2020-21 Russian Ladies' Figure Skating

i think program decisions have already been made and are likely being/have been choreographed and training has begun, they just aren't sharing because they don't know what will happen with the season.

Tolstoj said:

This is a big argument in favor of the return of compulsory figures btw, cause if coaches aren't going to work on these things and judges act like it's all beautiful all the same when it isn't then it's time to bring those back to show who has those skills and who doesn't.

Click to expand...

Except the most important thing for figure skating is to attract more fans, and having compulsory figures return would not exactly help with that.

I'd say the best way to do that would be to lower the age limit, or in other words the exact opposite of what ISU's actually trying to do, it seems. Well, not the first time they're completely out of touch.

Shayuki said:

Except the most important thing for figure skating is to attract more fans, and having compulsory figures return would not exactly help with that.

I'd say the best way to do that would be to lower the age limit, or in other words the exact opposite of what ISU's actually trying to do, it seems. Well, not the first time they're completely out of touch.

Click to expand...

It does seem a Russia's specific issue tho.

Most of the japanese girls improved their skating skills in seniors: Kihira wasn't that great in juniors, Miyahara was always good but she improved a lot on the artistry in seniors, same for Kaori Sakamoto and others.

Americans also, if you look at Tennell and Bell they skate better now than their junior days.

Canadians, both Daleman and Osmond skated better in the senior days compared to juniors.

...

Russian style ladies' fs training !

Jontor said:

Didn't also Denise Biellmann use to compete at a very young age at Europeans and Worlds in the 70s?

Click to expand...

I think Elena Vodorezeva competed at the 1976 Olympics when she was 11. Junior Worlds didn't start until 1976, so she couldn't have been grandfathered in by winning Junior Worlds. I think the limit of age 12 was in place then, so I don't know what she was doing there - other than huge double Axels and triple toes, that is.

Shayuki said:

Except the most important thing for figure skating is to attract more fans, and having compulsory figures return would not exactly help with that.

I'd say the best way to do that would be to lower the age limit, or in other words the exact opposite of what ISU's actually trying to do, it seems. Well, not the first time they're completely out of touch.

Click to expand...

Aaaaaaaaamen! To you and I the most important thing is her figure skating to attract more fans but to the people that run figure skating that's not there end. They come from the rule of thumb that everyone deserves a medal everyone deserves a participation award. I think it should be a combination of that and a combination of the best get to compete at the big competitions.

I don’t want figure skating to become a more popular sport and lose all its amazing characteristics.

Imagine if the ISU and the coaches/athletes were working for making figure skating a super popular sport, we would have skaters twerking and semi-naked on ice because that’s what gets views these days. The competitions would become like a Dancing with the stars sort of tv show, and jumps would all have the same name, because the general public doesn’t want to learn about difficult rules.

Yeah, I’m happy with the way figure skating is right now.

dunffvanstorn said:

I don’t want figure skating to become a more popular sport and lose all its amazing characteristics.

Imagine if the ISU and the coaches/athletes were working for making figure skating a super popular sport, we would have skaters twerking and semi-naked on ice because that’s what gets views these days. The competitions would become like a Dancing with the stars sort of tv show, and jumps would all have the same name, because the general public doesn’t want to learn about difficult rules.

Yeah, I’m happy with the way figure skating is right now.

Click to expand...

For that we have Liza Tuktamysheva
(A joking remark, everyone relax)

While nobody wants to popularize FS at the expense of what you have stated, if it gets any less exciting than it already is for the average viewer, in your argumentation you should consider that the people who will suffer the most are the athletes.
Less spectators - less money for the ISU - worse revenues, equipment, installations - less price money for the skaters- less interest of commercial businesses such as Nike, Makeup etc to contract skaters for commercial work - athletes with less money, less possibilities, doing the same amount of work as before but in worse conditions.

duffyanstorn makes a good point. The sport of amateur figure skating was never intended to be a big commercial enterprise. After Sonia Henie pointed the way, talented young amateurs would try to win medals in competition so that they could then sign a big contract with an ice show and make some money. Janet Lynn won U.S. championships and world and Olympic medals. Then she signed with Ice Capades for $1,500,000. Dorothy Hamill won the Olympics, then made a fortune selling hair products and dolls.

