How Would You Explain And Apply GOE Rules?

IMHO there is one problem with the suggestion that casual skating fans ought to exert themselves to learn more about the CoP. They are not going to. So maybe we need to move on to some sort of plan B.

If a fan wanted to exert himself he wouldn't be watching TV, he would be down at the local rink.

And this, I think, brings the debate into sharper focus. Is amateur figure skating a spectator sport or a participatory sport? Gkelly's list of ways to measure the health of the sport (post #51 above) gives detail to this question. About half of the criteria she lists are about fan interest and half come from the participation side.

Given the fact that it's impossible to really understand figure skating just from watching on TV, I'd love to see broadcast coverage that considered the possibility that some fans might want to learn more and point them toward live experiences and other resources that don't fit into a two-hour broadcast package.

Then the fans who want to know more but don't know where to start could get some direction on where to start, and the fans who aren't interested in making the effort or don't have the resources to do so would be aware that what they're getting on TV is only part of the story (and a highly mediated one at that).

Mathman said:

IMHO there is one problem with the suggestion that casual skating fans ought to exert themselves to learn more about the CoP. They are not going to. So maybe we need to move on to some sort of plan B.

If a fan wanted to exert himself he wouldn't be watching TV, he would be down at the local rink.

And this, I think, brings the debate into sharper focus. Is amateur figure skating a spectator sport or a participatory sport? Gkelly's list of ways to measure the health of the sport (post #51 above) gives detail to this question. About half of the criteria she lists are about fan interest and half come from the participation side.

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I agree.
Does anyone think the millions of fans who watch NFL football on TV or at the stadiums actually all played football?
Or that all who watch (quite religiously in many cases) understand all the rules?

If a football fan needed to learn proper blocking and tackling techniques to enjoy football the fan base would be considerably smaller :yes:

most football fans know the ins and outs of their sport... and we don't mind asking when something happens that we don't understand... the folks that will watch it when the family/friends are aren't going to care and just lost teh vote on what got put on the tv. I may not be able to play or coach, but that doesn't mean I don't catch what's going on.

To me, the biggest loss is the demise of professional shows and competitions. In other (more popular) sports there is no problem with having a vigorous amateur competitive program, an adult recreational program, and a professional program geared to raking in money by presenting an audience-friendly product. If necessary, the rules can be slightly altered to accommodate different goals. For instance in baseball you have T-ball and coach-pitch for the littlest kids and special rules for co-ed adult softball leagues.

The glory days of ice shows were from the 1940s to the 1980s. Ice Follies (1037-1979) was an immensely popular and profitable enterprise. Peggy Fleming starred for a while, and Janet Lynn got a 1.4 million dollar contract, making her the highest paid female athlete in the world. Ice Capades ran from 1940 to the mid 1980s (it limped to its demise in 1995). Dorothy Hamill was its biggest star from 1977-1984.

We can't blame the demise of ice shows on the CoP. But in looking up the Ice Capades on Wikipedia I found this interesting take:

Analysts believe that on the one hand, the increasing popularity of the sport of figure skating (in the 1980s and 90s) meant that more sophisticated audiences came to prefer straightforward Olympic-style ice-skating competitions, or skating shows for adults (i.e., without cartoon characters) such as Stars on Ice; and on the other hand, shows such as Disney on Ice (featuring Disney cartoon characters) successfully competed for the child audience.

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From 1940 to 1980, the only way to watch figure skating and shows was live, plus a few TV specials one had to catch. Then there were VCRs and these days online like livestreams and Youtubes, on demand. The audience is actually much bigger (and more demanding) than the "Glory Days" of paid ice shows. The music industry has suffered much more greatly since computer downloads became available.

janetfan said:

Thanks but no thanks. Reading the CoP bible is something I wouldn't force upon my worst enemy.

You on the other hand should feel free to spend your lesiure time reading through the ISU documents if it makes you happy.

But don't get to caught up in them - because the rules will probably change again before you finish reading

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Then I suggest you take a good hard look at why you are a fan in the first place. You obviously have no interest in learning the rules of the sport, why a judge places one skater over another and let’s be honest the rules are not that difficult. The ‘bible’ (as you call it) is not big; only a few PDFs per discipline and no the rules don’t change every five minutes. There are only a few jumps to learn and dancers don’t even do jumps! Single don’t do lifts and spins are pretty much the same all the way around.

