2018-2019 GP Assignments

Chock and Bates WD 4 days ago and they haven't been replaced. I doubt the ladies will be this close to the event.

C/B probably weren't replaced because the Russian Fed couldn't find a suitable team that could place behind Morozov / Bagin.....

Klarnet said:

Maybe it has to be even more strict, like impose penalties and charges for those who wait till last minute. Like, "a skater must announce withdrawal no later than 10 days prior, otherwise he pays a fine in amount of 100$ for each day of delay"

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I agree on principle but I do have a problem with withdrawals due to injury. I mean, paying because you're injured? Most of these WD's I've seen lately are caused by either unexpected injuries or injuries healing slower tham expected. Much as I'd rather see full ranges of skaters, I'd rather not see skaters going into a competition in pain because otherwise they'd have to pay a fine. I recall also a skater not withdrawing but getting a fine because she did participate in a competition while knowing it would go bad because of an injury. Right. You either don't withdraw and get a fine, or you do and also get a fine. So, yes a 10 day rule may be implemented but with exceptions please. I for one don't want skaters to be permanently disabled because of forcing an injury out of fear of a fine.

ladyjane said:

I agree on principle but I do have a problem with withdrawals due to injury. I mean, paying because you're injured? Most of these WD's I've seen lately are caused by either unexpected injuries or injuries healing slower tham expected. Much as I'd rather see full ranges of skaters, I'd rather not see skaters going into a competition in pain because otherwise they'd have to pay a fine. I recall also a skater not withdrawing but getting a fine because she did participate in a competition while knowing it would go bad because of an injury. Right. You either don't withdraw and get a fine, or you do and also get a fine. So, yes a 10 day rule may be implemented but with exceptions please. I for one don't want skaters to be permanently disabled because of forcing an injury out of fear of a fine.

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Of course there should be exceptions in case of unexpected injuries/illness, the proposal is just an example. And no one makes skaters compete in pain in order to avoid fine. The issue is just in timeline, that a skater can withdraw 10 days prior or 2 days prior to the event. Grand prix schedule is tight, it is 6 weeks in a row, and when injury has its long history, skaters know it won't heal in 5-7 days.

I don't think there should be fines for withdrawal, but there needs to be a kind of substitute list based on season's standing or w/e so folks automatically get bumped up when there is a withdrawal. Yeah the hosting feds want their say too, they can pick like among the top 5 of the list or something but right now I just dislike the guessing game that entails when someone withdraws.

I don't know about fines either, but there needs to be some kind of incentive for skaters who know that their injury or condition is not going to be sorted in time for their event to withdraw early. Like, people like Karen Chen - she had to know weeks ago she wasn't going to be ready. Or Daleman. Mental issues aren't just snap-fingers-and-fixed, she had to know she wasn't up for her second event after withdrawing from the first. Knowing there's no chance you'll be ready and not withdrawing until late is a jerk move.

Klarnet said:

Of course there should be exceptions in case of unexpected injuries/illness, the proposal is just an example. And no one makes skaters compete in pain in order to avoid fine. The issue is just in timeline, that a skater can withdraw 10 days prior or 2 days prior to the event. Grand prix schedule is tight, it is 6 weeks in a row, and when injury has its long history, skaters know it won't heal in 5-7 days.

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I agree on withdrawal fees for withdrawals later than 10 days before the event. But not USD$100 per day fine, just a flat rate USD$100 or so will do.
For badminton, its 'for any reason whatsoever' after the deadline(ard 14 days bf event), withdrawal fees will be imposed.

If not, skaters and/or their feds will wait till very last min to withdraw. If there are injuries, they will have to make a decision by the 10 day deadline.

Thus far in badminton, noone has had 'permanent disability' from adhering to withdrawal rules. Yes,players have had torn Achilles, torn MCL, ACL during the match itself. But these are athletes who would choose to compete anyway, as long they can stand & run.

Denney / Frazier have withdrawn from IDF next week. Her old injury must have flared up.

I strongly disagree with for withdrawals within ten days. People get hurt within that time frame. And if you're coming back from an injury, you can have a setback or a flare-up that's unexpected. Could some people have WD earleir? Yeah maybe, but I think fines cause more problems than they solve.

