It is disappointing our new ISU president couldn't leverage his connections and have Korea host a Grand Prix event. I suspect the outcome would have been different if the need was for a speed skating event.
Doubtful. As others have noted, the Korean fed lost their major sponsor after Pyeongchang 2018, and there have been several short-track speed skating scandals within the federation in recent years. It's been a struggle for them and it doesn't look like things are getting any better just because the new ISU president is Korean.
Converting a senior B event to Grand Prix might be the best bet at this point, but that seems to be a longshot considering how provincial many of these events are.
Yes, they're so provincial that we generally get live streaming with multiple camera angles, replays and some, like Budapest Trophy, even have graphics on screen and we see a lovely Kiss & Cry too. Others, not so much. I'm really surprised that the Hungarian fed hasn't put in a bid to host this GP.
To be honest, it will not be the end of the world if the series ends up as five events--the fields are already rather depleted, particularly in pairs. Remember, we only had five events in the inaugural 1995-96 Champions Series, and that was just fine.
See below... There are plenty of really good singles skaters and dancers who would lose out on a GP, plus it would mess with the seeding for the singles events to drop to five. The inaugural Champions Series isn't a good comparison since it was, you know, the first one and the very next season Russia's event was added.
The only discipline that is depleted enough to justify a 5 round competition is pairs - every other discipline has enough athletes who deserve a chance. Giving Russia any reason to believe that the sport can't survive without them at this point would be a mistake. It's an opportunity to give small feds more chances and to clean up the sport and the reputation that was so tarnished after Beijing.
What does Russia have to do with this? Now ISU is looking for a replacement for the Chinese GP.
Let's take the countries out of the equation and look at this from a slightly different angle in the sense that while, traditionally, the 6 GP hosts have been 6 specific countries the ISU is looking to replace TWO GP events, not one. Last season, when they were looking to replace just ONE, they had no trouble finding a host, and the same was true in 2018. This season, looking for TWO hosts, the going seems to be more difficult. It just so happened that the ISU announced both Russia and China as GP hosts and did not remove them as hosts at the same time.
We can debate the wisdom of the ISU assigning China a GP at all this coming season after they bowed out twice in the last 3 fully competed seasons (2018 & 2021), and maybe this discussion would be different if the ISU had, from the very start excluded China and found a different host for that GP. But, they didn't, so when the first event (which had been assigned to Russia) was removed, another federation immediately raised their hand and we heard about it. And, when, a few weeks later, they and the Chinese fed reluctantly realized that China wasn't in a position, with its zero-Covid policy, to host a GP this fall, it became a lot harder to find a second host. I suspect had the ISU, initially, said "we're not going to China next season," that Finland would have stepped up to offer to host that GP, and we'd now be discussing the fact that the ISU is having trouble finding another host for the previously assigned Russia GP.
If that had been the sequence of how this transpired, it would be a clearer case of "oh, look, how will the ISU survive without Russia?" but, really, the challenge is replacing not one but two GP events and, no matter how you slice it, the Russian propaganda machine will spin it exactly the way
@litenkyckling suggests.
And I doubt that ISU ignores small federations. This is not a Formula 1 GP to fight for.
Agreed. I think that as long as they have a decent bid, even from a small fed, they'd take it, especially if it's a fed that routinely organizes competitions. Hence, Estonia hosting three ISU Championships last season.
