Senior Ladies Need To Up The Age Requirement

[drivingmissdaisy]

Same old story, as with "Zagitova rule". "If you can’t win the game, change the rules".

There are valid reasons to consider age restrictions. Trying to manipulate results by making the best skaters in the world ineligible is not one of them.

 

[noskates]

And what age limit has to do with health?
Wouldnt it be healthier to, for example, forbid / restrict quads for juniors in competition, so even if they train it (and they will), it will not bring them immediate gain so maybe they will put less effort on it? Because, look, staying in junior does not keep girls from doing quads (Trusova, Shcherbakova, Liu) or facing intense competition and pressure.

But of course, age limit is the solution *sigh*

What does age limit have to do with health? Seriously? Possibly it's relative because young teenagers are still growing and as a result their bones are still developing. I agree that if the reward was less there would be less emphasis but many are quad-crazy these days. Johnny Weir had to eat his words at Skate America when he said you would never see anybody on the men's podium without a quad. So it is still possible to entertain and amass points without that jump. I've said this before - I think the quad jump is ruining all the facets of figure skating that I love. There are only a few skaters who CAN combine that level of athleticism and still present a good program. Only a few. I also understand that my opinion about quads is not gleefully accepted by a good many fans and I'm okay with that. To each his own.

I think Nathan's ballet background has taught him how to stretch and take care of his body - but he hasn't been injury free so he is not a good example to shoot my point down.

Anyway, I think the age limit should be raised and I don't really care whose country that hurts - even the US

 

[Shayuki]

What does age limit have to do with health? Seriously? Possibly it's relative because young teenagers are still growing and as a result their bones are still developing.

What does that have to do with increasing the age limit, though? Do you think these skaters just would not do their best, then? They were jumping quads in juniors as well, they didn't just start it in seniors. Juniors would also be so competitive that they'd need to do even better than right now, assuming they want some senior GP spots.

 

[el henry]

What does that have to do with increasing the age limit, though? Do you think these skaters just would not do their best, then? They were jumping quads in juniors as well, they didn't just start it in seniors. Juniors would also be so competitive that they'd need to do even better than right now, assuming they want some senior GP spots.

As long as I live, I will never understand the “they’re going to do it anyway so why should we try to even pass rules concerning their health” argument.

If it’s good for their health to raise the age limit, it’s good (and I believe it is). What they do “anyway”, why does that matter?

 

[Thrashergurl]

I think many are forgetting that when Kwan and Lipinski were winning, people wanted to raise the age- especially after Lipinski won the Olympics (and remains the youngest Olympic champion to date). Before Ashley Wagner there was Maria Butryskaya commenting about being a mature skater among children. Even Irina mistook Tara for a flower girl and told her she didn’t belong. Many of us still remember these things.

 

[crazydreamer]

What does age limit have to do with health? Seriously? ...
I think Nathan's ballet background has taught him how to stretch and take care of his body - but he hasn't been injury free so he is not a good example to shoot my point down.

Anyway, I think the age limit should be raised and I don't really care whose country that hurts - even the US

My point in mentioning Nathan is that he is probably the oldest example of a skater who trained quads pre-puberty, and has had no major health problems that we know of. Your fears for the health of these skaters is as of right now speculative. They may indeed develop health problems that could warrant raising the age limit, but that remains to be seen and I don’t see a need to change rules because some people with no medical expertise think it’s logical that quads may hurt 13 or 14 year old girls’ bones. Happy to revisit the issue in 4-5 years (if true, it’s too late for the current crop anyway).

 

[el henry]

My point in mentioning Nathan is that he is probably the oldest example of a skater who trained quads pre-puberty, and has had no major health problems that we know of. Your fears for the health of these skaters is as of right now speculative. They may indeed develop health problems that could warrant raising the age limit, but that remains to be seen and I don’t see a need to change rules because some people with no medical expertise think it’s logical that quads may hurt 13 or 14 year old girls’ bones. Happy to revisit the issue in 4-5 years (if true, it’s too late for the current crop anyway).

I”m sorry, but that argument cuts both ways: I don’t see a reason for the age to stay where it is because people with no real medical expertise think it’s OK

(I have been a broken record saying I would like a moratorium, I would like studies, I would like real medical professionals to opine. I err on raising age first, studying, and coming to a reasoned decision. Erring on the side of caution :thumbsup

Nathan may not be your best example, he did have an injury, from what I understand it was related to growth plates, very common in young athletes with repetitive movement. But that is all I remember

That’s the kind of thing I would like to see more studies about:agree:

 

[crazydreamer]

I think many are forgetting that when Kwan and Lipinski were winning, people wanted to raise the age- especially after Lipinski won the Olympics (and remains the youngest Olympic champion to date). Before Ashley Wagner there was Maria Butryskaya commenting about being a mature skater among children. Even Irina mistook Tara for a flower girl and told her she didn’t belong. Many of us still remember these things.

