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Congratulations to Kim Yu-Na

Congratulations to Kim Yu-Na on winning the Vancouver 2010 Ladies figure skating, competition, and to all the others in both the Ladies competition and the other disciplines who made this the best Olympic figure skating competition I remember seeing. To Kim, thank you for skating essentially flawless short and free programs.

My concerns expressed below, turned out to be nothing other than the normal ups and downs of a top level competitive skating career. I'm glad to have been wrong and my concerns unfounded.

What Happend to Kim Yu-Na

Everyone who has followed Kim Yu-Na's international figure skating career knows that by her high standards, she had a long program at the 2009 Skate America that Scott Hamilton rightfully called a "disaster." Her score was more than 22 points below her personal best and world record score set four weeks before at the French Grand Prix of Figure Skating. It was her next to worst long program score as a senior.

If you consider where she was as a skater four seasons ago in her first senior event at Skate Canada (her only lower score), and how she has developed since, her Skate America long program was her worst skate as a senior. It was all the more notable for her string of high scores that preceded it in 2009, starting with a world record short program score at the Four Continents Championship, followed by the World Championships and Trophee Eric Bompart at which she set successive world record total scores.

What about the following Grand Prix Final? Did she get back on track with a respectable long program or was this a continuation of the Skate America disaster? I've wondered if there is anything we could learn from the GPF and what it might suggest for Kim's future. Using my own recordings, YouTube.com and IceNetwork.com, I've reviewed every Kim Yu-Na long and short program as a senior and several as a junior. I found no clear answers. Nothing new was suggested beyond what was fairly obvious immediately after watching the GPF long program. It was obviously better than Skate America, but not good (by her standards), and certainly not at the level she has set during 2009.

I decided to see if statistics provided any better indication. I've gone through every international competition result Kim Yu-Na has participated in from the from the 2004 Junior Grand Prix in Hungary to the 2009 Grand Prix Final. I've looked at short program scores, long program scores, and total scores and analyzed all as differences and percentage decline from her most recent personal best in the relevant category.

I noticed one remarkable accomplishment that I've never heard any announcer or technical commentator mention. Kim Yu-Na has finished on the podium in EVERY international event she has completed. She had three seconds in her 2004/2005 Junior Grand Prix season and was second in the 2008/2009 GPF. As a senior she finished third in her first event at Skate Canada, and in the 2007 and 2008 World Championships. She has won the other 17 international events which she completed, for an amazing average finish of 1.42. I did not count the 2008 Four Continents Championship from which she withdrew as the result of an injury.

In reviewing Kim Yu-Na's scores, I found probably what most of us would have expected to find. She had a number of personal bests, and starting with 2007 World Championships, several world record scores. Her lower scores between were not generally greatly lower, indicative of the reliable performances, most of us have come to expect from her.

I also counted the number of  "significant" mistakes she made in each short program, long program, and event. I counted each mandatory deduction and or element that scored 2.5 or more below the base value of the element normally performed (or attempted when she changed the program), and any element that was completed but not scored. I did not double count mandatory deductions. These deductions often accompany an under rotated or otherwise inferior jump which gets low scores, in which case I only counted a single mistake. When I selected 2.5 points as the cutoff for a "significant" mistake, I wanted a number, where a major mistake on a spin or step sequence, other than a fall, could possibly reduce these lower valued elements by the significant mistake amount. I had no idea how it would affect the counts.

Commentators have often stated one variation or another on "Kim Yu-Na rarely makes mistakes." This is simply not correct. Through her entire international career Kim has made an average of 0.5 significant mistakes in the short program and 1.25 significant mistakes in her long program for an average of 1.75 mistakes per event. As a senior she has done a little better in the short program and a little worse in the long program than her overall averages.

What separates Kim Yu-Na's mistakes from those of most others is she almost never lets any mistake affect the rest of her program. Almost always when Kim makes a mistake, her next element is skated as well as if nothing unusual had happened on her preceding element. The two possible exceptions were the 2007 Worlds, where her long program, which followed her world record short program, fell apart in the second half with three significant mistakes, and the 2009 Skate America. At the 2007 Worlds, Dick Button wondered if it was her back injury or competitive pressure (nerves) that was responsible for the weak end to her long program.

At Skate America, it very much appeared that one mistake led to others. There were no injury issues. In an interview after the event Kim Yu-Na admitted to being nervous. Did her Skate America performance contribute to a weak Grand Prix Final. I think so. Her short program was weak but not exceptionally so. She has had lower numbers as a senior, and lower numbers and percentages compared to her most recent personal best. The GPF short program score stands out because Kim had an extraordinary run of four exceptional short programs in 2009 including three world records and one program which was only 0.04 points less than her immediately preceding world record performance.

