Is figure skating becoming acrobatics on ice?

[Mathman]

There is irreparable system mistake in 6.0 system. It allows you to evaluate a performace only in relation to other performances on the same event ...

This is the strength of the 6.0 ordinal system. The purpose of judging in any sport is to determine who performed best, who second best, etc.

It's inhonest, unjust and unfair system ...

On the contrary, what is dishonest is to pretend falsely that a judge can say, with coherence and consistency, that this performance earned exactly 7.75 worth of points in Musical Interpretation, not 7.50 and not 8.00, but 7.75.

But it is honest for a judge to say, I think this performance was better than that one with respect to intepretation of the music.

When you see a skate, you don't have to "leave a space" for what will come later ...

I think you misunderstand what those numbers, the 5.6s and 5.7s are used for in an ordinal system. They are temporary place-holders that summarize the judges evaluation of the performance (the judges also keep somewhat more detailed notes -- she did a pretty good triple Lutz; her layback was wobbly and she lacked overall speed). But The only thing that counts is the ordinal. Who skated best. Who skated second best. Who skated third best.

Obviously after the first skater performs, there is always the possibility that a later skater will do better (or worse). That is the judges' sole responsibility -- to decide, at the end of the day, whether this skater was better than that one. That is the very definition of ordinals. It would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

 

[McBibus]

If so, then the system is "outdated" for years, in men multiple quads are executed for years and for all that time I don't remember people would comply about how jumps are evaluated too much compared to spins or that jumps are killing artistry or that "skating is more than jumping" or whatever. Just when (particular) ladies tech content started to be close to men, the avalanche started to move.

It probably is.
Looking at the men competions, barren few excellence I just see people "trying" quads over quads, hoping to have that great day when everything works.
As for the avalanche, my favorites are "those" ladies + Rika so I'm just portraing my vision of skating: I dream of a sport in which there are more way to reach the same result
I agree with you that there is much jumping on this vagon with the intent of forcing some other skaters into play, and this make talking about it more difficult.

To the last point: harsh punishing of falls and other mistakes should be as significant as excellent execution of the elements (which is now, fortunately). In fact too much insisting on "clean skate" led to the state when in some countries skaters stopped to execute difficult elements. That result was stagnation and when the gap started to be too big, rather than trying to make things better it changed into "if we can't do that, we will change the rules." It's nothing else than this, no matter how many words about artistry is spoken. Again, it's a sport between athletes, the most important thing has to be the actual physical perofmance on the ice, not on the "artist" watching it from behind the barrier.

Very good objection!
Stagnation is bad as a splash fest, if not worse.

That's why I would prefer to have a bonus for the consecutive (or total) elements with positive GOE that destroy a skater with a single fall on a super difficult element.
Not that I have a solution: it's just an idea.
If we should have a bonus anything is better that a bonus for jumps in the second half.
That bonus itself "forces" the composition.
Very difficult jumps and one 2 jumps combo in the 1st minute
3 jumps combo and reliable 2 jump combo just after the 3:00 mark: ... boring

 

[[email protected]]

This is the strength of the 6.0 ordinal system. The purpose of judging in any sport is to determine who performed best, who second best, etc.

I cannot agree with the connection between the 2 sentences. The purpose of judging (which is correct) has little to do with 6.0 because of the human memory.

It would be unfair to ask judges to keep in mind the peculiarities of a performance that happened hours ago to compare it with the later performance. And judges had to keep in memory many performances to rank them vs. one another. It's quite different from what we have now when they compare a given performance against the rules and standards.

The score difference between early and later groups was built into 6.0 system. A skater had to build the reputation because no matter how good she performed during a given competition her chances of high placements were zero.

 

[Orlov]

I cannot agree with the connection between the 2 sentences. The purpose of judging (which is correct) has little to do with 6.0 because of the human memory.

It would be unfair to ask judges to keep in mind the peculiarities of a performance that happened hours ago to compare it with the later performance. And judges had to keep in memory many performances to rank them vs. one another. It's quite different from what we have now when they compare a given performance against the rules and standards.
.

Very good point.

 

[Mathman]

First, in today's FS-world, score must have an absolute value.

Well, this is what the IJS aspires to. I wouldn't say that a judging system MUST have this property, or that this property is self-evidently desirable in a judging system.

topic: Let's talk about snails What do you think about my suggestion that mathematics is "conditional" and our mathematics is based on the metric of our Universe because we are "metrical beings" ?

