Should minimum age for seniors be raised?

[Grin]

Hey, why not make it like boxing and martial arts and introduce weight categories, except it's now height and cup size Gotta be 'fair' after all ~

I have already proposed this several times. I'm all for it!
Skaters will be pleased because tall skaters will have medals, short skaters will have medals. Fans will be happy too.

P.S. 2019 year, random top skater weighing herself a day before the competitions...
- OMFG, I'm in Trusova category (desperately eating Big Mac)

 

[moriel]

Hey, why not make it like boxing and martial arts and introduce weight categories, except it's now height and cup size Gotta be 'fair' after all ~

Yep i already proposed to use cup size as a cut for seniors, and even add more show to competitions by measuring it in public before the ladies can compete.
But tbh, now i wonder what would be the male equivalent of this and how it would work.

Ponder... Maybe just height and weight? Because we are all forgetting about how chubby figure skaters are discriminated in this sport of 50kg girls, and how unfair the competition is for them.

Ok, ISU, I want to see chubby figure skaters, plz cater.

 

[Grin]

Yep i already proposed to use cup size as a cut for seniors, and even add more show to competitions by measuring it in public before the ladies can compete.
But tbh, now i wonder what would be the male equivalent of this and how it would work.

Ponder... Maybe just height and weight? Because we are all forgetting about how chubby figure skaters are discriminated in this sport of 50kg girls, and how unfair the competition is for them.

Ok, ISU, I want to see chubby figure skaters, plz cater.

Ok, ISU. Now I want to see most prestigious superheavy category!

 

[VerityXxX]

Personally in my opinion the problem with skating at the moment is that skaters upon turning senior in the ladies do not tend to progress and even regress. For example in mens they will often pick up quads as they go allowing them to up their tech scores to keep in contention. To contrast the only way for girls to learn them seems to be to do it as a junior and hope not to get hit too hard by puberty. For me this negates the point of the sport as even on gymnastics which has a similar cut off point gymnasts will tend to improve building skills to upgrade their programs. To contrast female skaters will tend to loose their skills especially in their jumps. However, I don’t think the problem will be fixed by changing the age limit to 18 though I do support pushing it to sixteen but by reassessing the importance of step sequences and choreography and even spins. I don’t want to be keeping every skater in the sport until they are thirty but I do want the skaters to be making progress and moving up throughout their careers.

 

[tars]

Carol H. Jenkins against lowering age limit

The 1960 Olympic champion, the 1956 Olympic silver medalist, and a five-time World champion (1956–1960) says she's afraid lowering the age limit in ladies' single skating may deprive the sport of special young talents in the article by Phil Hersh.

Carol Heiss Jenkins, who has been a skating coach for 40 years, was 13 when she became the first female skater to land a double axel, 16 when she won an Olympic silver medal in 1956 and 20 when she became champion in 1960. She is against raising the age limit for several reasons, one that may apply more to the United States.

“There aren’t that many of those special young girls, and if you say they can’t compete until they are 18, you may miss out on some really beautiful skaters,” Heiss Jenkins said. “You’ll have some very talented young skaters say they might not stay in the sport if they can’t make a senior world team until 18.

“Some won’t be able to afford financially to wait until 18. And here in the U.S., kids want to go on to college.”

Carol Heiss winning 1956 Worlds at the age of 16:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBmkAh2nxkA

 

[moriel]

I think ideally, they could bring the junior champions rules.
For example, senior age limit is 16 or 17, but junior worlds medalists can advance to seniors starting from 15. This kinda "protects" the seniors from an overflow of teenage jumping beams, but still allows the most talented to advance to senior ranks and create some competition and pressure so the senior ladies cannot really stagnate and stick to easy layouts.

 

[moriel]

Yep, kids everywhere may want to go to college, and its not like those are willing to accommodate figure skaters and their training and competition regime, not just in US, but literally everywhere.

 

[ramed]

Ok, ISU, I want to see chubby figure skaters, plz cater.

ISU will then rename itself to AESU (Adult Entertainment Skating Union) and introduce the softcore/hardcore categories. Gotta think how to distinguish between them...

 

[flanker]

By the way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-LCnGojnw
This girl Alisa was just nine when she played that part. Shouldn't there be some age restriction for kids on playing with orchestra to prevent some older harpist feeling bad?

