Should the ISU regulate how much money amateur skaters can spend for training?

And again, this is just a post pondering what figure skating would be like if all skaters were able to work with coaches solely dedicated to them or with a choreographer that really knew how to work the system for them. It's a thread wondering if there is a way for it to be done, and if it could be (even if it is just purely fantasy), what it would be like and how it could change figure skating.

Click to expand...

I think this is purely fantasy. There's no way to create a level playing field worldwide in terms of natural talents, access to ice time, access to top-level coaching and choreography, etc.

You might want to go back and look at some of the debates from the 1980s and earlier, when figure skating and other Olympic sports were aggressive in the insistence on strict amateurism, and how state-funded training in some countries gave an advantage over individuals from other countries having to fund their own training without earning money from sport or fame.

Suppose there were a cap on the amount of money that a choreographer could charge to a skater.
There's still no way to regulate the amount of money it would cost each skater to work with that choreographer.

A skater who lives in the same city and trains at the same rink where the choreographer is based would pay the choreographer's fee only.

A skater who lives halfway around the world would have to pay either for the choreographer to fly to her rink and stay in a hotel, or for the skater, maybe plus coach and/or parent, to fly to the choreographer's city and find accommodation there.

All those travel costs can add up to more than whatever the choreographer charges for his time.

prettykeys said:

I'm pretty fed up of people the last few days saying how they "like her skating" (but hate her personality) or "adore her" (but give no credit to her hard work and struggles over the years) or think she's "talented" (but keeps missing her 3-3 or doesn't have clean performances), etc..

Click to expand...

Oh, please don't forget about the people who admit "she's #1" (but thinks she skates emotionless)

prettykeys said:

OMG you're right, I never thought about that! We have YuNa, who had so much money that she was coached by highly sought-after names like Jyong-Hyun Ryu and Se-Yeol Kim before leaving the luxurious skating facilties in S. Korea and heading off to Canada and learning from Brian Orser, who she must have paid by the bucketload to persuade him to leave his shows for coaching. She also wore some hand-me-down skates that didn't fit her feet for a while, because only she could afford them--to other skaters' envy.

Meanwhile, Mao had to settle for second-rate discount coaches like Machiko Yamada, Rafael Arutunian, and Tatiana Tarasova. And then with Tarasova, Mao doesn't have the finances to live abroad and train, so she's forced to stay in Japan and only see Tarasova part-time, and surely it's Mao's lack of funding that has Tarasova unable to attend her competitions, not Tarasova's health.

YuNa is definitely the poster kid for overwhelming advantages right from the get-go.

Click to expand...

Don't forget Shin Hye Sook! O my god! Why is everyone going to Frank or Tom Z?? Don't they know the hotbed of coaches is in Korea?!

In defense of bethissoawesome, I don't think she was trying to put Yuna down. I've been reading this board too much lately and I have an idea who are the anti-Yuna posters and I don't think beth is one of them. And she's already apologized like 80 billion times, so I think we should give her a break.

That said, I really don't think a cap is a great idea. In life, people are successful because they have the resources or they make the best out of the resources they have. Yuna is clearly the combination of the two.

Oksana Baiul is actually a great example of making the most out of resources. Yes, she had a great coach in Galina (who also saved her from being an orphan). But the fact is that Ukraine had almost no ice. That was a big driving factor for her retiring at the "old" age of 16.

I think in any sport you have to make financial sacrifices to be successful and the people who really want it will find a way to do it.

It's not about putting Yuna down. The point people are trying to make is Beth's argument is infinitely wrong if she suggests using a cap to make the playground fair and uses Yuna as an example of someone on the higher end. It would have been more keen to use a better example, someone who doesn't also represent the lower end, one who wasn't as disadvantaged as can be like Yuna. The example of Yuna proves a cap isn't necessary. You can come from a know nothing, no resource, no figure skating background place like Yuna did and still go to the top. Therefore, no, a cap isn't necessary.

prettykeys said:

If you would read what I wrote, it's not that "belittling YuNa seems to have been the point"; it's that you are, by using her as the prime example of your case.

