Judging the "Old-Fashioned" Way

I think if the athletic part of the sport is called barel jumping in here, it is already a diminish of what these athletes can do, so we dont need the less fans or general audience to turn their back because they dont get CoP, we are killing the sport ourselves just fine. How can you think the jumping in figure skating is as easy or as important as the barel jumping we ALL did at school at some point? Can I be Phelps because I swim at the sea or Bolt because I can run in the street? Can we all skate and do a single loop because we can jump in our yard?

We all shout that we dont want fs to be a beauty contest but cannot aknowledge that in this sport athletes are not only doing a choreography to the beat of the music, so how can the rest of the world realise they are not watching some people in strange costumes just dancing?
I dont know, if jumps, spin, steps etc are less important for people while watching fs, then i really think they watch the wrong sport.
It is like someone tells me he can do trampoline at school, so thats all what gymnastics is about.
Maybe i m confused with all the arguments i read

Joesitz said:

There was barrel jumping as well which was replaced by Jumps in the traditional scheme of Free Skating which was 40% of Figure Skating. Skaters can now jump into the air and rotate all their jumps in the same direction. Much, much easier than jumping over barrels

silverpond - I'm not really interested in a name change for figure skating but you gotta admit, the PC scores are very much about the program more than judging the contestant. And its all based on the majority of scores as in Pagaent Judging.

Are you really happy with the results?

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YIKES!! Barrel Jumping??? Are you serious, Joesitz? Can you imagine designing a "program" around leaping over barrel? What kind of music would be appropriate? Perhaps "Flight of the Bumblebee" would inspire the skaters. If the barrels were set up at opposite ends of the rink, the skaters could skate to one end, jump over the barrel, and assuming they can still move, race to the other side of the rink and jump over the other barrel. Or, they could be really creative and place the barrels so that it's a sort of high-hurdle event - with the barrels spaced apart by 20-30 feet. If this was a timed event, it might really create havoc on the rink. The skaters would have to be well padded to ward off serious injury. This is the kind of stuff I write when I've just returned from a 11-hour work day and facing yet another marathon day in the office tomorrow.

Yes, I agree that the judges score the overall program - the complete package. But in doing so, they are also "judging" the competitors.

Again, thanks for giving me a huge laugh!!

seniorita said:

...we dont need the less fans or general audience to turn their back because they dont get CoP, we are killing the sport ourselves just fine.

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I agree with this assessment 100%. If anyone read the figure skating boards they would conclude that figure skating must be the stupidest activity in the world and that everything skaters do is just awful.

(But if people would only listen to ME, then all the problems would be solved and everything would be wonderful. )

No one is suggesting the return of Barrel Jumping Competitions.

The issue for discussion is whether the CoP needs revising or the ISU rules without question.

Mathman said:

I agree with this assessment 100%. If anyone read the figure skating boards they would conclude that figure skating must be the stupidest activity in the world and that everything skaters do is just awful.

(But if people would only listen to ME, then all the problems would be solved and everything would be wonderful. )

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Do you think part of the popularity of "Dancing with The Stars" has to do with it's easy to understand scoring system?

Can you honestly say that if DWTS adopted the CoP style of scoring it would enhance the show's popularity?

Would having anonymous judging make the show more popular?

I see a great similarity between competitive ballroom dancing and figure skating. Both use music and costumes and judges to determine who wins the competition.

Just being a judged competition does not make something a sport.

As Joesitz has pointed out most sports do not give partial credit for failed attempts or elements. In football a fifty yard pass down the field just off the fingertips of the receiver is an incomplete pass and does not get partial credit.

In baseball no more credit is given to a thunderous shot caught on the warning track than an infield popup caught by the 3rd baseman.

If the CoP had been used for the Women's soccer final USA surely would have won considering they hit the goalpost/crossbar 4 times.
In skating's bizarre system that might have equaled two more goals.

I think the rules and/or scoring system helps define what is sport and what is a judged competition.

When a skater wins because they were considered more theatrical or musical we are getting away from sport and into the realm of art or even show business.

When a very attractive costume is said to enhance the skater's good looks and program we are getting into pageants. The alluring Laura Lepisto in her beautiful red dress winning bronze at 2010 Worlds comes to mind. It didn't hurt that she is European either. Is that mentioned in the CoP rulebook :think:

If the equally alluring Miki Ando wasn't wearing such a ridiculous costume she probably would have won bronze at 2010 Worlds.

Don't get me wrong, I really love skating. I just don't think of it as a real sport but as a hybrid of sport and theater art.
The CoP rules don't seem to fit very well but don't take my word for it. Just check out the ratings.

Mathman said:

I think the CoP is a big obstacle to reviving the popularity of figure skating in the United States.