I would say this:. The sense in which mathematics is "conditional" is that mathematical theorems generally do not make any definite claims of fact. Rather, what mathematicians do is try to prove "conditional" statements of the form "If P, then Q." Mathematicians rarely if ever try to prove P (or even to speculate about whether P is true of false).

The topic of the referenced thread was that the cherished traditional hope of mathematics, that everything can be reduced to logical analysis (P implies Q) was dashed by mathematical logicians themselves int he late nineteenth and early to middle twentieth centuries. So ... (?)

As for the nature of mankind, it does seem like our brains are pre-wired to want to count and measure things. (But we also like to compare and rank things. Thus we are equally drawn both to the IJS (measuring) and to 6.0 (comparing). )

As for the "metric of the universe," that is the very topic that I have devoted my professional life to studying. But at the end of the day, I feel like Job in the Bible, who was mocked and admonished by God:

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone,
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?

:yes:

 

[flanker]

This is the strength of the 6.0 ordinal system. The purpose of judging in any sport is to determine who performed best, who second best, etc.

And how can you say that someone performed better or worse than someone who didn't perform yet. It would make some sense if the judges first saw all the performances and then they wopuld sart to give them points, but that would lead to another form of machinations. Therefore it is necessary to value specific performance, without relation to any other. Anytjhing else is just nonsense.

On the contrary, what is dishonest is to pretend falsely that a judge can say, with coherence and consistency, that this performance earned exactly 7.75 worth of points in Musical Interpretation, not 7.50 and not 8.00, but 7.75.

But it is honest for a judge to say, I think this performance was better than that one with respect to intepretation of the music.

That can be said with much more ease, because by that you don's say "it is better/worse than something I haven't seen yet. See above.

I think you misunderstand what those numbers, the 5.6s and 5.7s are used for in an ordinal system. They are temporary place-holders that summarize the judges evaluation of the performance (the judges also keep somewhat more detailed notes -- she did a pretty good triple Lutz; her layback was wobbly and she lacked overall speed). But The only thing that counts is the ordinal. Who skated best. Who skated second best. Who skated third best.

Obviously after the first skater performs, there is always the possibility that a later skater will do better (or worse). That is the judges' sole responsibility -- to decide, at the end of the day, whether this skater was better than that one. That is the very definition of ordinals. It would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

I understand it perfectly, and that is what is completely wrong on that system. Again, you can't evaluate the performance in relation to other performances that weren't performed. And it gives totally no backgoud for true technical contend, just how the judge liked, no matter the true technical difficulty and executionm, with no standard. With standards it is quite clear what a skater needs to do to gain +3 GOE, but when the only thing that matters is how judge liked it, this system is prone to corruption and injustice. That's why it was replaced for good.

 

[flanker]

It probably is.
Looking at the men competions, barren few excellence I just see people "trying" quads over quads, hoping to have that great day when everything works.
As for the avalanche, my favorites are "those" ladies + Rika so I'm just portraing my vision of skating: I dream of a sport in which there are more way to reach the same result
I agree with you that there is much jumping on this vagon with the intent of forcing some other skaters into play, and this make talking about it more difficult.

Yes, many men of course attempt quads, sometimes beyond their capability, because there is no other way how to win. But it's that I don't see a problem in it Again, for me figure skating is still a sport. It's beautiful sport and that's why I like it more than others, but that doesn't change the core, in sport bigger, faster, stronger decide. Being more beautiful is good too, but as you can see, even we here are not able to come to a conclusion what is more beautiful. Components are necessary, it's the way how not to turn programs only into elements competition, but for me that's their main reason, because competition in "artistry" is quite problematic.

Very good objection!
Stagnation is bad as a splash fest, if not worse.

That's why I would prefer to have a bonus for the consecutive (or total) elements with positive GOE that destroy a skater with a single fall on a super difficult element.
Not that I have a solution: it's just an idea.
If we should have a bonus anything is better that a bonus for jumps in the second half.
That bonus itself "forces" the composition.
Very difficult jumps and one 2 jumps combo in the 1st minute
3 jumps combo and reliable 2 jump combo just after the 3:00 mark: ... boring

At the junior level of the russian cup competitions there are some bonuses like that, bonus if all elements are lvl 4, bonus for all positive GOE and some others. It motivates young skaters to focus on quality of the execution and I think it's one of the reasons why they are so good now. On the other hand if for a skater in junior US competitions the clean performance with only doubles was evaluated more than performance where the skater had some triples and fell from just one of them, it of course killed the will to learn difficult jumps. And like I said, it led to the state where "average" russian 13 y.o. girl would crush all the national senior competitions around the world wit the exception of the two or three individuals (of course little exaggeration, but not far from the truth). So the system of supporting difficulty works. It works in all sports, tennis, hockey, petang , so why people are so defensive with figure skating.

