The Case for Handwork: Balancing Art and Sport in Figure Skating

[gkelly]

Of course, some of the answers may be along the lines of
*I got married and had two kids and no longer have time to follow figure skating
*My kid who was a figure skater has moved on to college and I am now turning all my attention to my younger child and his/her sport
*I have become more active in live figure skating (as a participant myself, skating parent, official) and see plenty of live skating in my daily life so I don't feel the need to subscribe to online sources -- if I want to watch elite skaters I can easily find them on TV or by searching online
Etc.

None of which says anything about what they like or don't like about skating or even necessarily about the online sources for watching or discussing.

 

[Mathman]

From reading on this forum and from my friends as well : a lot of people do not get invested in figure skating though they like watching it, because they don't understand the scoring. People usually tend to appreciate what they can compute. That is just one of the possible reasons I can see.

I don't think that having a deteiled knowledge of the scoring is very important. The people that you discribe as "liking to watch" -- hey, that's good enough for me. If they like to watch, later on they might take a more focused interest in the sport, or maybe not. The competitor gets points for doing a variety of moves and demonstrating a variety of skills -- one does not have to know any more that that to be a satisfied spectator.

I can remember back in the binary days of yore that the main difference between a man and a woman was that a man understood the infield fly rule in baseball. (So did women, but women were expected to pretend to be ignorant so they could hang on their boyfriend's every word as he explained it.)

 

[gkelly]

I definitely agree that better messaging to fans or potential fans -- directly from the ISU and also from broadcast networks, individual federations, etc. -- can help.

Educating viewers better about how skating works now should be easier than changing the sport to match what TPTB perceive that those viewers might prefer to see.

The easiest things for casual viewers to appreciate are the big tricks like jumps and overhead lifts, the performance qualities, and whether or not there are blatant errors such as falls.

In person, speed across the ice is also pretty obvious, but most people first see elite skating on video, which does not give a good representation of the quality of the skating.

Some viewers will be most captivated by the athletic qualities, others mostly by the performance aspects, and others by the tension in combining both at the same time.

You can't win over viewers who most love measurable exciting tricks by improving the quality of the artistry. You can't win over viewers who most love the artistry by encouraging bigger and riskier tricks, with more obvious errors and less focus on artistry as a result. If you try to appease one potential side of the fandom, you may lose as many fans from the other side as you gain from the changes to appeal to the other.

And as long as the quality of the actual blade-to-ice skating remains a significant driver of scores and results (as it should, IMO!), you can't help fans to understand the results without better efforts to help viewers understand what the blades are doing and what is being rewarded. It's really hard to see on video, so commentators/broadcasters need to do a better job of pointing out the positive and negative qualities of the actual skating, educating viewers how to see it for themselves, and encouraging them to visit local ice rinks or touring performances if they're lucky enough to live near appropriate venues, or to travel to live events if they can afford it.

 

[Magill]

Of course, some of the answers may be along the lines of
*I got married and had two kids and no longer have time to follow figure skating
*My kid who was a figure skater has moved on to college and I am now turning all my attention to my younger child and his/her sport
*I have become more active in live figure skating (as a participant myself, skating parent, official) and see plenty of live skating in my daily life so I don't feel the need to subscribe to online sources -- if I want to watch elite skaters I can easily find them on TV or by searching online
Etc.

None of which says anything about what they like or don't like about skating or even necessarily about the online sources for watching or discussing.

Of course, some of it would be like this, sure. That's why you pay lots of money to people who design these surveys as it is a skill in itself to design the questions in such a way as to get the info you really want.
Yet, in cases like "I got married and have no time" - that's life, you cannot do much about it. Yet, they did not give up everything, right? So why FS as opposed to other hobbies...?
"I focus on my younger kid now" - they followed but have never been a fan anyway, the older kid was. If they were a fan themselves, they would have stayed. So... here follows...
Surveys are usually structured in such a way that "if your answer is X, then a question Z follows"... to dig deeper that this.
That's why you also combine quantitative methods with qualitative ones, like focus groups of selected individuals whom you engage in a guided discussion. Or interview, as an interview allows you to go deeper behind these superficial answers.
But first of all, there needs to be a will to use the data for change. I am pretty sure if there was such a will, a research matrix could be designed to provide answers which are informative enough.

 

[4everchan]

I don't think that having a deteiled knowledge of the scoring is very important. The people that you discribe as "liking to watch" -- hey, that's good enough for me. If they like to watch, later on they might take a more focused interest in the sport, or maybe not. The competitor gets points for doing a variety of moves and demonstrating a variety of skills -- one does not have to know any more that that to be a satisfied spectator.

