Protocol Smackdown: Davis/White's 4CC Free Dance Scores

I want to do a little analysis on the free dance at the recent Four Continents Championship—partially because I was asked to by a lovely reader/commenter, and partially because… well, did you SEE the disparity in the judging??—but before I do any of that, I should probably ask something else…

Um, I’ll rephrase it slightly: DID you see the disparity? COULD you see it? Did you choose to pay IceNetwork (or pay extra, if you were already a subscriber this year), or Universal Sports, or the ISU itself? Or did you just bide your time until the clips made it to YouTube? Admittedly, I bit the bullet and paid the extra $6 at IceNetwork, but in doing so I saw plenty of posts by disgruntled subscribers, outraged that the original package didn’t already include all the major events (particularly Worlds). Were you one of them? Or might you be, had you known such a thread had formed? I’d love to hear readers’ thoughts on this…

Anyway, the primary question at hand—at least for some of us—was How did Davis/White end up losing the free dance by four points to Virtue/Moir when D/W appeared to skate as flawlessly as they have all season?

(And yes, I know V/M actually won the free dance at the GP Final too when all was said and done… but it was only by .5. Not eight times that amount.)

When you study the protocols for both teams at both events, you may marvel at the number of perfect “10” scores both teams received on the component marks. Ten 10s for V/M at the GP Final. Twelve 10s for D/W at the same event. Six more 10s for each team at 4CC. And by the scantest of margins—57.24 to 57.17—D/W won that battle.

Which leaves the technical score to be pulled apart, and that wicked four-point issue to rear its head again. On paper, it’s really quite easy to see how D/W lost: three of their eight necessary elements—the circular step sequence, the spin, and the twizzles, to be precise—were given level 3s at 4CC after being awarded level 4s at the GP Final, while difficulty levels remained identical from one event to the next in the case of V/M.

That means the circular step had a 6.5 base value, compared to an 8.0 at the GP Final (and about a TWO point difference once the GOEs were factored in)…

And the spin had a base value of 4.0 instead of 5.0, resulting in an overall loss of about .8…

And finally the twizzles, which had a 6.0 base value at the GP Final but only a 5.0 base at 4CC (leading to a loss of exactly one point).

The rest of the deficiencies came in the form of significantly slighter differences with the final three elements; both D/W’s straight lift and rotational lift received exactly the same number of points.

As I’ve said many times before, I’m in no shape or form an expert on the complexities and techniques of ice dancing. So maybe D/W truly did under-perform at 4CC—if you can explain the level 3s, please give it a shot! All I can say for sure is that I’ve re-examined the FD performances from both events, and D/W looked as good to me at one as they did at the other.

Some have speculated that the 4CC results were some sort of judicial payback to V/M after the error that was discovered in scoring the GP Final. It’s unlikely that theory will be proved or disproved; after all, I haven’t heard the D/W camp crying foul about anything (at least, not publicly). My simple thought about the whole thing? Better it happen here than at Worlds. It’s happened… it’s over… let’s move on.

What about the decision to leave Czisny and Mahbanoozadeh out of the 4CC lineup altogether? More about that coming soon...