The problem is that there is essentially no market for professional ice shows any more, so that leaves the current competitors in a tough situation. There are a few superstars like Hanyu, Kim, and i would put Zagitova in that category, who have the magic touch to cash in on their popularity as amateurs and Olympians. Still ... many are called, few are chosen. I do not think that any tinkering with the rules on the part of the ISU is going to make the public suddenly start liking amateur figure skating as much as they like football -- or even tennis.

Charlotte 71 said:

I think Elena Vodorezeva competed at the 1976 Olympics when she was 11.

Click to expand...

Wikipedia gives her birthday as May, 1963, so she would have been 12, turning 13 in May. She must have just qualified.

She was a prodigious child jumping bean, being the first lady to do a 2F-3T combo and known for spectacular high double Axels. She had to take the 1979-80 season off from competition due to juvenile arthritis. But she came back and competed at the 1984 Olympics.

Mathman said:

Wikipedia gives her birthday as May, 1963, so she would have been 12, turning 13 in May. She must have just qualified.

She was a prodigious child jumping bean, being the first lady to do a 2F-3T combo and known for spectacular high double Axels. She had to take the 1979-80 season off from competition due to juvenile arthritis. But she came back and competed at the 1984 Olympics.

Click to expand...

And then she became our beloved Elena Buianova...

Mathman said:

duffyanstorn makes a good point. The sport of amateur figure skating was never intended to be a big commercial enterprise. After Sonia Henie pointed the way, talented young amateurs would try to win medals in competition so that they could then sign a big contract with an ice show and make some money. Janet Lynn won U.S. championships and world and Olympic medals. Then she signed with Ice Capades for $1,500,000. Dorothy Hamill won the Olympics, then made a fortune selling hair products and dolls.

The problem is that there is essentially no market for professional ice shows any more, so that leaves the current competitors in a tough situation. There are a few superstars like Hanyu, Kim, and i would put Zagitova in that category, who have the magic touch to cash in on their popularity as amateurs and Olympians. Still ... many are called, few are chosen. I do not think that any tinkering with the rules on the part of the ISU is going to make the public suddenly start liking amateur figure skating as much as they like football -- or even tennis.

Click to expand...

That’s a whole other issue, but maybe the lack of popularity also has to do with the lack of territories where ice rinks are available, the small amount of countries participating in this sport (although countries with huge populations), and also the sense of it being an elite/exclusivist people sport.

Where I’m from, the only ice rink in the entire country is for tourists to play around. Nobody knows about figure skating, I’m probably one of the 3 people here who know at least something about the sport. But during Winter Olympics, everybody watches and cheers for figure skating, even if our country is not competing. We love Winter Games. We usually gather in each other’s houses to watch all the competitions, we stay with our parents in the tv room watching and cheering together. If more competitions were broadcast in open TV, more people would be interested. Now, can anyone tell me how easy it is to find news about the next competition? Unless you know very well where to look for, it’s not that easy. Now, google “next real madrid match”, even Google will have those special results.


Also, In places where there is no governmental support to FS, why would parents let their kids go through all the suffering skaters do just to have a very small chance of success? And parents don’t want to sacrifice education with that. In Russia, FS is a popular sport because kids are allowed to not attend regular schools and because of tradition.

We also have to remember that the NFL, NBA Champions League and all these super successful sports leagues have MONEY. Where is figure skating’s money coming from? Who are the big sponsors? Nike? Adidas? How much do they actually spend with the sport and how much do they invest solely on the athletes?

The program with figure skating is not its rules, the sport will only become popular if there’s funding and TV broadcast everywhere, which is not the reality for most Olympic sports anyway.

Unfortunately, the career of an athlete is very limited financially, unless we are talking about soccer players, NFL, NBA and so on. Do you think Yuzuru Hanyu earns more money than Cristiano Ronaldo?

That’s sad, but it’s the reality. There should be an alternative for a stable job for ex-athletes, like a social welfare system where athletes pay an entity (let’s say ISU) and they receive a salary when they retire.

Charlotte 71 said:

I think Elena Vodorezeva competed at the 1976 Olympics when she was 11. Junior Worlds didn't start until 1976, so she couldn't have been grandfathered in by winning Junior Worlds. I think the limit of age 12 was in place then, so I don't know what she was doing there - other than huge double Axels and triple toes, that is.

Click to expand...

Yes i think videos from those events are still on youtube i remember watching them few years ago.