Maybe the fine could be only if you WD from your first event before. Like Erokhov, for instance, whom I really like, so I'll use him: he was injured before GP Finland bad enough that he wouldn't be ready in 2 weeks. Likely the reason he held on before WDing is that this WD means no nationals for him (RusNats qualifying rules). In this case it didn't matter because Lazukin could come in, but if he had been WDing from a GP in another country this late, I doubt he would've been replaced.

I am wondering where all this medical knowledge of skaters’ injuries and skaters’ progress is coming from?

As far as I know, Karen, for example, has not announced a reason for her withdrawal. So how would anyone here *know* that she wasn’t training? That she *knew* she couldn’t go to Rostelecom because of her original injury? That she didn’t aggravate her original injury last week while training for Rostelecom?

I think the answer here is that posters on this forum don’t know. I’m sorry if you think a deserving skater didn’t get to go a GP because someone withdrew this week. But that is absolutely no reason to start talking about fines based on a medical opinion from looking at social media

I don’t think it’s totally crazy to assume that if someone withdraws with injuries from their 1st GP that they will withdraw from the 2nd with that same injury.

Considering this happens time and again I’m guessing that it’s just a lot harder to know if you will recover enough that we understand.

DSQ said:

I don’t think it’s totally crazy to assume that if someone withdraws with injuries from their 1st GP that they will withdraw from the 2nd with that same injury.

Considering this happens time and again I’m guessing that it’s just a lot harder to know if you will recover enough that we understand.

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It does make me think of hockey, where they might decide on the day of the game if a player coming back from an injury is ready/cleared to play or not. Obviously we don't want people making decisions that last minute for the GP, and also it's different in a team sport, but still it points out that it can be hard to know far ahead of time.

el henry said:

I am wondering where all this medical knowledge of skaters’ injuries and skaters’ progress is coming from?

As far as I know, Karen, for example, has not announced a reason for her withdrawal. So how would anyone here *know* that she wasn’t training? That she *knew* she couldn’t go to Rostelecom because of her original injury? That she didn’t aggravate her original injury last week while training for Rostelecom?

I think the answer here is that posters on this forum don’t know. I’m sorry if you think a deserving skater didn’t get to go a GP because someone withdrew this week. But that is absolutely no reason to start talking about fines based on a medical opinion from looking at social media

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Didn’t Karen withdraw from worlds in March because of an injury? Or was it just the vague “boot problems” given as a reason? And then a couple of months ago was seen with a boot on in a rink. And made a tweet? Insta post? Where she said she was excited to get back to training. Then withdrew from her first gp. So I don’t think it’s too much of a leap or unreasonable to think that she is out because of an injury and that after withdrawing a few weeks ago it was always gonna be a long shot for her to compete this week. I don’t know if a fine is the answer but in the case of Karen(and Gabby daleman) where it’s highly likely that they won’t be able to compete at their second gp after withdrawing from their first a better system is needed so that the spot doesn’t go empty.

But again, as el henry says, we have no knowledge of the skaters' injuries, or their paths to recovery. A skater might have to withdraw late in the day for all sorts of legitimate reasons. A recovery could be on track and a setback could happen. A recovery could be on track and a fresh injury could occur. The skaters aren't trained medical professionals; they're relying on doctors and therapists, and neither the skaters nor their doctors or therapists are infallible or omniscient. An initial diagnosis could be wrong, or a doctor or therapist could miss something, or a treatment could fail. None of these situations is predictable, all of these are commonplace, and none of these is evidence of bad faith. To punish athletes for not anticipating events that they are not trained to anticipate, and that nobody can fully anticipate, adds insult to injury and solves nothing.

This is especially true if we start to claim that withdrawing from one event means that a skater should have known he/she would have to withdraw from another event. Just because someone can't compete in mid-October doesn't necessarily mean that he/she can't compete in late November. It depends on so many circumstances that frankly none of us have a right to know: the precise diagnosis and prognosis given to that specific skater, the facilities and support for recovery/rehab available, the accuracy of the original diagnosis, the exact nature of the skater's physical and mental progress toward recovery.

