Raising minimum age for seniors from 15 to 17?

[Mathman]

I’m not sure what everyone else’s rinks are like but any of the rinks in my area that you visit very rarely have skaters over 18 let alone in their 20’s. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything...maybe it does

Hey Sam, good to see you posting.

I think it just means what we all know: skating is a young person's game.

 

[flanker]

Figure skating is not a lucrative career for most ..... very few of the skaters who possess elite level talent ever go on to make a decent sustainable income from it.

Something to consider: Is it maybe a better option to retire between 18 and 20 and go to school or pursue a more stable career in order to earn a living? Or maybe a better way to phrase it “ is it a reasonable option to consider”?

It’s unfortunate that there is little professional opportunity for most skaters post competitive career but very few skaters who are physically able to display elite level figure skating in my personal experience continue past even 18 or 19 let alone earn a better income than if they had just gone to college or pursued a career.

Maybe income stability and having career goals aren’t the most important factor to some competitive skaters or even fans. Fair enough but I do think it is a worthy topic for discussion and something I wouldn’t fault an athlete for considering. For skaters on the fringe (think smaller federation skaters) who are often in essence “less competitive” I’d imagine most will retire by the time they are around 20 for personal reasons as opposed to physical reasons. It’s possible that in some ways an undesired effect of raising the minimum age is that it could quite possibly wind up shortening a good deal of careers .. all things considered.

I don’t know. There are a lot of issues to consider. I’m not sure what everyone else’s rinks are like but any of the rinks in my area that you visit very rarely have skaters over 18 let alone in their 20’s. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything...maybe it does

I was talking about it recently, that I doín't htink it's primarily bad thing to make a great success between 15-18 and then go to university and having whole life ahead. Of course I don't wish skaters would be forced to end their career because of the injuries and I also wish to them to be able to skate as long as they want, but if they realize at the age of 18-20 that they want to do something else, why not start that being already a world/european/olympic champion/silver/bronze medalist. Look e.g. at Aliona, she, so far, doesn't plan to have a career till 30, she plans to go to medicine and of course such school is better to start at 20 than 30 (and yes, I know she also doesn't want to end at 18, but some others can see it that way).

 

[Tolstoj]

Sure it's progressing. My point was that fans watching the Battle of the Brians in 1988 had just as more fun then as fans watching Trusova and Shcherbakova do now, even though there were no quads back then.

As for progressing, I think that one difficulty with the Code of Points judging system is that it causes the sport to progress unevenly. It's like squeezing a balloon. You squeeze it this way and it bulges out over here. You squeeze here and it bulges out over there.

I was watching some old performances of Shizuka Arakawa. She was a pretty good jumper. She was pretty good at performance. But what made her an Olympic and World Champion ahead of others was that she was superb at blade control and quality of edges and transitions. To me, skating has progressed since 2006, but not in those areas.

It just seems really hard to decide how many points to give a Shcherbakova quad Lutz compared to how many points a Shizuka Arakawa Ina Bauer should get, or a "Look Ma, no hands" I-spiral.



Stunt rocks!

And don't forget the bottom of the pyramid heros. :yes:

What's funny is that with the current rules Shizuka Arakawa maybe would have not won Turin 2006, cause Mao Asada who won senior GPF and beated Shizuka at Nationals was not allowed to compete at the Olympics.

Though she'd have also had to skate clean which is not an easy task at the Olympics (i mean it's also true that Slutskaya could have won gold if she skated clean in the free)

 

[SkateSkates]

What's funny is that with the current rules Shizuka Arakawa maybe would have not won Turin 2006, cause Mao Asada who won senior GPF and beated Shizuka at Nationals was not allowed to compete at the Olympics.

Though she'd have also had to skate clean which is not an easy task at the Olympics (i mean it's also true that Slutskaya could have won gold if she skated clean in the free)

But we can’t really “what if” like this because Shizuka didn’t skate clean with her hardest content either. What if Sasha didn’t muck up her first 2 jumping passes, so then Shizuka right after her went for her 3-3 and didn’t double the loop? Would her clean program beat Irina’s clean program? Or Sasha’s? It’s too hard to say, and the energy of each skater’s performance can affect the next skate.

