Once again, World Team Trophy has six countries, but only three medal contenders...and that doesn't add up to much of a competition

Kaori Sakamoto reacts to her brilliant free skate Saturday. (ISU / Getty Images)

 And a half-dozen observations from the final day of the World Team Trophy in Osaka, Japan, the end of a long (mentally and emotionally) but short (competitively) figure skating season in the time of Covid:

1.  In yesterday’s observations, I proposed a changed scoring system for the World Team Trophy to give more credit for top three finishes (and, to a lesser degree, more credit for four through six in singles.)

Thanks to some help from the data-mining wizard who runs skatingscores.com, I got recalculated results for the last four editions of the biennial event.

As expected, it had no effect on the standings for this year’s seventh edition, because: a) Russia (winner for the first time) was utterly dominant; b) and the bottom three teams (Italy, France, Canada) were painfully weak compared to the top three (Russia, United States, Japan.)

But my idea would have flip-flopped the silver and bronze medals in 2019, pushing Russia past Japan, and it would have moved Russia into a first-place tie with winner Japan in 2017, leading to Russia winning a tie-breaker that I have also weighted to reward excellence rather than minimize mediocrity (and worse.)

The current system gives the 12 singles skaters from 12 points to one, with just one point difference between each place.  The six pairs and dance entries get scores from 12 to seven, again separated by just one point.

My suggestion was:  from 20 to 1, with the following gaps:  20-16-13-11-9-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 for singles; 20-16-13-11-9-7 for pairs and dance.

My tie-breaker is total of the points for each country’s entrants in the free skate / free dance, with the points for the two singles skaters divided by two.

Results might have been altered this year if four-time world champion ice dancers Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron had competed for France (Covid-related issues led them not to compete at all this season); if Italy had not lost its second men’s singles skater to a Covid positive; and if Canada had sent its best man, pair and dance team, for whom the lengthy quarantine requirement upon return to Canada obviously would have made the trip less appealing for the two couples (the man, Keegan Messing, lives and trains in Alaska) after having returned from the Stockholm World Championships last month.

2. The big current problem with the competitive aspect of the World Team Trophy is having just three countries with a chance to win medals now that Canadian skating has hit a fallow period since its athletes won the team gold medal (and three individual medals) at the 2018 Olympics.

Only Canada, Russia, the United States and Japan ever have won medals at the World Team Trophy, which has a six-country field, with two entries per country in each segment of singles and one couple in pairs / dance. Canada’s last WTT medal came five editions ago (2013.)

Only Canada, Russia and the USA have won team medals at the Olympics since the 2014 addition of the event, where the field has 10 countries with only one singles skater and one couple in the short programs, after which the field is cut to five countries for the free skates.

There has been an overall recent decline of figure skating talent (and interest) in Europe, other than in Russia and with occasional one-off stars like Spain’s Javier Fernandez; Germany’s Aliona Savchenko and her two Olympic medal-winning partners (both she and her 2018 Olympic champion partner, Bruno Massot, first competed for other countries); and France’s Papadakis and Cizeron.  And no Asian country other than Japan has consistently developed medal-contending skaters in more than one of the sport’s four disciplines (e.g., China in pairs).

The sport never has been broad-based.  Its appeal now is more limited than ever, especially given the substantially diminished fan interest in North America.

3.  The best moment of the World Team Trophy’s three days was Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto repeatedly jumping for joy after a near flawless free skate Saturday that earned her a career best score and left her second only to reigning world champion Anna Shcherbakova of Russia.

The ebullience that has always lay behind Sakamoto’s serious performance mien burst delightfully all over the arena.

It capped quite a comeback season for Sakamoto, who turned 21 a week ago.  The 2019 Japanese champion had tumbled to sixth at nationals last year before finishing second this season. She was her country’s top woman at both this World Team Trophy and the 2021 worlds, her sixth place less than a point from fourth.

For the second straight program, Sakamoto did a textbook solo double axel, from powerful takeoff to commanding height to run-out after a solid landing.  Her mean grade of execution for Saturday’s, 4.29, was second highest in history, topped only by her 4.43 in Thursday’s short program.

4.  Other than Sakamoto, the women’s free skate was generally meh, even if Shcherbakova overcame her one mistake to perform extremely well.

The trouble was the Russian’s mistake came when she botched the landing of a quad flip, the opening jump in her program and the only quad attempted by the six women.

Shcherbakova without a quad is a bit like a delicious cake without the icing.  But this was the second straight competition in which she has come out on top without landing a quad cleanly.

Prior to that, the 17-year-old had been winning (nine of 11 individual-event titles as a senior) while receiving positive grades of execution on four straight quads (solo or in combination) and nine of her 10 quads previous to the couple botched ones.

5.  The season ended with a whimper for U.S. women Karen Chen and Bradie Tennell.

Chen, who had been an impressive fourth at worlds, was sixth in both programs at the World Team Trophy (where there is no overall individual result), falling once in each program.

Tennell managed fourth in the free skate, but she was 13 points behind third-place Elizaveta Tuktamysheva of Russia.  The judges dinged Tennell, the reigning U.S. champion, on five of her 11 jumps:  three for “full” under rotation, designated on the score sheet as “<,” and two for “quarter” under rotation, designated as “q.”

6.  Try to explain the difference in both determination and penalty between “<” and “q” to anyone but a figure skating junkie, not to mention the reasoning behind it, and you will know a big reason why the sport has gone from captivating to unappealing for nearly everyone else - and even for some once hardcore fans.  (Unless, of course, they like ASCII code written in hieroglyphics.)