Knowing simple math does help but they do it all for you. Understanding that +3 is better than -1 is helpful but any child understands that concept. Understanding a Level 1 will get fewer points than a Level 4 will also help.

Learning the shorthand will come with time but reading score sheets like 3Tw3, you will know is a level three triple twist. All of this is on the website. (ISU Communication 1724, page 4). This is mentioned by the commentators as a resource for information for those who wish to learn.

I’m not saying television can’t improve how they get the scores to the viewers. They can do 100 times better explaining how scores work, take more time judging, cut out the K&C and show the scores and protocols in real time so fans and skaters can see the scores and deductions in real time with on screen or computers. I always follow competitions on ISU just so I can see the scores instantly anyway, if the competitions were live I would like to see it on the screen. But there are two problems; bad commentators and no live events anymore. The entire Grand Prix should be NBC or Universal Sports as well as Euros, 4CC and Worlds and maybe some nationals from around the world. I would love to see NBC picking up the larger competitions in with prime time or all day Saturday. But you know they won’t. They won’t even show the top three in all disciplines.

If I was watching football and someone said the payer should have had a penalty for ’horse collar’ and I had no idea what that was I would either ask or I would go the NFL website and find out what the penalty was. My mom was a huge fan of football and no one she knew played a day but she took the time to learn the game she loved. That is what a fan does. Have you seen the NFL rulebook? If you want to be a ‘casual fan’ which is listen to the music see pretty dresses, then don’t worry about the scores or who wins or doesn’t. I think this sport would rather have rabid fans of the sport who will be dedicated season in and season out; ones who will buy tickets to competitions and be fans more than just once every four years. If people can’t see it they won’t watch and get hooked, so no new fans. Until they get it back on TV; nothing will change, no wonder people think skating only happens in the Olympics.

I'm probably the only one here, but I really like the IJS, I think it's a lot better than the 6.0 system! It has improved a lot of things in skating: the spins and the steps for the singles are now a lot more difficult and interesting, the lifts in pairs and in ice dance are better now, and skaters take more seriously the choreography of their programs, the interpretation of the music, the quality in everything they do. Some rules are difficult to understand, and sometimes meaningless, I know it's not a perfect system, but it helped skating a lot, I think... Think about Czisny spins: would have we seen such beautiful ones under the old system, where they were considered like "transition" elements? Or steps like Kostner's or Chan's or Takahashi's?

SkateFiguring said:

From 1940 to 1980, the only way to watch figure skating and shows was live, plus a few TV specials one had to catch. Then there were VCRs and these days online like livestreams and Youtubes, on demand. The audience is actually much bigger (and more demanding) than the "Glory Days" of paid ice shows. The music industry has suffered much more greatly since computer downloads became available.

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I wish there were some way to channel all that Youtubing and livestreaming into cash for the skaters -- if for no other reason than to relieve some of the financial burden on parents.

Back in the day, amateur skaters were quite candid about the fact that they saw competitive success as their ticket to joining a professional tour, as is the case today with lucrative team sports. Dorothy Hamill is famously quoted, regarding the 1976 Olympics, that it was either win gold and sign with Ice Capades or win silver and go back home to Connecticut to her job as a secretary.

What I really miss are the cheesefests. Skating sophisticates turn up their noses, but to me they had something for everyone. A competition that was sort-of-serious but not heart-attack serious, together with a chance to showcase the talents of national and international stars. Pro competitions like the World Pro were like that, too.

The athletes had a chance to grab a big purse (the prize for winning the Campbell's or Marshall's events was equal to the prize for a world championship, $50,000. Now there are no such opportunities, and, for that matter, the prize money for worlds has gone down to $35,000.

In the United States the USFSA and the ISU negotiated a multimillion dollar agreement with ABC television. Out of this they paid Michelle Kwan on the order of $900,000 per year. Her obligation was to compete in all of the ABC-produced shows, which comprised Skate America, U.S. Nationals, and the three cheesefests. She didn't always win, by the way. Irina Slutskaya beat her in the 2004 Marshalls and Sasha Cohen won the 2003 Campbell's. Michelle didn't always win, but she always got paid.

