Are we watching skating… or just our faves?

[4everchan]

I don't agree that figure skaters are the "only athletes with individualized, personalized/ artistic sides.

I find this is many other sports. Even team sports like hockey.

A diver can be especially powerful while another one be more elegant. A gymnast can be more flexible while the other dances better on floor.

Nowadays, most athletes are "internet stars" and are constantly expected to share their inner thoughts with the public.

Even swimmers can be endearing. Yesh... and not just because they were a speedo.

Tennis players are much bigger individual stars than figure skaters... same with most individual sports like track and field or even golf. So to me, that argument that skaters have this special outlet because of the "performing" part of the sport is moot.

 

[TallyT]

I don't agree that figure skaters are the "only athletes with individualized, personalized/ artistic sides.

Didn't say 'only' so I assume this was for someone else?

Figure skating is one of those that includes a compulsory artistic element by its very nature. Alysa would not have been out there in makeup and a sparkly golden dress if not so. Most sports, the player can be as plain as a cranky scarecrow and have a technique that is spot on correct but recognised as dull as ditchwater but still win big. YMMV.

 

[4everchan]

Didn't say 'only' so I assume this was for someone else?

Figure skating is one of those that includes a compulsory artistic element by its very nature. Alysa would not have been out there in makeup and a sparkly golden dress if not so. Most sports, the player can be as plain as a cranky scarecrow and have a technique that is spot on correct but recognised as dull as ditchwater but still win big. YMMV.

Track and field. Watch the women make up and nails. Make up in figure skating is pretty much mandatory. It is not in many other sports and yet, many athletes make a choice to showcase their taste. Tennis players have new outfits pretty much every tournament. Some are wild, depending on the personality of the stars. Saying that athletes in other sports nowadays do not present themselves in a personalized way is like mistakenly thinking that classical musicians were basic dresses. Yuja Wang begs to differ.

 

[Magill]

Track and field. Watch the women make up and nails. Make up in figure skating is pretty much mandatory. It is not in many other sports and yet, many athletes make a choice to showcase their taste. Tennis players have new outfits pretty much every tournament. Some are wild, depending on the personality of the stars. Saying that athletes in other sports nowadays do not present themselves in a personalized way is like mistakenly thinking that classical musicians were basic dresses. Yuja Wang begs to differ.

The main difference being that while I love and adore Naomi Osaka's wildly beautiful outfits, I am pretty sure that while they may boost her personal popularity and her social media presence, whether any umpire likes them or not does not affect the tennis match's outcome at the slightest. In the end of the day, the ball is in or out, and that's all that counts. Naomi knows it very well, too.
Same for track and field, swimming, and most of the sports really.
While in figure skating make-up, costumes and such are perceived as a part of the general presentation of the program, and I heard multiple skaters across all disciplines and from many countries - men and women singles, ice dancers, pair skaters from Japan, Russia, France, US and so on - admitting they choose costumes with the judges response in mind, and worry about how these costumes and their overall "looks" might affect the scores they get and the final result. They don't do it just for themselves or for fans, they do it for the judges. Whether they are right or wrong, and whether it really affects the outcome and to what extent, may be discussed, of course, but many skaters do seem pretty convinced that it matters.
I don't know if it is the only Olympics sport with such an issue (maybe gymnastics is similar, I don't know much about it), but judging by how many times I have heard it in interviews it is a way bigger issue for skaters than for athletes in most other sports. Really hard to deny it,

End of

 

[skatesofgold]

The main difference being that while I love and adore Naomi Osaka's wildly beautiful outfits, I am pretty sure that while they may boost her personal popularity and her social media presence, whether any umpire likes them or not does not affect the tennis match's outcome at the slightest. In the end of the day, the ball is in or out, and that's all that counts. Naomi knows it very well, too.
Same for track and field, swimming, and most of the sports really.
While in figure skating make-up, costumes and such are perceived as a part of the general presentation of the program, and I heard multiple skaters across all disciplines and from many countries - men and women singles, ice dancers, pair skaters from Japan, Russia, France, US and so on - admitting they choose costumes with the judges response in mind, and worry about how these costumes and their overall "looks" might affect the scores they get and the final result. They don't do it just for themselves or for fans, they do it for the judges. Whether they are right or wrong, and whether it really affects the outcome and to what extent, may be discussed, of course, but many skaters do seem pretty convinced that it matters.
I don't know if it is the only Olympics sport with such an issue (maybe gymnastics is similar, I don't know much about it), but judging by how many times I have heard it in interviews it is a way bigger issue for skaters than for athletes in most other sports. Really hard to deny it,