 

[flanker]

I cannot agree with the connection between the 2 sentences. The purpose of judging (which is correct) has little to do with 6.0 because of the human memory.

It would be unfair to ask judges to keep in mind the peculiarities of a performance that happened hours ago to compare it with the later performance. And judges had to keep in memory many performances to rank them vs. one another. It's quite different from what we have now when they compare a given performance against the rules and standards.

The score difference between early and later groups was built into 6.0 system. A skater had to build the reputation because no matter how good she performed during a given competition her chances of high placements were zero.

That's precisely what I was trying to say all the time, but probably you explained it much better than me

 

[Miller]

Can you elaborate on this system a little more? Is the "out of ten" factor based on the average of all competitors, or does each skater have his own?

Suppose Hanyu got 110 TES and 90 PCS. So his factor is 1.22. What happens now? Do the judges reduce his TES by that amount, so now he has 90 TES and 90 PCS?

I must be misunderstanding the proposal. This would just automatically make each stater's total equal to exactly half of the PCS, no matter what the TES is. (?)

Hello, I must have not explained it at all well, or perhaps am too close to it that I've assumed a bit too much.

It would be the marks from each individual judge as if they had scored the contest by themselves that would be shown, but with their TES factored according to the discipline/segment so that it is of the order of the PCS. This is the reverse, hence the 'reverse factoring' of what you get at the moment where the PCS is factored according to the discipline/segment to be of the same order as the TES e.g. the 0.8/1.6 multiplier for Ladies and 1.0/2.0 for Men.

For example this is the 'judges tallies' section for the Men's Free Skate at the recent 4 continents, https://skatingscores.com/1920/4cc/men/long/tss/, and for each judge you've got an overall figure as if they've judged the contest by themself, but each score consists of a PCS score for each judge and a TES score. Hence I am proposing to split these out and show them separately for each judge, exactly as you used to get for 6.0, but with the TES factored so that it reflects the segment in question.

E.g. For Yazuru Hanyu the figures from each judge at 4CCs were

KOR KAZ AUS MEX GBR USA JPN CHN CAN
189.19 187.07 188.57 186.00 188.89 187.55 190.52 189.11 185.54

but the PCS and TES for each judge was (https://skatingscores.com/1920/4cc/men/long/)

KOR - TES 99.69, PCS 90.50
KAZ - TES 94.07, PCS 94.00
AUS - TES 95.07, PCS 94.50
MEX - TES 97.00, PCS 90.00
GBR - TES 100.89, PCS 89.00
USA - TES 98.05, PCS 90.50
JPN - TES 101.02, PCS 90.50
CHN - TES 95.61, PCS 94.50
CAN - TES 96.54, PCS 90.00

Hence when you display the scores as per 6.0 this is what you get,

Technical
KOR KAZ AUS MEX GBR USA JPN CHN CAN
9.97 9.41 9.51 9.70 10.09 9.81 10.10 9.56 9.65

(Note how a technical score can in fact be higher than 10, and up to about 12.5 would be possible at the moment with Nathan Chen/maybe Yazuru, whereas for PCS it will 10.0).

Then for PCS it will be
KOR KAZ AUS MEX GBR USA JPN CHN CAN
9.05 9.40 9.45 9.00 8.90 9.05 9.05 9.45 9.00

Hence what you've done is displayed the scores exactly as you would for 6.0, but you've used the rigours of IJS to calculate them, plus you can see exactly how each judge has judged the contest which used to be half the fun, plus scores being out of 10 should be much more understandable to the average fan (plus with the factoring I was talking about you would also have consistency across disciplines).

For example re the latter, factoring would come into it much more with the Ladies - the above example is not particularly good for that as all the factors are 1.0 and 10, but say in the Ladies Free the judges enter their PCS scores out of 10, but the final score is out of 80.

Hence however the way I'm suggesting it would be the marks out of 10 PCS, as above, that would be displayed and the TES adjusted accordingly.

