- Joined
- Sep 14, 2008
- Country
-
I invite you to make a nice cup of tea, curl up on your armchair, and read with great interest Communication No. 1672.
Tuktamysheva: The Views of Frank Carroll
- Thread starter Mao88
- Start date
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
I believe that this is the whole problem. "I don't like the CoP."
"You need more education."
"But I don't like the CoP."
"That's because you need to study it more, television commentators need to tell you more about it, the ISU needs to put out some in-depth brochures for you to read."
"But...(nevermind)."
If Hersh says that he doesn't like a scoring system that has a category titled "skating skills," but then gives a score of 9.5 in that category to a skater that falls twice, then the ISU should be listening to Hersh, not the other way around.
Instead of thinking hard about Hersh's criticism, ISUers merely parrot back the current rule book.
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
It's not the program, it's the performance. I'm talking about 2004 U.S. Nationals or course. You had to be there (or at least watching on live television).
Bang the drium slowly and play the pipes lowly, the Michelle Kwan era is over. The next generation has arrived, and the script calls for the battlescarred veteran to skate off into the sunset to polite applause.
And then...and then? She hears the horn of combat sounding as from a great distance, her own name called. Something stirs within her war-weary breast. Her game face descends upon her features. "If you can outskate me, outskate this!"
Like Horatio at the Bridge, she faces her foes, single file. Triple Lutz raises his menacing mace. Michelle's sword sings. Triple Lutz's head falls one way, his body the other, into the chasm at her feet -- only to be replaced by the dread Triple Flip! Michelle parries, thrusts...
Well, you get the idea.
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2003
Yes, there it is. That's why I gave you the link to where I was looking.
Who exactly do you think merits -GoE under this rule?
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2007
AGREED. I really enjoyed Sasha Abt's LP from that season too, and Honda's Aranjuez LP (in terms of choreography) was even better than his SP, though he performed his Don Quixote SP much better at the Olympics. Honda's LP actually had some lovely transitions even under 6.0....
Depends when you're talking about. In the mid-1990s the ISU started introducing well-balanced program guidelines that encouraged a full step sequence in the long program. Around 2000 (I'd have to check the date) it became mandatory, subject to deduction if missing.
Well, you don't have to like it. But it exists. So your choices would seem to be learn to appreciate it, ignore it try to enjoy the skating apart from the scoring, enjoy hating it, or stop watching current skating and enjoy the old videos. Your choice.
Why should the ISU listen to Hersh? At best he may have a finger on the pulse of US skating audiences, which could be valuable information for market research purposes, but he's certainly no authority on how the technique should be scored.
If the ISU wants to design its product to fill the desires of US skating audiences, they can listen to Hersh.
If they want to design their product to meet the desires of the its mission it is to serve, they should listen to international competitors and coaches, and representatives of their member federations whose mission is to meet the needs of below-international competitors as well. Personally, I think they need to involve the current and recent skaters in policy making more than they have so far.
We do know that they're listening to some input from coaches and skaters about how much quads should be worth, what with all the changes in base values lately. I have no idea how systematic that input is though. And different skaters and coaches have different opinions on that topic, as on most others. So rules will probably continue to swing back and forth to balance competing interests within the sport.
Oh, and they also have to keep the IOC happy.
What the fans want is a whole other level input with even more contradictions. Hersh hardly speaks for all of them. There are fans from different parts of the world with different national traditions of skating and skating fandom. There are skating fans who love skating for the athleticism and fans who love it for the artistry and fans who love it for the human drama, and often their desires are mutually exclusive among themselves, not to mention exclusive of the competitors' interests.
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
To me, figure skating is half sport, half --- not art, but entertainment. If this were not the case, there would be no need for costumes, for music, or for skaters to display performance skills. “No entertainment value” was the rationale, for better or for worse, for the elimination of required figures.
Like everyone in the sport and entertainment industry, the ISU must pay attention to what the public thinks of its product. To tell the fans, “learn to like the current scoring system or go watch something else” – I think that’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2010
Don't forget that the entire PCS is only about 30% of total score a skater gets. So the system emphasizes technical perspect of the skating far more than artistical side. And it should be this way. Or it won't be a sport.
I know what you are saying. I think both ISU and the public should try to meet in somewhere closer to the other side than they are standing now. The top task for ISU is to educate the public which they haven't done very good job so far. I thought the TV commentators used to point out the names of the jumps after each jump the skater finished during competition. Now at least the commentators in US don't do that any more. They use the time during skater's program to introduce the skater's background, or even tell some entertaining small things about them. To the people who don't want to take the trouble to learn a little bit about the rules of one sport, they'd better go to watch something else instead. Because every sport has rules. Figure Skating is such a complexy sport which has required such extensive learning for the viewers. That is one of the big reasons that it could not be very popular, not even in Asia.
I don't think we've had less controversy in the 6.0 era. In that era, people used more visual and more of their own subjective views. CoP uses numbers to try to minimize the subjectivity but as we all know that it could not be eliminated.
What Hersh said on the subject was misleading and damaging. Does ISU have their own journalist? They should hire someone to clearify any misinterpretation about their system. That is one way to educate public.
Last edited:
This is off topic but I don't mind at all if all the skaters (even ladies) were restricted of their costumes to wear only black. ..or even to a plain uniform. It won't take away artistry. We'll be able to compare skaters with tiny bit more of objectivity.