Now I think the Japan Open is the only event of this kind left.

IMO had the ISU not tried to take control of pro skating, we'd not be in this mess. They actively destroyed pro skating because it was not under their control and was "getting too popular"... so they reigned them in. :no:

FSGMT said:

I'm probably the only one here, but I really like the IJS, I think it's a lot better than the 6.0 system! It has improved a lot of things in skating: the spins and the steps for the singles are now a lot more difficult and interesting, the lifts in pairs and in ice dance are better now, and skaters take more seriously the choreography of their programs, the interpretation of the music, the quality in everything they do. Some rules are difficult to understand, and sometimes meaningless, I know it's not a perfect system, but it helped skating a lot, I think... Think about Czisny spins: would have we seen such beautiful ones under the old system, where they were considered like "transition" elements? Or steps like Kostner's or Chan's or Takahashi's?

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I don't think you are in the minority at all and also make some interesting points.

The other day I decided to look back at Sasha's "Swan Lake" and then compare it with Ashley's LP from last season.

I actually like both programs but I like Sasha's better because it looks more natural and graceful to me and the spin at the end gets me every time.

Perhaps it's a matter of personal preference .......

Any thoughts?

Sasha: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouNL5ux17c4

Ashley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQJlybl-pJ4

about now versus popularity back in 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and even 80's.

olympics was kinda of big due to them being basically amatuer -and even the so called big pro sports in the U.S. (i am not including soccer), was only baseball due to babe ruth,
basketball didn't become big until 80's due to lakers with majic and someothers . that is when it really became big.
pro football didn't become household sport until joe namath in 70's and than took the 80's to grow in to what it is know with espn,
tennis wasn't that big.
golf wasn't that big.
the only sport during those times was baseball, and what you call football/soccer, boxing was big maybe hockey,

now a days figure skating is competing within the olympic sports for attention and $$$, along with pro baseball, basketball, football, soccer, tennis, golf, plus athe x_games sports of all they do snowboarding etc, plus you got hockey, boxing, martial art type of boxing, racing both indy car and nascar.
there is alot more sports competing for money, time and viewers, not just a few but alot more.
the current and past reputation of the sport doesn't help along with making excuses as to why don't follow the "rules" but guidelines. it doesn't help when people/public perceive them as rules and go by them and you percieve as guidelines.

the cop was a chance to help clean up the reputation of cheating not enhance the reputation of cheating, people did follow 6.0 so when fell, 1 mistake didn't win and now can do a whole lot of mistakes and still win over the (clean) skaters, people question/wonder why.
post as rules keep as rules, no matter what no matter who, no matter what previous score was.
change the rules to favor skaters you want to win not to favor the perception of sport.

janetfan said:

Any thoughts?

Sasha: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouNL5ux17c4

Ashley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQJlybl-pJ4

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Ashley

Sasha

(vBulletinboard settings only allow five smilies.)

Apples and oranges. Ashley is robust and athletic. The cut of music was fierce and dramatic, almost unrelentingly so. The CoP is much in evidence, for instance in the two opening combos.

Sasha = exquisite perfection. If she had skated like this in every performance she would have gone undefeated. (Bring back the cheesefests!)

Mathman said:

I wish there were some way to channel all that Youtubing and livestreaming into cash for the skaters -- if for no other reason than to relieve some of the financial burden on parents.

Back in the day, amateur skaters were quite candid about the fact that they saw competitive success as their ticket to joining a professional tour, as is the case today with lucrative team sports. Dorothy Hamill is famously quoted, regarding the 1976 Olympics, that it was either win gold and sign with Ice Capades or win silver and go back home to Connecticut to her job as a secretary.

What I really miss are the cheesefests. Skating sophisticates turn up their noses, but to me they had something for everyone. A competition that was sort-of-serious but not heart-attack serious, together with a chance to showcase the talents of national and international stars. Pro competitions like the World Pro were like that, too.