 

[Tolstoj]

But we can’t really “what if” like this because Shizuka didn’t skate clean with her hardest content either. What if Sasha didn’t muck up her first 2 jumping passes, so then Shizuka right after her went for her 3-3 and didn’t double the loop? Would her clean program beat Irina’s clean program? Or Sasha’s? It’s too hard to say, and the energy of each skater’s performance can affect the next skate.

According to Irina, it was already set that she could have not won because Russia couldn't get 4 golds across all 4 disciplines, those were the discussions behind the scenes, and in fairness her score in the SP was a bit lower than what she got at previous events with the same exact same contents.

Anyway yes we shouldn't consider "what if" but that season the storyline was that Mao was stronger than everyone else, because of the 3a, because of how young and consistent she was, etc.

It's like Zagitova in 2017 after GPF, you knew that was going to happen, she was clearly the favourite going to the Olympics, especially after Europeans, then of course mistakes can happen, but the only difference here are the rules on minimum age for seniors.

 

[Mathman]

According to Irina, it was already set that she could have not won because Russia couldn't get 4 golds across all 4 disciplines, those were the discussions behind the scenes...

I suppose Irina would know. But I have always wondered if that was really true. Did Totmianina and Marinen have better lobbiests at ISU headquarters than Slutskaya did? (Plushenko and the dancers were clearly going to win no matter what.)

 

[jenaj]

I suppose Irina would know. But I have always wondered if that was really true. Did Totmianina and Marinen have better lobbiests at ISU headquarters than Slutskaya did? (Plushenko and the dancers were clearly going to win no matter what.)

Irina could have won if she had skated better! She has only herself to blame.

 

[Mathman]

Irina could have won if she had skated better! She has only herself to blame.

The age thing is interesting, though , as Tolstoy brought up. Both Mao Asada and Yuna Kim just missed the cut-off by a month or two. Mao competed on the senior grand prix and beat the entire Olympic podium, Arakawa, Cohen and Slutskaya, in international competition. Kim choose to stay junior, but probably would have gone senior if a trip to the Olympics had been a possibility (in fact, a certainty, given that she was the best by far from her country.)

Under slightly different rules, the gold and silver medalists could have both been 15 -- sort of like the situation we have now where the youngsters are leading the way.

 

[eterislouisvuitton]

Just in the light of the Tokyo Olympics being postponed a year, I just wanted to say: imagine the past two olympic winter games had been postponed by a year. Yulia and Alina might not be Olympic champions, who knows what would've happened with Yuna, I didn't see Evgenia's technique holding on for another year - essentially things would've changed a lot had the 15 year olds not been 15 for the olympics. So likewise if you raise the age limit just one year, then things would be a lot different in the sport. It remains to be seen whether or not Trusova and Shcherbakova can sustain their quads through the next couple of years. ANd seeing that quads are becomingn an increasingly large part of the sport, that is definetely something to consider.

 

[flanker]

Just in the light of the Tokyo Olympics being postponed a year, I just wanted to say: imagine the past two olympic winter games had been postponed by a year. Yulia and Alina might not be Olympic champions, who knows what would've happened with Yuna, I didn't see Evgenia's technique holding on for another year - essentially things would've changed a lot had the 15 year olds not been 15 for the olympics. So likewise if you raise the age limit just one year, then things would be a lot different in the sport. It remains to be seen whether or not Trusova and Shcherbakova can sustain their quads through the next couple of years. ANd seeing that quads are becomingn an increasingly large part of the sport, that is definetely something to consider.

Yeah, imagine Alina as a champion at 16. Unthinkable

Well, that people were saying that before she has won worlds at 16, OK. It was wishful thinking, I even dare to say malice, but OK, anything could have happened. However, that people would keep saying that even AFTER she won worlds a year later, that's something I just can't understand.

 

[Edwin]

I think it is pretty disilusional to think that raising the minimum age will bring back artistry just like that. If you aren't an artistic skater at 13, 14 or 15, you will not be at 18, 19, 20 or 30.

Sure, you can learn to flail your arms, to pout and pull your face into grimaces pretending to be emotions while miming lyrics, but it will present itself as learned, artificial, instead of natural.