Interestingly enough i believe she is one of the first skaters Marina Zueva has worked on (in terms of programs choreography, not coaching)

Sports popularity is an interesting topic...
The most popular sports worldwide have in common that they're accesible, as in easy to watch, get information and practice.
They also have simple rules (whoever makes the most goals/baskets/etc. wins) in a way that, even if you've never watched it before, you can turn on the tv and all you need is a few minutes of watching to figure out the basics and follow the game.
Finally, they're team sports. I guess people are more attracted to the idea of playing with others or following/identifying with teams rather than individuals.

Unforunately, figure skating is not accesible. If you're totally new into it and you watched a competition for the first time, you would probably not be able to follow and understand the rules and scoring system without someone guiding you through it. It's also true that it's an elitist sport, expensive and unaccesible to most people around the world.
But maybe the visibility aspect carries more weight, otherwise, why is roller skating not more popular than figure skating, even though it's cheaper to practice?

Also, a sport will become more popular in a country which has succesful athletes or superstars. There was a documentary about Yuna Kim where they mentioned that FS became more popular in South Korea after her success. FS is most popular in Japan and Russia too.

I think one thing that ISU could do if they wanted to make the sport more popular is to make it super accesible to watch everywhere but especially in countries where it's far from popular and only present in people's minds during the Olympics. For example, here in Mexico, last season you couldn't even watch the competitions on the ISU Channel without VPN. I don't even know if the cable company that had the rights actually showed the competitions, but who pays for cable TV these days anyway?

lopsilceci said:

Sports popularity is an interesting topic...
The most popular sports worldwide have in common that they're accesible, as in easy to watch, get information and practice.
They also have simple rules (whoever makes the most goals/baskets/etc. wins) in a way that, even if you've never watched it before, you can turn on the tv and all you need is a few minutes of watching to figure out the basics and follow the game.
Finally, they're team sports. I guess people are more attracted to the idea of playing with others or following/identifying with teams rather than individuals.

Unforunately, figure skating is not accesible. If you're totally new into it and you watched a competition for the first time, you would probably not be able to follow and understand the rules and scoring system without someone guiding you through it. It's also true that it's an elitist sport, expensive and unaccesible to most people around the world.
But maybe the visibility aspect carries more weight, otherwise, why is roller skating not more popular than figure skating, even though it's cheaper to practice?

Also, a sport will become more popular in a country which has succesful athletes or superstars. There was a documentary about Yuna Kim where they mentioned that FS became more popular in South Korea after her success. FS is most popular in Japan and Russia too.

I think one thing that ISU could do if they wanted to make the sport more popular is to make it super accesible to watch everywhere but especially in countries where it's far from popular and only present in people's minds during the Olympics. For example, here in Mexico, last season you couldn't even watch the competitions on the ISU Channel without VPN. I don't even know if the cable company that had the rights actually showed the competitions, but who pays for cable TV these days anyway?

Click to expand...

I agree with you on most parts, except for the part where rules are necessarily easier to understand.

How many rules does American football have? No matter how much I watch it, I won’t understand it or like it, violence is not how my dopamine system works.

How many rules does Soccer have? Also many. I still can’t understand when they invalidate “gols” or things like that.

However, if I were new to figure skating and I had only watched the Italian commentators, I would understand many things about the rules.

If I were new to figure skating and only heard the NBC commentators, or my country’s ones, where they just say the name of the jumps and say how many revolutions they have, that would he much harder.

For the occasional fan of figure skating, the rules are: if you fall, you may lose; if you don’t fall, you may not lose. If you fall many times, you lose. If don’t fall at all, let’s see if your jumps are harder than other people’s. That’s quite simple, right?

Whenever I ask my boyfriend to watch FS with me (which is almost never, cause he never wants to) he’s like “this skater sucks, because he/she fell”, “does he/she jump quads? Only quads are good”, or “you cannot win if you fall”. That’s what most occasional watchers do.

In terms of having judges to judges competitions - how many controversial soccer results have you heard of? I’ve heard of MANY. How many controversial results in figure skating? Also many. Whenever there are subjective criteria to judge a sport, results will be controversial.

The bigger problem is, as I have said, money.

Soccer, football, basketball all have money to invest in TV and to have TV investing on them. You can watch these sports even at bars and pubs.

Have you ever been to a pub where people are watching Figure Skating? Please, tell me, I have to go there to have a few drinks and have a “Patrick Drunk Commentary” moment [emoji23][emoji23][emoji3526]

lopsilceci said:

Sports popularity is an interesting topic...
The most popular sports worldwide have in common that they're accesible, as in easy to watch, get information and practice.
They also have simple rules (whoever makes the most goals/baskets/etc. wins) in a way that, even if you've never watched it before, you can turn on the tv and all you need is a few minutes of watching to figure out the basics and follow the game.
Finally, they're team sports. I guess people are more attracted to the idea of playing with others or following/identifying with teams rather than individuals.

