- Joined
- Oct 26, 2010
At the world championships press conference, ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta provided some details for the new team event that will be added in Sochi. He said, "This is something very new, it means there will be five figure skating gold medals, instead of four."
While this is very exciting, where does this leave synchronized skating, which has not always been respected but has evolved with the new system, requiring high levels of technical difficulty while maintaining the precision at the core of this discipline. Synchronized skating has been pushing the envelope with increasingly competitive world championships in recent years. Further, it allows phenomenal skaters who have difficulty jumping or for whatever reason cannot find an ice dance partner to continue skating at a highly competitive level. And don't forget the teamwork component.
While I understand what Cinquanta said with there being more complications because of the sheer increase in numbers of competitors, do you think it was fair that this new team event was awarded Olympic status while synchro is left behind? Should the ISU be pushing the IOC harder to make synchronized skating a sport? In my opinion, this is an entire figure skating discipline being left out with little recognition and support, both of which it has earned in recent years.
What are your thoughts?
While this is very exciting, where does this leave synchronized skating, which has not always been respected but has evolved with the new system, requiring high levels of technical difficulty while maintaining the precision at the core of this discipline. Synchronized skating has been pushing the envelope with increasingly competitive world championships in recent years. Further, it allows phenomenal skaters who have difficulty jumping or for whatever reason cannot find an ice dance partner to continue skating at a highly competitive level. And don't forget the teamwork component.
While I understand what Cinquanta said with there being more complications because of the sheer increase in numbers of competitors, do you think it was fair that this new team event was awarded Olympic status while synchro is left behind? Should the ISU be pushing the IOC harder to make synchronized skating a sport? In my opinion, this is an entire figure skating discipline being left out with little recognition and support, both of which it has earned in recent years.
What are your thoughts?