- Joined
- Nov 2, 2013
Well put. This "protecting their health"-perspective is so flawed words can't even convey. In fact, with the juniors becoming more competitive, the skaters will be pushed into performing more difficult content earlier, not later. The reality is that if we wanted to protect the health of the skaters, lowering the minimum age for seniors from 15 to 13 would do a better job than increasing it from 17 to 18.el henry, read the Netherlands' proposal. Where in there does it say that the proposal is designed to protect the health of skaters? I see a whole lotta horse manure about idols and women being afraid, but I don't see anything in the proposal about protecting skaters' health.
Why?
Because that's not the reason the proposal was suggested and anyone with half a damn brain knows it.
And of course, the official reasoning is just some fluff about the older skaters being sad about younger skaters being better, which is even more ridiculous if I'm being honest. If they would answer this point: If the aim is promoting longevity, how does directly removing 2 years from a skater's senior career not hurt longevity instead of improving it?
And then the reasoning of it being 17 years instead of 16 even though it's 16 for gymnastics is even more ridiculous. Seriously, who comes up with this stuff? Even better is that the person from NL tried to justify it like "You just don't see the effect these rules will have as a whole, you can't look at them individually" on this very forum... Just what.
This rule might help the CURRENT senior skaters. But after they retire and the new skaters would be stuck with the ruleset... I wish some people took a moment or two to consider the impacts of that.