I can remember back in the binary days of yore that the main difference between a man and a woman was that a man understood the infield fly rule in baseball. (So did women, but women were expected to pretend to be ignorant so they could hang on their boyfriend's every word as he explained it.)

I think you misread my post or perhaps were you simply liking to read my post instead of trying to understand it

 

[Magill]

One thing I do not understand here is why this discussion somehow focused on whether scoring is important to keep /attract / put off fans.
I do think it matters for attracting / keeping / losing fans. But obtaining scoring as fair and transparent as only possible should be at the heart of any sport by default - as a self-explanatory obligation of the sport authorities towards the athletes most of all, forget the fans. No?

 

[4everchan]

One thing I do not understand here is why this discussion somehow focused on whether scoring is important to keep /attract / put off fans.
I do think it matters for attracting / keeping / losing fans. But obtaining scoring as fair and transparent as only possible should be at the heart of any sport by default - as a self-explanatory obligation of the sport authorities towards the athletes most of all, forget the fans. No?

I think it comes from the "artistic" topic of this thread.
As some have mentioned, even the skill based elements of the sport are somewhat hard to judge or see, especially for untrained eyes... imagine scoring the "artistic" component.

So when a discussion like this has begun, scoring is for sure going to be mentioned in why the sport isn't as popular as well all think it should or could be?

That's the link I would make with the OP's topic.

 

[el henry]

1. If someone says "It's rigged and it's a beauty contest".
From my POV, that person is lost. I can sit down with the rule book, the videos, and a panel of judges. Their minds are made up. They just don't want to say "Guys in feathers, yuck". Education will not help.

2. Where education does help, is the person who has been attracted in the first place:
Wow, look at those guys go up in the air, and come down on a tiny blade! Where do I learn more? Look at that guy holding his leg out on ice, so cool. The other guy didn't hold his leg out as long. What's the difference?

They truly want to know the difference. They truly want to know more about the sport.

3. Figure skating will always have a subjective component. Figure skating therefore will always have "wuzrobbed.". We can't eliminate wuzrobbing, and even if we could, that would not attract more fans.

According to the "Me and My Friends" handbook.

 

[4everchan]

1. If someone says "It's rigged and it's a beauty contest".
From my POV, that person is lost. I can sit down with the rule book, the videos, and a panel of judges. Their minds are made up. They just don't want to say "Guys in feathers, yuck". Education will not help.

2. Where education does help, is the person who has been attracted in the first place:
Wow, look at those guys go up in the air, and come down! Where do I learn more? Look at that guy holding his leg out on ice, so cool. The other guy didn't hold his leg out as long. What's the difference?

They truly want to know the difference. They truly want to know more about the sport.

3. Figure skating will always have a subjective component. Figure skating therefore will always have "wuzrobbed.". We can't eliminate wuzrobbing, and even if we could, that would not attract more fans.

According to the "Me and My Friends" handbook.

My friends love the feathers as you can imagine.

 

[Magill]

My friends love the feathers as you can imagine.

Mine, too. That's why they watched in the first place. But then....

 

[gkelly]

2. Where education does help, is the person who has been attracted in the first place:
Wow, look at those guys go up in the air, and come down on a tiny blade! Where do I learn more? Look at that guy holding his leg out on ice, so cool. The other guy didn't hold his leg out as long. What's the difference?

They truly want to know the difference. They truly want to know more about the sport.

The tricky part, though, is to get them to move on from focusing on the free leg that was held out, and to look at the foot that's on the ice and what its blade is doing, which is much less obvious at first viewing but often much more important in the scoring.



Oh, and another reason why fans stop watching is when their favorite skater retires from competition, if they were always more a fan of that person than of the sport as a sport.

 

[4everchan]

Mine, too. That's why they watched in the first place. But then....

Yeah. I was kidding, but I think my humour needs better balance between art and sport

 

[el henry]

The tricky part, though, is to get them to move on from focusing on the free leg that was held out, and to look at the foot that's on the ice and what its blade is doing, which is much less obvious at first viewing but often much more important in the scoring.



Oh, and another reason why fans stop watching is when their favorite skater retires from competition, if they were always more a fan of that person than of the sport as a sport.

True on both counts.

The "tricks" as Uncle Dick would say attract the viewer: look at them flying in the air, how cool. Look at them spinning on the ice, how cool. But the blade to ice skills are what make figure skating a sport. How do they actually manage to land on ice on a blade? How do they manage to build the speed to rotate on that tiny blade. All while giving me all the feels. . And that education is a fine needle to thread....

