My Alternative Proposal For The Reform Of Youth Championships In Figure Skating | Golden Skate

My Alternative Proposal For The Reform Of Youth Championships In Figure Skating

CaroLiza_fan

EZETTIE LATUASV IVAKMHA
Record Breaker
Joined
Oct 25, 2012
Country
Northern-Ireland
My Alternative Proposal For The Reform Of Youth Championships In Figure Skating

I was reading the proposals for the ISU Congress, and whilst I agree that there needs to be some adjustments to the age ranges, I feel that the proposals are going the totally wrong direction.

Instead of making increasing the age that skaters can continue to compete at Junior level, they should be decreasing it!

I have never thought it was fair that we have 13 year old children and 19 year old adults competing in the same competition.

Like you only have to look at the 2013 Junior Worlds. The champion in the girls category was 14 year old Elena Radionova. That’s fine. You would expect the top competitors in Junior Worlds to be around 14 or 15 years old.

But in 4[SUP]th[/SUP] place, and leader after the SP, was Samantha Cesario, who was 19 years old!!! For goodness sake, at that age she had been eligible for senior competitions for over FOUR years!!! Why was she still doing Juniors?! (Well, we all know why – because it is too competitive to get into the Senior American Ladies team). Unsurprisingly, Samantha was the oldest competitor. And she looked it too…

Incidentally, the youngest competitor was Jenni Saarinen, who was only 13 years old.

An age range of 6 years is a lot in a Junior competition. Like, Saarinen was only 2/3rds of Cesario’s age.

Better than that, Cesario started skating in 1999, THE YEAR RADIONOVA AND SAARINEN WERE BORN!!! Radionova started skating in 2002 (!), while Saarinen started in 2004. So, Cesario had a whole 5 years more experience than Saarinen.

Surely this is not fair.

I know in Senior competitions, we have skaters that have been skating for very different lengths of time. (Take this year’s NHK podium: 1st Mao Asada – 18 years; 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Elena Radionova – 11 years; 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] Akiko Suzuki – 21 years). But, by this stage they are usually at a similar level. Surely the same cannot be said when we are dealing with VERY young skaters compared to those in their late teens.


I am not a fan of football. But, I do think that they have got the right idea when it comes to youth competitions. Instead of just having “Junior” and “Senior” levels, they have a series of age groups leading up to Senior level.

And I feel that this model could work very well for figure skating.

Below is a table of how the different age groups would be made up:

AgeUnder 15International
Children's Games
Under 17Youth Olympic
Games
Under 19Under 21UniversiadeSenior
Freq.
Even YearsOdd YearsOdd YearsLeap YearsOdd YearsEven YearsOdd YearsEvery Year
40
39
38
37
36
35
34
33
32
31
30
29
28
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
20
19
18
17
16
15
14
13
12
11
10

Of course, I am not expecting skaters to continue competing until they are 40. I just continued my table that far to allow for the fact that Fumie Suguri will be 37 by the time Pyeongchang comes along… ;)

I realise that asking the ISU to run FIVE World Championships, and at least 1 extra championship at a Games event, every year would be far too much. Just imagine the amount of organisation that would involve!

In football, youth tournaments are held every 2 years, so I feel that this would work in figure skating as well.

As it is, the ICG and Universiade are held every 2 years. So, if we alternated the U-15 World Championships with the ICG, and the U-19 World Championships with the Universiade, it would mean that these age groups would have major championships every year, but there would not be as much extra organising to do.

Similarly, we could alternate the U-17 and U-19 World Championships with the Youth Olympics. The problem is that the Youth Olympics are held every 4 years rather than every 2. So, that would mean there would be a year without a major championships for these age groups.

HOWEVER, the years off for the U-17 and U-19 Worlds would be Olympic years. So, I don’t think anybody would begrudge the ISU for not holding the full compliment of youth Championships these years. Let’s face it, they would have enough on their plate!

Here is a table showing how my proposals would work over the next 2 Olympic cycles:

2015
ICGU-17U-19UniversiadeSenior
2016U-15YOGYOGU-21Senior
2017ICGU-17U-19UniversiadeSenior
2018U-15U-21SeniorOlympics
2019ICGU-17U-19UniversiadeSenior
2020U-15YOGYOGU-21Senior
2021ICGU-17U-19UniversiadeSenior
2022
U-15U-21SeniorOlympics

Now, I realise that, if the ISU is broke as we suspect, then this will never get off the ground. Because it costs a lot of money to hold championships.

But, in an ideal world, I think this model would be a good way to make things fairer for the competitors.


Those are my thoughts. What do you think? Does anybody have any suggestions that would be better (and cheaper!)?

CaroLiza_fan
 

concorde

Medalist
Joined
Jul 29, 2013
Accept and move on!

As an ice skating parent, I learned very early that skaters are grouped by skill set not by age. In my daughter's first competition she was 5 years and 1 month competing against a 12 year old! Guess what? she got 2nd in a group of 2 since there is no realistic way that the two can compete when the older child's legs are twice as long as the younger child's legs and one component of the score is ice coverage. That is only one example of how unfair it is - I can name many more.

To this day, my daughter typically competes against kids 2-3 years older than her. Yes - she is grouped with the "youngest kids" but they are still much older than her. My feeling is if she finishes in the middle of the group, she is a winner. In the rare times that she medals, she feels it is special so she appreciates more.

What is the choice? Group by age not skill set and then have the other parents of kids complain why a child that has been skating for 5 years should be completing against their child who has been competing for 1 year?

I know that your question was focused on the higher levels but if you change that upper levels, you would need to change all the levels. If you don't, what do you use as your cut-off? skill or age? If you go by skill, then you are back to the old scenario.

On the ladies level, I think a pre-puberty 13-year old has the advantage over the post-puberty 19-year old. Not so in at the mens level.

There is a Youth Olympic games and it is only open to competitors of a certain birth year. That is a rare instance where all ice skating competitors will be at about the same age.

You pointed to football, I will point to swimming. Swimming also groups by age but they also have a "Senior" category which is open to about anyone over 13. International meets are at the "Senior" level only. Again, age is eliminated when a certain skill level is met. I expect that to be true in any sport it is just that ice skating starts it younger.
 
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