Neither will it bring increased longevity, more commercial success, unless you perhaps go for the shortest skirt and deepest cleavage route and have a continuous center spread presence in male magazines. Or star weekly in the gossip columns or regularly expose yourselves in uninhibited shamelessness like a certain family. Perhaps this might attract a certain audience to the rink?

Nor will it change the presumption of 'one season only champions' suddenly becoming multiple season ones, the sport being expensive, demanding and physically damaging as it already is. How many seasons do you require to proof the point?

Only if difficulty will be capped, there might be a chance of 'long, healthy and successful careers'. But capped difficulty for women alone is discrimination, mysogeny (because it will be conservative older white anglosaxon males in ISU deciding over the fate of women's figure skating), robbing girls and young women of the one and only chance to actually achieve 'highest, strongest, fastest' in sports and achieve feats no one can repeat after them.

Capping difficulty on the pretext of caring for female athletes' health will remove the sports from figure skating. Which means, IOC must drop figure skating from the Games.

Ask any professional adult dancer, performer in circus, etc about their health over their careers and you'll hear the same: highest level dance, acrobatics, etc. is demanding and will give you pain and discomfort, sometimes even leading to disablement. But for the large majority, this outweighs all the pleasure, excitement and accomplishment their artistry brings themselves and the spectators.

Nor will it instantaneously bring back the much lamented US ice shows quite of few of the long standing board members longe for. What is keeping the present day mature skaters from performing in these?

 

[chuckm]

Nathan Chen wasn't an artistic skater in his early teens---his struggles with knee pain made for problems with the 3a, and his quads were still in development. His artistic development came later, from 18 on.

 

[lzxnl]

Nathan Chen wasn't an artistic skater in his early teens---his struggles with knee pain made for problems with the 3a, and his quads were still in development. His artistic development came later, from 18 on.

The main difference is, most top men are over 18 years old. Yuzuru won Sochi at the age of 19, for instance. Most top women aren't. Tuktamysheva, Evgenia and Bradie are the only top-ish women at/over 20, and they're not competitive at the very top. Rika and Alina are 17, the rest are 16 and under. The last time any woman over 20 won anything significant was, I believe, Mao Asada winning Worlds in 2014. Thus, there might not be enough time for these skaters to develop said artistry.

 

[Fried]

I think it is pretty disilusional to think that raising the minimum age will bring back artistry just like that. If you aren't an artistic skater at 13, 14 or 15, you will not be at 18, 19, 20 or 30.

Sure, you can learn to flail your arms, to pout and pull your face into grimaces pretending to be emotions while miming lyrics, but it will present itself as learned, artificial, instead of natural.

Neither will it bring increased longevity, more commercial success, unless you perhaps go for the shortest skirt and deepest cleavage route and have a continuous center spread presence in male magazines. Or star weekly in the gossip columns or regularly expose yourselves in uninhibited shamelessness like a certain family. Perhaps this might attract a certain audience to the rink?

Nor will it change the presumption of 'one season only champions' suddenly becoming multiple season ones, the sport being expensive, demanding and physically damaging as it already is. How many seasons do you require to proof the point?

Only if difficulty will be capped, there might be a chance of 'long, healthy and successful careers'. But capped difficulty for women alone is discrimination, mysogeny (because it will be conservative older white anglosaxon males in ISU deciding over the fate of women's figure skating), ruining the one and only chance of girls and young women to actually be 'higher, stronger, faster' and achieve feats noone can repeat after them.

Capping difficulty on the pretext of caring for female athletes' health will remove the sports from figure skating. Which means, IOC must drop figure skating from the Games.

Ask any professional adult dancer, performer in circus, etc about their health over their careers and you'll hear the same: highest level dance, acrobatics, etc. is demanding and will give you pain and discomfort, sometimes even leading to disablement. But for the large majority, this outweighs all the pleasure, excitement and accomplishment their artistry brings themselves and the spectators.

Thank you. You always manage to get things straight to the point.

 

[Mathman]

Yeah, imagine Alina as a champion at 16. Unthinkable

Still, I think we can say that it was the previous year that Alina was absolutely at the tip-top of her powers. Evgenia Medvedeva has had a sort of longish career, relatively speaking, but she was at her most dominant in the 2015-16 season (she turned 16 in November).