Unforunately, figure skating is not accesible. If you're totally new into it and you watched a competition for the first time, you would probably not be able to follow and understand the rules and scoring system without someone guiding you through it. It's also true that it's an elitist sport, expensive and unaccesible to most people around the world.
But maybe the visibility aspect carries more weight, otherwise, why is roller skating not more popular than figure skating, even though it's cheaper to practice?

Also, a sport will become more popular in a country which has succesful athletes or superstars. There was a documentary about Yuna Kim where they mentioned that FS became more popular in South Korea after her success. FS is most popular in Japan and Russia too.

I think one thing that ISU could do if they wanted to make the sport more popular is to make it super accesible to watch everywhere but especially in countries where it's far from popular and only present in people's minds during the Olympics. For example, here in Mexico, last season you couldn't even watch the competitions on the ISU Channel without VPN. I don't even know if the cable company that had the rights actually showed the competitions, but who pays for cable TV these days anyway?

Click to expand...

ISU streams some of us were able to watch are good thing to promote the sport. Also the media/TV promotion... But to be fair, i am adapted to the way Eurosport was 'promoting' the figure skating. By streaming competition from the beginning/middle to the end, without added material to it. Not like USA TV shows about figure skating, with thousand of fluff pieces, gold medal contenders topics and showing only their performances and over commentating about it. Because i want to witness 'live' sport event, not a TV show about it. I bet majority of people just love to watch skaters performances and to enjoy the run. Not to be obsessed with who is the darling, who is the favourite, which country is the winner, why/according to which rules is someone the winner etc etc. I don't think that is important for the casual viewers at all... Just play the sport, and let all in the world watch it...

dunffvanstorn said:

I agree with you on most parts, except for the part where rules are necessarily easier to understand.
How many rules does American football have? No matter how much I watch it, I won’t understand it or like it, violence is not how my dopamine system works.
How many rules does Soccer have? Also many. I still can’t understand when they invalidate “gols” or things like that.

Click to expand...

These are not subjective sports, though. You don't need to understand something like the offside rule in football/soccer to be able to follow the game. You know that whoever ends up scoring the most goals will win. Also, they have implemented technologies, like VAR, instant replays with graphics and data, etc. to make everything easier to follow.
Actually, that is another thing the ISU could do (even though they don't seem willing :sarcasm, implement technology to make the judging cleaner, easier, even for the judges and not change the rules but just make it easier to follow, even for casual fans.

For the occasional fan of figure skating, the rules are: if you fall, you may lose; if you don’t fall, you may not lose. If you fall many times, you lose. If don’t fall at all, let’s see if your jumps are harder than other people’s. That’s quite simple, right?
Whenever I ask my boyfriend to watch FS with me (which is almost never, cause he never wants to) he’s like “this skater sucks, because he/she fell”, “does he/she jump quads? Only quads are good”, or “you cannot win if you fall”. That’s what most occasional watchers do.

Click to expand...

This makes perfects sense in theory, however, in practice it's not really how it works. In FS, even if you're not new to it, sometimes you have to actually take a look at the protocols to make sense of why a skater received a higher score or a lower score than another skater, with or without falls. You also have to know about the difference between TES and PCS, base values of elements, types of jumps, jump edges, e ! < <<, step sequences, choreo sequences, levels and don't even get me started on things like "artistry", "skating skills", etc.

Soccer, football, basketball all have money to invest in TV and to have TV investing on them. You can watch these sports even at bars and pubs.

Click to expand...

Well, they have money because of sponsors and they have sponsors because they attract millions of fans worldwide. So maybe the key is visibility.

Have you ever been to a pub where people are watching Figure Skating? Please, tell me, I have to go there to have a few drinks and have a “Patrick Drunk Commentary” moment [emoji23][emoji23][emoji3526]

Click to expand...

I think you could probably find at least one of those somewhere in Russia?

I think you could probably find at least one of those somewhere in Russia? [/QUOTE]

Pluschenko’s wife could open one of those pubs, right?

I think that figure skating and its rules is too complicated nowadays for a casual viewer to understand. And it's a pity. This sport needs its fans to stay strong and to develop new great athletes.

