- Joined
- Mar 26, 2014
I've been very conflicted on this topic for a while now and have stayed away from this thread because of that...i see both sides of the argument, but it seems to me the root of the issue are the jumps and not age. there wouldn't be an issue if juniors and below weren't doing quads. this may have been discussed somewhere in here before, but would the issue be solved or at least lessened if quads were only allowed for seniors? if people still have a problem with 15 year olds doing quads, then up the age a year to 16. i think anything higher than that will detract from the sport and lessen participation...no one is going to want to wait until 17 or 18 to compete in seniors. this way regardless of whether or not the age limit stays the same, very young skaters won't be drilling quads at 11-14 years old and putting them out in competition so young.
My opinion is that those who have problems are heavily biased people who are in minority. Ladies' figure skating is on the rise at least in Russia, Japan, and Korea. When some prodigies follow Alysa Liu the same will happen in the U.S.A. When was the last time before Alina that Japanese PM had an audience with a Russian skater? Has it ever happenned before? There has been a lot of statistics on popularity even in this thread. But the minority will keep insisting that the sport is dying and they are not interested.
The most strange thing though is that some of the quads of those youngsters are simply beautiful like Sasha's 4T. How can one have problems with it?