ISU figure skating officials weigh major changes in rules, schedule

[Miezekatze]

This thread is discussing what those criteria should be. But, also the criteria aren't applied reasonably, so rule changing isn't necessarily going to change things. You can see this with the choreography scores that Sonja gets. They definitely should be higher IMO.

I don't know why people are assuming that the ISU wants to make changes in order to stop Ilia from winning. Ilia himself has said that the scoring system doesn't reward and incentivize artistry and creativity. And the judges are happy to give him high scores for things other than quads.

I used to prefer men's skating over women's, but I am so sick of splatfests resulting from the men going for quads that they don't land consistently. The quads are worth so much even with a fall that the skaters do the math and say that they should spend their training time and their competition time and energy on quads. I'm all for further reducing the value of quads with falls (and even more if the quad is not fully rotated).

Agreed.

It’s not Ilia, that’s the problem (even though I agree with jägerbomb, that he’s not as marketable to the masses as he/his management thinks he is), it’s the fact that the current judging system rewards especially the male skaters trying jumps they can’t do, which makes their whole programs completely unbearable to watch about 75% of the time.

Best example for me the Italian male skaters trying to get an Olympic spot, ruining their health and splatting on their programs so often, that as a viewer you barely got an idea how the program would actually look like. Then Memola seemingly enjoying to skate the first time this season at Europeans when he was too injured to try the quads.

Also the mens LP at Europeans was mediocre, but it had good performances, but all the good performances seemed to be young skaters who happened to land their jumps, while having crappy spins and no choreography until after their jumps. I did other things while watching it and still was bored.

Obviously removing all jumps from the LP would be over the top, but I think there need to be some changes to keep skaters from trying quads they barely ever manage.

For me as an audience member the skate that made watching Europeans the most worth it for me and that is going to stay with me forever and that I felt like sharing on social media was Josefin Taljegard by the way.

 

[zigzig]

So everyone would do the same step sequence? Aside from how old that would get -- worse than 10 Ricky Martin RDs -- how are they going to fit the music and theme of the program if it's prescribed?


I'm confused about this. They aren't giving GOE so what would be averaged? If 3 said a jump was not under-rotated but one did, it gets 25% of the underrotation penalty? Or just doesn't get counted as underrotated because the majority said it was fine? I like having the TS spread out but that might mean one really sees the jump while the others don't, so there has to be a way to reconcile this if it's going to work to solve the problem. Probably multiple cameras is a better solution as it requires fewer trained people.

Like if someone's 3A got called clean, q and < (and yes that is a pretty extreme case but I have seen some truly bonkers calls where an obviously underrotated jump was called clean - see Bradie Tennell's 2A+3T from Shanghai Trophy a few years ago - https://youtu.be/JLv6tPIQhAk?si=5EVQzDHJQh7YcY83&t=3m05s), the base value would average out to 7.2 (8 plus 8 plus 5.6 and then divided by 3).

ETA - I love Bradie and only picked this example cuz it was pretty egregious, especially considering that tech panel was going to town on other people's jumps.

 

[BittyBug]

So everyone would do the same step sequence? Aside from how old that would get -- worse than 10 Ricky Martin RDs -- how are they going to fit the music and theme of the program if it's prescribed?

Think of it as the compulsory dance of figure skating.

I used to prefer men's skating over women's, but I am so sick of splatfests resulting from the men going for quads that they don't land consistently. The quads are worth so much even with a fall that the skaters do the math and say that they should spend their training time and their competition time and energy on quads. I'm all for further reducing the value of quads with falls (and even more if the quad is not fully rotated).

I disagree that quads are worth so much with a fall that people risk them anyway. When you add in the -1 for the fall plus the impact on PCS including the cap for multiple falls, falling on a quad is costly. The reason people do them anyway is that it’s hard to win without a quad, as it should be for an athletic sport. Sport is about pushing the limits - citius, altius, forties - and I don’t want to see the clock rolled back.

I’ll also add that plenty of people got injured before the quad era. Both Rudy Galindo and Tara Lipinski had hip replacements at an early age, Michelle Kwan was felled by injury, Randy Gardner, Deanna Stellato, and on and on and on.

I said it before, but more unleveled elements provides more opportunities for reputation judging, as we see in ice dance with the choreo elements, and I think it’s a bad idea. That doesn’t mean what earns features for levels can’t or shouldn’t be changed, but having no levels at all makes things ripe for corruption.

 

[her grace]

They could start by actually judging PCS based on the published criteria. There should be larger variations in scoring of the three different components. See if that helps encourage more creativity, artistry, and well-rounded programs.