Oksana Baiul's moment of perfection was 1993 (age 15), although she did win the Olympics a year later. Many people think that Michelle Kwan's peak was her first world championship gold in 1996 (age 15), despite a decade of memorable performances still ahead of her.

Then there are skaters like Julia Lipnitskaia and Tara Lipinski who were ascendent at 15, retired at 16.

If the age limit were raised even just to 16, a lot would be lost. As for mature artistry, I'm all for it. But youthful virtuosity has a place, too.

 

[Spirals for Miles]

Evgenia Medvedeva has had a sort of longish career, relatively speaking, but she was at her most dominant in the 2015-16 season (she turned 16 in November).

I always thought of 2016-2017 as her most dominant season: she didn't lose any competition (in 2015-2016, she lost Rostelecom Cup to Radionova) and set world record after world record (she only set the record once in 2015-2016). She turned 17 the November of the 2016-2017 season. So, in my opinion, she was strongest not in her first senior season, but in her second.

 

[Jeanie19]

I always thought of 2016-2017 as her most dominant season: she didn't lose any competition (in 2015-2016, she lost Rostelecom Cup to Radionova) and set world record after world record (she only set the record once in 2015-2016). She turned 17 the November of the 2016-2017 season. So, in my opinion, she was strongest not in her first senior season, but in her second.

:agree:

 

[eterislouisvuitton]

I always thought of 2016-2017 as her most dominant season: she didn't lose any competition (in 2015-2016, she lost Rostelecom Cup to Radionova) and set world record after world record (she only set the record once in 2015-2016). She turned 17 the November of the 2016-2017 season. So, in my opinion, she was strongest not in her first senior season, but in her second.

Yes, I was not referring to the fact that Alina became world champion in March at the age of 16, I was referring to the fact that the truth of the matter is that last season at 16 she was struggling and the season before at 15, she was not. For all we know had the games been held in 2019, Rika might be olympic champion. But we will never know, because they Olympics are held every four years. Alina was at the peak of her technical powers at 15, but was most loved at 17. I always personally found most of her emotions to be a pretty face to pretty music but like Outro last season was something that she could not have pulled off in the Olympic season.

Raising the age limit to 16 would be fine and might protect younger bodies, but it would just make for stiffer competition at the junior level and not all tha tmuch more artistry. It is an art, yes but also a sport. Artistic and technical abilities all need to be developed.

 

[flanker]

Still, I think we can say that it was the previous year that Alina was absolutely at the tip-top of her powers. Evgenia Medvedeva has had a sort of longish career, relatively speaking, but she was at her most dominant in the 2015-16 season (she turned 16 in November).

Oksana Baiul's moment of perfection was 1993 (age 15), although she did win the Olympics a year later. Many people think that Michelle Kwan's peak was her first world championship gold in 1996 (age 15), despite a decade of memorable performances still ahead of her.

Then there are skaters like Julia Lipnitskaia and Tara Lipinski who were ascendent at 15, retired at 16.

If the age limit were raised even just to 16, a lot would be lost. As for mature artistry, I'm all for it. But youthful virtuosity has a place, too.

The "previous year" (meaning probably the olympic season) Alina was the new girl in the town (or somehow like that she was called by one of the commentators on the Olympic Channel). There was nothing to lose till the worlds 2018 where expectations were suddenly different. This new pressure was the difference between the olympic season and the following one, which is pretty universal (remember that Alina is the first olympic champion who won the worlds the season following the olympics since Katarina Witt). But, as was discussed plenty of times before, actually Alina's results from the first half of the season, even with all this, weren't much different from the season when, as you say, Alina was "at the tip-top of her powers". Just look at it:

2017/18 season:
Lombardia: 218.46
JO, free skate: 145.28
CoC: 213.88
IdF: 213.80
GPF: 223.30

Now for the 2018/19 season:
Nebelhorn: 238.43
JO, free skate: 159.18
GP Helsinki: 215.29
Rostelecom: 222.95
GPF: 226.53