End of

In gymnastics, the women like leotards inspired by dresses that one would wear to prom or, I guess, a ball because I know most other countries besides the U.S. don't have prom. I don't think it's necessarily to impress the judges. College gymnastics leotards right now have waaaaaaay too much going on with them.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Then may you please use the word "group"?

"Tribe" is covertly racist towards indigenous people.


Regarding your "I am but a harmless teddy-bear, why can't I play with whatever toys make me happy in my sandbox" narrative: you may be harmless but your toys may be not.

You've never studied Maths I suppose? (Nor Sociology but I haven't either.)
Tribes and Clans are types of sets in Measure... But... Wait... Racism has done its work in English? The names are still there in French Wikipedia but in English, they have been edited by that sort of racist who pretend that using the word tribe means automatically denigrating "indigenous people"? That projective narrative just exposes the scorning viewpoint of its authors. I happen to have had the good fortune to be taught Measure (and Tribes and Clans) by a "Person of Colour" (Black and White), good fortune not because of this Professor's colour who mattered to nobody (it was in France) but just because he was good (a good Mathematician and a really good Pedagogue, not all Professors are endowed with both). It never came to my mind that these notions of Tribe and Clan could be imposed on people in a negative light and censored for racist motives which exist only in the censors' mind. Do you have a problem with the fact that whichever our ancestry, so many of our ancestors have lived in tribes or do you want only some people whom you would make artificially inferior to be associated with the concept of tribe? Even without considering that everybody had many ancestors living in tribes, do you have a problem with the fact that people of all colours are normal, full-fledged human beings who can be equally spoken of? Or (specifically in this example) you may be a Scottish exceptionalist?
I'm not reporting your uncalled-for racist take because I do believe that you're not conscious of the wicked White Supremacism concealed under those narratives, but please, consider what your assertion conveys.
And sorry for being nearly as aggressive as you, Racism rarely fails to put me off.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

The main difference being that while I love and adore Naomi Osaka's wildly beautiful outfits, I am pretty sure that while they may boost her personal popularity and her social media presence, whether any umpire likes them or not does not affect the tennis match's outcome at the slightest. In the end of the day, the ball is in or out, and that's all that counts. Naomi knows it very well, too.
Same for track and field, swimming, and most of the sports really.
While in figure skating make-up, costumes and such are perceived as a part of the general presentation of the program, and I heard multiple skaters across all disciplines and from many countries - men and women singles, ice dancers, pair skaters from Japan, Russia, France, US and so on - admitting they choose costumes with the judges response in mind, and worry about how these costumes and their overall "looks" might affect the scores they get and the final result. They don't do it just for themselves or for fans, they do it for the judges. Whether they are right or wrong, and whether it really affects the outcome and to what extent, may be discussed, of course, but many skaters do seem pretty convinced that it matters.
I don't know if it is the only Olympics sport with such an issue (maybe gymnastics is similar, I don't know much about it), but judging by how many times I have heard it in interviews it is a way bigger issue for skaters than for athletes in most other sports. Really hard to deny it,

End of

And speaking of Judges, costumes and Figure Skating lore, and being so far out of topic...

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

Did Aleksandr Fadeev gain fans with this costume? (Was the transparency voluntary at all? From him or his team?)
Ah times are gone of wild costume creativity!