Hence if an individual judge scored Anna Shcherbakova, say, as PCS 72 (raw score 9.0), and TES 100 (she lands her quads successfully), then it would be displayed as

Country
TES - 12.50 i.e. 100/8 (the factor for that particular discipline/segment)
PCS - 9.00 i.e. the raw score of 5 component values divided by 5,

whereas for say Kaori Sakamoto getting 76 TES and 72 PCS it would come out as

Country
TES 9.50
PCS 9.00

Hope this makes it clearer.

 

[Orlov]

I would say this:.

No, no. Lets talk about this in original thread. I answered there.

 

[Mathman]

Artistry in this sport is really dying. ... I think a lot of times people are just distracted by a supple body, flexibility, and elegant flowing movement. There's more to artistry than just that... there's story, action, musicality, use of the gaze, et cetera...

For me, I am perfectly content with elegant flowing movement (combined with smooth secure edges, speed across the ice augmented by powerful stroking, command of the rich "vocabulary" of figure skating (my favorite term from the ISU rule book), all matched to the character and phrasing of the music.) I do not look outside figure skating for inspiration and comparison.

Story telling, miming, gazing, pretending you are Joan of Arc or Cinderella -- I don't know. This is a sport where competitions are held to determine who is the best skater. It is unreasonable to expect skaters to be able to act as well as actors do, to tell stories as well as real story-tellers do. When I attend a skating contest I am not expecting to see someone paint the Sistine Chapel. to play the french horn like Dennis Brain or to intimidate the judges by a piercing "gaze" like Yul Brynner. To me, the art of figure skating is its own art form.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...Brynner_Anna_and_the_King_television_1972.JPG

People criticize, for instance, a skater like Alexandra Trusova for lacking "artistry." I don't agree at all. OK, maybe we feel a stronger emotional attachment to Alena Kostonaia's program or someone else's. But Trusova embellishes her technical fireworks display with plenty of interesting choreographic details, she does not ignore the music, she tries to suggest her chosen character (possibly an example of type-casting in this instance ). A work of art.? No. The remarkably talented Alexandra Trusova skating? Yes. :yes:

 

[McBibus]

YAt the junior level of the russian cup competitions there are some bonuses like that, bonus if all elements are lvl 4, bonus for all positive GOE and somne others. It motivates young skaters to focus on quality of the execution and I think it's one of the reasons why they are so good now. On the other hand if for a skater in junior US competitions the clean performance with only doubles was evaluated more than performance where the skater had some triples and fell from just one of them, it of course killed the will to leard difficult jumps. And like I said, it led to the state where "average" russian 13 y.o. girl would crush all the national senior competitions around the world wit the exception of the two or three individuals (of course little exaggeration, but not far from the truth). So the system of supporting difficulty works. It works in all sports, tennis, hockey, petang , so why people are so defensive with figure skating.

That's a very good strategy to develop quality and concetration in a learning stage.
My appreciation for whoever did it.

 

[Mathman]

And how can you say that someone performed better or worse than someone who didn't perform yet.

Why are you pretending that you don't understand this. The judge says that one skater is better than another only after both have performed.

Skater A skates. Pretty good. The judge puts down 5.7 (and also makes some notes about the performance as a memory aid.). Now skater B goes. If she skates better than skater A, then the judge gives her a 5.8. If she skates worse, then the judge gives her a 5.6. NOW (but not before) these marks are converted into ordinals. Skater A either gets first or second depending on whether the judge thought she was better or worse than skater B, having seen both.

 

[Mathman]

Hello, I must have not explained it at all well, or perhaps am too close to it that I've assumed a bit too much...

Cool. Thank you. So it wouldn't make any difference to who won or lost, but itis perhaps a more audience-friendly way of displaying the results (or at least a familiar one -- everybody understands rating something from 1 to 10). It might appeal to those fans who complain about the IJS that they don't really understand where all those numbers come from (but are not curious enough to find out).

I am reminded of the scoring at the Aurora Games show earlier this year. A couple of skaters got perfect tens. Then Ayssa Liu skated and did a quad Lutz, so they had to give her a 10.5.

On the other hand, many fans like to see the running total in the little score box for the excitement of watching their favorite gaining and gaining on the current leader.

 

[Mathman]

I cannot agree with the connection between the 2 sentences. The purpose of judging (which is correct) has little to do with 6.0 because of the human memory.

