Did anyone watch the compulsories? | Page 2 | Golden Skate

Did anyone watch the compulsories?

SamuraiKike

Medalist
Joined
Jan 26, 2008
Cumpulsory figures were before my time so I can only talk about the Compulsory dance. Besides Worlds and Olys There wasn't much footage of the CDs by the time I started following so I only catched on YT the top placements.

I only watched completely the Vancouver Tango Romantica and remember being suprised it wasn't the snoozefest I feared. it was really cool to detect the difference on interpreation of the many teams and you could really tell why the top teams had that status. Oksana Domnina was on fire!

After that good first experience I remember wanting to watch the Golden Waltz at Torino 2010 worlds, the last ever compulsory competition! but the camerawork was a disgrace..
 

Triple loop

Rinkside
Joined
Aug 19, 2018
Yes, I watched it on television in the 1980's. So boring to watch and we can never see the etchings. I think this is when judging was very political esp. in the 1984 Olympics. How could Tiffany Chin and Elaine Zayak be ranked 12th and 13th? The overall field then was weak and the skaters who were ranked high in compulsories were awful free skaters. And 2/3 of the medalists skated poorly. I'm glad figures are gone but they are the foundation of the sport.
 

TontoK

Hot Tonto
Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 28, 2013
Country
United-States
Yes, I watched it on television in the 1980's. So boring to watch and we can never see the etchings. I think this is when judging was very political esp. in the 1984 Olympics. How could Tiffany Chin and Elaine Zayak be ranked 12th and 13th? The overall field then was weak and the skaters who were ranked high in compulsories were awful free skaters. And 2/3 of the medalists skated poorly. I'm glad figures are gone but they are the foundation of the sport.

I go back and forth on figures. I think they must have provided a great foundation for skaters rising in the system - as I stated previously, figures instilled blade control, proper edging, posture, etc. For that reason, I think they are missed.

On the other hand, they weren't crowd-pleasers, and skaters had to work a very long time on them. I've heard stories that half of elite practice time was devoted to figures. That's a lot of resource spent on a small part of the sport. I think the elimination of figures has contributed to the ability of smaller federations to compete.
 

lesnar001

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 19, 2005
Even though we might consider them boring, they are, in fact, the basis for the sport. It's where the "figure" in figure skating comes from. I think they actually added a lot to a skater's abilities in terms of edge control, balance, handling nerves...

Very well said!
 

pearly

Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 1, 2017
I wasn't born yet, but I probably would have watched them. I'd also like to learn how to do them someday.

You should, they're the basis for everything in skating and so very relaxing. We didn't do them when I skated, but I am doing them now.
 

lesnar001

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 19, 2005
That's true, however I don't think Midori would have won under any system. I think she was a very fragile competitor. Of course COP eliminates the need to skate a perfect program so maybe that would have helped. However Kristy would have also received good marked under COP and I think she could have hit the more demanding spin positions to get higher spin levels.

The judges could have held her back in PCS also - her style of skating wasn't appreciated by the judges as it should have been (IMO).

And if that didn't have the desired effect, the maximum PCS would probably have been increased from 80 to maybe 90, since Midori's TES would have been so high. The "Midori Rule" as it were.

Also - would they have found a way to "ding" her leg-wrap too? Would that affect the GOE given for the jump?

Unfortunately she could be a fragile competitor, but when she was "ON" - OMG there was (and still isn't) anyone else like her!!!!
 

Crossover

All Hail the Queen
Record Breaker
Joined
Oct 31, 2014
Not my time, so I haven't had a chance to see compulsories live, but if compulsories were reintroduced, I probably would watch it once to solve my curiosity. That's all. I loved watching compulsory dance patterns, but they had MUSIC and fitting COSTUMES for the set patterns. So I wouldn't just sit and watch compulsories without them.
 

davnee

Spectator
Joined
Feb 3, 2018
She'd also have been helped by the fact that Yamaguchi rarely skated two perfect programs herself. Did she win a major singles title other than 1992 Nationals with two clean programs? Fell at the Olympics in 1992, fell at the Worlds in 1992, popped a jump at 1991 Worlds.
 

Ice Dance

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
I'm not old enough to have seen it live. Anyone here lucky enough to have seen it on live television? What was it like? Was it a snooze-fest?

I quite enjoyed watching senior dance compulsories live in a rink. You could see how much faster some teams traveled. And how much more risk they took in pushing the pattern clear out to the edges of the rink.

And you can still watch compulsories live today. All the young dancers--juveniles, intermediates, and novices and/or their international counterparts--still compete them; though it is nicer now that the athletes can choose their own music instead of using the same piece. Of course the young dancers can't fill a rink the way the juniors & seniors can when performing their patterns. We still see compulsories at the junior & senior level. They are just disguised within the RD and often abbreviated in length.