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I agree, Mathman.

(Should this be a separate thread?)

Imagine that you have been hired as part of a consulting group charged with the task of improving the position of international figure skating in the global market.

The ISU remains the organization responsible for overseeing figure skating as an Olympic sport, but its leadership and member federations are willing to consider a complete separation of the figure skating and speedskating branches, as well as increasing or decreasing its role in promoting and regulating figure skating competition at all international levels. Let's call this organizing entity ISU-FS. After reorganization, they may take on roles that had previously been the province of national federations or of professional event organizers, or they may give up some of their existing responsibilities to those entities.

Several proposed approaches are on the table.

Do you want to choose one and expand on how you would achieve it?

Or do you want to reject all of these approaches and submit your own alternative?


1. ISU-FS should consider itself as a business purveying an entertainment product. Success would be defined by skating's profile in the entertainment sector (which includes professional sports) of key national markets around the world -- countries where there is plenty of money to spend on entertainment and enough interest in figure skating to make skating a competitive product within that market. Viewership numbers, income from media outlets and sponsors, and secondarily from ticket sales, would be measures of that success.

Suppose that market research has shown that large general audiences tend to value the following qualities most highly in a figure skating performance:
*Difficult/spectacular tricks
*Lack of easily visible flaws in execution
*Beautiful body line and movement quality
*Musicality
*Charisma
*Attractive costumes and easily understood choreographic themes

These audiences also tend to tune in for
*human interest stories
*a method of determining results that is clear enough that casual fans feel they can play along at home
*controversies pitting one value system against another.

What kinds of events should ISU-FS organize? Which of the existing events should be scrapped completely or re-imagined from scratch? What kind of new events should be introduced? Any that involve audience participation or that don't involve competition at all?

What should be the process for choosing which skaters can participate in each of these events?


2. ISU-FS should consider itself in the business of maintaining athletic and technical standards of an objective sport. Above all it seeks respect and acceptance by the IOC, other Olympic sports and amateur sports associations in general, and the speedskating branch of the ISU in particular.

The Olympic motto of higher faster stronger is taken as an ideal.

There may even be an overt threat that unless figure skating improve its objectivity and fairness, it will be removed from the Olympics.

Suppose that surveys of the Olympic decisionmakers, and athletes and fans from a wide range of professional and Olympic sports, the following qualities are most valued:

*Difficulty, including but not limited to numbers of revolutions in all rotating elements and variations of body position that challenge the skater's balance
*Speed
*Height (of jumps, extension, etc.)
*Number of elements performed
*Do or die -- no partial credit (this could mean that certain kinds of errors, as obvious as a fall or as subtle as an edge change, result in no credit for a given element -- or it could mean that certain kinds of gross errors such as falls result in the entire peformance being disqualified)

In addition, this group of decisionmakers has shown a clear distrust of the role of show business in sport. There have been suggestions from some to ban nude fabric or lack of fabric on any part of the torso, to ban sequins and crystals entirely, and even to do away with music entirely.

What kinds of changes should ISU-FS make to its Olympic product? Should technology replace human judgment in some or all of the process of determining results?

What other events should ISU-FS hold to determine Olympic participants, world champions, etc.? Should they also organize other kinds of events that do not meet the Olympic demands? Or should they narrow their focus to strict sport while allowing competitors in their events also to participate in non-ISU events (some of which may pay very well), with no loss of eligibility?

3. ISU-FS should consider itself in the business of maintaining the traditional values of pure figure skating. Success would constitute the fairest possible system of competition for participants who have trained to excel in all skating techniques.

Suppose a survey of active and retired competitors, judges, and coaches shows that the following qualities are most valued:

*Speed and flow across the ice
*Depth and security of edges
*Accuracy of blade control in the execution of turns, steps, and tricks (including details such as clean turns, clean correct jump takeoffs and landings, spin centering, etc.)
*Difficulty and variety of turns, steps, and tricks
*Control of skating as evidenced by rhythmically timing stroking and knee bend to music
*Classic pure body line

There may be some conflict between those who value originality and self-expression vs. athletic risk taking vs. tradition and pure technique.

How should competitions and scoring be organized to prioritize these traditional skating values most fairly for the participants?

How can tradition be valued while also rewarding skaters for expanding athletic or artistic limits through the use of skating technique?

Recognizing that many of these skating qualities are invisible to general viewers with no skating training, and that many do not come across accurately from a distance or mediated by video even to knowledgeable viewers, what is the best way to communicate the criteria to the audience?

Which approach would you start with? Why and how?

I think by now the fans of the CoP are satisfied with a less popular sport. They have that emotional feeling about the Program scores together with the arithmetics of the Tech to make it a perfect sport for them, and with full faith in the system, it doesn't really matter if other fans have forsaken Figure Skating. Complex scoring is better than simple scoring.