 

[4everchan]

The main difference being that while I love and adore Naomi Osaka's wildly beautiful outfits, I am pretty sure that while they may boost her personal popularity and her social media presence, whether any umpire likes them or not does not affect the tennis match's outcome at the slightest. In the end of the day, the ball is in or out, and that's all that counts. Naomi knows it very well, too.
Same for track and field, swimming, and most of the sports really.
While in figure skating make-up, costumes and such are perceived as a part of the general presentation of the program, and I heard multiple skaters across all disciplines and from many countries - men and women singles, ice dancers, pair skaters from Japan, Russia, France, US and so on - admitting they choose costumes with the judges response in mind, and worry about how these costumes and their overall "looks" might affect the scores they get and the final result. They don't do it just for themselves or for fans, they do it for the judges. Whether they are right or wrong, and whether it really affects the outcome and to what extent, may be discussed, of course, but many skaters do seem pretty convinced that it matters.
I don't know if it is the only Olympics sport with such an issue (maybe gymnastics is similar, I don't know much about it), but judging by how many times I have heard it in interviews it is a way bigger issue for skaters than for athletes in most other sports. Really hard to deny it,

End of

Of course gymnastics and artistic swimming are similar.
And of course, I get the point of "packaging"
However, the judges may like or not like outfits, there are no "real points" for such outfits. Unless there is a costume violation
Like there are no deduction for awful voiceovers or bad usage of a warhorse piece.

So while, subjectively, costumes and packaging in general may affect the impression of a program, objectively, it's not supposed to matter if the jumps are landed.

So same with a tennis player : the serve is good or it's out. The quad lutz is rotated or not. It doesn't matter if the skater was wearing a tutu or not.

My point was not about that anyway. It was about the simple fact that there skaters are not the only athletes able to display their creative and personal style. As a matter of fact, you have just proven my point : if the skaters do it with the judges in mind, they do it for their sport... while Naomi Osaka does it for herself. So in that sense, Naomi's style is somewhat more personal than some figure skaters's style, right ?

I actually do not disagree that some figure skaters have brought constant personal style in their packaging. We can look at Guillaume Cizeron often monochromatic costumes including well fitted garnements and mesh... in various colours for the different programs or look at some of the very refined Korean school of costuming... or look at the extravagant choices in some Japanese male skaters (not only Hanyu but Takahashi, Mura etc) However, my point is not about what is happening in skating, but what is happening everywhere else. With marketing, social media and live streaming, the access to athletes of all sports has been widened and their personal, individual choices are showcased like never before.

I am leaving this thread now in style

 

[yfan1]

My point was not about that anyway. It was about the simple fact that there skaters are not the only athletes able to display their creative and personal style. As a matter of fact, you have just proven my point : if the skaters do it with the judges in mind, they do it for their sport... while Naomi Osaka does it for herself. So in that sense, Naomi's style is somewhat more personal than some figure skaters's style, right ?

There's also a bit more worth to personal styling in other sports, in contrast to a show-bizzy sport where athletes actively try to look good for the pleasure of the viewers and the judges, and actively try to present themselves in 'personalized' ways. To me, anyway.

(Excellent point, well made from you, by the way, liked reading it.)

 

[yfan1]

You've never studied Maths I suppose? (Nor Sociology but I haven't either.)
Tribes and Clans are types of sets in Measure

They might be in French.

Never heard of them myself. (I see that it's supposed to mean "ring", which would fall under set theory IME)

 

[Mathman]

In mathematics, "clans" and "tribes" (a tribe is a special type of clan) were coined for use in "Category Theory" when the practitioners ran out of words for groupings of similar things. People who study the logical foundations of mathematics continually need to co-opt new words from ordinary natural language to avoid logical contradictions.

For instance, Russel's Paradox shows that you can't say "the set of all sets." So you have to invent a new term for a set that is too big to be called a set and say instead, the "class of all sets."

Actually, the hunting and gathering culture provides the template. Such societies are typically organized around the notion of a tribe of about 512 (necessary to produce enough mating pairs to perpetuate the tribe) that seasonally splits up into "bands" of about 25 (this is the optimal size in terms of how much territory you can cover and still make it back home to base camp with your gatherings). All very mathematical.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

They might be in French.

Never heard of them myself. (I see that it's supposed to mean "ring", which would fall under set theory IME)

In French Maths, the word was coined by one of the founders of the Bourbaki group, René de Possel. He didn't remain long in the group but that was for personal reasons (the same after all, why Nobel is said not to have founded a Nobel Prize of Mathematics; if it isn't an urban legend; those Mathematicians!)

 

[Mathman]

^ I believe that Alexandre Groethendieck, also a contributor to Bourbaki, also played a role.

I also think that the Nobel Prize thing is an urban legend without basis in fact. I think that the real reason that Alfred Nobel excluded mathematics from the Nobel Prizes was that he wanted to honor and celebrate practical contributions to human life (like the invention of dynamite) as opposed to abstract theoretical meanderings.

