Non-6.0 Scoring System Goes In Effect Next Season!

Re: Non-6.0 Scoring System Goes In Effect Next Season!

Jumps, spirals, elements, is that all skating is to you? Why bother with the music or choreography then? Like I said, let's just hold a separate competition where skaters do all the elements back to back, with no music, let's see how popular it gets. Otherwise, if you, like me, insist that skating should be done with music and coherence and themes and other pesky non-mathematical things in mind, there will be subjective judging. I'll put up with the subjective judging as long as the judges are held accountable, which is my one big problem with judging which this new system does nothing to solve.

Actually, there are competitions held in ballet where the athleticism is stressed. Never heard of them? 'Cause they aren't very popular. How is this new system a balance of athleticism and artistry? You and I both agree artistry is not quantifiable, yet this system stresses the quantifiable.

As for me objecting to the system before I've seen it in action (although we all have, in gymnastics), there's a very good reason for it. I don't want to see the sport harmed, fixed in ways it doesn't need to be fixed while leaving the broken parts unfixed. Given how slowly the ISU moves, the objection to it should build up now and maybe in 2010, when skating is relegated to ESPN2 like gymnastics, the ISU will come to its senses.

Re: Non-6.0 Scoring System Goes In Effect Next Season!

Mathman, thanks for the welcome note.

FetalAttraction, I don't see the point of having a discussion with you. You have one thing in mind that you obviously like to repeat no matter what. The main point here is how to make figure skating qualify as a SPORT (cause I'll give you thousands of people who LOVE it and think it is not a sport as it is). So give me a suggestion of how to quantify those small and intangible things? You yourself said we can't. Then how do we decide on the medals and standings??? Any suggestion?

As I said, let's see how the new system works out and then talk more...

Re: Non-6.0 Scoring System Goes In Effect Next Season!

I was forced to repeat myself because you don't get it. But maybe now you do, since you repeated my point that the intangibles in skating can't be quantified. How do we get medals and standings in skating? Gee, how have we been doing it for the last hundred years?

We, at least those in American society (can't speak for the other savage places of the world), will trust life or death decisions, often with many intangible elements such as witness creditility, to juries and judges, so why not medals and standings in skating? In skating, the judges are trained and certified. What needs to be done now is to free judges from national affiliations and political aspirations, in other words, pay independant judges to do the judging.

Not everything in life has to be quantifiable, not even in sports. Sports are games with arbitrary rules for the enjoyment of all. Sports are not rational. There's nothing rational about making people run around in circles, or slam inflated plastics through metal hoops, then receive them as heroes when they win. Athletic competitions are very much visceral, emotional interactions.

In its ideal form, figure skating takes the visceral and emotional impact of sports, refines it with knowledgeable judging, then produces rankings. The consideration of the V&E, such as musicality and artistry, in the results is what makes figure skating so popular and satisfying a sport. This new system threatens to change that, which is why I object to it

Re: Non-6.0 Scoring System Goes In Effect Next Season!

If all we're going to look at in order to make everyone see skating as a SPORT, I say we have everyone wear uniforms. Screw the illusion fabric and Swarovski crystals, put everyone in the same lycra spandex leotards and tights, have "team" practices with one coach, and sequester them all in Colorado Springs (it's at altitude, so that should increase our chances of domination, right?).

Remember preliminaries in gymnastics when all the women used the same cut of music for the floor exercise and did the exact same routine? Let's do that for skating, too! Instead of a short program, we'll just do elements and jumps. Of course, the music will either be "Carmen" or "Malaguena". Anything original is verboten. Watch everyone's eyes blur over as they watch 20 or 30 skaters do the same routine over and over and over....

Figures will, of course, make a comeback, and be worth 90% of the total score. The preliminaries will be worth 9%, and the free skate will only get you the remaining 1%, with the technical elements being the tiebreaker.

Sounds great, right? I'm sure the ISU will implement this plan any day now. Where do I sign up for tickets??

Re: Non-6.0 Scoring System Goes In Effect Next Season!

I agree that the new system sucks big time, but I think we have to wait to see how it would work in competition. I assume they have been testing it this season, hopefully they wouldn't want to implement it unless it was generating somewhat reasonable results.

Overall we will have to wait and see. If there is a huge diasaster with the scoring next year......I think they will reconsider. The bottom line is that they are not going to keep anything where the public or the viewing audience isn't going to watch. The money is the reason for this crackpot idea in the first place, and it will be the reason if they change it back later.

Re: Non-6.0 Scoring System Goes In Effect Next Season!