OMG you're right, I never thought about that! We have YuNa, who had so much money that she was coached by highly sought-after names like Jyong-Hyun Ryu and Se-Yeol Kim before leaving the luxurious skating facilties in S. Korea and heading off to Canada and learning from Brian Orser, who she must have paid by the bucketload to persuade him to leave his shows for coaching. She also wore some hand-me-down skates that didn't fit her feet for a while, because only she could afford them--to other skaters' envy.

Meanwhile, Mao had to settle for second-rate discount coaches like Machiko Yamada, Rafael Arutunian, and Tatiana Tarasova. And then with Tarasova, Mao doesn't have the finances to live abroad and train, so she's forced to stay in Japan and only see Tarasova part-time, and surely it's Mao's lack of funding that has Tarasova unable to attend her competitions, not Tarasova's health.

YuNa is definitely the poster kid for overwhelming advantages right from the get-go.

Click to expand...

Machiko Yamada may be altruistic enough not to charge ridiculous fees at least to those who cannot afford them, but she is one of the most decorated coaches in the world in terms of the number of medals that her former and current pupils have garnered. Her pupils have earned far more medals than Mr. Nobuo Sato who just made the FS Hall of Fame. She raised four female 3A jumps, too. How many ladies have ever landed 3A in the history?

Bennett said:

Machiko Yamada may be altruistic enough not to charge ridiculous fees at least to those who cannot afford them, but she is one of the most decorated coaches in the world in terms of the number of medals that her former and current pupils have garnered. Her pupils have earned far more medals than Mr. Nobuo Sato who just made the FS Hall of Fame. She raised four female 3A jumps, too. How many ladies have ever landed 3A in the history?

Click to expand...

Please re-read my post, and you will understand my true regards for Ms. Yamada, who I am aware has spectacular Midori Ito on her list of past pupils.

By the way, I am Canadian, and I love our country, and "sharing the wealth" is a little something I do believe in. I don't believe YuNa's example and story is a reason to say that other struggling skaters don't need help. South Korea may not have been the ideal place to take up Figure Skating, but it certainly can't have been the worst--there must be other countries whose skaters and skating dreams seem more impossible to pursue than even YuNa's were. I would love to see them helped out. Who knows how many other YuNa's we could miss out on.

bethissoawesome said:

When you look at who has won Worlds for the past 3 years... it's Miki Ando, Mao Asada, and Yu-Na Kim... all phenomenally talented skaters, but also all skaters who can afford coaches and choreographers that other skaters could only work with if they won the lottery.

Click to expand...

I am not sure who hires Morosov. It was through the JSF and IIRC it seems that the JSF also played some role when Nobu went to Morosov.
Miki is hired by Toyota. But Toyota has traditionally been known for its frugality.

Let's put every sanctioned skaters in ISU into a figure skating concentration camp somewhere in South America to make sure everyone is on a equal footing. Give them the same food, same color rooms, even same uniforms. Make sure they use the same toothpaste, same underwear (per gender, of course), same tea, same coffee, same vitamins, etc. Have them be taught by a robot programed with the same instructions and choreography. Allow the inmates... oops the athletes, to leave the premise only for competitions. Keep them cooped in solitary confinements so everyone has no outside influence. Hell, take them when they're babies so none of them can have the advantage of a more loving and nurturing parents. Just do some pseudo science test for figure skating aptitude as the infants come into the world for selection. Wouldn't that be great?

bethissoawesome said:

So maybe a better or another question to pose then is should there be a price cap on how much choreographers, coaches, etc. can charge (to amateur skaters) so that they are accessible to more skaters?

Click to expand...

No. It's all about supply and demand.

Also just because they charge less, doesn't mean they have to take on more skaters or decide to work for them.

They may just decide that the extra time they spend on skaters isn't worth the money they get, so they may just become even more selective about who they work with. It's all about marginal cost.

Finally it's almost offensive to say that ISU should start regulating how much people should be paid regardless of their ability. How would you feel if some governing organization told YOU how much you should be paid regardless of your ability and experience?

bethissoawesome said:

To be able to have SO many talented people focused on just you would be any skater's dream... that is a team that could probably train a lump of mud to get up and skate an OGM-worthy performance, but with Yu-Na the talent was already there.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that lovely insult to Yuna and all her fans and the people who enjoyed her lovely SP & LP at the Vancouver Games.