It would be unfair to ask judges to keep in mind the peculiarities of a performance that happened hours ago to compare it with the later performance. ...

That's quite true and a valid criticism. For some reason I feel like I am being bullied into defending the ordinal system more vigorously than I really do. Any system has its strengths and weaknesses, while on the other hand almost any system does a satisfactory job of determining who the rightful winner and medalists are.

The ordinal system (hence it's name) says forthrightly and without apology: the skater wins who the judges think skated the best compared to each other. Everything else is detail. The IJS says the skater wins who skated the best according to an objective standard. While a well-intentioned goal, I think that this is easier to promise than to deliver.

As for reputation judging, neither system provides a good fix. Let's say you are judging a certain level, say novices. Under 6.0 you begin with the assumption that skaters at this skill level will get in the 3s, then individual performances go up or down from there. Under IJS you expect PCSs in the 4s and 5s. As for Tech, if a prodigy throws in a triple Axel, that skater will be rewarded appropriately in both systems.

Similarly, under both systems competitions generally have the best skaters skating last, so naturally we see the scores rising as we go along.

At the highest level, I can tell you right now what PCSs Yuzuru Hanyu and Nathan Chen will get at the World Championship next month. Just the same as I could have predicted, under 6.0, that the 2002 Olympic championship would come down to Yagudin and Plushenko.

 

[Tavi...]

Every time I see one of these threads, I think two things:

First: So many people authoritatively state that jumps / quad jumps are more “difficult” than other elements. I’ve never seen “difficulty” defined (does it mean the skill takes longer to learn? That you expend more energy? Or what?), nor have I seen evidence from a rigorous study that supports the relative values assigned to each element under IJS. Are there any? Or are those relative values just a rough guess? Even if you are a skater (and I’m betting most people taking this position are not) your experience is anecdotal- based on how things feel to you and maybe what your friends think. If there really is a scientific basis for the relative weight of the elements, why does the ISU keep changing them?

I have a bigger problem with judges who sometimes gift high BV skaters with higher than deserved GOE and PCS for sometimes poorly landed jumps, mediocre SS & performance skills, etc. I often hear this justified with “programs with quads are harder” or that “quads make a program more exciting” or that it doesn’t really matter because the “right” skater won anyway. Again, is there proof that those programs are harder? Is excitement a GOE bullet point or a PCS factor? I think people often forget that GOE can comprise up to a third of total TES - that is, an extra 50% of an element’s score. So when judges award high BV skaters with bonus points in GOE on multiple elements by giving them a +3, say, instead of a deserved +1, they’re not only increasing that skater’s reward for something that’s already factored into the system (higher BV + percentage of higher BV) but they may be skewing results. Add in few extra points in quad PCS, and there you have the reason why most skaters without quads still aren’t competitive under a system that was theoretically re-designed to right the balance in their direction a bit.

 

[Orlov]

Skater A skates. Pretty good. The judge puts down 5.7 (and also makes some notes about the performance as a memory aid.). Now skater B goes. If she skates better than skater A, then the judge gives her a 5.8. If she skates worse, then the judge gives her a 5.6. NOW (but not before) these marks are converted into ordinals. Skater A either gets first or second depending on whether the judge thought she was better or worse than skater B, having seen both.

You were pointed out the most important problem of this algorithm (which you did not answer) - the judge must keep in mind the performances of all previous skaters in order to place the performance of the current skater between them. In practice, this is not real. And btw that's why reputation was so important in those days - it allowed the judge to focus his attention and memory on several important athletes, so that this inefficient algorithm can somehow work.

And if you offer in response - “well, let the judge make notes during the performance, what jumps the skaters managed, how good they were” - then you will suggest IJS! Only half-amateur, uncoordinated and uncontrolled IJS.

 

[[email protected]]

Why are you pretending that you don't understand this. The judge says that one skater is better than another only after both have performed.

Skater A skates. Pretty good. The judge puts down 5.7 (and also makes some notes about the performance as a memory aid.). Now skater B goes. If she skates better than skater A, then the judge gives her a 5.8. If she skates worse, then the judge gives her a 5.6. NOW (but not before) these marks are converted into ordinals. Skater A either gets first or second depending on whether the judge thought she was better or worse than skater B, having seen both.

This can work only when only the podium is meaningful, top 5 at best.

