Future of FS competitions? | Page 4 | Golden Skate

Future of FS competitions?

Joined
Dec 9, 2017
As I said, I'm a purist. An lutz is not a lutz if the takeoff edge is incorrect.

I absolutely have an idea of how many skaters flutz. I hear so many complaints about how the technical side is over-emphasized. Well, for starters, how about not rewarding faulty technique?

I get where you're coming from (though I don't think it's a good idea), but where would you stop? Do full-blade take-offs count in your approach? Pre-rotating more than 180 degree? The spinning take-off on the -3Ts? Swinging into edge jumps?

Faulty technique does need to be disincentivized correctly and evenly, but I don't think giving zeros is the correct approach.
 

Ladskater

~ Figure Skating Is My Passion ~
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The ISU should also consider bringing back figures. The figures portion used to be a large part of the competition and skaters well skilled at tracing figures would have a huge lead even over the most artistic skaters. All that aside, it might be fun to see who is more skilled at figures. As the great Trixi Schuba once said "it is figure skating"
 

jenaj

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The problem with calling it an "artistry" competition is that the term is so nebulous. What is artistry? Is it skating skills? Transitions? If there are no jumps or spins, transitions into what? Or the other more "artistic" PCS components like choreography, presentation, interpretation? And who gets to judge that?

Calling it an "artistry" competition just makes it sound so subjective and opens it to a lot of criticism, even if it's unwarranted. Although I have a hard time believing it will be unwarranted.

For most of the 100+ years of competitive figure skating, there was a score for artistic impression, later changed to presentation. So it's not a new concept. And yes, it is subjective but so is performance/execution, interpretation, composition, etc. The problem with the current system is that it tries to break down into components something that really can't be broken down. The system worked pretty well before, properly rewarding skaters like John Curry, Peggy Fleming, Janet Lynn, Michelle Kwan and Toller Cranston. If you want to know what artistry is, watch some of their programs.
 

Colonel Green

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I'm not talking about the jumps they can do best. Just the jumps they can do.

Again, if the problem (real or perceived) is that the technical side of skating is over-emphasized, then a reasonable first step is to stop rewarding bad technique.

If a diver's list states that he is to do a reverse dive, but instead he does a forward dive, he isn't awarded partial points because his approach to the end of the board was proper. Why reward a "flutz"?

Likewise, if he lands on his back, he doesn't get credit for the revolutions he achieved before he splatted. So why reward a fall?

In both of these examples, he has failed the dive and receives no points for the effort.
I don't think the comparison to diving works, given the differences in how figure skating is set up.

I also disagree that your changes would help stop over-emphasizing technical stuff, because the core issue there is that TES scores drive the whole show, so zero points for a failed Lutz would in practice just seriously cut down on the competition, because the scoring system would continue to emphasize big tech scores, there'd just be fewer people capable of taking advantage of that. And I'm not arguing, incidentally, that we should just ignore errors. Rather, I think the system needs to give skaters more freedom to set aside elements they can't do to best effect -- the Zayak rule, in the era of the effectively mandatory seven-triple free skate (for women), doesn't give anybody the option of not doing a Lutz and still having a meaningful shot at succeeding.

And in regard to falls, as I said, the ISU wants to encourage people to try difficult jumps, and thinks that zero points for falls would be too conservative. Now, the most recent round of scoring changes were done with the view that the scoring for falls was too generous, so there's a need to find equilibrium, but zero would be going too far.

But Mao did fix it; and she shores it up at one point around the middle of her career too for a while. Even Ashley Wagner, not exactly a technician, has done two or three real Lutzes in her career when she tried. And no one mentions Satko’s lip anymore. It can be done.
I never said it couldn't be done, I said that it's extremely rare, even for the best skaters. Watch Medvedeva any time she does a Lutz, how hard she's straining to avoid the incorrect edge, and yet invariably she fails.

I think everybody agrees that edge calls have gotten absurdly inconsistent at this point, but that's something that can be fixed within the existing system.
 

Sam-Skwantch

“I solemnly swear I’m up to no good”
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The future is now....what a time to be alive! :dance2:
 

Haleth

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Feb 14, 2018
I love this idea! I'll probably be killed by some for saying this, but doesn't the idea of artistry as proposed and measured, remind one so much of opera fan wars?