I, for one, haven't realized that I was watching a lump of mud on the ice.

This has been a very interesting thread, with most of the points that came to my mind while reading having already been made by other posters.
The one thought of mine that hasn't already been voiced is this: I hope that, as fans, we are all doing more to support our skaters than arguing on fan boards. I hope we're all keeping current with the talent at our local skating clubs, seeing their shows and making donations to training funds if possible. Skaters at all levels need support, and every little bit helps.
Thanks for a good read.

Just because someone is a good coach or a good choreographer doesn't mean they are good for ALL skaters. Look at Brian Boitano who skated his whole career with Linda Leaver who has not had a "star" pupil before or since. She was a good coach for HIM, though.

I'd say it's important that the skaters understand the rules and what gets points for themselves in addition to letting the coach/choreographer decide what's going in the program AND for the skaters to choose a coach who's teaching style best fits the skater as opposed to being a big name coach. It's not about what it costs for a lesson/program but whether the student is as strong a skater as they can be. I know skaters who get lessons 2X per day from 2 different coaches, 6 days a week who are highly respected and had their programs choreographed by one of the well known choreographers and they still didn't make the cut for the Olympics at the Senior B this year.

And really a good coach will go only as far as the skater allows him or her to. We only have to look at CaroK and her short stint with Frank Carroll to realize that.

I agree with the previous post that states that the right coach and choreographer is dependent on what's right for that skater. When you think about past champions world, Olympic or otherwise, there's never a coach that has a corner on the winning market.

Of course the choreographer side is a bit different, but again there seems to be plenty of emerging choreographers that do some great programs. (Yuka Sato choreographed Kouzka's LP, I think?)

Thread ? my A . Only if they could regulate how much can be charged.

Currently, the effect of a good choreographer on scoring may be a bit overrated. David Wilson is fine and all, but if you look at his client list, there are more duds than winners. He choreographed both of Johnny Weir's programs this season, and neither has done particularly well with the judges. He also did programs for Yan Liu, and at the speed she skates at, it's not like he had to do any actual work. Really, it boils down to the talent and discipline of the skater, and the biases and politics of the judges way more than it has anything to do with the choreographer. The main job of a choreographer is to have a good grasp of the COP and the ability to communicate with the skater, and you don't need big bucks for that. Daisuke Takahashi's masterful SP this season, as mentioned above, is choreographed by a newbie choreographer who just turned pro after a stint as a low level ice dancer.

Of course, this can all change if the judges actually decide to apply the COP fairly instead of relying on reputation judging and other ridiculousness. How so? If you look at the ISU's PDF on how PCS should be applied, choreography greatly affects 4 out of 5 of those scores. Originality, good use of space, tempo nuances, engaging the audience, those are all stressed. Having a great peice of choreography, should, if judges followed the rules, boost a skater's PCS significantly. But does that mean big name and expensive choreographers will be favored, if and when we approach this utopian version of a judging system? In some areas, yes. But the criteria for two PCS stress individuality in one and originality in the other. If a whole bunch of skaters show up with recognizable choreographic touches from the same overused choreographer, those points should be deducted.

Bennet... Thanks for telling us about Kenzi Miyamoto.. When I saw Daisuke's fabulous SP this year , I rushed to look up his choreographer.. Miyamoto's emergence in the choreographic field is one of my big thrills of the year , along with the work Shae Lyn Bourne has begun to do, which I think puts to shame the mannered, predictable efforts of her over-rated Ex.( sorry, I can't resist.) Neither one can be that expensive yet , but if they continue to shine.. Camerlengo's work ,known for a while, has become more prominent recently, and I like it a lot, too.

I think CoP, whatever it's imperfections, has opened the door for a new generation of choreographers, while those who've already adapted to it will continue to be sought out. More diversity = more fun. ( And should go a long way to offset the sameness quotient DesertRoad refers to)