Imagine, a young skater A skates the lights out in the first group. A judge gives her the temporary 1st place. In the second group skater B skates OK and she has much longer reputation than skater A. The judge weights pros and cons and decides to put skater B in the first place - Skater A is second now. When there is the fifth group two and a half hours later skater A is 11th now and skater B is 10th. Skater C is no good at all tonight but she is in the last but one group. The same judge has no idea how to place her. Finally, she decides to put skater C into 11th place between skaters A and B. Why? For the lack of a better idea.

Once again when anything past top 5 has little importance this system could work. The judges are entirely focused on top skaters - everybody else are fillers whose scores and placements are of little concern with one exception. If you are a young skater and skate well you might get more or less random place but not within a random range. Say with 36 participants this new skater might get anywhere between 20 and 30 for a good performance. Another and yet another time like that. Now she is no longer in the first group and her range goes up, say, 15 to 25 for a good skate. She keeps building the reputation and keeps going up in terms of starting order. Finally, she is in the last group and now the real competition begins.

I can't say I like this system. Alina would have 0 chances to win big titles during her first season.

 

[rain]

This is the strength of the 6.0 ordinal system. The purpose of judging in any sport is to determine who performed best, who second best, etc.



On the contrary, what is dishonest is to pretend falsely that a judge can say, with coherence and consistency, that this performance earned exactly 7.75 worth of points in Musical Interpretation, not 7.50 and not 8.00, but 7.75.

But it is honest for a judge to say, I think this performance was better than that one with respect to intepretation of the music.

It is far more intuitive to rank skaters relative to one another than to try to give them a number on each thing.

But....the ordinal system really works best only if judges ONLY use ordinals and do not try to give out any kind of number mark like 7.23 in IJS, or 5.5 in a 6.0 system. In this way both are ridiculous. Because indeed the problem with doing that is having to leave room for late skaters in those number marks. And then, of course, you have the problem that one simple ordinal ranking is not particularly transparent.

This I've come to realize after having to rank a group of entries in a contest (totally unrelated to skating). They had divided it up so supposedly we (judges) were giving individual number marks to different sections of the entries, then adding up the section marks. But in reality the only sane way to do it was to look through all of the entries, rank them relative to one another, then work backwards to assign values. And the thing is, it really does work. The best entries did, in fact, have the best individual sections as well. But I can tell you that these minutely divided numbers are totally antithetical to how human beings judge something. And an expert in a field does KNOW when one thing in that field is better than another, and given time, they can break down for you why, but they can also tell you one is better just by looking.

 

[PyeongChang2018]

Hmm...I’ve never felt comfortable defining art. Not for myself and certainly not for others. I’m often surprised by how diverse my tastes can be and how over time they can completely change. Personally I find a blend of technical mastery and complex choreography to be artistic on its own merits and in most instances very enjoyable to watch. I’m not a fan of facial expressions myself but I wouldn’t say they aren’t artistic or less artistic than something more my taste.

Facial expressions can help or hinder a performance. But I'm not really talking about facial expressions. I'm talking about what is behind the expression and what motivates it. You can't just "choose" to have an intense face. You have an intense face as a result of X, Y, and/or Z.

For me, I am perfectly content with elegant flowing movement (combined with smooth secure edges, speed across the ice augmented by powerful stroking, command of the rich "vocabulary" of figure skating (my favorite term from the ISU rule book), all matched to the character and phrasing of the music.) I do not look outside figure skating for inspiration and comparison.

Story telling, miming, gazing, pretending you are Joan of Arc or Cinderella -- I don't know. This is a sport where competitions are held to determine who is the best skater. It is unreasonable to expect skaters to be able to act as well as actors do, to tell stories as well as real story-tellers do. When I attend a skating contest I am not expecting to see someone paint the Sistine Chapel. to play the french horn like Dennis Brain or to intimidate the judges by a piercing "gaze" like Yul Brynner. To me, the art of figure skating is its own art form.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...Brynner_Anna_and_the_King_television_1972.JPG

People criticize, for instance, a skater like Alexandra Trusova for lacking "artistry." I don't agree at all. OK, maybe we feel a stronger emotional attachment to Alena Kostonaia's program or someone else's. But Trusova embellishes her technical fireworks display with plenty of interesting choreographic details, she does not ignore the music, she tries to suggest her chosen character (possibly an example of type-casting in this instance ). A work of art.? No. The remarkably talented Alexandra Trusova skating? Yes. :yes:

I think Trusova is the most artistic of the 3A. Easily, really. Then Kostornaia.