ISU rankings, Japanese ladies, weird math, and whatever else we want to throw in

attyfan said:

The Russian dominance in pairs and ice dancing stemmed from the Soviet Union's emphasis on getting their best skaters into those two disciplines. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, few Russian men (I mean, men from Russia, whether before or after the Soviet era) won World titles and none won the OGM; even the first OGM from the former Soviet Union was not Russian, but Ukrainian. Similarly, no Russian women won World gold until Maria B (Oksana Baiul is also Ukranian, not Russian), and, none have won the OGM. Since the collapse, Russia has been doing much better in the singles events; but has lost world titles (and, maybe, OGMs) to Canadians, French, and Italian (ice dance) and to Canadians and Chinese (in pairs) Furthermore, the expected "Russian sweep" of the golds expected in Torino didn't exist until Zhao Hongbo got so badly hurt -- and the Chinese have adopted the Soviet athletic system.

IMO, the chances of the US adopting anything from the former Soviet Union to improve its skating are between zip and zilch.

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While it is true that Viktor and Oksana are Ukrainians, they were trained by the Soviet system. While former USSR Olympic selection committee had certainly favored ethnically Russian athletes, I think just about anybody (ethnically that is) from the FSU could've been the first FSU athlete to win an Olympic gold medal following the collapse of the USSR. So I think it is by chance that the first former ex-Soviet singles OGM came from Ukraine and I wouldn't put too much emphasis here.

Yana

attyfan said:

-- and the Chinese have adopted the Soviet athletic system.

IMO, the chances of the US adopting anything from the former Soviet Union to improve its skating are between zip and zilch.

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I would say in Soviet athletic system, figure skating managed more as a team sport. They can pull in whatever resource they wanted without the cost to skaters. If needed they can even orgnize a team of scientist help analysis the movements, what the food the skaters should take, what the drink is good to them, etc. It is treated as team sports in a sense of management and developing. Anyone knew the chinese hurdle Gold medalist Liu Xian. There is a whole group of scientists from sports university doing research for his trainning....and most of all the Federation has the control of skaters.

But here in US athletes basically have to pay their way up. The family manage skater developing, pick up the cost. In some cases skaters need to hold another job to support the cost, the job takes out trainning time. And the democracy make every one, from coach, skater to family member has a say in decition make. If it's a pair or dance team, then 4 parents, 2 skaters, plus coach, how many opinions? And what happens if one family can afford this costumn the other family can't? ....just too many possible way to cause the frictions and cause the team break up......how you develop good pairs and dance team in a enviroment like this?

So like every thing. There is a trade off in any system. And the things go with this system.

Getting back to the question of rankings, I'd say that apart from issues of how they're compiled, no one is paying attention to them because they don't seem to be _used_ for anything internationally.

The main use I can think of would be for seeding skaters at the three largest international competitions, Europeans, Worlds and Olympics.

Seeding skaters according to ranking could eliminate the idiocy of counting the qualifying round (the single stupidest thing about the current competition format).
Let's say the top 12 ranked (or whatever) skaters got a bye into the SP so that the qualifying round really is, you know, a qualifying round and not a first scoring round.

Seeding skaters would be a more rational way of establish warm up groups when there's no qualifying round rather than random draw as is the current practice so you don't potentially have all the medal contenders in the first two groups (for example).

I'm assuming (from what I know of ISU Glorious Chairman Comrade Cinquanta) that the main reason the rankings aren't currently used for anything is that Comrade Cinquanta hasn't figured out how to use them as a blunt weapon against those who displease him ... yet.

Mafke said:

Seeding skaters according to ranking could eliminate the idiocy of counting the qualifying round (the single stupidest thing about the current competition format).

Seeding skaters would be a more rational way of establish warm up groups when there's no qualifying round rather than random draw as is the current practice so you don't potentially have all the medal contenders in the first two groups (for example).

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I like this. Even if the rankings are inaccurate for some skaters, both of these ideas are better than what we have now.