The athletes had a chance to grab a big purse (the prize for winning the Campbell's or Marshall's events was equal to the prize for a world championship, $50,000. Now there are no such opportunities, and, for that matter, the prize money for worlds has gone down to $35,000.

In the United States the USFSA and the ISU negotiated a multimillion dollar agreement with ABC television. Out of this they paid Michelle Kwan on the order of $900,000 per year. Her obligation was to compete in all of the ABC-produced shows, which comprised Skate America, U.S. Nationals, and the three cheesefests. She didn't always win, by the way. Irina Slutskaya beat her in the 2004 Marshalls and Sasha Cohen won the 2003 Campbell's. Michelle didn't always win, but she always got paid.

Now I think the Japan Open is the only event of this kind left.

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I love the cheesefest too! Wish there are more around besides in Japan. They are about charisma and entertainment, very different from competitions, but one feeds the other. The ISU events and the Olympics develop the stars who can then perform in the fests, hopefully commanding great attendance and $$$. The problem in the US is there are no drawing stars. And Canada is a very small market. Of course, figure skating has to compete with sports and other entertainments, many of which have people emotionally invested in, such as team sports representing various communities. There is no comparison at all between the prizes the popular sport stars earn with those of the figure skaters, some of the finest athletes in the world.

Mathman said:

IMHO there is one problem with the suggestion that casual skating fans ought to exert themselves to learn more about the CoP. They are not going to. So maybe we need to move on to some sort of plan B.

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Or accept that figure skating isn't going to be as popular as it once was. I don't like the idea of catering to or celebrating ignorance, though.

ImaginaryPogue said:

Or accept that figure skating isn't going to be as popular as it once was.

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That's Plan C. I haven't given up on Plan B yet. I just haven't figured out what it is.

I don't like the idea of catering to or celebrating ignorance, though.

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Still, what do we gain by being dismissive of potential friends of the sport who just want to enjoy its beauty and excitement? Granted we get to feel superior to the unwashed masses (always a good thing ). But there ought to be a way to draw a bigger perimeter and take them in, rather than circling the wagons with every criticism.

It's probably easier to draw in new fans than to satisfy old fans who are attached to specific aspects of the way the sport used to be -- or who perhaps were more interested in the show business of skating by stars who earned their stardom by winning top honors in the sport and then leaving it to turn pro

ImaginaryPogue said:

Or accept that figure skating isn't going to be as popular as it once was. I don't like the idea of catering to or celebrating ignorance, though.

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I don't find intolerance any more appealing than ignorance.

I agree with mathman and no need to give up Plan B yet............

Who knows...perhaps the public will once again embrace a theatrical sport that relies on music and costumes for much of it's appeal.

Does it feel ironic that DWTS - which also relies on music and costumes became so popular as skating was fading?

Hmmm...maybe that's because DWTS is not using a CoP scoring system but a system where we see "10" as the best score. :yes:

Sorry, I couldn't resist

Mathman said:

Still, what do we gain by being dismissive of potential friends of the sport who just want to enjoy its beauty and excitement? Granted we get to feel superior to the unwashed masses (always a good thing ). But there ought to be a way to draw a bigger perimeter and take them in, rather than circling the wagons with every criticism.

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I guess it depends on what you feel the sport needs to be inviting of those potential friends if the sport.

gkelly said:

It's probably easier to draw in new fans than to satisfy old fans who are attached to specific aspects of the way the sport used to be -- or who perhaps were more interested in the show business of skating by stars who earned their stardom by winning top honors in the sport and then leaving it to turn pro

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That's an interesting thought ...

But I am not sure where these new fans are coming from.

I am from a skating family of sorts. My sister took lessons but mom, dad and me and my brother were all recreational skaters. Three of my four grandparents skated as well.

The skating tradition in our family has ended though as none of the next generation skate. Just as sad none of them will watch skating on TV or go to a Live event.

I certainly don't blame this on the scoring system and don't think it has anything to do with TV coverage or NBC announcers.

Is it a cultural shift even more wide ranging than has been mentioned here?

I remember as a boy waking up on Christmas morning and the joy of seeing new skates under the tree.
Today if the gifts are not digital the kids don't seem to have much interest.