the USFS will not tolerate the bad publicity. Not in this day and age.
Ummm. Well, Eteri and her methods have existed just fine in this day and age for a very long time, albeit under Russian fed representation. But ISU judges and other officials haven't had any problems with Eteri either. Eteri's skaters and thus indirectly her methods have been rewarded for years. It took an unnecessary scandal during the huge spotlight of the Olympics before more attention and questioning has been placed upon the methods Eteri utilizes. Her skaters won, at huge costs to their physical and emotional health, but the sport, as usual, preferred to look the other way until a significant scandal forced them to address at least part of the situation. Mind you, they aren't actually investigating Eteri that I'm aware of.
As far as U.S. figure skating, they are notorious about not acting when needed. They, similar to the ISU, tend to bury their heads in the sand, or look the other way regarding controversial issues, and complicated problems that need to be addressed, but are never faced until festering into huge public scandals.
The ISU has performatively changed the age rules, mainly for the optics. If the ISU actually bravely intended to benefit the health and well-being of the athletes, they would have convened a panel of experts to truly examine this a long time ago. Or better yet, they may have been able to put rules in place with better advisement from the very beginning. Instead, they bop around with their rulings from one cycle to the next, from one extreme to the next, based on public scandals that threaten the sport's credibility with the IOC. It's also problematic that speed skating is combined in one union with figure skating. These are two separate sports, and figure skating always gets the short end of the stick, while bringing in most of the revenue.
As far as the age rule changes, there are a lot of different sides to this issue. The rules changes will not fix the doping problems, and the coaching abuses across the sport. While it might be a good idea to raise the age limit to at least 16, I think it's problematic to make a blanket age rule, when athletes mature and have varying levels of strengths and abilities at different points in their career development within the sport. Other measures need to be taken in conjunction with this age rule change. As well, there are numerous other pressing problems that the sport tends to bury its head in the sand about. Business as usual in figure skating.
