 8. Same with Liz "Wobble" Manley. Most slovenly presented.

And on top of that she was very rude to myself and my two-year-old son in Atlantic City SA when I ran into her on the boardwalk I was so in shock after she brushed us off I turned back and look at her and said Katarinaaaaaa!!!!!

Back when I was a kid and I thought I was straight I thought she was going to be my first wife. Lol she would've been a cougar but that's what I thought lol

 

[olympic]

And on top of that she was very rude to myself and my two-year-old son in Atlantic City SA when I ran into her on the boardwalk I was so in shock after she brushed us off I turned back and look at her and said Katarinaaaaaa!!!!!

Back when I was a kid and I thought I was straight I thought she was going to be my first wife. Lol she would've been a cougar but that's what I thought lol

LOL. When you noted your location, I assumed you were talking about Liz Manley.

Witt giving someone the cold shoulder is not surprising to me. I don't dislike her persona as much as I used to, but she seems like someone that can be unpleasant; I know based on her interviews that she is direct, but there is a fine line between just being direct and being nasty. FS glitterati like her should really work harder at being kind to fans. FS needs all the fans it can get.

 

[AngieNikodinovLove (ANL)]

LOL. When you noted your location, I assumed you were talking about Liz Manley.

Witt giving someone the cold shoulder is not surprising to me. I don't dislike her persona as much as I used to, but she seems like someone that can be unpleasant; I know based on her interviews that she is direct, but there is a fine line between just being direct and being nasty. FS glitterati like her should really work harder at being kind to fans. FS needs all the fans it can get.

Yeah Katarina, I mean in her defense she may have been on her way to do German broadcasting but I was so in shock that I was like 3 feet from my idol when I was a kid and I was holding my two-year-old son with my partner at the time and I was so in shock when I said her name. she looked at us and then turned her head and kept on walking lol and then I just shouted her name in shock

 

[Brenda_Bottems]

And on top of that she was very rude to myself and my two-year-old son in Atlantic City SA when I ran into her on the boardwalk I was so in shock after she brushed us off I turned back and look at her and said Katarinaaaaaa!!!!!

Not surprising. I too had a rather vexatious encounter with Miss Witt at Landover in the mid-1990s. I suspect her perpetual stranglehold on last place at this competition may have contributed to her less than gracious manner.

Back when I was a kid and I thought I was straight I thought she was going to be my first wife. Lol she would've been a cougar but that's what I thought lol

Unfortunately,a large bosom does not a personality make.

-BB

 

[timwarpingout]

Witt's figures sucked for a top skater. I doubt they were even that much better than Ito's. Probably better, but only marginally. She definitely got some massive help by her massive name in the sport, plus a then strong federation.