I mean really, at some point we could do it like an audition for an opera role. Think about the debates we could have, over 2 different programs of Turandot from skaters.
Person A: "I think that skater X did a lovely interpretation, she was the best artistic skater today."
Person B: "But Skater Y also did turandot..."
Person A: "No no, you don't get it, skater X had the best held spiral to the climax of Turandot!"
Person B:" No she did not-"
Person A: "That spiral was on the beat, and did you not see how those hands extended more?"
Person B:" But skater Y had the better singing in Turandot, and besides she can at least also skate to Tosca!"
Person A: "But her edges on Tosca sometimes slip off, and then that flip-"
Person B: "Excuse me, but one does not call someone bad just because she occasionally slips off key..."
Person A:"Sure, but she's off key all the time."
Person B: "Does not matter, she better embodies the spirit and role of Tosca!"

And somewhere along the way, we have person C thinking Skater Z is superior because in addition to Tosca and Turandot, Skater Z also has Andrew Lloyd Webber in her artistic repertoire.

I'm all ready with the popcorn, who's with me?

Edit: even better, if we go this direction. I mean, in Opera all the people auditioning have to sing the same piece. Maybe we can have skaters compete using the same music pieces? Like one year is you have to interpret Andrew Lloyd Webber, then another year everyone does Puccini, then another year everyone does Rach. This way we are less likely to have issues such as music actually affecting the perception of artistry, since everyone has to interpret the same music type artistically. And of course everyone gets a pretty even shot, since some are naturally better at translating Puccini on ice, and others are better at translating Llyod Webber. This is fair of course, and then we can determine the greatest artistic skater by the sheer number of music types/pieces that skaters can win on. Right?

Why stop there and punish ourselves with endless rounds of the same few late-nineteenth-century operatic and Webberian warhorses? Why not go back to the earliest days of fs for inspiration and invite music directors to choose pieces musicians will perform live for the skaters? I am certain that brilliant souls like Susanna Mälkki, Dennis Russell Davies, Bill Summers, René Jacobs, David Fallis, Bryan Carter, William Christie, and John Elliot Gardiner would save us from the Puccini warhorse wasteland, taking us through an exploration from everything from free jazz and other avant-garde music to music centuries old from the European traditions. In fact Gardiner and his beloved ensembles have experience performing in cities already tied to fs history, like this compelling performance of Mozart's Requiem in Barcelona (I suggest moving to 8:20 to listen to the dynamic "Dies Irae"): https://youtu.be/q5Y2B55nKZY.

And to further mitigate the domination of especially mainstream forms of Western-influenced music, have acclaimed experts in the repertoires of a revolving roster of countries choose a second piece. Although multiple genres of Western music have become thoroughly globalized, this could also provide skaters with opportunities to demonstrate their creative skills and flexibility by navigating not just the most familiar musical styles, but also music that has fewer or even no ties to Western aesthetics. Japan, for example, could supply us with gagaku, tsugaru-jamisen, taiko ensemble music, Okinawan folk music, among many others. Canada might do the right thing by asking its many talented First Nations, Métis, and Inuit musicians including Tanya Tagaq, Digging Roots, and A Tribe Called Red to showcase throat singing, powwow step, and rez blues.

I know I would look forward to much more musically diverse fs competitions. :cool:
 

el henry

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But wasn't Toller regularly beat by guys with better tech and/or compulsory figures (the tech of olden days)? He was a revolutionary, but what he did was undervalued then just as it would be now. In that sense, "the sport has always been this way."


....

Too true, that. Toller was not rewarded, except with the love of the audience:agree:, in his own time.

Then again, we do have SPs and no figures, thanks in part to Toller. So who knows what, in my view welcome, changes will come in the future to prize spins and skating skills and footwork and choreo over seven jumps with max revolutions in a program?:hap85:

Maybe I’ll still be around to see it:laugh:
 

schizoanalyst

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Oct 26, 2016
I don’t hate the idea of an artistic program. But I’d prefer it be a separate discipline. Most of the complaints about the current state of skating - boring, predictable programs; ugly step sequences; weird, contortionist spins; giving too much credit for messy programs; judging bias - are mostly a product of overly-restrictive technical rules the ISU decided upon for no particular reason and an unwillingness to reform the judge-selection mechanism the way most judged sports have it currently. People have half-jokingly talked about single’s ice dancing for years. You could make the rules of single’s “ice dancing” look more like the rules of this Peggy Fleming Trophy and it might be fun. But there is hardily enough fandom and money for the ISU to justify adding another 3 disciplines (“artistic” men’s, women’s, and pairs). They can barely fill a tiny arena to 1/2-3/4 capacity for most events outside of Japan and I doubt they want to try and sell enough to cover another 3 disciplines. I think splitting it into an Artistic and Technical segment would make the sport even less popular though.
 

narcissa

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For most of the 100+ years of competitive figure skating, there was a score for artistic impression, later changed to presentation. So it's not a new concept.