 

[moriel]

By the way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1-LCnGojnw
This girl Alisa was just nine when she played that part. Shouldn't there be some age restriction for kids on playing with orchestra to prevent some older harpist feeling bad?

We should ban Mozart to start with. He started composing at age 4-5, that makes even me feel bad, and I am not even a musician.

 

[andromache]

Okay, I get that some people feel very strongly against raising the minimum age for seniors (I personally have very mixed feelings) but I don't think the analogies or jokes anyone here is making are quite fair.

Puberty is something that happens to literally everyone and I think it's reasonable to be skeptical or cynical about a sport in which the prepubescent (aka physical children) are more successful than post-pubescent (aka physical adults).

Does this have anything at all to do with thin people versus fat people? No. Physical fitness is entirely separate from physical age + maturity. Comparing figure skating to music? LOL, sure, as if hitting puberty has anything to do with how well you can play an instrument the way it does doing rotations in the air.

Prepubescent bodies have obvious advantages re: their jumping ability over post-pubescent bodies, but elite sport should be determined by more than what stage you are at in physical development.

In a perfect world, I think figures should be brought back, or at least something figures-adjacent. Don't raise the age minimum, but make objective evaluation of accomplishment of figures (or some sort of blade-to-ice work) a part of scoring criteria. Young prodigies will not suddenly regress in figures as they physically develop.

Overall, I just don't think it is appropriate for elite athletes to regress at age 16/17. If that is the major trend, then that elite sport is for children, not for adults.

(All of this said, I'm not sure if we're actually at this sort of "crisis" moment in the sport right now. We have yet to see a significant pattern of talented 13/14 year olds regressing as they develop - we're only speculating as to what will happen to this current crop of them. Let the next four to eight years play out - let's actually see what happens to them before we decide to enact long-term changes.)

 

[moriel]

Puberty is something that happens to literally everyone and I think it's reasonable to be skeptical or cynical about a sport in which the prepubescent (aka physical children) are more successful than post-pubescent (aka physical adults).

Lets look at the world medalists ages over the last 5 years:

2014: 23 - 15 - 27
2015: 18 - 16 - 16
2016: 16 - 24 - 17
2017: 17 - 22 - 19
2018: 23 - 17 - 19

Lets count:
15 years old girls on podium: 1 time
16 years old girls on podium: 3 times
17 years old or more: 11 times

I mean please tell me a bit more about the advantages that 15 and 16 years old girls have advantages and how they are more successful and how they dominate the sport.
Over the last 5 years, they were on World podium only 4 times.
In the last 2 years, not a single 15-16 years old was on Worlds podium.

 

[andromache]

Lets look at the world medalists ages over the last 5 years:

2014: 23 - 15 - 27
2015: 18 - 16 - 16
2016: 16 - 24 - 17
2017: 17 - 22 - 19
2018: 23 - 17 - 19

Lets count:
15 years old girls on podium: 1 time
16 years old girls on podium: 3 times
17 years old or more: 11 times

I mean please tell me a bit more about the advantages that 15 and 16 years old girls have advantages and how they are more successful and how they dominate the sport.
Over the last 5 years, they were on World podium only 4 times.
In the last 2 years, not a single 15-16 years old was on Worlds podium.

Did you miss this part of my post:

(All of this said, I'm not sure if we're actually at this sort of "crisis" moment in the sport right now. We have yet to see a significant pattern of talented 13/14 year olds regressing as they develop - we're only speculating as to what will happen to this current crop of them. Let the next four to eight years play out - let's actually see what happens to them before we decide to enact long-term changes.)

This concern about age limits and body development is obviously occurring due to the quads and 3As we're seeing from 13/14 year olds, who will theoretically be unbeatable until they lose their jumps as they go through puberty, at which point they will be defeated by a new crop of brand new seniors with quads and 3As.

Right now this isn't really a problem, and we should let things play out. Carlo Fassi warned against the end of figures because we would have tiny jumping beans winning everything. Sure, we had Tara and Sarah win OGMs, but we also had precociously artistic Oksana Baiul win OGM, Kwan domination for years and years, Irina S. come into her own long after she went through puberty, Shizuka Arakawa's OGM, etc. Fassi's concerns were largely unfounded.

