- Joined
- Nov 22, 2009
I imagine that they are envisioning something like the gymnastics team event in the Summer Olympics, where the team event is the qualifier for all around events and for apparatus finals. The team event is something they wanted specifically for Olympics, so I suspect that has something to do with it.
And it may be the IOC that is setting the Olympic schedule & calling the tune here.
I don't believe for a second that the IOC is behind a push for a team figure skating event, at least not as a whole although there might be a few members in there who were highly supportive. While the IOC members must vote on all proposals from the various sports for new events or new disciplines, the origin of the proposal and the push must come from the governing body for the sport. And in this case, that would be the ISU (Speedy in particular). Many of the voting members of the ISU are from countries that have little or no participation in the ISU or the sport of figure skating. They wouldn't necessarily care one way or another about having a FS Team event....though behind the scenes, there might be ways of persuading them to vote for or against.
I'm not excited about this new Team Competition at all. In fact, I'm dismayed by the way it's being set up in terms of timing and requirements for participation. I think it definitely puts a singles contender at risk. What happens if a skater has a fall/injury during their program during the Team competition and either has to withdraw, or skate injured in their singles competition? As seen by what happened to Wagner at the GPF a few days ago, it's possible. And nobody has yet answered a hypothetical question of mine: what happens if a country's federation decides they do not wish to field a team for the team competition even if eligible to do so? Will the ISU then disqualify all of that Federation's athletes from participating in the regular singles/pairs/dance competition? All it would take is any two of the major feds (= any that have strong players in at least 3 disciplines) to say "Hell no we won't do Team comp" and then the ISU has an interesting problem on its hands.
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