Wakaba Higuchi's TRIPLE AXEL: was it rotated? 樋口新葉 [2020 NHK Trophy]

The technical panel calling ‘q’ on Wakaba Higuchi’s triple axel was probably the most controversial decision made by the judges at the 2020 NHK Trophy, and it lead to a lot of frustration among fans who felt that Higuchi had successfully landed the jump and didn’t deserve the call. I remember being on Twitter and seeing everyone talk about how happy they were only for that happiness to turn into irritation. In this video, I’ll try to examine in slow motion to see how accurate the call was.

It was very saddening as a fan to see the judges lowball Wakaba. I thought that she performed fantastically, especially in the free program, and her performance didn’t warrant such a low PCS score. Adding to that, whether or not there was a ‘q’ call, I still believe that the triple axel was a bit underscored: the GOE marks given out by the judges here were NOT generous. 🙁

Note: there was previously an introduction to this video with more details, but I had to remove it for copyright purposes. It’s a bit abrupt now but it gets straight to the point.

Unfortunately, the video didn’t render every line that I drew before uploading, but it essentially showed that Wakaba landed exactly on the quarter, give or take a few degrees in either direction. It’s quite difficult to draw out the lines to show a skater’s direction of travel because the camera’s perspective isn’t ever perfect. For that reason, I’m not saying that the ‘q’ call was correct just because of the way I have the lines drawn — there are definitely factors for error here, and it was super close! That’s why I feel like benefit of the doubt would’ve been the correct call. In the end, ‘q’ as a concept is already difficult to deal with because it’s quite impossible to determine if a skater is ever “exactly” on the quarter. Looking back, I think that the perspective is a bit off and that the jump was more rotated than the cyan lines would suggest. The translations/transcriptions are paraphrased — the Spanish commentators, for example, spoke about the triple axel for quite a while outside of the video, so I just typed the most important ideas.

Did you think that the jump was rotated? Questions, comments, concerns, or ideas? Tell me below! If you enjoyed this video, I’d love it if you were to subscribe :D.

Copyright: this video falls under fair use. This is not a video of Higuchi’s program that replaces what the copyright owner has the right to; this is an educational/commentary video about one jump from that performance. The footage is used for the purpose of educating the audience about the topic at hand.