What things would you change/add/remove to make figure skating popular again?

Leslie Browne spoiled me. She was such a wonderful actress, and because she was a dancer you could see that her every move was balletic. She sat like a dancer. She nodded her head like a dancer. She even got slightly tipsy as a dancer. After seeing The Turning Point, I came to expect that kind of seamlessness between the acting and the dancing in every performance movie. And then there's Baryshnikov. He was so believable in that movie, and he has continued to convince in films like White Nights. (The latter also starred another convincing dancer-actor, Gregory Hines.) I live in hope that we'll find the right people and the right story for our skating movie.

One set of movies that I find inspiring are the flamenco movies of Carlos Saura of Spain. His leading man was always Antonio Gades, one of Spain's leading flamenco artists, and his leading ladies were dancers Laura del Sol and Cristina Hoyos. Blood Wedding, Carmen, and El Amor Brujo have varying degrees of plotline, though the dance takes center stage. Has anyone seen them? And then there's the grandparent of all ballet movies, The Red Shoes. Think about it: You don't have to have a bunch of skaters who can act; you only need two or three for the prominent parts. The rest can be walk-ons who are there so we can enjoy their skating.

A segment from Saura's El Amor Brujo (don't know why the movement is so choppy)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydf1oIp6vyU

And here's the Ritual Fire Dance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L18b3UQQ49I&feature=related

Fundraising calendars of skaters in swimsuits. That's how the public will see how hot they are.

When I looked at a recent issue of Sports Illustrated with the impressive photos of athletes in action, I realized skaters do their things fully clothed and the public never get to see their muscles and bodies making those amazing moves, dripping in sweat with determined facial expressions. They are not considered athletes and figure skating not considered a sport because skaters dress in costumes and make the most difficult maneuvers look easy and artistic. Many other winter sports demonstrate easily understandable speed and risks and many winter athletes these days are promoted with photos of them scantily clothed.

Adam Rippon has been twitting vacation photos of his very fit and toned body in a swimsuit.

https://twitter.com/Adaripp/status/206159113036644353/photo/1
https://twitter.com/Adaripp/status/206098378042515457/photo/1

More skater should get on these kinds of pages: Sportsnet magazine: The Beauty Issue. Objectify them! It pays.

The girls of figure skating get lots of exposure. They wear short, skin-tight dresses with lots of sequins and sparkle, that look more like bathing suits with skirts. This is why skating is the glamour sport of the games. They don't need to do bikini calendars to show off how hot they are. In fact, figure skating has been criticized for marketing underage girls so making the girls appealing is really unnecessary.

What does need to be addressed is the notion that all male skaters are gay. I hear this even from members of my own family who skated and who should know better. I don't know how we go about changing this perception.

Skate Canada tried to address this issue with their "Not all of us are gay" and I don't think anybody liked the campaign - not the public and certainly not the skaters. One skater who participated (and who shall remain nameless here) said it was the most embarassing thing he'd ever been asked to do.

As for the girls, skating used to be one of the sports that girls could do. When I was growing up, we couldn't play hockey or football, a lot of other sports, but figure skating was fine. Today, there are women's hockey leagues and teams play at the Olympics. All sports are much more open to female participation and skating is being left behind.

The sport is expensive, and there's a perception that it's all fixed. Even posters here are convinced that politics matter in figure skating. Are you willing to spend $150,000 to train your kid in a sport where the results are pre-determined and your kid has no fair chance at winning? Few are.

Figure skating could be marketed as a extreme sport with the focus on athletics. Quads, triple axels and 3/3's, throw jumps and twists are all amazing feats on a par with those in snow-boarding and other extreme sports. Instead of focusing on the great athleticism to sell young people on the sport, skating focuses on the pretty, the exquisite, the artistry. Not the way to win young fans.

Using commentators in their 60's and 70's also does little to make the sport appeal to young fans either.

Mathman said:

Dorothy Hamill famously remarked about the 1976 Olympics, "It was either win the gold medal and skate with Ice Capades or get silver and go home to Chicago to my job as a secretary." Even as late as 1992, when Kristi Yamaguchi won the Olympic Championship, she sat down with her financial advisors to figure out if she could make more money by turning pro immediately and signing with Stars on Ice or by staying amateur for two more years.

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Kristi would have had a great shot at repeating as WC in 1993 and OC in 1994 with her technical content.

Dragonlady said:

What does need to be addressed is the notion that all male skaters are gay. I hear this even from members of my own family who skated and who should know better. I don't know how we go about changing this perception.

Skate Canada tried to address this issue with their "Not all of us are gay" and I don't think anybody liked the campaign - not the public and certainly not the skaters. One skater who participated (and who shall remain nameless here) said it was the most embarassing thing he'd ever been asked to do.

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I think what people objected to about the Skate Canada initiative was that it seemed like they were were saying, "Gay is bad, but you don't have to be gay to skate. You can be OK and still skate." No wonder skaters were embarrassed to be associated with it.

