Why? I'm sure that the skaters that participate in the competition are going to be doing jumps they do infinitely more often in practice. They are just as likely to get injured in practice as in a 'jump' competition.
My guess is that they are likely testing out the event for popularity to add it be a regular fixture, and I don't know if mimicking another event exactly would be the best thing. I agree they could have went a lot more creative on the format. I would have preferred it be more random vs. an everyone skates their SP and FS, like once the "teams" are picked the coach has to assign out which skaters do their SP and which do their FS, or the opposing coach picks, random draw (though unlikely as a draw could mean the ladies with quads get the SP and can't do quads). The issue related to the same programs for an entire season is that you are going to further inhibit skaters without bigtime money either private money or money through sponsorships - choreography is expensive and asking skaters to get 3-4 programs a year would likely push out skaters.
Well I think part of not doing that might be that this event is to also help skaters get more miles on competition programs; so we are going to see are the programs that are intended to be competition programs based on the ISU judging system.
I think not having both Medvedeva and Zagitova participate as skaters for the competition is protecting their reputations. Neither skater prior to their last competition skates were very competitive with the top of the Russian ladies field and now they both have had extended time off from hardcore training its unlikely that's improved.
Yep
