OK, so I've been downloading figure skating videos from the Internet again, and I came across the 1992 Albertville LP of Midori Ito. I could remember watching the 1992 Olys and that Midori won the silver, but I watched it again to refresh my memory (I was 5, after all). The 3axel.....by a woman.....3:10 seconds into the programme ....blew me completely out of the water.
Which got me thinking (always dangerous, lol): pretty much every programme we watch by th big names in figure skating today is "front loaded" or with the really BIG jumps and combos at the beginning so they can get them out of the way faster. I suppose it's somewhat understandable with stuff like quad combos, etc. but what happened? What happened to the days when halfway through the programme people threw crazy stuff like a 3axel and landed it. For Midori, sitting in 4th place, throwing that 3axel was what got her on the podium.
For what I can tell, with things like the 3quad programmes and certain hard jumps being worth more if they come in the middle of the programme under CoP (somebody please explain that one to me), it's getting more varied, but my question is: where did this idea of front loading come from, why does everybody in the world do it, and how (if at all) are we going to get past it?
Which got me thinking (always dangerous, lol): pretty much every programme we watch by th big names in figure skating today is "front loaded" or with the really BIG jumps and combos at the beginning so they can get them out of the way faster. I suppose it's somewhat understandable with stuff like quad combos, etc. but what happened? What happened to the days when halfway through the programme people threw crazy stuff like a 3axel and landed it. For Midori, sitting in 4th place, throwing that 3axel was what got her on the podium.
For what I can tell, with things like the 3quad programmes and certain hard jumps being worth more if they come in the middle of the programme under CoP (somebody please explain that one to me), it's getting more varied, but my question is: where did this idea of front loading come from, why does everybody in the world do it, and how (if at all) are we going to get past it?