No one's saying it's a new concept, but whether it's a fair concept. Judging by political alignment and colluding with other federations aren't new concepts either. But just because a concept exists doesn't mean it's a good idea :scratch2:

And yes, it is subjective but so is performance/execution, interpretation, composition, etc. The problem with the current system is that it tries to break down into components something that really can't be broken down.

Maybe we should get rid of it then.

PE, IN, and CO are the most easily abused PCS components. When, as is the case in ladies' skating right now, only skaters from big feds are able to get high 9's in those areas without having the goods to match, why pretend that we have those categories at all? Leave skating skills and transitions and maybe create a category for program balance or some other better quantifiable PCS category to judge from.

The system worked pretty well before, properly rewarding skaters like John Curry, Peggy Fleming, Janet Lynn, Michelle Kwan and Toller Cranston. If you want to know what artistry is, watch some of their programs.

And I have, thank you. Some of them are not exactly what I'd pay to see, but that's just me personally. I know other people have different opinions, which are perfectly valid. It's only problematic when someone starts deciding which "valid" opinion is the "correct" opinion. Isn't that the problem that made the ISU move away from the 6.0 system in the first place?
 

brens78

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Nope leave it as is, I like to see skaters have the ability to well balance both technical and artistry elements.
 

TontoK

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I get where you're coming from (though I don't think it's a good idea), but where would you stop? Do full-blade take-offs count in your approach? Pre-rotating more than 180 degree? The spinning take-off on the -3Ts? Swinging into edge jumps?

Faulty technique does need to be disincentivized correctly and evenly, but I don't think giving zeros is the correct approach.

You make some good points, and they're up for debate.

In general (not related to your post), I'm confused... do people want to see more artistic programs? Or do they want to see artistic skaters without good technique be competitive for podiums?

Because those aren't the same things.
 

jenaj

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No one's saying it's a new concept, but whether it's a fair concept. Judging by political alignment and colluding with other federations aren't new concepts either. But just because a concept exists doesn't mean it's a good idea :scratch2:



Maybe we should get rid of it then.

PE, IN, and CO are the most easily abused PCS components. When, as is the case in ladies' skating right now, only skaters from big feds are able to get high 9's in those areas without having the goods to match, why pretend that we have those categories at all? Leave skating skills and transitions and maybe create a category for program balance or some other better quantifiable PCS category to judge from.



And I have, thank you. Some of them are not exactly what I'd pay to see, but that's just me personally. I know other people have different opinions, which are perfectly valid. It's only problematic when someone starts deciding which "valid" opinion is the "correct" opinion. Isn't that the problem that made the ISU move away from the 6.0 system in the first place?

No. The move from 6.0 was spearheaded by a speed skater who knew nothing of figure skating and thought aesthetics could be reduced to numbers. I'm sorry you can't appreciate the skating of someone like John Curry. You are certainly in the minority.
 

narcissa

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No. The move from 6.0 was spearheaded by a speed skater who knew nothing of figure skating and thought aesthetics could be reduced to numbers. I'm sorry you can't appreciate the skating of someone like John Curry. You are certainly in the minority.

Doesn't change the fact that the CoP was proposed with the goal to reduce bias and abuse. Here's the Wikipedia article about it.

And I have pretty selective taste, so there's no need to be sorry. There's lots of things I don't happen to appreciate that others do. I think I'll live.
 
Joined
Dec 9, 2017
In general (not related to your post), I'm confused... do people want to see more artistic programs? Or do they want to see artistic skaters without good technique be competitive for podiums?

I consider it more difficult for the skater to do both convincingly. Since sport should be about challenge, I'd like to see the skaters being incentivized to take on this challenge. Which means, I'd like to see technical skaters becoming good artists, and artistic ones becoming good technicians, and the ones who are great at both coming out on top.
 

4everchan

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people want it all... always...

you want figure skating to remain an olympic sport... bring in some rules and more quantitative ways to judge it..

then some fans miss the artistic aspect of the "sport"

if you want to kill the sport of figure skating, make it artsier....

you cannot judge art in the way that is needed to give olympic medals... if figure skating is no longer an olympic sport, federation will stop funding it... and it will die...

remember artistic ski (ballet?) it's long gone... they kept moguls and aerials from what used to be a 3 event sport.... the ballet was pretty much like figure skating... turns, hops, spins, and jumps while going down a hill... killed.. too artsy.. too hard to evaluate.
 

jenaj

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Doesn't change the fact that the CoP was proposed with the goal to reduce bias and abuse. Here's the Wikipedia article about it.

