Brezina has realistic ambitions

Michal Brezina looks to be a top candidate for the international podiums this season, and has worked hard over the summer to realize his dreams. He is not resting on his laurels.

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Thanks! I really enjoy his skating, and hope he has a great season.

Thank you for the article!
It's interesting to compare this with Tomas's interview by PJ Kwong a few weeks back - such different personalities!
I laughed when I read where he implied that he expected Japanese fans to travel to China to see him. I am sure some will do!
I for sure will see him skate at TEB and I am so looking forward to it.

It's nice how positive he is about Verner.

It was a little funny how he said he wasn't excited for the upcoming season though, since it was just work. I guess that kind of attitude might help him succeed though - if you're overexcited, you might end up crashing when it counts.

Thanks so much for the article! I've always loved GS articles!

I like him a lot. 4t-3t, 4s, and 3A in SP? That's insane! Can he really do it?

So we need to do the steps and put some more moves into the program, because last year everybody told me it's good, but it's a little bit too less. So we have to do more for the components, the transitions, that's all.

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I liked An American in Paris, but that exactly what I thought - it woulg benefit from having more choreography. There were moments where I thought that he was just skating from jump to jump. I'm glad he's going to address this.

"You have to do the steps anyway, and it has to be nice, because you'll get the pluses from the judges. The step for the GOE actually must be better than the step for the level," he laughed. "There must be more moves, because the judges don't care about the edges so much, they care for the moves."

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That's something I don't agree with. I think that the judges do care about the edges. After all, you can execute the moves with strong, deep edges. That's what the judges are looking for.

"In the short program right now we have two," Březina revealed. "I go for quad toe-triple toe combination and quad Salchow from the steps, and triple Axel.

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Very ambitious. We'll see whether he will stick to this layout throughout the whole season.

The 20-year-old has a cool, realistic approach to his sport that helps him to focus and to reach his goals. Asked about if he is excited to begin the new season, he shrugged. "Not really. It's just work, it's not exciting."

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I like his answers. You get an impression that he says what's on his mind rather than sticking to the usual 'I'm so honoured to be here' stuff. I suspet that he's not the only one not very excited about the new season, but other will not admit this. Some ardent fans could be pretty tough on them for not 'loving skating' strong enough. That's especially true for female skaters.

One of his goals is obviously to make the Grand Prix Final after being a substitute in the past year. Another goal is reaching the podium at least at Europeans.

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I hope, he will.

flesymtuobayzarc said:

"You have to do the steps anyway, and it has to be nice, because you'll get the pluses from the judges. The step for the GOE actually must be better than the step for the level," he laughed. "There must be more moves, because the judges don't care about the edges so much, they care for the moves."

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That's something I don't agree with. I think that the judges do care about the edges. After all, you can execute the moves with strong, deep edges. That's what the judges are looking for.

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Nope, the judges don't really care that much about good edges in the footwork. First of all, it's not a requirement for gaining levels. You just need to have the right amount of steps, turns, quick rotation, and full body movement. Secondly, judges do indeed score the footwork in GOE based upon, basically, how "exciting" they find it to be. If they really cared about strong, deep edges then we wouldn't have seen some of the scores for certain competitors that we have on these elements.

If you get a Level 4 on your footwork, the judges pretty much automatically give you at least +1 GOE just because they think "OMG Level 4 Footwork". It doesn't matter how jagged the pattern is or how ungainly it looks.

I would love to see him try a short program with a quad toe triple toe, quad salchow and a triple axel! I mean that would be a WOW moment. Even trying it.

Blades of Passion said:

Nope, the judges don't really care that much about good edges in the footwork. First of all, it's not a requirement for gaining levels. You just need to have the right amount of steps, turns, quick rotation, and full body movement. Secondly, judges do indeed score the footwork in GOE based upon, basically, how "exciting" they find it to be. If they really cared about strong, deep edges then we wouldn't have seen some of the scores for certain competitors that we have on these elements.

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I think your second point is not exactly correct, so is Michal's statement. The guideline for +GOE for the step sequences (including newly-introduced choreo step seq.) are;

1) good energy and execution
2) good speed or acceleration during sequence
3) good clarity and precision
4) deep clean edges (including entry and exit of all turns)
5) good control and commitment of whole body to accuracy of steps
6) creativity and originality
7) effortless throughout
8) element matched to the musical structure

Unless you implied that the judges were not correctly applying the guideline?

Do judges do all of the criteria or what they feel is the most important?

gmyers said:

Do judges do all of the criteria or what they feel is the most important?

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For step sequences, judges award a point if a skater fulfils requirement for each bullet point. Then the number of points the skater is awarded is used to culculate the +GOE score.

FOR+1: 2 bullets
FOR+2: 4 bullets
FOR+3: 6 or more bullets

Blades of Passion said:

Nope, the judges don't really care that much about good edges in the footwork. First of all, it's not a requirement for gaining levels. You just need to have the right amount of steps, turns, quick rotation, and full body movement. Secondly, judges do indeed score the footwork in GOE based upon, basically, how "exciting" they find it to be. If they really cared about strong, deep edges then we wouldn't have seen some of the scores for certain competitors that we have on these elements.