If in 4-8 years we have cycles of dominance of new seniors who hit puberty and begin losing to new prepubescent seniors, then yes, I think that's bad for the sport. Hasn't happened yet, but we already have people preemptively both trying to prevent that from happening and people defending it if it does happen.

 

[el henry]

All the folks who are so salty that the age might possibly be raised, I am having fun reading the comments

Only because as amusing to you as comments about height, and about other disciplines, and heavens to Betsy about other endeavors even, the relevance is so far removed that the humor is gone. Talk about reductio ad absurdum... not related at all to the raising the minimum age for seniors and not convincing at all to those of us who support it.

And, I gotta say funny to me because it’s not even funny. I can’t believe how a move to protect the health of skaters is so *threatening*.....

 

[flanker]

Okay, I get that some people feel very strongly against raising the minimum age for seniors (I personally have very mixed feelings) but I don't think the analogies or jokes anyone here is making are quite fair.

Of course that was a hyperbole but you can read such arguments here (about older skaters feeling bad) and in the whole debate about this topic.

However, as it was said and pointed by examples, in fact there is very little number of such young victors (and also those who ended so early). Just having small body isn't definetely everything. Experience, mature moves etc., that all counts too. Just look at pairs and ice dance, majority of top pairs are people around 25-30 because only tiny body isn't enough. And I already mentioned that e. g. Alina Zagitova definitely is more developed physically than some older skaters. So the age restriction seems pretty stupid measure. Should I look at a skater who is now "developed" and "mature" differently because her first olympic season was when she was 15 and now she is 25 or more? Should we erase their achievements? Starting as senior by the age of 15 obviously NOT the limit factor by itself.

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

And, I gotta say funny to me because it’s not even funny. I can’t believe how a move to protect the health of skaters is so *threatening*.....

I think the problem is that no one actually believes you’d be protecting the health of skaters though. There is zero evidence to suggest it and I’m actually concerned you’d see the opposite. So....

 

[andromache]

I think the problem is that no one actually believes you’d be protecting the health of skaters though. There is zero evidence to suggest it and I’m actually concerned you’d see the opposite. So....

I agree with you. For better or worse, I think we've got to see how everything turns out for the current crop of preteen prodigies before any moves are made to protect the health of the ones who will come after them.

The wait-and-see approach might turn out really crappy if Kostornaia, Trusova, Scherbakova, et al are all too injured to compete beyond age 20, but really the only way to know if we're protecting skaters with any sort of rule change is to see what happens to the skaters pre rule change, and it's way too soon to know.

(I still think bringing back figures or something figure-adjacent would do the job of keeping everything extremely competitive and fair for both pre- and post-pubescent skaters, rather than something more arbitrary like an age limit. It would also mean that skaters have to spend time on less dangerous, but still very athletic, precise, and technical, types of training. Alas, anything akin to that is way less fun to watch than jumps.)

 

[musicfan80]

‪This is literally the dumbest and whiniest suggestion ever made in figure skating (and that’s saying A LOT!).

Every other Olympic sport - including GYMNASTICS for crying out loud - is fine with keeping the age 16 limit for elite/Olympic level. SIGH!‬

 

[Manitou]

Lets look at the world medalists ages over the last 5 years:

2014: 23 - 15 - 27
2015: 18 - 16 - 16
2016: 16 - 24 - 17
2017: 17 - 22 - 19
2018: 23 - 17 - 19

Almost identical with last 7 Olympics:
1994: 16-24-16
1998: 15-17-21
2002: 16-23-21
2006: 24-21-27
2010: 19-19-24
2014: 17-23-27
2018: 15-18-22

15 on podium: 2
16 on podium: 3


I think this whole thing is just a pre-emptive anti-Eteri action. I don't like Eteri, but it doesn't change fact this entire "proposal" makes no sense at all. Trusova stirred this whole chaos. Shame on you, Sasha!

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

(I still think bringing back figures or something figure-adjacent would do the job of keeping everything extremely competitive and fair for both pre- and post-pubescent skaters, rather than something more arbitrary like an age limit. It would also mean that skaters have to spend time on less dangerous, but still very athletic, precise, and technical, types of training. Alas, anything akin to that is way less fun to watch than jumps.)

Have you ever watched someone actually doing figures?

I’d rather watch the zamboni honestly.

**Dodges Internet Fruit pies thrown at my avatar***