 

[yfan1]

In French Maths, the word was coined by one of the founders of the Bourbaki group, René de Possel. He didn't remain long in the group but that was for personal reasons (the same after all, why Nobel is said not to have founded a Nobel Prize of Mathematics; if it isn't an urban legend; those Mathematicians!)

I really don't know anything about Category Theory But googling Bourbaki, it does seem like set theory and Abelian groups turn up, so

Are the terms 'clan' and 'tribe' common in mathematics?

In the book 'Vector Measures' by Dinculeanu, he starts the discussion by talking about "classes of sets", and introduces two pieces of terminology I've never seen before, and can't find ...

math.stackexchange.com

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

I really don't know anything about Category Theory But googling Bourbaki, it does seem like set theory and Abelian groups turn up, so

They really had a broad scope! And I wonder if reformulation wasn't their most lasting contribution?
In any case, it seems that I saw censure where it wasn't!

 

[Arigato]

Track and field. Watch the women make up and nails. Make up in figure skating is pretty much mandatory. It is not in many other sports and yet, many athletes make a choice to showcase their taste. Tennis players have new outfits pretty much every tournament. Some are wild, depending on the personality of the stars. Saying that athletes in other sports nowadays do not present themselves in a personalized way is like mistakenly thinking that classical musicians were basic dresses. Yuja Wang begs to differ.

I'll never forget Flo Jo. Ever.

"She brought in more people wanting to know more not just about her but also our sport.” Griffith Joyner’s style and speed brought her international fame, but her focus on beauty in sports revolutionized the game forever.

Remembering—and Celebrating—Flo-Jo’s Game-Changing Beauty

Vogue’s August digital cover star, Sha’Carri Richardson, reminds us of a past Olympian and beauty star, Florence “Flo-Jo” Griffith Joyner.

www.vogue.com

 

[Mathman]

I really don't know anything about Category Theory But googling Bourbaki, it does seem like set theory and Abelian groups turn up, so

OT Category Theory, as @DizzyFrenchie points out, was motivated by a desire to reformulate aspects of the foundations of mathematics in order to clarify some of the main ideas that pop up over and over in disparate subfields. Features like sets, operations and structure-preserving functions. Abelian Groups provided the "model for the model" -- that is, it is a mathematical topic where these ideas lie close to the surface. At first there was a flurry of hope that some "meta-theorems" would aemerge that would simultaneously resolve some big unsolved problems in many apparently unrelated fields at once. This enthusiasm -- like String Theory in physics -- eventually petered out without much to show for itself.

Niels Henrik Abel (Abelian Groups) is most famous for proving that it is impossible to produce a "formula" for the solution of fifth degree polynomial equations, like the quadratic formula does for polynomial equations of degree two (and similarly for three and four).

 

[Arigato]

So while, subjectively, costumes and packaging in general may affect the impression of a program, objectively, it's not supposed to matter if the jumps are landed. So same with a tennis player : the serve is good or it's out. The quad lutz is rotated or not. It doesn't matter if the skater was wearing a tutu or not.

I actually do not disagree that some figure skaters have brought constant personal style in their packaging. We can look at Guillaume Cizeron often monochromatic costumes including well fitted garnements and mesh... in various colours for the different programs

I think the fitted, monochrome colors can easily help you to focus on the lines of the body as he skates. Many costumes can do the opposite and the first person who comes to mind also happens to be French. And that's Adam. At the beginning of the season his SP costume looked as if buckets of paint were thrown at him. I lost the lines of the body as he skated - the opposite of Guillaume in monochrome. Fortunately for Adam, the problem was rectified by changing his SP costume later in the season.

 

[4everchan]

I think the fitted, monochrome colors can easily help you to focus on the lines of the body as he skates. Many costumes can do the opposite and the first person who comes to mind also happens to be French. And that's Adam. At the beginning of the season his SP costume looked as if buckets of paint were thrown at him. I lost the lines of the body as he skated - the opposite of Guillaume in monochrome. Fortunately for Adam, the problem was rectified by changing his SP costume later in the season.

I think Guillaume knows perfectly well what works for him. I like his costumes. Nice tutu here .