But why are more top women then top men have less than five or even four different triples? If figures were just brought back to novice or junior level do you think it will help the quality of the future generation?
If figures were brought back in such a way that required the number of hours of practice that they required in the 1980s and before, I think you would see better technique on the double lutzes and loops but even fewer skaters who could consistently rotate and land all the triples -- they would have less time to train the jumps. And, if anything, insisting
From the mid 1990s (after most of those who had competed figures at the senior international level had retired) until the introduction of the new judging system, I think that any skater who could make a reasonable attempt and hope to stand up on any triple would try to include it because triple jump count and difficulty of the jumps chosen in the short program were some of the most objective and most obviously rewarded elements in the old system, so there was incentive to make the attempts even with less than optimal technique or less than optimal consistency.
A lot of those attempts would have been downgraded in the current system, though, so skaters who can't quite rotate the jumps have less incentive to include them in their programs than they did a few years ago. Better to repeat the jumps they can land, including double axels, or include good doubles that will get positive GOE instead of underrotated triples that will count as bad doubles with negative GOE.
Another point that may partly explain why we see fewer triple loops than triple lutzes and flips -- if a skater is good at toe jumps and can land the triple lutz, she can probably also land the triple flip. (Although one or the other may often suffer from wrong edge takeoff, there's usually enough difference in the approach that they can be seen as different jumps.) That means that a toe jumper has two of the harder triples to work with, plus probably the triple toe and maybe the triple salchow.
A skater who is better at edge jumps, on the other hand, may have the triple loop but not the lutz or flip, along with triple salchow and maybe triple toe. And probably a good double axel but not a triple axel. That gives her fewer jump points to work with in her base mark, so other things being equal she's more likely to lose to skaters who are better at toe jumps and therefore not to reach the top levels where TV viewers get to see them.
This year the required solo jump in the junior SP is the loop, double or triple, so look for skaters who do have triple loops to place well on the junior circuit this year.
