ISU figure skating officials weigh major changes in rules, schedule

[Capt. DeSoto]

I mean, it IS possible for the judges to use the PCS marks correctly even if they currently don't.

Here I am, a relatively new fan who previously watched casually on TV, but started diving deeper a little over a year ago (diving into protocols, etc.). It became clear to me very quickly that I’ll never understand PCS.

 

[Karen-W]

I agree it will be a boost to skating's appeal in the US. I think it will be a boost if Ilia wins one as well. I think it will be an extraordinary boost if we win Gold in Women, Men and Dance. Especially if we have two US women on the podium.

What I disagree with is that this will be a big boost in $$ for the ISU that will be bigger than what they get from Asia.

You don't think?

List of largest consumer markets - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

US consumer market is 2.75 times larger than China, 8.35 times larger than Japan, and 23.5 times larger than South Korea. Those three Asian markets combined are half the size of the US market. And, let's be real, the ISU hasn't managed to truly tap into the Chinese market at all, so we're really talking about just Japan & Korea right now. The boost in interest in the US doesn't have to be as large, percentagewise, to bring in more $$ overall because the sheer size of the US consumer market dwarfs any other market in the world.

 

[Theatregirl1122]

I guess I just don't understand this idea that it is terrible to have a dominant athlete in the sport and we must change the rules to prevent them from winning so much. How many times has it been discussed in the past that one of the reasons people weren't watching figure skating was because there weren't any big enough stars to cross over into popularity beyond the sport? Now Malinin is and the ISU's response is that we must stop this? It's so short-sighted!

When atletes like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps emerged and were breaking world records left and right and winning all the gold medals, their sports celebrated them and guess what? Their success and the hype around them brought a lot of people to those sports that previously didn't care about them (source: I was one of them).

Simone Biles's success was a huge boost to gymnastics not just in the US, but world wide. But the FIG was still engaged in attempts to devalue her named elements to make them not worth doing. They couldn't stop her. And what gymnastics did was way less stupid and drastic than this.

But I don't get why they thought it was a good idea to try? I could see it being led by other federations who are not happy that they aren't winning. But it doesn't even seem like that is true in the case of figure skating.

Also, making a program judged only on PCS is a great way to ensure that the results have NOTHING to do with the skating. The look at how GOE and PCS are used now. And choreo elements in dance.

 

[kwanfan1818]

And to which Zoueva says, “So who’s up for Mahjongg?”

 

[tangerine dream]

Simone Biles's success was a huge boost to gymnastics not just in the US, but world wide. But the FIG was still engaged in attempts to devalue her named elements to make them not worth doing. They couldn't stop her. And what gymnastics did was way less stupid and drastic than this.

But I don't get why they thought it was a good idea to try? I could see it being led by other federations who are not happy that they aren't winning. But it doesn't even seem like that is true in the case of figure skating.

Also, making a program judged only on PCS is a great way to ensure that the results have NOTHING to do with the skating. The look at how GOE and PCS are used now. And choreo elements in dance.

Agreed on all points. I don't know why Simone didn't pop into my head when I wrote that post, she's a perfect comparison for Ilia - someone who was so far ahead of everyone else technically that the winner was essentially known before anyone competed. And yet tons of people still watched, excited to see what she could do, amazed at her ability to do things no one thought were possible.

To your last point, if they do this it will entirely depends on judges using PCS/GOE appropriately (which IMO is the biggest problem in the sport today). Are the judges really going to place a skater like Josefin Taljegard (who I adore) 20th in the jumping program and 1st in the non jump one? Are the two programs equally weighted?

I can't imagine watching the majority of the skaters today doing a program with no jumps. Most of them are not inherently musical and aside from a select few I imagine most would be rather boring and they're all going to start to look the same. They might as well just bring back figures.