Actually Alina's results were better at least when it came to score (I know, the new system, but the difference in ladies is minimal), yet from the very beginning of the season (or from the Milan) particular people were talking about her lack of power. While in reality the performances with bigger problems after 2018 worlds were the test skates, nationals and Europeans. At GPF 2018 Alina made some mistakes like singling 3T in the first combo, but Rika had problems as well and won the competition literally just because the 3A. Also to me Alina should definitely have won the free skate, where Rika's fall wasn't penalized as it should have been). The time where the olympic season prevailed over the following one in Alina's performances was actually only between russian nationals and olympic games/Europeans. Also there was no Rika during olympic season and Zhenya was injured during the first half of it, that's why Alina looked more excellentl then the next season. Many people judged her according to her Europeans and olympic performances, while ignored that she had troubles before those two competitions.

So, to me in fact the olympic ane the following season weren't so much different. The performances during the GP series were in fact prettry similar in those two seasons, with some performances even better during the following one. During the Olympic season the peak was EC and OG, during the following there were two peaks, Nebelhorn+JO and then Worlds, with many other results pretty similar. Also, she set the world recors during the second season (her total score was overperformed only by 3A since then, even Rika still didn't overcome several of Alina's top scores that she has reached during the season where she wasn't "at the tip-top of her powers" ).

From the bigger perspective, when comparing with other skaters like Yulia or Oksana. Those didn't keep their "strength" (from the reasons that could be discussed separately), while I don't think that this could be applied to Alina. I don't think she has technical or health problems like some of the others. I don't think it would be among that "a lot that would be lost", when she was motivated the right way, she has performed well.

As for the artistry, I am not against it at all, the problem is that it is much more the matter of taste. For me the performances of the 4A or some other young skaters are not less artistic than let's say Bradie's or Mariah, to name two current ladies over 20. At Europeans I was watching Nicole schott, who is often named in one row with Carolina Kostner, but to be honest, her perfromances didn't make a deep impact in me not only from the technical side, but I didn't see some exciting art in it. We are back to my usual question what it comes to that: who are the alleged artistic skaters who should be winning the championships if not the current skaters under 18?

 

[Tolstoj]

The main difference is, most top men are over 18 years old. Yuzuru won Sochi at the age of 19, for instance. Most top women aren't. Tuktamysheva, Evgenia and Bradie are the only top-ish women at/over 20, and they're not competitive at the very top. Rika and Alina are 17, the rest are 16 and under. The last time any woman over 20 won anything significant was, I believe, Mao Asada winning Worlds in 2014. Thus, there might not be enough time for these skaters to develop said artistry.

What you're seeing now is the result of the current rule, if you change them you'd see stronger +18 women because you'd have to last 2-3 seasons or if you're lucky capitalize everything in the senior debut like Zagitova.

It's also a motivation factor, as of now there are less incentives for older skaters to keep up technically with the top if the newcomers get the best marks at the first events immediately mostly due to the technical contents they bring.

That said i wouldn't discount either Tuktamysheva, Medvedeva or Tennell as not competitive. Technically Liza could still compete for the top spots in Russia, Medvedeva is taking a different approach working on those skating skills (which is why i also don't agree the whole argument about you can't improve artistry with age), while Tennell is getting better, she qualified for GPF this season.

I think they are all 3 still in the mix for something, but right now literally all gold medals are won by Eteri skaters.

I suppose Irina would know. But I have always wondered if that was really true. Did Totmianina and Marinen have better lobbiests at ISU headquarters than Slutskaya did? (Plushenko and the dancers were clearly going to win no matter what.)

Well judge by yourself, there are a lot of other interesting claims in that interview. She does play a bit of the victim role, but i believe her especially on the lack of funding, which is kind of insane nowadays.

https://www.fsuniverse.net/forum/threads/vaytsekhovskayas-interview-with-irina-slutskaya.105280/
https://rsport.ria.ru/20190209/1550615378.html

I guess Russia has never really pushed ladies (and we could throw all sorts of conspiracy theories there on why), as they never really had a depth back then, nowhere near as the other disciplines, they took advantage of mostly Slutskaya, but also Butyrskaya and Sokolova successes, but there weren't really others behind.

Irina could have won if she had skated better! She has only herself to blame.

She did blame herself for falling, and it was her fault for that, on 2002 tho...