We simply don't know what is happening in these athletes' lives, and for us to sit back and say that skater X should have seen their withdrawal coming ignores the realities of both medical treatment and being an elite competitive athlete, pushing yourself for hours a day toward a goal whose achievement relies on mental and emotional fortitude as well as peak physical and mental health. It must be hard enough to know whether your health will allow you to compete. Asking an athlete to state weeks or months in advance of a competition that they won't be ready to compete, in situations in which they simply don't have enough information to make that judgment, goes against everything an athlete is mentally and emotionally trained to do. And look at how we scream on these boards when the opposite happens and an athlete decides to compete anyway, and either has a difficult competition that reveals obvious signs of injury or becomes so badly hampered by pain or physical factors that he/she is forced to pull out mid-competition. Creating further incentives for skaters not to withdraw due to injury is not going to solve those problems either.

el henry said:

I am wondering where all this medical knowledge of skaters’ injuries and skaters’ progress is coming from?

As far as I know, Karen, for example, has not announced a reason for her withdrawal. So how would anyone here *know* that she wasn’t training? That she *knew* she couldn’t go to Rostelecom because of her original injury? That she didn’t aggravate her original injury last week while training for Rostelecom?

I think the answer here is that posters on this forum don’t know. I’m sorry if you think a deserving skater didn’t get to go a GP because someone withdrew this week. But that is absolutely no reason to start talking about fines based on a medical opinion from looking at social media

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Tell 'em. :thumbsup:

SnowWhite said:

It does make me think of hockey, where they might decide on the day of the game if a player coming back from an injury is ready/cleared to play or not. Obviously we don't want people making decisions that last minute for the GP, and also it's different in a team sport, but still it points out that it can be hard to know far ahead of time.

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Hence why certain other individual sports have withdrawal fees. So that there's enough time to find a replacement.

But, it did take a lot complaints from member countries before fees were imposed. People were getting pissed off players from X or Y country withdrawing so their team mates get a better chance in winning. Then the very next tournament 1 week later, the same player miraculously recovered.

el henry said:

I am wondering where all this medical knowledge of skaters’ injuries and skaters’ progress is coming from?
As far as I know, Karen, for example, has not announced a reason for her withdrawal. So how would anyone here *know* that she wasn’t training?
I think the answer here is that posters on this forum don’t know

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Posters on forum don't know but ISU certainly do know the reason for withdrawal. And we're here just discussing what could possibly be done by ISU,not by posters, to prevent the situation that one day there are 5-6 participants because the rest of the field withdrew last minute and no replacement could be done so late.

Also when it comes to Seeded skaters, even posters could know the reason for withdrawal - because Seeded skaters are obliged to participate and have no right to withdraw from GP and GPF without permitted by ISU reason:

Withdrawals are permitted only for illness or injury duly confirmed by a timely Medical Certificate as outlined below and subject to review by an ISU appointed Medical Doctor and/or for other justified serious reasons, such as e.g. bereavement in the close family.

And when a Seeded skater withdraws due to injury,detailed medical information on injury must be provided to ISU (quote from GP/GPF announcement):

i)the history which clearly indicates the date of injury or date of onset of illness, the type of injury or illness and severity of injury or illness as well as the physical findings on examination;
ii)copies of laboratory or radiological reports that were conducted in the investigation of the injury/illness;
iii)the recommended treatment by the physician including medications, therapy, advice on training frequency and intensity, date for follow-up examination ( a copy of this assessment should then be forwarded to the ISU), expected date of return to full activity, planned further investigations and/or criteria for return to full activity

So it seems like ISU can be pretty demanding when it's needed. They might as well be demanding about withdrawals in general. For example something like that:
"If a skater withdraws from first event due to medical reasons, as of the date 10 days prior to the start of second event he/she must provide medical report on his condition to ISU (or it could be even 8 days, because the benchmark of replacement to be ready is 7 days). If ISU based on this report recommends to withdraw 7 days prior to event, and skater refuses, but then withdraws anyway 1-2-3 days prior to event, penalties may be applied. If report says skater's condition is satisfying, no recommendation on withdrawal is made, and when skater gets aggravated or unexpected injury less then 7 days prior to event and withdraws, no penalties apply".

ribbit said:

Asking an athlete to state weeks or months in advance of a competition that they won't be ready to compete, in situations in which they simply don't have enough information to make that judgment, goes against everything an athlete is mentally and emotionally trained to do.