If for any reason, the Rules change like omitting partial credit, they will agree to it without question.

Mathman said:

I agree, Mathman.

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what is that?

seniorita said:

what is that?

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That was my little attempt at asking, why do posters keep saying they don't the CoP and address their remarks to me of all people? I don't like the CoP either.

By the way, here is a little history of the sport of barrell jumping that I found.

http://www.hickoksports.com/history/barreljumping.shtml

Mathman said:

That was my little attempt at asking, why do posters keep saying they don't the CoP and address their remarks to me of all people? I don't like the CoP either.

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Because you keep answering.

Mathman said:

That was my little attempt at asking, why do posters keep saying they don't the CoP and address their remarks to me of all people? I don't like the CoP either.

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LOL!

Cause you said if people listen to you, everything will be wonderful, or something like that, so who else to adress to?

They were still doing barrel jumping as a demonstration at US Nationals back in the 1980's.

Michael Verlich, was the bronze medallist in ice dancing with Jean Miley, used to do it during the gala.

As with any system that is developed by flawed humans (and while some people who post here on GS think they are without flaw, they'd be flawed in that thinking), the system isn't perfect and there is always going to be issues. What those issues are tend to be perceived differently by different people. Just because some people here don't actively bash the scoring system, doesn't mean they agree with the method of determining a winner without question and wouldn't make changes to it if they could.

In my opinion, the purpose of the figure skating arm of whatever IGB there is should be to promote "stronger, higher, faster" (harder elements at a better speed, with excellent choreography/transitions other than crossovers) skated in a manner that attracts a casual audience (nice line, musicality, charisma and personalities) where the contest is judged in a transparent manner (no anonymous judging) such that the people at home/in the audience can play along and understand once the contestant is done immediately whether they've done well or not and can agree or agree to disagree with those results immediately instead of having to search the internet to figure out if the score is good, mediocre, or bad. The IGB also needs to serve the skater in their method of judging - skater A needs to understand what they need to work on so that next season once they "get" that they will be able to be skater B if skater B doesn't improve. Basically, there needs to be a "best of both worlds" between the 6.0 and IJS. IJS is great in that the skater knows what they got credit for and what was deemed less than ideal. When they look at their protocol sheets and the levels and GOEs they can make plans to improve the less than stellar numbers. On the other hand, the casual fan has no idea if "53" is a good number or a bad number for the SP. Under the old system, when receiving critiques from judges, the first judge might say "I really like your choreography and program layout and your spins, but man your jumps are small and need to be better and you could improve your speed" while the second judge could say "I like the fact your jumps are fully rotated, it's a big deal at this level and your speed and flow across the ice is really excellent, but I don't see the music and choreography as a good match to your on ice persona" and the third judge could say "your spin positions are a little weak as is your centering. Your speed is OK, but you look like you are struggling to get that speed versus flowing easily. Your jumps are just OK, but I wouldn't focus on that at the moment since they are acceptable for your current level". After getting this kind of feedback, what do you go back and work on?

mskater said:

Under the old system, when receiving critiques from judges, the first judge might say "I really like your choreography and program layout and your spins, but man your jumps are small and need to be better and you could improve your speed" while the second judge could say "I like the fact your jumps are fully rotated, it's a big deal at this level and your speed and flow across the ice is really excellent, but I don't see the music and choreography as a good match to your on ice persona" and the third judge could say "your spin positions are a little weak as is your centering. Your speed is OK, but you look like you are struggling to get that speed versus flowing easily. Your jumps are just OK, but I wouldn't focus on that at the moment since they are acceptable for your current level". After getting this kind of feedback, what do you go back and work on?

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I think that is great feedback! The skater should work on increased height in his jumps, improve his speed with especial attention to effortless acceleration, work on spin positions and centering, and try to develop an individual musical style.

I do not see how attaching decimal numbers to those suggestions would be of especial use to the skater.

Mathman said:

I think that is great feedback! The skater should work on increased height in his jumps, improve his speed with especial attention to effortless acceleration, work on spin positions and centering, and try to develop an individual musical style.

I do not see how attaching decimal numbers to those suggestions would be of especial use to the skater.

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It's true that both forms of feedback can be as contradictory as the examples mskater93 provided. So neither form has the advantage there.

One advantage to sitting down and talking with judges afterward is that you can get very explicit qualitative feedback and you can ask follow-up questions.