As far as television goes, U.S. television very rarely bothered to show dance compulsories. They showed a handful of performances during each Olympics and even fewer, if any, at Worlds. You can't see the difference between teams on TV because you cannot really see speed or ice coverage that way. And since the TV commentators of the era were often highly politically biased, I didn't much care for the TV version of the compulsory coverage even when it was shown.
 

Kitt

Final Flight
Joined
Feb 1, 2007
Country
United-States
"They were difficult to watch on television, no disagreement. Even the old YouTube videos you can find - it's hard to see any tracings, much less examine the figures in the minute detail the judges did.

I seem to recall a fairly recent figures competition that was done on black ice, and those who attended reported that it was much easier for a spectator to see the tracings.

Even though we might consider them boring, they are, in fact, the basis for the sport. It's where the "figure" in figure skating comes from. I think they actually added a lot to a skater's abilities in terms of edge control, balance, handling nerves..."

Those basics are so important. I am lucky enough to skate at a rink where the Minnesota figures champion from the '80s skates. Thirty plus years later he can still tear up the rink. His backwards speed and rink coverage leads to a jaw-drop from the waiting hockey players! It is a beautiful thing to see.
 
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dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Country
United-States
I loved watching compulsory dances!

Torvill and Dean were wonderful.to watch doing them :love:

Group compulsory dance sessions were a lot of fun!


I also used to do some of the compulsory figures. I found a very meditative pleasure in doing them.
 
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el henry

Go have some cake. And come back with jollity.
Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 3, 2014
Country
United-States
I loved watching compulsory dances!

Torvill and Dean we're wonderful.to watch doing them :love:

I used to do some of the compulsory figures. I found a very meditative pleasure in doing them.

That is true about T&D’s CDs, not that I saw that many of them. But can you imagine fans today (including me), who mutter if they hear one too many POTOs, hearing the same. exact. tune. over and over again. And over and over and over.:hpull:

Not that I wouldn’t love to see skating skills more respected today. Sigh....
 

asiacheetah

On the Ice
Joined
Feb 15, 2017
I've only seen the ID compulsory. It's like watching paint dry. Also remember watching gymnastics compulsory, which is slightly more exciting due to stumbles and falls, but still gets boring after a while. For ID, I have a hard enough time understanding that discipline, watching the same routines all the time and the totally crazy scores was total confusion because I can't see where one team would get such higher scores. Because of compulsories, the podium seems pretty set for ID and that never sat well with me, a casual viewer (of ID).
 

anonymoose_au

Insert weird opinion here
Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 22, 2014
Country
Australia
I watched a few Ice Dance Compulsary programs (never a whole segment, just one or two pairs) on YouTube and the one thing that weirded me out was how the music would just *stop* after the two minutes, like no fade outs or anything. That just seemed odd! I guess it calls back to ballroom dancing where I think the same thing happens too.

As for figures, I always wondered if people got all event tickets back then, went and were like freezing in their seats for six hours trying to see what was happening on the ice, or did they just leave and come back the next day for the short programs?

I wouldn't mind watching special figures though, where the skater has to come up with their own figure, because those are amazing!
 

TGee

Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 17, 2016
"They were difficult to watch on television, no disagreement. Even the old YouTube videos you can find - it's hard to see any tracings, much less examine the figures in the minute detail the judges did.

I seem to recall a fairly recent figures competition that was done on black ice, and those who attended reported that it was much easier for a spectator to see the tracings.

Even though we might consider them boring, they are, in fact, the basis for the sport. It's where the "figure" in figure skating comes from. I think they actually added a lot to a skater's abilities in terms of edge control, balance, handling nerves..."

Those basics are so important. I am lucky enough to skate at a rink where the Minnesota figures champion from the '80s skates. Thirty plus years later he can still tear up the rink. His backwards speed and rink coverage leads to a jaw-drop from the waiting hockey players! It is a beautiful thing to see.
True, but the hours and hours put into training figures to the competitive level sacrificed other things.

Don Jackson has said that his 3Lz, the first ever ratified in 1962, was not repeated for nearly a decade largely because the training time needed to be competitive in figures crowded out freeskate training.

On the other hand, Toller Cranston argued that Skating Skills including figures were a foundation for all good technique.

Personally, I really enjoyed the time spent on 'patch' as figure training was called. But I had early ballet, and balance was so much of that. And I also wasn't at the elite level doing it 6 hours a day.

As a spectator, I never saw it on TV, and was frustrated when the short freeskate program began with a full set of marks already judged.

I actually did like both the ice dance compulsories and the original set pattern. I thought one really came to understand the fundamental technique by watching them.

And while parents and judges still have to hear the same pattern dance standards endlessly, I agree that a modern audience wouldn't stand for it.

For those who would like to see the patterns, the streams of the pre-juvenile and Juveniles (at least in Canada) do still include 2 mandatory set patterns, to music of the team's choice, rather than an RD.
 
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