- Joined
- Jul 11, 2003
That's a hefty amount for skater(s) to refuse the offer.It also says ISU pays $10,000 for participating in his/her 3rd GP.
I can only see Pairs as having a vacant slot for competition. Maybe there will be others. Quien sabe?
That's a hefty amount for skater(s) to refuse the offer.It also says ISU pays $10,000 for participating in his/her 3rd GP.
That's a hefty amount for skater(s) to refuse the offer.
I can only see Pairs as having a vacant slot for competition. Maybe there will be others. Quien sabe?
If the main purpose is to have only top skaters, then why not restrict the Grand Prix to the top 12 at Worlds, with a few extra spots going to top Seasons Best scorers? Of course, the big drawback to this approach is that with injuries and illnesses, there will be lots of withdrawals which will have to be filled in with 'inferior' skaters.
Hernando, Alissa Czisny scored 100 points more than a skater (Tatyana Khazova) at US Nationals. It also happened in dance. Do you feel that Nationals would benefit from restricting the skaters who went based on a similar criterium? If not, what do you feel the difference is?
ETA: I went and checked this last season, and I couldn't find a single example of a senior GP event where the top skater was 100 points higher than the last placed skater. Do you have an example in mind?
Just watching the first group of skaters and then the second group at almost any GP seems like night and day.
Even when the reigning world champ is in 8th place?
My point is that she skated in the earlier group.
Ok, and there are always exceptions to the rule.
There are always a couple of exceptions -- top skaters having a bad day or a bad year for one reason or another.
The skaters who come into the GP with lower rankings and are not already stars known to the public may be less likely to contend for medals. But again there are always exceptions. The general public won't already be familiar in advance with the juniors moving up to senior, but when they have a breakout performance at their first GP event, they can establish themselves as new stars. Each year some new seniors bring fresh excitement to the senior scene and others have disappointing debuts that they may or may not redeem in future seasons.
Some well-known veterans may be past their peak or may have had a disappointing season last year and are now on the comeback trail. Again, it's hard to know who will successfully rebound at the time the invitations are issues. But often these veterans already have fan followings, in their home countries or in countries where they had successful competitions in the past. So including some of these well-known names is another way to attract fans
And then there are skaters who aren't very well known, aren't very charismatic or exciting, don't attract many fans especially outside their home countries, but they got the job done last year and earned high enough placements and rankings to deserve GP assignments, by beating skaters who do have the charisma and past titles to attract more fans.
So where do you make the cutoff on how many skaters to invite to the series and how to choose which ones?
How many entries per discipline make for a satisfying event for spectators? How many make the event too drawn out for casual fans and too expensive to host? How many is too few for fans to feel they got their money's worth of entertainment, especially if several skaters end up withdrawing at the last minute?
It's a balancing act. If you include too many skaters, you risk boring the audience and spending too much money. If you include too few, you risk leaving out skaters that fans really wanted to see and you risk ending up with too small a field if there are withdrawals. And then from the point of view of fairness, if you include fan favorites who didn't earn top results last year, you kind of have to include less well-known skaters who did earn the results.