Before the quad era discussion

Back when Evgeny Plushenko and Alexei Yagudin were at their peak, they were doing triple-triple combinations. What were the ladies doing? Non combo triples, doubles? I am trying to piece together the past, thank you!

You can actually look it up! For example, if you follow this link
http://www.isuresults.com/results/owg2010/
and click on the judges scores for the ladies free, you can see what elements each skater did in her free program.

I got that file by googling isu results 2010 olympics. You can get results from other competitions by doing a similar search for worlds or olympics.

I think your answer depends on the year and "which women". The top two or three? The top 10? I see some triple triples, but not a lot. Mao did a 3A. And the 10th place skater, Alene Leonova not only did a triple+triple, but she is STILL SKATING!

Before the quad era

billo999x said:

Back when Evgeny Plushenko and Alexei Yagudin were at their peak, they were doing triple-triple combinations. What were the ladies doing?

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For the men, the years when Yagudin and Plushenko were both competing was the quad era. At the 2002 Olympics LP, Yagudin did 4T+3T+2Lo and 4T (no triple-triple). Plushenko did 4T+3T+3Lo, 4T, and 3A+1eu++3F. Timothy Goebel did 4S+3T, 4T, and 4S (no triple-triple).

Also competing wer Takeshi Honda, Elvis Stojko (at the end of his career) and Chengjiang Li, all of whom had quads, but I don't remember exactly what they did at this competition. (I am pretty sure that Honda at least did a quad in the SP).

For the ladies, Sarah Hughes did 3S+3Lo, 3Lz+2T, and 3Lo+3Lo. Irina Slutskaya did 3Lz+2Lo, and 3S+2Lo+1eu+2S. Michelle Kwan did 3T+2T (planned 3T+3T), 3Lz+2T, and 3F (hand down, intended combo). Plus a variety of solo triple jumps.

You can also find videos of many performances on youtube.

Are you interested in what the top jumpers at the time were doing? All the potential medal contenders whether their strengths were jumps or other skills? The elite senior field as a whole? Over what time period?

Sarah Hughes was doing UR 3-3s. Sasha Cohen and Michelle Kwan were doing 3-2 combos, but were "planned" 3-3s (that they almost never actually did).

It took a long time for the 3-3 to become standard for elite ladies. Kristi Yamaguchi was doing 3Lz-3T in 1992, but after she and Midori retired, the technical standard kind of went down for a few Olympic cycles.

Tara Lipinski had a 3Lo-3Lo in 1998. I think she also had a 3-euler-3 combo at that time as well.

gkelly said:

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I am mostly interested in how the quad revolution started and when the ladies started it. But all my questions are answered. And now I know old performances are on youtube, I will use those!

andromache said:

Sarah Hughes was doing UR 3-3s. Sasha Cohen and Michelle Kwan were doing 3-2 combos, but were "planned" 3-3s (that they almost never actually did).

It took a long time for the 3-3 to become standard for elite ladies. Kristi Yamaguchi was doing 3Lz-3T in 1992, but after she and Midori retired, the technical standard kind of went down for a few Olympic cycles.

Tara Lipinski had a 3Lo-3Lo in 1998. I think she also had a 3-euler-3 combo at that time as well.

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During the 97-98 season, Tara did a triple toe loop-Euler-triple Salchow, and earlier in her career she did a double axel-Euler-triple Salchow.

andromache said:

Sarah Hughes was doing UR 3-3s. Sasha Cohen and Michelle Kwan were doing 3-2 combos, but were "planned" 3-3s (that they almost never actually did).

It took a long time for the 3-3 to become standard for elite ladies. Kristi Yamaguchi was doing 3Lz-3T in 1992, but after she and Midori retired, the technical standard kind of went down for a few Olympic cycles.

Tara Lipinski had a 3Lo-3Lo in 1998. I think she also had a 3-euler-3 combo at that time as well.

