I keep saying: people, stop trying to make an ice dance out of figure skating.
Jumps are the same figure skating elements as many others: spirals, variations of spread-eagles, spins, walley jumps and etc. How can you call yourself a figure skater if you can't even do a single-rotation jumps? Single axel, walley jump or single salchow for instance - they all are jumps.
Single Salchow was created by Ulrich Salchow back in 1909. Quoting here: "the salchow is accomplished with a takeoff from the back inside edge of one foot and a landing on the back outside edge of the opposite foot". It is about sudden change of direction, foot and edge, and it is performed with a hop. Sounds familiar to some transitions and steps, huh? Single jumps are just a "transition with a hop", so to speak. With time as sport had been progressing it became harder to decide who is a better skater, so athletes had stared to add more rotations in those single jumps, but in essence jumps were and still are most beautiful figure skating elements. Jump is just another element of figure skating, what else to add here? Jumps making figure skating sport appealing and exciting. Risky and dramatic.
Last time I checked figure skating is still a sport. Therefore it is still should be judged by athletic abilities and trained skills. Jumps are not tricks. It is a skill. Jumps are harder to master to get stability in performing them. Jumps are riskier to train, definitely requires a special talent and athletic ability. Training jumps takes a lot of time. And pain. And risk of injury. Because it is a professional sport. Skills and talents in figure skating takes times to develop, that's why they are starting early at 3-4 years old with the basics, doing many countless correlated and leading exercises to develop balance, precision, air awareness, footwork coordination. Obviously SS and transitions are easier and less risky to perfect. If figure skating wants to be part of Olympics than medal distribution should still be based on athletic abilities, natural talent/genetics and hard training. Otherwise everybody will be able to do it and figure skating would not be a high-performance sport requiring a special coordination abilities as it is now.
Current generation of quadsters or top-jumpers (like with 3Lz-3Lo) - both male and female - usually are very talented and genetically gifted athletes, they are very special people. They spend countless hours and hours of mastering all elements of figure skating: jumps, spins, steps, transitions, upper-body choreography. Some of them are more gifted in something like jumps, others - in spins or transitions. Matter of personal talent and how their coaches are investing time in recognizing and developing those skills. Most current quadsters do have great SS and perform their ultra-C jumps with difficult transitions in and out of jumps. They spend countless hours and hours of mastering all elements of figure skating, they just happen to have a talent for a good jump genetics so to speak - fast rotating speed, good pop, air awareness, high coordination and a cat-like ability to land on their feet. Highly developed vestibular apparatus is a genetics and a lot of training/developing. This is what sport is all about.
We need to distinguish why skater-A is more talented and trained harder than skater-B. Otherwise figure skating would be not a sport, but an art form like ballet or something, and skaters still be doing single axels and single toe loops. Why does one need to add extra rotation into an element if you cant get a medal for it? They do some kind of elements similar to axels in ballet. But ballet is not a judged form and not a sport at all. We can see some sort of axel jump in gymnastics sometimes too, but it is rare now. But those are not judged as sport elements, IRCC not even as a dance element. in current CoP. I can't imagine some gym fans saying: "
Triple Back Somersault in Men's gymnastics are so overrated and boring to watch, *yawn* we want to see hundreds of split-jump elements and wolf turns of various ugliness on FX every single competition instead of amazingly difficult tumblings". If you are a figure skating fan my advice is simple: try to watch figure skating live. Not on TV or twitter/forum flame fandom war. Try to see at least triple-triple combo up close. Or at least go to your ice rink (local mall or smth) and see any local figure skater training in person, see them jumping triples in front of you. It will leave you breathless. Quads jumped in front of you will blow you away. It is power, height, distance, rapid rotation. Quads are amazing. I know it is hard to get into figure skating competitions now - tickets prices are ridiculously high. Jumps are the most amazing and spectacular elements of figure skating, there is a good reason why they are showing slow-mo replays of jumps (almost) exclusively on tv-broadcasting. Well, with some intro and outro choreo, but the rest of the replays are jumps, jumps, jumps in slow-mo. This is what we like to watch.
Triples and quads are the most amazing elements of figure skating. Period. Not all figure skating elements are performed solemnly with at least of one blade on the ice. Besides toe loop, salchow, loop, euler, flip, lutz, axel there are many-many other figure skating elements which are performed with a hop or some kind of a jump when 2 feet are off the ice. They are considered as a transition or step element sometimes. If you are serious figure skating fan and/or doing figure skating yourself you should know about them.
So "jumps" in figure skating are not just triple axels and quad toes, but many other jumps. We can't disregard or devaluate all jumps as elements. Without jumps there would be no figure skating, it would be "
figure running" or smth.
Of wait. We have that already.
In short: jump
per se is a big deal in figure skating and a very beautiful element on itself. Whatever the amount of rotation some jumps have, they all are hard to master and to perfect, and very risky to perform, therefore jumps are rewarding to land for competitive purposes. And this is the way it should be if figure skating wants should still be a sport. Any single-rotation jump is harder to learn than almost any step or transition element. You know if you tried FS in the past. We need progress and difficulty upgrade in figure skating just like in any sport. Otherwise it is not a sport any more.
Difference between gold-silver-bronze (or off the podium place) should still be differentiated by athletic performance. Yet it still should be beautiful and cares a certain artistic minimum level for television and aesthetic purposes, but in essence it is still a sport nonetheless. Otherwise we will be stuck in fighting and endless pages of arguing about who is more artistic or has nicer deep edges and a cute smile & dimples. Which is very subjective and correlates a lot with local taste, culture, traditions and aesthetic preferences. If everyone would still be doing clean LP with 7 triples and triple-triple combos and double axel in the next 3 years.. It will be nightmare pretty soon. It is a bit already. Currently ~50 female skaters in the world now are capeble of doing clean LP with 7 triples and double axel. Pretty soon it would be nearly impossible to figure out the winner without pissing off any big part of the figure skating community. Disaster for any sport. Everyone are jumping difficult triples and a lot of ladies are capalbe of high-scoring triple-triple combos now like 3Lz-3Lo or 3S-3Lo. I mean like approximately 20 Russians, 20 Japaneses and 10 of the rest ladies field are capable of those difficult triple-triple now. Soon all o them will be able to do a clean SP and LP full of those hard jumps. How are we going to decide the medals in this situation soon? We will be stuck in subjectivity and constant state of scandals regarding "who wuz robbed (yet again) and who is more artistic". IOC will def kick out figure skating out of Olympics this time and replace it with some cyber games or whatever kids are playing and watching online now. The audience will be bigger than figure skating right off the bat, therefore more commercially profitable for IOC and sponsors. Win win for IOC and global corporation
proud partners.
Some are naturally more coordinated than others. That's life. I vaguely remember TAT saying something like: "
If you can't jump high - go to Pairs. Can't jump at all - go to Ice Dance. Can't skate with good deep edges - go for a coaching career. Can't teach figure skating - grab a shovel and start cleaning ice and locker rooms. Can't do even that - well, your road is to be a figure skating judge then". Can't agree with her more.
Whatever you say and think about or personally want from figure skaters - this is your personal taste and choice, but figure skaters are athletes first and only then artists. Figure skating is a sport, not a show. That's why we love sports - to watch people compete at the top of their abilities and what is humanly possible. It is drama and suspense. For a nice show and more artistry one should watch ice dance. Or better yet - buy yourself and your friends tickets to ice shows. Ice shows are widely available in almost every other country now. Go to a show, so you favorite figure skater will get paid, and you can support them skating outside of competitive sport and their athletic career.
