Next year, World's will go to COP. If so, how is this going to be handled for the Qualifying Round?Are QR points going to be cumulative? How do the Powers That Be intend to compensate for the fact that completely different panels of judges are typically used for the two qualifying round, and even more potentially disastrous, that two different 'callers' will be used for the two rounds? Conceptually, in a perfect world, COP would make this irrelevant. But, in actual fact, some judges give very high grades and some low, and some callers are much tougher on underrotation than others. The opportunity to cheat is even higher, because an entire Qual round could end up with hugely higher scores than the other side of the round. And the program component scores are still hugely subjective.
The qualifying round has always suffered from the problem that the ISU makes no real effort to balance the two brackets. Skaters are grouped first by their performance at worlds' the previous year and then, if they did not attend worlds the previous year, by the first initial of their last name or some such. No compensation is used for skaters who are known to be excellent, but did not compete at last year's worlds ( think Winkler and Lohse). No preplacement is done for skaters who win Junior Worlds (think Ando). No attempt is made to keep all skaters from the same country out of the same round. It would be better, I think to group skaters by their total world ranking, which takes into account the last 3 years and includes performance in Juniors, than by finish at World's alone.
What are all your opinions of qualifying rounds, and how do you think they will be different under COP? What do you think could be done to make them more fair?
The qualifying round has always suffered from the problem that the ISU makes no real effort to balance the two brackets. Skaters are grouped first by their performance at worlds' the previous year and then, if they did not attend worlds the previous year, by the first initial of their last name or some such. No compensation is used for skaters who are known to be excellent, but did not compete at last year's worlds ( think Winkler and Lohse). No preplacement is done for skaters who win Junior Worlds (think Ando). No attempt is made to keep all skaters from the same country out of the same round. It would be better, I think to group skaters by their total world ranking, which takes into account the last 3 years and includes performance in Juniors, than by finish at World's alone.
What are all your opinions of qualifying rounds, and how do you think they will be different under COP? What do you think could be done to make them more fair?
Last edited: