Thanks for the explanation gkelly. Your comments about judges are interesting and when I said something similar last year I was crucified by a few Canadian posters who wrote at great length about the rigorous training Canadian judges are put through. That may true but perhaps not for all federations.
The idea of the tech panel at times seems good as expertise is certainly required to judge skating - now more than ever under such a complex system.
Well, all judges have to go through rigorous judging training to get to the international level, although the details of how each federation trains them are different and I think some smaller feds rely on ISU seminars to train their international judges.
But judging training means recognizing elements and edges and errors, and knowing the judging rules and the guidelines for the scoring that judges do, whatever they happen to be at the time, and keeping up with the changes.
Under IJS, that does not include determining the level of a spin or step sequence. That task belongs to the tech panel.
Judges who were also skaters have an advantage over judges who never skated themselves or never got to a high level when it comes to things that are better learned in one's own body than intellectually. A smart, well-trained judge can learn the intellectual parts just as well as or better than the former skater, but she won't feel it in her own body the same way.
Speaking as an adult skater who got to preliminary level as a kid and not much further as an adult, I understand the difference between rockers and counters, even though I can only do a few of them on the ice myself, and even fewer that I'd put in a program.
But if I'm watching a step sequence, in real time I might think "Rocker! Or was that a counter? Wait, maybe it was a bracket. What edge did it start and end on? Which way did he turn? Let me rewind!"
That wouldn't work if I were a tech specialist trying to call the level of a step sequence. :lol:
If I were judging a step sequence under 6.0, I could recognize that yes, the sequence did have several difficult turns in it, which is all that judging required.
When the new system came in and wanted to give specific rewards for specific kinds of difficulty in jumps and spins, one of the things they also introduced was specific rewards for variety/complexity in the kinds of steps and turns used in the step sequences. So that meant it was no longer enough to recognize "difficult turn" -- someone also had to keep track of how many different kinds of difficult turns were used. That's what's much harder to do in real time in the middle of a complex sequence.
Then there are also picky rules that have changed a few times over the years, like you have to have at least eight different turns with each kind of turn counting no more than twice to get level 2, etc. That's new knowledge that was never required in the 6.0 system -- not just identifying what the skater did, but also how it fit into that year's specific rules for step sequence levels.
BTW, I'm pretty sure that it's a lot less common for ice dance judges not to have been ice dancers themselves. So much of what's being judged in that discipline is picky little technical details that are completely invisible to the untrained eye.
I'm enjoying Belbin's commentary on Universal Sports because she educates me a little more about some of those details that are only obvious to trained ice dancers.
At least ice dance at a social level is also something that is more suited to starting as an adult.
I wonder if a pc specialist could be added to the panel?
How would that work? What would that person do?
Right now the panel is just responsible for identifying the elements that make up the technical content.
I could see introducing more different kinds of technical content, involving skills that right now only fit into transitions, and having the tech panel identify those and give them levels. But then those would become elements.
As long as skating consists of two programs that are skated to music with the only difference being the duration it seems more attention could be paid to the components.
Much of that area is subjective ....... and the judges need something to do
But why does the ISU feel added expertise is needed for the technical elements and not for the pcs?
Right.
Well, remember, most judges do have skating background.
Having that knowledge in muscle memory would be useful for judging Skating Skills. It would also be useful for judging transitions especially when someone does something unusual to be able to sense in one's own body "Wow! That was a really difficult means of getting into that jump or spin! Big bump up on the GOE and also Transitions score" vs. "Cool flashy entrance to that move. But having done that kind of move myself, I can feel how that setup would in some ways make it a easier to do the move than the typical approach."
