Where there is a skater or team touted or feared as an "inevitable" winner, there is so often a rule change that makes them not so inevitable.
We had a thread recently which asked the question,
"Can anyone challenge Papadakis and Cizeron?"
https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/s...nge-Papadakis-and-Cizeron&highlight=Papadakis
We have also had threads debating which skaters were GOATs. Especially in those threads, posters had to adjust their arguments based not only the state of the sport when old time greats skated, but to the different rules in place in those different times. Usually, people think that the new rules were the ones to go to.
But IMO, if you can change the rules, you can make any Win less inevitable.
I think it might be worthwhile to consider which & whether any of our GOAT prospects could beat those greats of the past under their own rules, rather than just transporting the old timers to today's rules, and comparing those
.
An example:
Nobody has ever done figures as well as Trixie Schuba. Trixie's traces were so deep and so on top of each other that she would displace her last trace a bit so she would not trip in the rut she made. Furthermore, Compulsory figures were worth 50% of the grade in 1972, and your scores, not your placings, were added up. Trixie was able to win with overwhelmingly high figures scores and a 9th place free skate.
Triple jumps were so little valued that although Janet Lynn could do a triple toe, she never bothered to add it to her routine.
The short program was added so that if Trixie returned to skating,she would not win. Furthermore, ordinals were accumulated, not scores, so that you could not really run up the scores in the figures. The hope was that good free skaters, like Janet Lynn, would benefit by the change.
But When better jumpers arrived, they were limited by the Zayak rule too.
The men had similar rules.
Good free skaters, like Midori Ito and Tonya Harding were held way down in the rankings till figures were abolished in the 1990-1991 season.
When our current judging system was first proposed, quadsters like Tim Goebel were penalized by weighting PCS scores higher.
So I ask you, a couple of things. What rules would you make to assure your favs in any discipline, have a better chance of winning?
Who do you think has a chance of beating Trixie at her own game?
And how would you change the rules to disadvantage P&C?
We had a thread recently which asked the question,
"Can anyone challenge Papadakis and Cizeron?"
https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/s...nge-Papadakis-and-Cizeron&highlight=Papadakis
We have also had threads debating which skaters were GOATs. Especially in those threads, posters had to adjust their arguments based not only the state of the sport when old time greats skated, but to the different rules in place in those different times. Usually, people think that the new rules were the ones to go to.
But IMO, if you can change the rules, you can make any Win less inevitable.
I think it might be worthwhile to consider which & whether any of our GOAT prospects could beat those greats of the past under their own rules, rather than just transporting the old timers to today's rules, and comparing those
.
An example:
Nobody has ever done figures as well as Trixie Schuba. Trixie's traces were so deep and so on top of each other that she would displace her last trace a bit so she would not trip in the rut she made. Furthermore, Compulsory figures were worth 50% of the grade in 1972, and your scores, not your placings, were added up. Trixie was able to win with overwhelmingly high figures scores and a 9th place free skate.
Triple jumps were so little valued that although Janet Lynn could do a triple toe, she never bothered to add it to her routine.
The short program was added so that if Trixie returned to skating,she would not win. Furthermore, ordinals were accumulated, not scores, so that you could not really run up the scores in the figures. The hope was that good free skaters, like Janet Lynn, would benefit by the change.
But When better jumpers arrived, they were limited by the Zayak rule too.
The men had similar rules.
Good free skaters, like Midori Ito and Tonya Harding were held way down in the rankings till figures were abolished in the 1990-1991 season.
When our current judging system was first proposed, quadsters like Tim Goebel were penalized by weighting PCS scores higher.
So I ask you, a couple of things. What rules would you make to assure your favs in any discipline, have a better chance of winning?
Who do you think has a chance of beating Trixie at her own game?
And how would you change the rules to disadvantage P&C?
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