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No one is talking about months in advance, it is the matter of at least several days (8-10) in advance, so that the substitute could replace. There could be a lot of talk about how doctors are wrong and misdiagnose, and how this world is so unpredictable, but realistically time of recovery of certain injuries is a known fact, some recover slower, some faster. In case of bad injuries 8-10 days is not that far ahead to predict whether one would be able to perform or not.

ribbit said:

But again, as el henry says, we have no knowledge of the skaters' injuries, or their paths to recovery. A skater might have to withdraw late in the day for all sorts of legitimate reasons. A recovery could be on track and a setback could happen. A recovery could be on track and a fresh injury could occur. The skaters aren't trained medical professionals; they're relying on doctors and therapists, and neither the skaters nor their doctors or therapists are infallible or omniscient. An initial diagnosis could be wrong, or a doctor or therapist could miss something, or a treatment could fail. None of these situations is predictable, all of these are commonplace, and none of these is evidence of bad faith. To punish athletes for not anticipating events that they are not trained to anticipate, and that nobody can fully anticipate, adds insult to injury and solves nothing.

This is especially true if we start to claim that withdrawing from one event means that a skater should have known he/she would have to withdraw from another event. Just because someone can't compete in mid-October doesn't necessarily mean that he/she can't compete in late November. It depends on so many circumstances that frankly none of us have a right to know: the precise diagnosis and prognosis given to that specific skater, the facilities and support for recovery/rehab available, the accuracy of the original diagnosis, the exact nature of the skater's physical and mental progress toward recovery.
.......
.

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Then, just get the Dr or specialist to do a check up and certify if the skater is fit to compete. Within X number of days before the competition. Simple as that.

If there are injuries sustained during training after the deadline, get a Dr to certify. No certification, no valid reason, pay up the withdrawal fees.

Klarnet said:

Posters on forum don't know but ISU certainly do know the reason for withdrawal. And we're here just discussing what could possibly be done by ISU,not by posters, to prevent the situation that one day there are 5-6 participants because the rest of the field withdrew last minute and no replacement could be done so late.

Also when it comes to Seeded skaters, even posters could know the reason for withdrawal - because Seeded skaters are obliged to participate and have no right to withdraw from GP and GPF without permitted by ISU reason:

Withdrawals are permitted only for illness or injury duly confirmed by a timely Medical Certificate as outlined below and subject to review by an ISU appointed Medical Doctor and/or for other justified serious reasons, such as e.g. bereavement in the close family.

And when a Seeded skater withdraws due to injury,detailed medical information on injury must be provided to ISU (quote from GP/GPF announcement):

i)the history which clearly indicates the date of injury or date of onset of illness, the type of injury or illness and severity of injury or illness as well as the physical findings on examination;
ii)copies of laboratory or radiological reports that were conducted in the investigation of the injury/illness;
iii)the recommended treatment by the physician including medications, therapy, advice on training frequency and intensity, date for follow-up examination ( a copy of this assessment should then be forwarded to the ISU), expected date of return to full activity, planned further investigations and/or criteria for return to full activity

So it seems like ISU can be pretty demanding when it's needed. They might as well be demanding about withdrawals in general. For example something like that:
"If a skater withdraws from first event due to medical reasons, as of the date 10 days prior to the start of second event he/she must provide medical report on his condition to ISU (or it could be even 8 days, because the benchmark of replacement to be ready is 7 days). If ISU based on this report recommends to withdraw 7 days prior to event, and skater refuses, but then withdraws anyway 1-2-3 days prior to event, penalties may be applied. If report says skater's condition is satisfying, no recommendation on withdrawal is made, and when skater gets aggravated or unexpected injury less then 7 days prior to event and withdraws, no penalties apply".


No one is talking about months in advance, it is the matter of at least several days (8-10) in advance, so that the substitute could replace. There could be a lot of talk about how doctors are wrong and misdiagnose, and how this world is so unpredictable, but realistically time of recovery of certain injuries is a known fact, some recover slower, some faster. In case of bad injuries 8-10 days is not that far ahead to predict whether one would be able to perform or not.