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They have to care somewhat about edges, because to fufill the different turns requirement you need to demonstrate strong edging quality. A RFO 3-turn and RFO rocker turn in the same direction, but exit on different edges and an attempted rocker with weak edging would be deemed a 3-turn, reducing the turns that are present in the footwork. So eding is taken into account when grading for levels.

That doesn't speak to edge quality. Yes, you have to execute the correct edges for the turn to count, but the quality of those edges don't necessarily matter. It's only 1 single bullet point in terms of how the sequence is scored and it's not a required bullet point either.

The bullet points for GOE on the technical elements need to be reworked. Most specifically, footwork should have a REQUIRED bullet point of "adheres to a Circular, Straight, or Serpentine pattern". Jumps should have more emphasis on height and distance (those together are 1 single bullet point right now, which is stupid, because you could theoretically get +3 GOE for a tiny jump). Oh, and multi-direction spins should receive more credit as well since they finally disallowed simple upright multi-direction spins as counting for a feature.

Blades of Passion

Apologies - I misunderstood you then. I thought you were implying the judges were not applying the guidelines correctly; but really, you meant that the guidelines needed to be adjusted to put more emphasis on edge qualities. Completely different argument then. I understood Michal's statement is in line with the former, not the latter.

I personally feel it is rather fruitless to argue how the rules should be set. Figure skating is, and like many other sports to large extent, very complex with many aspects to be judged and also enjoyed. That is the beauty of the sport. There is always personal preference on which aspects appeal to spectators the most, and which enthuse competitors. But the bottom line for any sports is to follow the rules. Once you start questioning the rules, based on personal preferences, there is no end to it, and it may deprive one of joy of watching the sport all together.

Sorry but that argument doesn't hold water. Any game needs to have good rules and mechanics or else people will come to find the game boring and won't play it or watch it anymore.

The "beauty of the sport" as you put it, has been suffering because of the arbitrary rules within CoP that make little sense in relation to how the sport has been for decades. It's like if basketball competitions were suddenly played in courts that had 4 hoops (one on each side of the rectangular court) instead of 2 hoops. The game would become far less interesting and not nearly as many people would play it or watch it.

I do not know where you are from, but I am sorry if popularity of figure skating is declining / you are worried that it may decline in your part of the world. I am lucky perhaps the sport is enjoying almost unprecedented popularity where I come from, Japan. (Though it is not where I live now, so I sympathise. :disapp

I think its popularity in Japan is little to do with the rules and /or which aspect of figure skating the rules place emphasis upon. It's simply because Japanese competitive skaters have been very successful in the recent years. It was once very popular, when Midori Ito was successful, then popularity declined until 2006; when Shizuka won the OGM, it just exploded. The rules changed and figure skating changed quite a bit between the late 1980s / early '90s when Midori was skating and 2006. So I understand it is not to do with the sport itself, but success that counts.

I cannot think of a single sport which enjoys universal popularity, even though it is played under the same rules. It depends on the number of participants, history, whether it is included in the school's PE curriculum (=familiarity), and mostly their national team's international success.

I appreciate your love of the sport, and understand your frustration over the rules that have changed worse for you. But I am not going to argue that point, as it is personal to you. It is enjoyable to share personal views and preferences, but I do not gain much from arguing about it. Besides, what you enjoy in figure skating is very similar to mine!

Back to Michal - I do hope he and Tomas are going to be very successful this season, and many more seasons to come. Then popularity of male figure skating will rise in Czech Republic. That'll be only a good thing.

So, basically, the objective state of the sport of figure skating doesn't matter. What matters is that it's popular in Japan/Korea because people there are excited by "their own kind" doing well in competitions. I can't abide by that notion as a reason for why I shouldn't debate about the poor judging system. ALL countries would benefit from better rules. I rather think that real fans of skating in Japan would be excited to see Mao and Takahashi skate with greater artistic freedom in competitions.

Blades of Passion said:

Nope, the judges don't really care that much about good edges in the footwork. First of all, it's not a requirement for gaining levels. You just need to have the right amount of steps, turns, quick rotation, and full body movement. Secondly, judges do indeed score the footwork in GOE based upon, basically, how "exciting" they find it to be. If they really cared about strong, deep edges then we wouldn't have seen some of the scores for certain competitors that we have on these elements.

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It's been a while since you wrote this but :thumbsup:

Blades of Passion said:

The bullet points for GOE on the technical elements need to be reworked. Most specifically, footwork should have a REQUIRED bullet point of "adheres to a Circular, Straight, or Serpentine pattern". Jumps should have more emphasis on height and distance (those together are 1 single bullet point right now, which is stupid, because you could theoretically get +3 GOE for a tiny jump). Oh, and multi-direction spins should receive more credit as well since they finally disallowed simple upright multi-direction spins as counting for a feature.

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The step sequences are all over the place now. I see a lot of moving, arm-flailing, tiny twists on ice, but it all seems like busywork. I used to watch an athlete's skates during step sequences. Now, well, I keep my eyes on the upper body, which is where the movement is centered. The only exceptions are Patrick and Kozuka.