That's a nice example. Ah, Jason! He's smooth when there's barely any challenge. And what a stark contrast with his LP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ipSYfIyqII Suddenly, everything is not so pretty anymore. Edges aren't as deep, skating is much more laboured and smile isn't as omnipresent.
There's a perfectly good reason for jumps to be by far the most costly elements - they're the greatest challenge. And there's a logic in awarding skater with relatively bigger PCS for executing much harder programs, because being graceful and artistic while doing incredibly hard stuff is an entirely different story.
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Athletic aspect also serves as a common denominator for athletes, judges and fans from all over the world. I see a constant back and forth bickering about everyone's "artistry" caused by cultural and personal stylistic preferences. Jason Brown's skating doesn't do jack to many, many Russians, just as Alina's to American people. Cultural dialogue is a very complex process and awarding medals on those shaky grounds will just lead to frustration of everyone involved.
I totally agree. I’ve always regarded the performance aspect of figure skating as a sort of handicap to the execution of technical elements, especially the more difficult ones that are less consistent. And in that sense, I’ve never seen it as something separate from the athleticism in FS, but rather an integral part of it.
So the whole idea of separating the two or lowering the level of difficulty doesn’t make any sense to me.
I also think that it’s not only about the ability of doing the more risky elements, such as difficult jumps, during a performance.
People like to talk about the flexibility and/or control that one needs for a great spiral, spin position or good edgework and how these skills, despite also being athletic feats, aren’t favoured the same way as being able to rotate fast i.e. being a ‚jumping bean’.
But what about the stamina and especially the mental focus that one needs to get through a long program with little to no mistakes? When there’s so many elements that a skater has to get through, and especially when they’re opting for more risky ones? Why shouldn’t that be rewarded (the way it does currently)?
From what I see, many skaters can rotate stand-alone jumps in practice and some can also skate more or less clean run-throughs of their programs. But how many manage to do so in competition?
This is why I like the format of a short vs. a long program, because they test different qualities. So I’m not a fan of reducing the number of jumps in the long program to only 3-4 jumping passes or creating two programs of medium length with only 3-4 jumps.
And as several posters have already said, I have no idea how one would even go about judging ‚artistry‘ (hate the use of that word within the context of figure skating) in a reasonable and fair way.
Because not only is it totally subjective, even without taking cultural differences, personal taste or any type of bias into account. But there’s also so many different styles of music/themes/dances and ways that skaters can express themselves in. How would you even go about comparing skaters, it is already problematic the way it is now.
Most obvious example would be some emotionally ‚deep‘ ambitious theme, preferably to some classical music
, compared to something more upbeat or slapsticky.
This is where the king of skating "artistry" bares it all.