I”m sorry, but that argument cuts both ways: I don’t see a reason for the age to stay where it is because people with no real medical expertise think it’s OK

(I have been a broken record saying I would like a moratorium, I would like studies, I would like real medical professionals to opine. I err on raising age first, studying, and coming to a reasoned decision. Erring on the side of caution :thumbsup

Nathan may not be your best example, he did have an injury, from what I understand it was related to growth plates, very common in young athletes with repetitive movement. But that is all I remember

That’s the kind of thing I would like to see more studies about:agree:

I get your point and don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but I don’t agree it cuts both ways. I don’t believe in restricting people from doing what they think is best for them without some sort of concrete evidence. If you ban it you will never have the opportunity for the studies to which you are referring. You will have ended the debate based on speculation.

Also, my point obviously is not that Nathan has never been injured, only that he has no signs of any kind of injury that would have justified banning him from doing quads until he turned 16 or something, which would have greatly damaged the sport.

 

[RobinA]

I've come to favour this idea more and more. I do not enjoy watching children skate, which is why I've never followed juniors. I do not enjoy watching young girls with bodies that have not gone through puberty compete with women. Nothing against them. They're just not my cup of tea. They are, by dint of age and trying such huge technical feats, not producing the kind of skating that I enjoy, by and large. I watch now knowing that the programs and performances I like will not be winning medals. Which is fine, in its way. Makes me less nervous for them, lol. But I worry that they will quit competitive skating. I've mostly fallen out of love with mens in the same way with the quad-and-fall fest that it largely is.

So a competition for those that enjoy all the quads and such and then another competition more focussed on artistry for those like me would be excellent.

I couldn’t agree more with every word you said. Add the fact that when the sport rewards girlish bodies it creates an incentive to keep bodies girlish by whatever means people are willing to subject themselves to. I am in favor of changing the scoring so that a quad is no more valued than other hard things. They can do a quad if they want, but they can also do a spectacular spiral sequence and get a bunch of points. Not only would this create more variety in the routines, it would incentivize beautiful skating so that it wouldn’t be necessary to be unhealthy succeed in figure skating.

 

[el henry]

I get your point and don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but I don’t agree it cuts both ways. I don’t believe in restricting people from doing what they think is best for them without some sort of concrete evidence. If you ban it you will never have the opportunity for the studies to which you are referring. You will have ended the debate based on speculation.

Also, my point obviously is not that Nathan has never been injured, only that he has no signs of any kind of injury that would have justified banning him from doing quads until he turned 16 or something, which would have greatly damaged the sport.

Thank you for answering.

We have different ideas of what would have greatly damaged the sport. And I do not agree that athletes should left to do what they think is "best for them"; otherwise Antonio Brown would be playing in an unapproved helmet (apologies if the NFL reference is too obscure, it's the first one I thought of).

But your idea that the young age needs to continue to conduct valid studies is an intriguing one :scratch:

In any event, it will always engender discussion

 

[RobinA]

Yuzuru is not tiny , but is very thin: 117 pounds! Nathan is listed at 135. Jason Brown at 145 pounds does not do quads, but he is not 117 pounds either.

Men are stronger. Men (and girls) have their body weight closer to the axis of rotation, making them able to rotate quicker, which is what is required for jumps with more rotations. This is why females lose their ability to rotate as quickly post-puberty. It’s physics.

 

[el henry]

I think many are forgetting that when Kwan and Lipinski were winning, people wanted to raise the age- especially after Lipinski won the Olympics (and remains the youngest Olympic champion to date). Before Ashley Wagner there was Maria Butryskaya commenting about being a mature skater among children. Even Irina mistook Tara for a flower girl and told her she didn’t belong. Many of us still remember these things.

Thank you for sharing Thrashergurl.

Post long and post often!

 

[b-man]

I understand your point. Once again, you are right but in theory. The jumps are not only easier for common folks to understand - tech people do review them before making their verdict. I am sure that the decision on Trusova's level 2 was made beforehand. If they looked at it that was before the competition. Because the level appeared immediately after she finished it. It's physically impossible to count the elements change of direction degree of using the body etc in real time. Then if it the case a fair procedure should be as follows. The tech people either after reviewing previous competition or practice session should say that they are going to give a certain level should StSq be preformed without mistakes. If this level is different from previous competition they should explain why they believe that previously assigned level was wrong. Otherwise it all looks arbitrary and political. I will laugh if for exactly the same steps Sasha will receive level 3 at CoR. Then for the same effort she will collect almost "the full house ". If it happens I will truly believe that TP are either political or have no clue how to assign levels. Both situations are bad news if we are talking about making StSq more valuable.

Well, you made me check the rulebook. It's not just if a skater makes a mistake, but a skater must perform an increasing number of complex turns to achieve higher levels , some turns on different feet. For level 4, apparently 11 complex turns must be performed, 5 types of turns in both directions. Here is a link to the ISU rule. I've read it a few time, and still have little understanding of the rule. One must understand brackets, rockers, Choctaws, counters and other types of turns to judge if a skater makes a certain level. It's way beyond my understanding. If you understand it, you may have a future as a tech controller.

https://www.usfigureskating.org/content/Technical Panel Handbook_Singles Skating.pdf

 

[colormyworld240]

As long as I live, I will never understand the “they’re going to do it anyway so why should we try to even pass rules concerning their health” argument.

