Why Didn’t Alexandra Trusova Get Gold? Skating Scoring, Annotated


17-year-old Russian prodigy Alexandra Trusova won the free skating on Thursday after performing five quads in the most ambitious technical program in women’s Olympic figure skating history. However, he had to settle for the silver medal and looked extremely upset afterwards. So what happened?

It is important to remember that the result of a skating competition is the combined score of the short program and the long program. Trusova dropped a triple axis – the hardest triple jump – in the short program and finished fourth. Quad jumps are not allowed for women in the short program. Trusova has never put the triple axle down in the competition. It has a base value of 8 points when done clean, but only 3.20 points after Trusova’s downfall.

She started the free skating more than five points behind her training partner, 17-year-old, eventual gold medalist Anna Shcherbakova. Shcherbakova skated more conservatively in the short program, finishing second after doing a double axle instead of a triple, and receiving no points deduction for defective jumps.

The difference in short program scores was 80.20 points for Shcherbakova and 74.60 points for Trusova. Thus, Trusova narrowly won the free skating with 177.13 points against Shcherbakova’s 175.75 points, while Trusova could not close the gap in the short program. Shcherbakova won the gold medal with a total score of 255.95, against Trusova’s 251.73 points.

Plus, it involves more than just skating. The result rewards a complete performance. In addition to a technical score for jumps and spins, a skater receives a component score. This is actually a score for art. The component score evaluates elements such as skating skills; footwork and other transitional movements between jumps; the structure and integrity of a program and the ability to translate music and choreography into performance.

The technical score and component score are added to give the overall score for skaters in the short program and the long program.

Jumping is not art, it is Trusova’s strong suit. On Thursday, he scored the highest technical score in winning the free skating, but only recorded the third-highest component score, leaving some potentially decisive points on the table.

In the free skating, Trusova’s 5.67-point advantage over Shcherbakova in technical score was eroded by a 4.29-point margin over Shcherbakova in component score. Shcherbakova had the highest component score of all competitors in free skating. Trusova’s component score also followed the leaders in the short program.

Finally, while Trusova tried five quads on the free skate, she landed only three cleanly. The other two – a toe ring and a lutz – received deductions from their base point values ​​by the judges. These quad deductions totaled 3.43 points. Trusova took another slight deduction of about half a point for jumping a flawed double-axle-triple-finger combination.

Shcherbakova tried only two quads in the free skating, but she landed both cleanly and was not deducted points for any technical element in her routine.

All these reasons, taken together, resulted in Shcherbakova’s gold medal and Trusova’s silver.

Later, Trusova was spotted on camera, “I hate this! I don’t want to do anything in figure skating in my life! Everyone has a gold medal and I don’t.”

Later, her eyes turned red from crying, she told reporters, “I’m not happy with the result. There is no happiness.”



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