One disadvantage is that it's very time consuming and labor intensive for the judges. Can you imagine if they had to give a five-minute critique to every skater in every event? That would take longer than the events themselves, especially if multiple judges critique each skater. So that kind of feedback is rare, has to be solicited specifically, and sometimes involves extra expense (higher entry fees for competitions that offer critiques; traveling to skate for and meet with a specific judge for individual critique or more likely paying for the judge to travel to where the skater is). In most competitions there's no mechanism set up to get detailed direct feedback from judges because there just isn't enough time.

Also, judges aren't allowed to talk to skater A about how they judged skater B. So those kinds of critiques don't give any comparative information the way actual scores do.

Protocols will show where skater B earned more points. If skater A looks at the protocols and looks at the videos and sees that the judges scored B higher on this element or that component, she may be able to see for herself how B was better. In many cases under IJS, the answer is in the base marks for the calls made by the technical panel, not the judges. E.g., if B gets credit for two double axels and A gets downgrades on both her attempts, that might be the answer right there.

If the areas where B was better are not apparent to A and her coach even after studying the protocols and videos, there's no official mechanism under any judging system to tell her "B skated faster and jumped higher and spun faster and had a better balance of clockwise and counterclockwise skating, so those areas trumped the areas were A was better." If A is unable to see the difference in speed and jump height if that was the deciding factor, for example, or is unable to see the difference in jump rotation if that was the difference, then she will remain bewildered either way.

The protocols just show the numbers, not the thought processes -- if a skater really wants to know what a judge was thinking, she still needs to find the judge and ask. And with anonymous judging in international events, it isn't possible to identify which judges gave which marks so you wouldn't know who to ask about what.

Joesitz said:

Lest we forget. The name of the sport is FIGURE skating. I think it should be changed to Program Skating. No?

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Joe, I agree. The term Figure Skating is sort of lost on the sport now. Yes, I remember spending hours tracing figures over and over (feeling frustrated). As someone pointed out Trixi Schuba won several world titles on the strength of her figures. It's true, I saw her once demo her command of the blade. Her tracings were perfect. The goal of the skater was to lay the figure down perfectly with no wobbles or flats (skating on the flat of the blade). Trixi's tracings were awesome - her edges flawless. Her circles were the precise size and her tracings were one on top of the other. Judges actually got down on their hands and knees to measure and inspect the skaters tracings in those days. I doubt they would want to do that today. Unfortunately, the art of tracing figures was lost on the general public who rarely saw this part of the competition and found it boring and difficult to understand the marking system. Many great free skaters lost to skaters - like Trixi - who were just so good at tracing figures, but lacked artistically at free skating. I have often thought perhaps the term "figure" skating should be changed to just Free Skating. However, perhaps, historically the term at least connects skating as we know it today to the great legacy that was once true figure skating.

Mathman said:

That was my little attempt at asking, why do posters keep saying they don't the CoP and address their remarks to me of all people? I don't like the CoP either.

By the way, here is a little history of the sport of barrell jumping that I found.

http://www.hickoksports.com/history/barreljumping.shtml

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Thanks for the link. Tell me what is the value difference between an extra rotation on a jump, and jumping with an extra barrel?

Mathman said:

I think that is great feedback! The skater should work on increased height in his jumps, improve his speed with especial attention to effortless acceleration, work on spin positions and centering, and try to develop an individual musical style.

I do not see how attaching decimal numbers to those suggestions would be of especial use to the skater.

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Did you ever join a Track Team? Beyond the 'dashes' the coach had me train for broad and high jump competitions, because as he said, I have natural spring in my legs. Not everyone is born equal. One can only improve his natural talent.

Ladskater said:

Joe, I agree. The term Figure Skating is sort of lost on the sport now. Yes, I remember spending hours tracing figures over and over (feeling frustrated). As someone pointed out Trixi Schuba won several world titles on the strength of her figures. It's true, I saw her once demo her command of the blade. Her tracings were perfect. The goal of the skater was to lay the figure down perfectly with no wobbles or flats (skating on the flat of the blade). Trixi's tracings were awesome - her edges flawless. Her circles were the precise size and her tracings were one on top of the other. Judges actually got down on their hands and knees to measure and inspect the skaters tracings in those days. I doubt they would want to do that today. Unfortunately, the art of tracing figures was lost on the general public who rarely saw this part of the competition and found it boring and difficult to understand the marking system. Many great free skaters lost to skaters - like Trixi - who were just so good at tracing figures, but lacked artistically at free skating. I have often thought perhaps the term "figure" skating should be changed to just Free Skating. However, perhaps, historically the term at least connects skating as we know it today to the great legacy that was once true figure skating.

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Nicely put Ladskater. Barbara Ann Scott's figures were exceptional too. I wonder who would have been the champion between she and Trixie.

There really have been no changes in the contents of figure skating, but the ISU has changed the mechanics of running a competition. We have to live with that.