Warren Buffett Offers $1 Billion Prize For Perfect March Madness Bracket

Thoughts on Men's skating:

Yuzuru Hanyu (Japan) and Patrick Chan (Canada) are in the same sort of battle for gold as Davis/White and Virtue/Moir. They've had the same sort of "shattering each other's world records" battle going on all season.

The only real difference is, occasionally Yuzuru Hanyu or Patrick Chan (or both) will fall and hand the medal to someone else. So unlike in ice dance, while gold and silver is likely for them, it is not guaranteed.

Yuzuru Hanyu has a really amazing short program where he skates to some sort of electric guitar blues music.

Patrick Chan's long program is one of the many many renditions of Vivaldi's Four Seasons this year. And unlike the creativity of Bobrova and Soloviev that I mentioned in a previous post, this is just one more of a long line of figure skaters interpreting Four Seasons with their skating.

Not that he doesn't interpret Vivaldi well. He does. But, BORING!

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Jason Brown of the US doesn't do any quads. But he does perfect triples, and his superior artistic quality makes up for all the points he loses in not doing quads.

Today in the team event, he will be skating his quad-free Riverdance program against that Russian guy who lost to a quad-free American in the 2010 Olympics.

It remains to be seen who will score higher. But the Russian guy might just get a reminder of what it feels like to lose to an American who does no quads.

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Javier Fernández from Spain is awesome. Period. Bronze maybe?

I just love his whimsical short program this year. I wish he'd kept his whimsical Charlie Chaplin long program from last year to go along with it.

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Denis Ten (Kazakhstan) is going to be a bit of an unknown factor.

He got the silver medal in last year's worlds, but has been out with an injury most of this season. He might be fully recovered now, or not.

If Yuzuru Hanyu and Patrick Chan skate world record performances again, I can't see Denis Ten besting them. But he could nab bronze, if he is back to the level of performance he was skating at last year's worlds.

If Yuzuru Hanyu or Patrick Chan (or both) slip and fall, they'll leave the door open for any number of people to step through.

Question: Does a shaky quad score the same as a nailed triple?

These should be the scoring ranges for jumps that are fully rotated (assuming no typos on my part):

Quadruple Axel: 11.4 to 18.6
Triple Axel: 5.5 to 11.5
Double Axel: 1.8 to 4.8
Single Axel: 0.5 to 1.7

Quadruple Lutz: 10.6 to 16.6
Triple Lutz: 3.9 to 8.1
Double Lutz: 1.2 to 3.0
Single Lutz: 0.3 to 1.2

Quadruple Flip: 9.3 to 15.3
Triple Flip: 3.2 to 7.4
Double Flip: 0.9 to 2.7
Single Flip: 0.2 to 1.1

Quadruple Loop: 9.0 to 15.0
Triple Loop: 3.0 to 7.2
Double Loop: 0.9 to 2.7
Single Loop: 0.2 to 1.1

Quadruple Salchow: 7.5 to 13.5
Triple Salchow: 2.1 to 6.3
Double Salchow: 0.8 to 2.0
Single Salchow: 0.1 to 1.0

Quadruple Toeloop: 7.3 to 13.3
Triple Toeloop: 2.0 to 6.2
Double Toeloop: 0.8 to 2.0
Single Toeloop: 0.1 to 1.0


So if someone did the best possible Quadruple Salchow they would receive 13.5 points for it.

If they did a Quadruple Salchow and rotated four full times, but then crashed badly when they landed, they would receive 7.5 points for it.

If they did the best possible Triple Salchow they would receive 6.3 points for it.


But there is also more to the total score than just the jumps. A skater also gets credited for their artistry. Landing jumps perfectly won't by itself lead to a high artistic value, but having clean jumps certainly helps. A program can theoretically score high enough on the artistry front to overcome a lack of difficult jumps.

The best examples of that are the two Italian women skaters. They stick to low-scoring jumps, but they both make up for it with much higher than usual artistic content.

Thanks...you laid it all out very well.

Looks like they didn't send Sui and Han. That's a shame. Their free skate is a Russian folk dance.

They did send Pang and Tong though.

The Germans have a new short program: Pink Panther. Emphasis on PINK.

Fully recovered it is.

Bummer. They changed and did their long program from last year instead. I was looking forward to seeing them do their new long program.