Gays are well represented in many artistic endeavors. Skating is open to everyone, come one, come all. The issue that really needs urgent action is bullying children. Last week in Detroit a 7-year-old boy hanged himself after being bullied at school.

A seven-year-old? Oh, God save us. I hadn't heard about that one.

Mathman said:

I think what people objected to about the Skate Canada initiative was that it seemed like they were were saying, "Gay is bad, but you don't have to be gay to skate. You can be OK and still skate." No wonder skaters were embarrassed to be associated with it.

Gays are well represented in many artistic endeavors. Skating is open to everyone, come one, come all. The issue that really needs urgent action is bullying children. Last week in Detroit a 7-year-old boy hanged himself after being bullied at school.

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IIRC wasn't this an attempt to attract more male sports fans? As if people won't tune in to watch a gay skater in sequins, but will tune in to watch a straight male skater in sequins. :disapp:

drivingmissdaisy said:

IIRC wasn't this an attempt to attract more male sports fans? As if people won't tune in to watch a gay skater in sequins, but will tune in to watch a straight male skater in sequins. :disapp:

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I was embarassed and I'm just a fan.

When officials are caught in contriving unfair results, they should be banned. We are not too stupid to notice them still sitting on judging panels, let alone being eligible to run for head of the ISU.

Many of us would like to see more of the competitors, not just the top three.

Suppose for a moment that hockey games were shown a week or more after the results are known, and then only the third period, don't you think there would be a drop in popularity?

Making the results even more transparent would be a start. Someone posted on another thread about a statistician answering the question, "Did the new judging system improve accountability in figure skating?" (or a question like that)-- and his response was an emphatic NO, because the new judging system is too convoluted for the average fan who tunes in every four years. Even gymnastics saw a dip in popularity when they changed their scoring system.

I think it's up to the skaters to make skating more interesting. People love human interest stories. People tuned in to watch Dan Jansen skate around the oval, not so much because speed skating is exciting (it is!), but because they wanted him to finally capture gold after two previous tries.

I am sure this year during the Summer Olympics, people will tune in to watch women's vault to see Oksana Chusovitina--who is not just a contender for the gold medal, but is also someone whose presence in gymnastics has been longer than some of her contemporaries have been alive.

Now, I'm not advocating creating drama for drama's sake or airing one's dirty laundry (we certainly don't need anything like this: http://youtu.be/0Vg6Ejha7rY ), but I think skaters should show a bit more personality during interviews. I don't mind it when Chan or Moir express their opinions publicly, or Nagasu gets cheeky. They're human, too.

I think that bullying of children has nothing to do with the issue of figure skating being, figuratively speaking, dead. Bullying has always been there, long before figure skating ever started its first competitions. And, figure skating used to be a lot more popular, in times when bullying was probably more of a common thing. (the ability to broadcast news to the world on-the-fly has only served to help people think that bad events are happening with more frequency). If you're going to become concerned about bullying, then do two things: give the education system the ability to punish children as it used to, and give the responsibility of parenting the children back to the parents.

As for helping figure skating climb out of the hole that it's in, two things in my opinion that need to happen are this. I think that some kind heart at the TOP of the news broadcasting world needs to step in give figure skating more attention than what it's been given. At the BOTTOM of the figure skating competition cirlce (as in the local rinks), the costs need to come down. With the economy being what it is, the costs of coachs' hourly rates and the costs of providing ice time need to come down. At least here in Massachusetts and in New York (I've talked to a number of folks who've been in figure skating for a long, long time) there are fewer rinks than there used to be, and there's less ice time available at the remaining rinks.

This means that ice is more crammed than it used to be. Who wants to deal with THAT? Coaches are also demanding higher rates. Some of that has to do with who coaches who THINK they are worth their salt (or that they are somehow not as good as other coaches if their rates are lower), and some of it has to do with the declining number of students and ice time available. I, myself, had a terrible time finding a coach (once I found one I was able to add another one) simply because the rinks they coach at don't provide that much ice time, and they don't coach more than one student at a time. Viscious cycle, huh???

This has been an awesome thread, not because I started it .... LOL .... but because so many of you all have a lot of insider knowledge of the sport (why can't www.cbssports.com acknowledge figure skating as a sport?). That tends to be hidden because most here are chatting about the latest gold medal hopeful, or because they're busy with their own lives. I believe, as at least one poster in this thread mentioned, that this IS a topic that's been beaten to death. Please, though, DON'T stop talking about it. You guys are the ones holding this sport up. It's not the Olympic hopefuls that are the foundation. They will win their medals and move on.

It's the ones at places like goldenskate that are the ones that spend the money that keeps the rinks open, the coaches employed, the young skaters outfitted with new boots and blades and fancy costumes, oh and a show writer. Manufacturers and rinks can't survive on elite skaters alone. Those at the top of their sport aren't going to spend money to keep this sport alive. They have other dreams to tend to.