Tuesday 7 April 2009

Maths to make your head hurt


Over at Ice Network, Sarah and Drew were looking at Yu-na Kim's fantasticly huge scores:
We were pondering Yu-Na Kim's exceptionally high, world record-breaking total score and wondering how she would have stacked up against the men. Since the men's components are multiplied by 2 in the free skate, and the ladies only by 1.6, and since men are allowed eight jumping passes instead of seven, we had to bust out the calculators!

If you multiply Yu-Na's components by 2 instead of 1.6, they would be 85.50, so her total score for the free skate, exactly as she performed it in L.A., would have been 148.69, and her overall score would have been 224.81. This would have earned her fifth place in the men's free skate, sixth overall. But since she would have been able to do an additional jumping pass, we'll give her a conservative 3.85 (the value for a double Axel in the second half). This is a guessing game, of course; who knows whether she could add another jump and land it. We think she could.

If she did, even with 0 GOE, she would have had 228.66 in total and finished fifth in the men's competition. Yet another very impressive statistic from Yu-Na.

That's how amazing Kim is. Watch her SP and LP below and judge for yourself.