2019 ISU World Team Trophy, April 11-14, in Fukuoka, Japan

[MsZem]

I get that it would have been nice for Madison Hubbell to win a team medal, but the team event already advantages specific countries, and there's no reason to make it even more stacked in their favor. By all means, allow substitutions across all four disciplines. But it should not be required, and it should be up to each country to decide which of its skaters will compete in which part. The team event should be about excellence across all four disciplines, not who has the most depth - something that is much harder for small federations to achieve.

Also, definitely no to the WTT format in the Olympics as suggested in the previous post. It allows Japan to bring in more of its popular skaters and succeed even when its pairs and dance teams finish well behind the others as happened this year. That's nice for an event held in Japan, with substantial prize money put up by the organizers and local sponsors. But it hurts countries that are stronger in pairs/dance, or even countries that are just more balanced, and that is not okay at the Olympics.

 

[Enchanted]

I’d like to see amount of single skaters to be reduced at WTT. Now, it’s rather unbalanced when pairs and icedance only have one entry. It would be more interesting if there would only be one skater/team in each discipline.

 

[Deleted member 40371]

I get that it would have been nice for Madison Hubbell to win a team medal, but the team event already advantages specific countries, and there's no reason to make it even more stacked in their favor. By all means, allow substitutions across all four disciplines. But it should not be required, and it should be up to each country to decide which of its skaters will compete in which part. The team event should be about excellence across all four disciplines, not who has the most depth - something that is much harder for small federations to achieve.

Also, definitely no to the WTT format in the Olympics as suggested in the previous post. It allows Japan to bring in more of its popular skaters and succeed even when its pairs and dance teams finish well behind the others as happened this year. That's nice for an event held in Japan, with substantial prize money put up by the organizers and local sponsors. But it hurts countries that are stronger in pairs/dance, or even countries that are just more balanced, and that is not okay at the Olympics.

I agree with your sentiments. For instance, if a team struggles in pairs/ice dance, the worst they could score is 7 points, a deficit of 5 points against the top performing team. If a team struggles in singles' events, the worst they will score is 1+2=3 points, a deficit of 20 against a team the maximises singles scoring (12+11=23, 23-3 =20). Japan is maximising this type of scoring by reducing their exposure to Pairs and Ice dance. US too a lesser extend in Pairs. I hope IOC and ISU doesn't introduce this type of scoring at the Olympics. Also, if Japan struggles in both Pairs and Ice dance, they won't even qualify for the olympics team event.

 

[Firedancer]

I don’t think it should be mandatory to substitute in all four events but I do think teams should have the option, limited to skaters who qualified for the Olympics. And I agree the scoring needs to change. Under the current scoring, some or all of the FSs can become meaningless.

 

[Debbie S]

I don’t think it should be mandatory to substitute in all four events but I do think teams should have the option, limited to skaters who qualified for the Olympics. And I agree the scoring needs to change. Under the current scoring, some or all of the FSs can become meaningless.

I agree with this. Obviously, the U.S. would have only had 1 pair team in the team event in Pyeongchang but it would have been nice to have been able to sub another dance team given the depth of U.S. dance.

Since the WTT is a stand-alone event, I don't have a problem with more (singles) skaters taking part. I feel like only 1 singles skater per discipline would make the event too small. Substitutions probably wouldn't be feasible since the organizers would have to pay for more skaters to skate less, so to speak, and they wouldn't like that.

 

[npavel]

I really would like all the teams to have SP/SD and FS/FD. And get the points like at WTT, the points for the short and the points for the free ranked separatelly

 

[RoseRed]

I really would like all the teams to have SP/SD and FS/FD. And get the points like at WTT, the points for the short and the points for the free ranked separatelly

I'm not sure what you mean. The Olympic team event already gives points for SP/SD/RD placement and FS/FD placement separately.

 

[Dobre]

One of the problems with the Olympic team event scoring is that the cut prior to the FD & FS maximizes the significance of the RD/SP and minimizes the significance of the FD/FS. So there is more risk to teams and athletes going up in the RD/SP.

And less risk to an athlete going up in the FS/FD.

In Dance, in particular, where momentum can be a big deal, no smart dance team in a tight battle would want to go up only in the RD. Then have their major home-country competition go up--quite possibly against an easier group of competitors--in the FD. And have said team get the push heading into the individual dance event. As we saw happen with Ilinykh & Katsalapov vs. Bobrova & Soloviev in Sochi. And no country would want their #2 to go up in the RD because there is a greater risk of losing points. (Of course, none of this would be as much of a problem if the team event happened after the individual ones).

At least at World Team Trophy, the two portions of the event are worth an equal amount and the level of competition in both portions of the event is equal.

 

[npavel]

I'm not sure what you mean. The Olympic team event already gives points for SP/SD/RD placement and FS/FD placement separately.

all 10 teams, not only 5. But if it's only 5 than it should be 10,8,6,4,2

 

[aussieSKATES]

If the World Team Trophy included two dance and two pair teams to match the four singles' skaters already represented for each nation, the event would definitely favour Team Russia and Team USA.

It was for the most part, a brilliantly skated competition.