But it doesn't have to be that way. As someone said, even in football (soccer) there are some strange rules that people don't fully understand, but the sport is popular anyway. Why is that?

I think it has to do with how everything is presented. Nowadays when you can follow the technical score live in figure skating is a HUGE improvement when it comes to accessibility and understanding of the sport. But it isn't enough. It can be presented even better.

We all know that the technical panel might intervene and call edges and underrotations etc. And it is very irritating when the tech score suddenly drops 5-10 points, I can understand that viewers that don't know figure skating get very confused. So why not display a range of scores. If the Tech panel flags one of the elements and want to look at it more closely, then display the possible deduction, like now is the tech score 52-55 points. After another questionable element it rises to 54-60 points. And so on. And if you fall, why not make that deduction immediately.

The PCS score is another problem. It also creates confusion for a non figure skating fan. When you see the tech score and it is in the lead, you might think that this person won, but that is not always the case. Doesn't make any sense for a casual viewer. So why not display a preliminary PCS score, based on this skaters previous records. Perhaps SB?

Then there is the Short Program. People who see a Free Skate doesn't necessarily know that there has been a segment before and that scores are already in place. That needs to be clarified as well.

What I'm saying is that if you present the scores in an understandable way, people might not mind not knowing all the rules.

All it takes is a little programming and smart displaying. ISU can fix that.

dunffvanstorn said:

Where is figure skating’s money coming from?

Click to expand...

There was a time, in the middle 1990s, when figure skating was (relatively speaking) flush with cash. The ISU's biggest source of revenue was their contract with ABC television in the United States. In exchange for broadcast right to U.S. Nationals, Skate America, and three "cheesefests" per year (friendly made for TV competitions with invited U.S. and International stars), the television network paid millions US$ per year to the ISU (I think think it was something liike twelve million dollars) and to the United States Figure Skating Association.

Michelle Kwan at her peak years received up to $900,000 a year for participating in these events, aside from whatever prize money she won. There were also private sponsors. Kwan had a million dollar per year contract with Disney to promote Disneyland and appear in Disney skating shows on TV, etc. She also has a million dollar contract (total for three years) with Chevrolet to sell cars. And many other commercial deals. She won many "most popular female athlete" awards against women in all sports. (Kwan was a special case, but still ...)

For many years the 1994 Olympic ladies free skate remained the number 1 watched TV show of all time in the U.S., getting a bigger audience share than the Super Bowl (U.S. football championship). Ottavio Cinquanta, former president of the ISU was lauded as a marketing and financial genius for securing these contracts.

Pro skating was also riding high. The two major U.S. touring shows played to strong audiences all over the country, with as many as 90 stops in an Olympic year. Some sort of made-for-TV skating special was on TV almost ever week. The top stars earned maybe as much as $5000 for each performance on the tour. The Champions on Ice tour featured not only the most popular Olympians, but also variety acts and fun show stuff, like ice acrobats and the "hula hoop girl" (Irina Grigorian ), which were very well received. On the rival Stars on Ice tour, Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi and their supporting cast were semi-household names -- everyone at least had heard of them and knew who they were.

By the late 1990s, Cinquanta is blamed for killing the goose that laid the golden egg. He was not content to administer amateur skating, but tried to intrude into pro skating and take control of the whole skating world. Rules were put in place that greatly restricted shows that featured both popular pros and equally popular amateurs, keeping the skaters under his control on short leashes. They lost the ABC TV contract some time around 2000, and the new contract with rival network NBC was not nearly so lucrative. The cheesefests were discontinued. The pro tours contracted and mostly went out of business. There were no TV skating specials on TV any more.

It wasn't just the lack of U.S. stars. Kwan was still in her prime and winning world championships, Sasha Cohen was popular and there were many promising youngsters in the pipeline.

In Cinquanta's defence, his motive in imposing stiffer rules was that many pro "competitions" were not really competitions at all, just shows. Cinquanta wanted to bolster the image that figure skating is a real sport and not some kind of silly "clowns on ice" entertainment. (Before the tours of the 1990's the professional Ice Shows were more along the lines of Las Vegas Chorus Girls on Ice.)

Anyway, for whatever reason, the bottom dropped out of the U.S. figure skating market. Personally, I don't think there is any particular reason. I just think that the American public's taste in entertainment changed and went in a different direction.

As far as the ISU's current budget, I think that nowadays their biggest source of revenue is dues paid by national federations.