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Marina Anisina complained recently, in Russian, that "Unfortunately, we are going through an americanization of ice dance"
http://www.championat.com/other/_skating/news-977455.html
There is a long thread at FSU inspired by this statement by Anissina:
http://www.fsuniverse.net/forum/showthread.php?t=80893
However, I have a somewhat different conversation in mind than having fans of different eras and different teams start defending their favorites (not to mention some complaining by both citizens of the US and Canada about being lumped together as Americans.)
Marina's comment started me thinking about the process of changing the rules in skating, and the conclusion I've come to is this: those who are consistently losing, and are unhappy about that, are in the final analysis the groups that drive rule change, just because they have thought long and hard about the "unfairness" of the current way of doing things, and have ideas about what needs to be fixed in the rules.
Generally, winners are likely to love the rules under which they are winning!
When it became necessary to develop COP in 2002, after the ice dance/pairs scandal, all the criticisms that could be leveled at the ice dance rules and judging of the 1990's and early 2000's coalesced about that effort, and a number of the old complaints were at least partially addressed.
What!! You didn't know there were criticisms???? You thought along with Marina that her era was the bestest ice dance era Evah??
Well there were indeed criticisms of the era, and are some of them were:
1. In Anissina's era, it was common for team members to have grossly unequal skills. People point to Margaglio being much less skilled than Fusar-Poli, but they were only the most extreme case. Chait was much less skilled than Sakhonovsky, Lobacheva less skilled than Averbukh, Goncharov than Grushina, even Peizerat was not as skilled as Anissina. Now it is unlikely that two people will have exactly the same skill level, but it certainly should be a goal, both in dance and in pairs. COP rewards equal skills. Both partners have to do 100% of all the prescribed turns and twizzles equally in both directions and on both feet, and on correct edges to get top levels in step sequences.
2. Undue reliance on lifts and speed, and Over The Top drama, not skating. As a result, the original version of COP had much more emphasis on complex step sequences as the 'quads' of ice dance. That was later relaxed.
3. The judging of the CD was very contentious, and wasn't settled at the beginning of COP. A recent revision of COP got rid of the CD-but instead of really getting rid of it, it has been enshrined in the SD in a more rigorous form. The key points have to be skated on correct, clean edges, on the correct beats, or you lose levels. During the Anissina era, a lot of inaccuracy was tolerated if only you skated fast (or "big") enough, with enough of the character of the dance to get by. The first version of COP CD judging was just a slightly revised 6.0 style judging-a large block of the dance was given one GOE number. There were no levels.
Here's the protocol from the 2010 World Championships, the last worlds with the old style CD:
http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2010/wc10_IceDance_CD_Scores.pdf
Naturally, winners under the old rules, like Anissina, are likely to be offended by the new rules, and the winners under the new rules. She reminds me of Peggy Fleming back in the early 1980's who was really nasty then about ladies who could do triple jumps, and wanted to label every girl whose jumps were weak as strong on the artistic side, and denigrate every lady with strong jumps as somehow not artistic. Once Peggy retired from pro skating, she became more mellow.
The losers cry deal; then the old winners, who are now losers, cry deal again.
Of course, this is idle speculation on my part, but I thought, maybe someone else would be interested.
So what do you think about Marina's statement? About what causes the changes in rules, and what changes actually happen and why those changes and not others? Or anything else that interests you?
http://www.championat.com/other/_skating/news-977455.html
There is a long thread at FSU inspired by this statement by Anissina:
http://www.fsuniverse.net/forum/showthread.php?t=80893
However, I have a somewhat different conversation in mind than having fans of different eras and different teams start defending their favorites (not to mention some complaining by both citizens of the US and Canada about being lumped together as Americans.)
Marina's comment started me thinking about the process of changing the rules in skating, and the conclusion I've come to is this: those who are consistently losing, and are unhappy about that, are in the final analysis the groups that drive rule change, just because they have thought long and hard about the "unfairness" of the current way of doing things, and have ideas about what needs to be fixed in the rules.
Generally, winners are likely to love the rules under which they are winning!
When it became necessary to develop COP in 2002, after the ice dance/pairs scandal, all the criticisms that could be leveled at the ice dance rules and judging of the 1990's and early 2000's coalesced about that effort, and a number of the old complaints were at least partially addressed.
What!! You didn't know there were criticisms???? You thought along with Marina that her era was the bestest ice dance era Evah??
Well there were indeed criticisms of the era, and are some of them were:
1. In Anissina's era, it was common for team members to have grossly unequal skills. People point to Margaglio being much less skilled than Fusar-Poli, but they were only the most extreme case. Chait was much less skilled than Sakhonovsky, Lobacheva less skilled than Averbukh, Goncharov than Grushina, even Peizerat was not as skilled as Anissina. Now it is unlikely that two people will have exactly the same skill level, but it certainly should be a goal, both in dance and in pairs. COP rewards equal skills. Both partners have to do 100% of all the prescribed turns and twizzles equally in both directions and on both feet, and on correct edges to get top levels in step sequences.
2. Undue reliance on lifts and speed, and Over The Top drama, not skating. As a result, the original version of COP had much more emphasis on complex step sequences as the 'quads' of ice dance. That was later relaxed.
3. The judging of the CD was very contentious, and wasn't settled at the beginning of COP. A recent revision of COP got rid of the CD-but instead of really getting rid of it, it has been enshrined in the SD in a more rigorous form. The key points have to be skated on correct, clean edges, on the correct beats, or you lose levels. During the Anissina era, a lot of inaccuracy was tolerated if only you skated fast (or "big") enough, with enough of the character of the dance to get by. The first version of COP CD judging was just a slightly revised 6.0 style judging-a large block of the dance was given one GOE number. There were no levels.
Here's the protocol from the 2010 World Championships, the last worlds with the old style CD:
http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2010/wc10_IceDance_CD_Scores.pdf
Naturally, winners under the old rules, like Anissina, are likely to be offended by the new rules, and the winners under the new rules. She reminds me of Peggy Fleming back in the early 1980's who was really nasty then about ladies who could do triple jumps, and wanted to label every girl whose jumps were weak as strong on the artistic side, and denigrate every lady with strong jumps as somehow not artistic. Once Peggy retired from pro skating, she became more mellow.
The losers cry deal; then the old winners, who are now losers, cry deal again.
Of course, this is idle speculation on my part, but I thought, maybe someone else would be interested.
So what do you think about Marina's statement? About what causes the changes in rules, and what changes actually happen and why those changes and not others? Or anything else that interests you?
It was like being caught in a bad nightmare.