After the event Kim Yu-Na again admitted to being nervous. Scott Hamilton said something like if she's nervous now, what will she be like when she sees the Olympic rings. It was a valid point. Perhaps as the Olympics approach, and now that she has commandingly won a world championship, she feels increasingly that Korea expects her to win the first Olympic gold in figure skating for Korea.

The important question is, was Scott Hamilton correct when he said that she had begun to "right the ship" with her long program performance. This was clearly better than her SA long program and not significantly out of line with most of her senior long program scores. I hope Scott was right, but I don't think he is.

Though there are several measures that suggest Skate America and the Grand Prix Final are not exceptional I found two that suggest they may be. The first is total significant errors per event. At both SA and the GPF she had three. The only other senior event where she had three errors was the 2007 Worlds where she had an injured back which may have contributed significantly. She has never before as a senior had two consecutive events with three errors.

The other measure was the percent less than her most recent personal best total score. In her senior events, where she did not set a new personal best, prior to Skate America, she averaged 3.31% less than her previous personal best; her largest percent off her total personal best as a senior was 7.08%. At SA and the GPF she averaged 10.29% off the personal best of 210.03 set at the Grand Prix of France. The 123.22 at the GPF does not look out of line with most of her senior long program scores, but Kim Yu-Na had been raising her standard during 2009. By comparison with her previous personal best, Kim's performance at SA and the GPF were more than three times worse than her senior average before these two events. Below is a graph showing total event scores as a percentage less than the most recent personal best total.

What does all this mean. Not much. I think Scott Hamilton's assessment following the GPF, that other women will now believe Olympic gold is within their reach, is correct. But there was no need to look at Kim Yu-Na's statistical history to know that. Her last two totals have been beaten by three active skaters: Mao Asada, Miki Ando, and Joannie Rochette, and are very close to numbers Carolina Kostner and Fumie Suguri have posted. Though the scores were clearly inflated by international standards, and do not count in the official ISU skater statistics, in the U.S. Nationals, Rachel Flatt posted a score that is clearly in the range of what is expected of Kim Yu-Na and Mirai Nagasu posted a score just below the range of Kim's scores. An exceptional skate by Yukari Nakano, Rachael Flatt or Mirai Nagasu could put them over Kim's recent numbers.

Still, no woman in the 2009/2010 season has yet posted any ISU total score over any total score posted by Kim Yu-Na in 2009. Miki Ando came the closest with her second place finish at the GPF.

I'd thought Kim Yu-Na might skate in the Four Continents Championship, and this might tell us something about her mental and physical state. Almost no skaters going to the Olympics will be at the 4CC. The only skaters I recognized as potential Olympic contenders in the 4CC entry lists were Mao Asada in Ladies and Zhang and Zhang in Pairs. Otherwise, the 4CC entrants appeared to be entirely non Olympic entries, at least from the countries who have podium contenders, and mostly young skaters gaining international competition experience.

Part of what makes sports interesting is that past performances do not reliably predict future ones. Rarely is the winner known until the event is over. Personally I will be very surprised if Kim Yu-Na is not on the Olympic podium in Vancouver, but I will not be very surprised if she does not win, even though I, and I believe most others who follow figure skating closely will consider her the favorite. Had Kim Yu-Na finished 2009 in a manner similar to how she skated her first seven programs in 2009, she would have been an overwhelming favorite for Vancouver. Now she is just the favorite with several other skaters close behind.

Graph of the percent below 
her previous personal best Kim Yu-Na's total senior scores were.

The five blank bars are events where Kim Yu-Na scored a new total personal best. 2 is the 2006 Trophee Eric Bompard where she set personal bests in both the short and long programs; 4 is the 2007 World Chapmpionship where she set a world record short program score of 71.95; 6 is 2007 Cup of Russia where she set a world record of 133.70 with the Miss Saigon program; 13 is the 2009 World Championship with the first 200+ score of 207.71; and 14 is the 2009 Trophee Eric Bompard with new world records in the long program and total scores. If you look at the actual scores, only the 2009 Skate America long program looks significantly out of line, but when you calculate new total scores as percentages of the current personal best, the drop off is enormous in both SA and the Grand Prix final.

Written by George Shaffer, January 9, 2010
Revised January 28, 2010

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