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Worth noting that Sarah Hughes was in a time of 6.0. Under-rotations were less called then (indeed iconic skaters like Kwan had jumps that would have been called UR by today's standards). For what was considered "acceptable" at the time, Hughes did 2 triple-triples for all intents and purposes. Even Miki Ando's 4S (the first quad for a woman) was definitely UR by today's standard, though usually only when a skater downgraded a jump was it particularly egregious. Of course, the flip side is that 3-3 combinations weren't really credited a whole lot more. No matter how many 3-3 combos a skater like Hughes did, if Kwan had gone absolutely clean without 3-3 attempts, Kwan would have won. And because Kwan kept winning without 3-3 combos, she didn't really attempt them as often as skaters today are. Back then a clean skate was more important than incorporating more difficulty. You might get like an extra tenth on the technical score if you did a 3-3.

There was a while when an underrotation wasn't worth 70% but rather you dropped down to the next lowest, so a 3Z+3T< would be counted as a 3Z+2T in base value, plus any (likely) GOE deduction. This might have discouraged several women from attempting 3-3 combinations.

But yeah, Midori was a technical standard who rarely URed her jumps although she also benefited from having way less complex/less taxing programs today in terms of composition/spins/footwork/transitions.

The first 3-3 combination was performed by Grzegorz Filipowski I believe at 1981 Junior Worlds or other junior competition that season.

The first 3-3 by a female skater was by Midori Ito the following season also in juniors.

Both were 3T+3T, which was seen by a handful of other female skaters during the 1980s and a bit more often into the 1990s.

Ito and Kristi Yamaguchi both did 3Lz+3T during the 1992 season.

Tara Lipinski and Irina Slutskaya started pioneering +3Lo combinations in the mid-later 1990s.

3-3 combinations were first allowed in the ladies' short program in the 1996-97 season. But it seemed that 3Lz combinations were considered more valuable -- by the better skaters who were more likely to earn top places on the strength of overall quality if not actually by the judges -- for as long as judges were ranking skaters on overall impression.

Once IJS came in, the objectively higher base values of 3-3 combinations made them become more common in the short program. And also in the long program because the only ways for a skater without a triple axel to get 7 triples into a program with 7 allowed jump slots and a required axel-type jump was to do a 3-3 combination, a 3-3 sequence (allowed until recently with different definitions, but always with an 80% discount of the base value), or an axel-triple combination. Therefore, 2A+3T combo, which had been seen rarely since the early 1980s, suddenly became fairly common in ladies' freeskates in the mid-00s, at the same time that triple-triples were becoming more common in both programs.

I think the the reasons 3-3s were rarely done in the short program under 6.0 was the importance of skating a clean short program in that era. The 3-3 was too big a risk with too little reward. There were mandatory deductions for mistakes and if a skater didn't end up in the top 3 after the short, she was unlikely to win (Sarah Hughes at SLC being a notable exception). If a skater did manage to win after being 4th after the short, it would have to come from mistakes by others. The top 3 after the short, as Terry Gannon always reminded us, controlled their own destiny.

There was a time, at least for women, where I think that doing the 3Lz+2T combination in the SP was probably considered more difficult than the 3T+3T. You had a whole decade during the 1980s where a handful of women were landing 3T+3T combinations who couldn’t land a 3Lz period, much less one in combination.

Then during the 90s skaters started having the full set of triples and the 3Lz+2T became more common than the 3T+3T, and harder 3+3s started to make the appearance. But the factored placements under 6.0 meant that the risk of doing a 3+3 in th short program was kind of pointless. Maybe it would get you first place in that segment if you landed it, but you’d be just as well off in second or third, and probably place much lower if you missed it.

cohen-esque said:

Then during the 90s skaters started having the full set of triples and the 3Lz+2T became more common than the 3T+3T, and harder 3+3s started to make the appearance. But the factored placements under 6.0 meant that the risk of doing a 3+3 in th short program was kind of pointless. Maybe it would get you first place in that segment if you landed it, but you’d be just as well off in second or third, and probably place much lower if you missed it.

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There have also been skaters who had no other triples but 3T and 3S and still could land a good 3T-3T which was very valuable in the SP. Here's Lenka Kulovana placing 4th in the 1997 Europeans SP and then dropping to 11th in the FS. Another recent case was Juulia Turkkila who became an ice dancer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRAauq8nHmE