If it’s good for their health to raise the age limit, it’s good (and I believe it is). What they do “anyway”, why does that matter?

Why do you believe it's good for skaters' health to raise the age limit (and only for seniors), though?

I'm going to try to take a stab at this from what I believe is to be a non-biased view:

How do we know training quads is dangerous? We can talk about theory - like growth and the formation of bones, but all studies are conducted through experiments and analysis. To my knowledge, none of these studies have been published from a reliable source. No one has compiled a comprehensive study from the data we currently have. For something like this, we can only infer a correlation, not a causation. To do this, we'd have to look at the available data and break it town into three separate variables:

1) Does training quads lead to more injuries than not training quads (training doubles, triples, spins, skating skills, etc.): I don't have enough knowledge to answer this, it'd actually be very interesting if someone has compiled the data from current and past skaters.

2) Does training quads pre-puberty lead to more injuries than training them post-puberty: for the ladies we cannot say as there is no data on this currently, for men we have to look at skaters who trained quads pre-puberty and those to trained them only after puberty - again I do not know myself.

3) Does increasing the age limit prevent skaters from training quads (or is the answer that we have to apply a minimum age to start skating as a whole): This is the only question I can answer from the data I've seen in the ladies, and that is no. Quads are not trained for the sole purpose of senior competitions. In fact, all the ladies who have ever landed a quad in competition did it first in juniors, with the only exception of Tursynbaeva. Many of these ladies have started training these elements way before they even made their international debut (Shcherbakova, Liu, unsure about Trusova and Tusynbaeva, and Kihira and Tuktamysheva's 3A). So to reduce the quads, it would make sense to raise the age limit for juniors, ie. all international competition, to 18, or whatever age threshold is believed to lower the dangers of training quads. This is only the incidence of quads though, nothing about health (that is answered by the first two).

4) Alternatively we can also look at if increasing the age limit reduces injuries overall by looking at percentage of injuries in skaters above 18 and below 18 (if that's the chosen age limit). But this only tells is about figure skating as a whole, not about the quads and this would be about all competitions, not just seniors.

I think those 3 questions have to be answered before we can say that a rule to increase the age limit will be healthier for skaters, or if it even affects health at all.

Obviously, none of the studies would have the appropriate control: one skater cannot be used to test all these things so the biological and environmental variables would not be accounted for. Then, if we were to compile all the data and conclude that an increase in age would be healthier, what makes 18 the magic number? Why not 17 or 20? We'd need the study to determine the age.

This age limit argument has been going on for so long with both sides arguing for what they want for whatever reasons, but I don't think there has been any logical approach to answering how age limits affect the health of skaters.

 

[skatergurl7]

People here act like they all completed medical school at Harvard [emoji23] let the girls skate for goodness sake. What they’re achieving now is amazing and unheard of. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

 

[[email protected]]

Well, you made me check the rulebook. It's not just if a skater makes a mistake, but a skater must perform an increasing number of complex turns to achieve higher levels , some turns on different feet. For level 4, apparently 11 complex turns must be performed, 5 types of turns in both directions. Here is a link to the ISU rule. I've read it a few time, and still have little understanding of the rule. One must understand brackets, rockers, Choctaws, counters and other types of turns to judge if a skater makes a certain level. It's way beyond my understanding. If you understand it, you may have a future as a tech controller.

https://www.usfigureskating.org/content/Technical Panel Handbook_Singles Skating.pdf

We are running in circles. One last time. I did not read the rule book. And I don't need to count anything. I just looked at the screen. The analogy is when you look at twizzles in dance or SBS jumps or SBS spins in pairs. You don't have to be a tech controller to see if those are in sync or not. Sasha did the same steps at Nepela and Skate Canada. They looked exactly the same. She got level 4 for the former and she lost 2 levels in Canada. It's a very big difference. Lose 2 more levels and you have level 0 - it's like I go on ice now with a "step sequence". In jumps it is more objective - it's much harder to play similar tricks: for visibly same jump execution give full credit in one competition and 2 levels down (<<) in another. That's why I don't want any value increase for StSq before the TP becomes accountable for the levels they set.

 

[neud]

Why only Ladies, exactly? Isn't it sexist? Ladies are already discriminated, they are not allowed to jump quads in SP, unlike Men. Do you want more discrimination? What a shame!

 

[el henry]

I would be in favor of an age limit for all skaters. The arguments are indeed the same:thumbsup:

 

[Joekaz]

Why only Ladies, exactly? Isn't it sexist? Ladies are already discriminated, they are not allowed to jump quads in SP, unlike Men. Do you want more discrimination? What a shame!

Because mens and womens bodies change in different ways through puberty. Girls have advantages physically over women when jumping that boys don't have over men.

 

[neud]

Because mens and womens bodies change in different ways through puberty. Girls have advantages physically over women when jumping that boys don't have over men.

People of different races also have different ways of their bodies development. Is there any race you want to discriminate?