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No, recovery times for injuries are not known facts. A doctor can look to past experience and to peer-reviewed studies of scientific data and make predictions based on statistics: the average recovery time for a particular injury is so many weeks, 90% of people with this injury recover in so many months, etc. But this data is only an aggregate of individual cases, each of which presents unique combinations of circumstances and none of which may apply to any given case. Athletes are outliers to begin with; their bodies are different in many ways, both positive (strength, fitness) and negative (stresses experienced), from those of the general population. Skating is a niche sport; there will be less data than there will be for more popular sports. And even good data will only get you so far. Different people recover at different rates. Individuals recover from different injuries at different rates; many people recover more slowly as they get older, for example. A second instance of the same injury may heal more slowly than the first, and there may be very little data to draw on.

Who in the ISU should be empowered to decide that a skater should withdraw based on the medical information the skater has provided? How are corruption and national bias--or the suspicion of corruption and national bias--to be avoided? (Think about how posters react to judges' scores and technical panels' calls...) What if the skater has legitimate grounds for disagreement with the ISU's decision? Is there an appeals process? And what happens to the legitimacy of the whole system the first time a skater defies the ISU's recommendation and then does spectacularly well in the competition?

Yes, if you break your leg eight days before a competition almost anyone could confidently make the call that you should withdraw. But what if you sustained a stress fracture in your landing foot that you're told should heal within three months, and eight days before the competition it has indeed just about healed but a bad landing in practice causes you intense twinges of pain--do you take the chance that you won't have another bad landing in the competition, or do you panic and withdraw to avoid penalties? What if you lightly sprained your ankle three months earlier, recovered faster than the doctors had expected, and eight days before the competition were skating at 90% of your pre-injury peak and giving your team reason to be optimistic that with another week of training and therapy you would be ready to go--do you go ahead and compete, or withdraw and wonder what might have been? And what if you were approaching your first competition back from a break due to severe depression and anxiety? How, at eight days out, do you assess whether your feelings of nervousness and sleeplessness are something that you can and should work through with your therapist and team, or something that requires you to take a step back and slow down your comeback?

tl;dr: These are simply not areas in which we can expect certainty--let alone the level of certainty that should be required to impose financial penalties on someone who gets it wrong.

eaglehelang said:

Then, just get the Dr or specialist to do a check up and certify if the skater is fit to compete. Within X number of days before the competition. Simple as that.

If there are injuries sustained during training after the deadline, get a Dr to certify. No certification, no valid reason, pay up the withdrawal fees.

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Simple as that? Seriously?

Who chooses the doctor? How are issues of confidentiality handled?
Who pays the doctor? How does the doctor avoid pressure to give the answer that is most advantageous to the person paying the bills?
What if the doctor's opinion differs from the other medical advice the skater has received? Whose judgment prevails?
Who defines what constitutes fitness to compete, and what is that definition? Are we talking about being ready to skate at 100% of peak fitness, or to complete an SP and LP, or something in between? How is the medical opinion to be balanced against the coach's opinion? Is it even possible for a doctor to make this judgment on his or her own?

Instead of assuming that skaters are horrible people acting in bad faith, we might look to the tennis world. Over the last two years, the number of retirements due to injury in the first round of Grand Slam tournaments spiked. This was unfortunate both because the injured players were taking up spots that could have gone to other players and because the spectators didn't get to watch as much tennis as they had expected. But instead of concluding that they needed to punish players for being stupid or delusional or dishonest, the organizers decided to try to see the issue from the players' point of view. They realized that because the prize money for losing a first-round match is so substantial (especially compared to the money that a player whose ranking barely qualifies him for the main draw of a Slam, or who has to go through qualifying, can expect to earn in a year), that injured players were turning up to their first matches, making it through a few games, and then conceding the match. They needed the money that badly. So they instituted a new rule that if a player withdraws in a specified window before the tournament begins, he or she gets half the money that would normally go to a first-round loser. (The other half goes to the replacement player.)

What kinds of incentives could the ISU offer skaters to withdraw within a specified timeframe and make room for a substitute? Some skaters on the GP have a realistic shot at the higher amounts of prize money and a place in the GPF. Others don't, but might win a few thousand dollars for finishing fourth or fifth at an event. But everybody is competing for the ranking points for world standings and season's bests. Would it make sense to offer a skater who withdraws for documented medical reasons before a set date some protection in the standings, or some ranking points, or the opportunity to carry over a season's best score from the previous year, or the opportunity to join the substitute list for later events, or one slot on the GP for the following year if the skater didn't otherwise qualify for one? What would a system built on understanding and compassion, on respect for the skaters and with their best interests at heart, look like?