Will We Ever Going To See a Quad Axel??

[aliceanne]

Elvis Stojko once said in an interview that he thought quintuple jumps could be possible if someone designed skates that were significantly lighter and could still offer the necessary support. He didn't think they would be common.

[AragornElessar]

I think we might just need a change in boot design for it to happen. Something to give a skater more support in the ankle maybe, so they can get a solid takeoff w/out the danger of it rolling due to the sheer amount of thrust needed for both the rotation *and* height? I really don't know.

The Triple Axel was the last of the triples checked off and the Quad Axel will be the same w/the Quads I think. Combine a special skater and possible advances in equipment design and hopefully someday...

edited to add...I posted my thoughts after reading the first page, so I was shocked to see aliceanne and I on the same wavelength.

[antmanb]

Nevermind.

[spikydurian]

Not only do I want to see LOTS of quad axels, but I want to see kneebones splurt out of a guy's body, right through their costume! That would be AWESOME!!!

Not to worry. Medical science is so advanced these days. The knees can be easily put back with superglue and titanium screws, or maybe replaced the whole leg with bionic muscles.

[essence_of_soy]

Not to worry. Medical science is so advanced these days. The knees can be easily put back with superglue and titanium screws, or maybe replaced the whole leg with bionic muscles.

Could you imagine if THE BIONIC WOMAN had taken up skating. She'd do octuple quads and spins that could rotate at 2000 revolutions per minute!

[npavel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TfAzhrUyrA

[PeterG]

Could you imagine if THE BIONIC WOMAN had taken up skating. She'd do octuple quads and spins that could rotate at 2000 revolutions per minute!

Until she fell and broke her neck. I believe she would get -3 GOE for that.

[mag]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TfAzhrUyrA

I love that video. So well done you hardly notice the editing

[LilJen]

Not only do I want to see LOTS of quad axels, but I want to see kneebones splurt out of a guy's body, right through their costume! That would be AWESOME!!!

Yeah, I think that's pretty much what would happen.

[antmanb]

Until she fell and broke her neck. I believe she would get -3 GOE for that.

-3 GOe on that element but could still win an Olympic Silver

[spikydurian]

Seriously.... if there are bionic replacement knees for sale, they will sell like hotcakes! There should be a huge market from the elderly and sports people.

[Iceman]

delete

[orbitz]

The whole argument as to why so few women can do 3Axel was that it require upper body strength that women don't generally have. But then you started seeing "frail_looking" skaters like Mao and Nakakno pull off 3A with good success. Granted they were rather fugly, as in the case of Nakano, but it was still done. So I think a 4A is possible, but the skater would have to do like a really weird take-off like a roller-skating technique and worries about the rotations and distance and not so much the height.

[wowonice]

I sure hope not. Not that it wouldn't be exciting to witness but the strain on the bodies isn't worth it. Besides, how often do you hear "was that a triple or a quad?". The skaters rotate so quickly, it is difficult sometimes to tell. Going to a 3A and beyond IMHO would lead to uglier skating. In order for the athletes to have the energy to insert such a huge jump in to a program, something would suffer and that something would be components. Lesser components= uglier skating.

[Aussie Willy]

Well the quad axel does have a base value. But is the potential injury really worth it?

[leafygreens]

On the one hand, raising the technical bar is exciting for the sport.

But on the other, jump injuries can take out a skater like that. You only have to look at skaters from the 1970s and 1980s and that they had pro careers reaching 10 or 15 years. Dorothy Hamill is still skating and she retired from the amateur ranks in 1976.

The flip side is that Tara Lipinski barely skated two years before she had to give up touring entirely.

I don't think Lipinski had to quit, she wanted to. She claims the hip surgery helped her and was still doing full arsenal of triples in 2002.

[leafygreens]

Will we ever see a 4A... Don't know but if we don't, then people will shriek that the sport isn't "progressing"...

[unicorn]

The whole argument as to why so few women can do 3Axel was that it require upper body strength that women don't generally have. But then you started seeing "frail_looking" skaters like Mao and Nakakno pull off 3A with good success. Granted they were rather fugly, as in the case of Nakano, but it was still done. So I think a 4A is possible, but the skater would have to do like a really weird take-off like a roller-skating technique and worries about the rotations and distance and not so much the height.

You forgot Midori Ito who had amazing jumping height, her 3A was much more effortless than Mao Asada.

[skatak]

Once a team made measurements of several parameters of Brian Joubert's jump, with sensors, etc. never knew what the outcome was though. But I guess it's probably by analysing the physics behind the jumps of a skaters that one could tell what can be achieved now.

I still remember the first Top Jump competition, with a practice session that left me speechless for quite a while : several skater doing 4T and 4S, i think it was Roman Serov doing/going for 4Lp, Frédéric Dambier doing/going for 4F and Michael Weiss doing 4Lz. and it's already some years back.

I also remember Candeloro saying huge improvement could be made on the boots/blades, as they did not evolve much in decades.

so probably one day a skater will try again the 4A seriously, it does not seem impossible.