Yes, the ISU cares about money. If that's all they care about, we might be better off. Unfortunately, the ISU is made up of members intent on climbing the power ladder, and intent on covering their own rotten behinds. Also, the ISU lacks leaders with vision and understanding of figure skating's appeal, so any attempts they make to court popularity will be done in the dark.

Judges currently do not judge 'artistry'

they judge presentation. Presentation consists of 8 specific elements not just how artistic/balletic/pretty a skater or team is. Here are the 8 elements:

1. Harmonious composition of the program as a whole and its conformity with the music chosen
2. Variation of speed
3. Utilization of the ice surface
4. Easy movement and sureness in time to the music
5. Carriage and style
6. Originality
7. Expression of the character of the music
8. Unison (in the case of pairs skating only)

The 6.0 system has worked good most of the time for over 100 years. The problems have occured when some officials were willing to cheat and over mark or under mark skaters. Changing the judging when the problem is the judges now the scoring system is IMO a waste of time and money. Ban the worst offenders for life, root out the culture of corruption in the ISU and national federations that consider deal making normal operation procedure! When judges like Tatiana Danilenko are sent to event after even when she has over a decade of screwy marks on her record show <strong>exactly</strong> what and where the ISU's problem is.

judging

RE Shallah's post: You are exactly right. It is not the system of judging that is at fault it is the judges. I am sure some at the ISU know this but it will not change any time soon.

Geopolitically, the USSR is the USS Was. In sports such as figure skating they are still judging as one country(i.e. a Ukranian judge will rate a Russian first). They like the system as it is, with judges under the control of national federations. East Bloc countries also like this system. This is the reason for many of Irina's past victories. The only reason Irina seems to be going the way of Surya Bonaly is that Victoria V. is getting some consistency and Ludmila N. has a triple Axel. The East Bloc has two new skaters it can hold up. Long story short no independent judges with individual accountability because of the East and Soviet Bloc.

As to the new judging system:x Skaters like Ludmila N. and Yoshie O. will indeed rule the world. Forget about developing the whole package. People may laugh now, but mark my words skating will be relegated to the second rung of ESPN 2 just like gymnastics; if skating goes in this direction.

I don't know how the gymnastics community feels at this time without the North American moolah. Who knows? The typical Russian, Romanian, and Chinese gymnast probably likes not having to worry about a zillion Shannon Millers or Mary Lou Rettons(say what you will but US Gymnastics had depth on the Womens side in its heyday).

Re: Judges currently do not judge 'artistry'

Shallah - your points of judging:

1. What if a skater uses a-tonal music?
2. What if a skater skates slow to slow music?
3. What if the skater goes all around the rink in circles doing quads and not much more but a camel and sitzpin?
4. What if a skater uses a high kick to toe-off his/her quad lutz?
5. What if the skater goes against 18th century ballet poses?
6. What if the music has no character?
7. What if the Pairs didn't see the latest ballroom tricks?

Do you really believe the judges of today actually go through these guidelines?

In an ideal situation, I'm with you, but I do not believe the judging of figure skating today is ideal. It is subjective for many reasons, and there is no way to conclude from this a "winner".

As Fetal suggests: Can you quantify the tangibles in figure skating? I can't so I go for the whole package for what I consider the best skate that night regardless of quads, the contortionist spins, and the how young the skater is, among other things.

Joe

Joe

Re: Judges currently do not judge 'artistry'

If they have to set the "start value" for each skater's program, I hope they will at least consider this.

Each group of elements should have a maximum value that cannot be exceeded. I am especially concerned about jumps. Some skaters may try to go around the Zayak rule and add four more double axels to beef up their start value so that they can make up for their low start values in spins and steps. I don't think that should be allowed. Maybe a separate point should be set aside to evaluate the overall balance of the program. But even then, setting a max for jump point is not a bad idea.

I would also love to see a change in the Zayak rule so that a skater would not do two quad toes and two triple toes in the same program.

Re: Judges currently do not judge 'artistry'

Shallah, thank you for providing the list. However, to me it only shows that the new system can work. Suppose each of the items on the list is worth 5 points. Suppose the maximum for technical elements (broken into how many items is necessary) is also 40 points. Taking the corruption out of the equation for a minute, the "presentation" mark can become much more exact. For example, the judge may explain that he has given the skater perfect 5 for "Variation of speed", but only 1 for "originality".

As for block judging, I would only like to make one comment. We all know that the Russian judges have been favoring the Israeli team over the Lituanian one for the past several years. The last time I checked, Israel has never been a part of USSR, while Lithuania most certainly has been. My point is that it is not quite so straight forward as "former USSR = voting with Russia".

Didn't Israel import a Russian judge

not long ago? I can't remember who but I remember they hired a judge from outside Israel...