That actually isn't true (Wikipedia?). The head of the ISU (a speed skater) wanted the change but wasn't able to implement it until the judging scandal of 2002 gave him the excuse. Bias and abuse was no more of a problem then than it is now. If bias and abuse were really the motivating factor, the ISU would have gotten rid of corrupt judges and officials (Didier G. of France survived to run for ISU head after Speedy retired) instead of scrapping entirely a system that had worked pretty well for most of the sport's history.
 

el henry

Go have some cake. And come back with jollity.
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Everyone says they know what will promote or hurt figure skating for the public

Including me:biggrin: but no one knows.

Based on my experiences, all my friends and family and random people walking down the street I’ve interviewed, I say that seven jumps a program. Perfect rotations. More rotations. Will kill the sport (yes sport, check my avatar;) ) of figure skating.

I would looooove to see a real live, absolutely objective survey of fans and potential fans. That I might trust. Except then we would argue about methodology:)

ETA: and any one random poster saying darn it, I’m going to quit watching figure skating. Yeah, well, I hate to be the one to say this, but I’m afraid no one cares. I quit watching figure skating for a while when I saw nothing but jumps, no Toller, no Christopher Bowman, until I “discovered” Jason Brown. Sad to say, no one called to see where I was :laugh:
 

4everchan

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Everyone says they know what will promote or hurt figure skating for the public

Including me:biggrin: but no one knows.

Based on my experiences, all my friends and family and random people walking down the street I’ve interviewed, I say that seven jumps a program. Perfect rotations. More rotations. Will kill the sport (yes sport, check my avatar;) ) of figure skating.

I would looooove to see a real live, absolutely objective survey of fans and potential fans. That I might trust. Except then we would argue about methodology:)

ETA: and any one random poster saying darn it, I’m going to quit watching figure skating. Yeah, well, I hate to be the one to say this, but I’m afraid no one cares. I quit watching figure skating for a while when I saw nothing but jumps, no Toller, no Christopher Bowman, until I “discovered” Jason Brown. Sad to say, no one called to see where I was :)

i am a tad milder than you are on the jumping side of things because i believe a guy can have beautiful skating and jumps like Patrick does.... or that a guy can be a super great entertainer with quads as well, like one guy you have yourself noticed : Nic Nadeau...

You would still love Jason Brown if he had quads...

where you would get angry is if Jason, not picking on him, but using him since you mentioned him, decided to remove a bunch of his choreo and moves in the field to accommodate for an extra quad or two...

this is where balance comes into play... Patrick used to say that after 3 quads, there was no program... now that we have seen 5 -6 quads in programs, do you agree with him? See i love Shoma and Nathan for what they bring and it doesn't bug me that they jump.... Maybe that's why people love Nathan's SPs because there is only 3 jumping passes in it, and the rest of the time we can watch his beautiful lines...

back to the main topic though...

fans are useless when it comes to make such an important decision... and i am not talking only about us, dedicated, somewhat knowledgeable fans... what matters is the IOC. Olympic sports are the ones that get funding by tax payers/governments... if they are not funded, they do not exist.... so actually, some of us may have to stop watching figure skating if it goes into the artsier no more olympic sport kind of deal... simply because, like the pro compettions, tv won't care, and federations won't invest in it....people will go to tours... and shows... but sooner than later, who will we go watch??? a generation of skaters who have not competed in mainstream events like the olympics???

there are sports that have world championships.... year after year... but it is only when they get into the games that they become known from the general public... i knew nothing about the winter xgame sports and now that some of them have been included into the olympics, and people from my country won some medals, with the help of our tax money, there is a connection, a cycle.

yes... hate to break the news... It's a business and the ISU may say things but it won't self destroy into frivolous reforms...

and FWIW... i know this was just edition 1 of that Peggy Fleming trophy... but the few skates I watched were not even that artistic... it was just like figure skating but with less jumps... like exh programs... hate to break the news again but it wasn't interesting enough nor different enough to call it another discipline. I enjoyed watching the "artistic" programs from Pro competitions in the 90s much more than what we saw a month ago.

There are many ways to develop the sport, develop the QUALITY of the execution without risking it to be dropped by the olympics and federations..

and finally, QUALITY is often confused for artistry.... yea... i hear you.. splatfest are awful to watch... programs with flaw = hard to pass for art.. but it's not because a program is cleanly executed that it is "artistic" or "art" it simply means that the athlete presented content they mastered and managed to execute that content... that's all... nothing else. I will hit my own boy with such an example : Elegy or Take Five... two wonderful programs by Patrick Chan... lots of artistic quality in both these programs... Mack the Knife... (zzzzz)... so even within on skater, depending on choreography there are better vehicles than others. Elegy and the Beatles programs for instance, started as EXH numbers for Patrick and you can tell because the focus is on performance. Perhaps more skaters could use that approach of turning EXH programs into competition programs? I don't know... all I know is that it's impossible to please all.
 
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