Also, a fan of one skater hopefully will then learn about other skaters, even if not their fav. Toller drew me in. But by the time he retired, I appreciated other skaters. It would be great to expand others with a single skater focus, but I don't even remember how it happened with me, let alone anyone else

 

[Magill]

Oh, and another reason why fans stop watching is when their favorite skater retires from competition, if they were always more a fan of that person than of the sport as a sport.

That's true. But then, unless they had been friends of that skater off the ice and came to root just for him/her as a rule, why were they not attracted to the sport while they were actually attracted to this one skater enough to follow him/her? What was the IT factor that only this one skater apparently had for them?
It always reminds me of a story from the field of urban development which I was told by my professor while still at college, although studying a very different field. When you design a condo, you design residential buildings, service buildings/spaces/ shops, parking spaces, grass etc. Plus driveways and footpaths across the grass (tracks for pedestrians). So one school is to have them designed all at once, have the residents move in and then try to make them follow the plan i.e not to use any shortcuts, "illegal" entries, paths etc. The other school is that you design no footpaths and watch the paths across the grass that people choose with full spontaneity and no rules - and then make those used most often into proper footpaths, entries etc.
Now, which school makes more sense? And which one is used more often?
I hope you can get the point even if urban development realities in your country do not really fit into this story at all.,

 

[yesterday]

From reading on this forum and from my friends as well : a lot of people do not get invested in figure skating though they like watching it, because they don't understand this thread. People usually tend to appreciate what they can compute. That is just one of the possible reasons I can see.

FYP

 

[Mathman]

About the fans who watch figure skating because they like seeing impressive feats of athletic prowess, I have to wonder: Did figure skatimg increase in popoularity when skaters started doing triple jumpos instead of doubles? When they started doing quads instead of triples?

Don't get me wrong. We all love to see this year's track and field stars run a few seconconds faster than last year's, just like we like to see a skater set a new world record of 230.45 points obliterating the old record of 229.67. Biut I am not sure how this translates into success at the box office.

About the audience appeal of "ordinals" versus "code of points," which is better remembered about the 1973 Belmomnt Stakes horse race: that Secretariat set a course record of 2 minutes and 24 seconds (that still stands 50 years later) or that he ran away from the field by 31 lengths -- so much so tha tno other horse is in sight in pictures of the finish ?

 

[gkelly]

About the fans who watch figure skating because they like seeing impressive feats of athletic prowess, I have to wonder: Did figure skatimg increase in popoularity when skaters started doing triple jumpos instead of doubles?

If so, it would be hard to quantify the effect of the jump content, vs. the simple fact that television coverage was becoming more common at that time -- and then coming in color, and and live via satellite for the Olympics, at the time that triples started to become common, at least for the men.

And of course, which countries saw the greatest increase of interest would likely be highly correlated with which countries were winning medals.

And which disciplines were favorites in a given country would be correlated with which disciplines they had the most success in. But it might not always be easy to tease apart whether the interest came first (and thus more participants self-selecting into those disciplines, or state funding focusing on those disciplines) or whether the interest in particular disciplines came as a result of the success of homegrown stars.

When they started doing quads instead of triples?

This (men doing quads) would largely correlate with the increase of interest in the 1990s, which can be attributed to several different reasons. One of them being the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, which is not something that could or should be replicated.

For women (or girls) doing quads, that somewhat correlates with the increase of streaming access worldwide, although that access largely preceded the quads.

 

[el henry]

FYP

What does FYP mean?

 

[yesterday]

What does FYP mean?

fixed your post(ing)

 

[TallyT]

I don't think understanding the scoring per se is the magic bullet. Half of Australia doesn't have a clue about the scoring in the soccer World Cup but 'Our Girls Got to the Semis!!!' was enough, now we just have to see if that translates to longterm fans. And if you have ever sat through a family do turned into a 4+ hour argument about the scoring/penalties in your local brand of footy... they don't care that they're right, just that they are... well, right. If people care about watching any sort of competition, no matter how complex, they'll learn or handwave the rules. But - and this is a big, black-hole-size but - if the scores are blatantly 'fixed', people who don't even know them will get pissed off and yes I am talking about PCS and GOE and interpretation and all that suddenly going way way up when a skater gets to be favoured (sometimes even when the rules say penalties should apply and penalties don't), or is held down to give others a boost.

Which is what I at least mean by the scoring being transparent. The sport may never be clean (it's judged, and anyway even the biggest sports tend to be more or less dodgy, helllooooo FIFA) but it needs to be seen to be fair. If not, what's the point of people getting attached to and following skaters unless they get told beforehand who are going to be officialdom's darlings?

(The point, at least partly and for me, is in the art. Watching someone because their skating makes me feel good even if I know they'll never get the scores they deserve.)