That´s why you should listen to Plushyagudin´s fans, like me, or senorita.:yay: We know better than Plushenko´s fans or Yagudin´s fans. :yes::thumbsup:
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2003
Actually, that was not the reason for the elimination of figures. Figures was very expensive to train for the smaller federations who were limited in their access to ice surfaces. There were also numerous questions and complaints about honesty in the judging. It didn't help that skaters like Trixi Shuba, could rack up a huge lead in figues and then finish 7th in the LP and win the title. Since the figures were not televised and there was no audience for them, with all of the allegations of rigged results, and the expense of trainingi them, the European federations voted to end them. The USA was one of the federations who opposed the demise of figures.
To you, yes. Not to the ISU.
There really isn't a need for costumes. Skaters enjoy them, and fans enjoy them, so the sport tolerates them. Many officials enjoy them too, and they have certainly come to expect a certain level of glitz, but all the officials really need is for the clothing to look neat and not immodest and to reveal body line without extra fabric getting in the way and distracting. And for nothing to fall on the ice that might become a hazard.
Music was not needed originally for freeskating, but by the 1920s or 30s it became the norm and pretty much required. The main purpose of skating to music is to demonstrate control -- it's a lot harder to do specific moves on specific beats in a specific rhythm than do them any which way whenever you get in place to make the next turn or step. But some skaters are able to go beyond that and actually dance to the music and use their whole bodies in expressive ways. That requires even more control of basics, as well as being more fun to watch, so it's also rewarded.
For ice dancing, music is a fundamental requirement, since the main point of that discipline is using skating skills to dance on the ice to music. Or at least historically that has been the case -- right now it seems that executing difficult elements well with good skating skills in between can be enough to score well without really dancing to the music. But that's a separate debate.
Not really. I think the arguments in favor of dropping figures (and over the decades before that, of reducing their number and importance) included
*Boring for spectators, required lots of ice time but didn't generate income in ticket sales or TV coverage (i.e., "No entertainment value")
*Observers (fans and other skaters, coaches, officials not on the judging panel, etc.) couldn't see what the judges on the ice could see, which made the judging more suspect than for freestyle even though the content of what was being judged was less subjective than a freestyle program
*Many insiders felt that the skills being judged -- repeated tracing, specifically; edge control in general was always valued -- were no longer relevant as a determinant of championships, since there was not a direct correlation between excellence at tracing figures and excellence at freeskating
*Figures required many years of long hours on clean ice to perfect, which meant that skaters from countries who did not have ready access to that much clean ice time were at a significant competitive disadvantage even if they were able to hold their own in freestyle competition
The first one is a marketing reason, but that alone wouldn't have swayed the vote in favor of eliminating figures if the other arguments from inside the skating world weren't already in play.
And of course it took decades to get rid of them from when a few rebels including Dick Button first started suggesting that in the 1950s-60s. Awareness of the advantages of appealing to television audiences certainly grew during the course of those decades.
But the ISU is not really an "industry" producing a product for consumers. If it were, then it should design its product to appeal to fans. Historically most of the costs of running its activities were borne by the participants, not the spectators at the few events that the public considered worth watching.
How much has that changed?
Where does the money come from? I don't know what the breakdown would be.
*At lower levels, and in the days of strict amateurism, individual skaters and their families paid for everything -- ice time, coaching, equipment, etc., as well as membership fees to federations and entry fees to competitions.
*Federations host events and send skaters to international events.
Their money comes from membership fees, entry fees, corporate sponsorship, in some countries government sponsorship, ticket sales, and broadcast rights.
*Individual skaters' expenses may be supported by private benefactors, corporate sponsors, or government/federation sponsorship.
Governments and federations that pay skaters' expenses do so in expectations that their skaters will bring home international medals and the sporting glory that comes with them.
In recent decades, money from broadcast rights and corporate sponsorship of events have contributed a large proportion of income in some federations' and the ISU's budgets. How much has varied along with the fluctuating popularity of the sport in different parts of the world. Broadcast corporations and advertisers certainly care about the number of fans they can attract, so they care about fan appeal -- and broadcast scheduling around other programming. Sometimes they ask federations to make changes in the way events are structured to accommodate their needs and to attract fans, and sometimes the federations comply even if it disrupts the needs of the participants. (Splitting US championships across 2 weekends in 2010 is one example.)
But how much should the needs of the athletes be subordinated to the needs or desires of the outsiders who pay some of the bills?
Especially if the group whose desires they're trying to appeal to ("fans" in general) are split among themselves as to whether to give more weight to big tricks, artistry, clean programs, etc.?
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2006
I think you're forgetting the option of advocating for change which MM as a prominent and highly informed fan is doing very ably.
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2003
No he's not. He's complaining on a skating message board. Advocating for change would mean getting involved in the his national federation at a fairly high level and working towards a position where he could lobby the ISU to make changes.
Or at least, making concrete suggestions on the message board that, with luck, might somehow end up in front of the eyes of decisionmakers who could do something productive with them.
Just saying "I liked it better before. Turn back the clock, please," isn't going to create change.
Nor is saying "Please change things to appeal to fans who like the same kind of skating and competition format that I like best. I don't care what other fans with different interests like. I don't care what the skaters want. There are enough fans like me to pay all your bills if only you'll give us what we want."
Just saying "I liked it better before. Turn back the clock, please," isn't going to create change.
Nor is saying "Please change things to appeal to fans who like the same kind of skating and competition format that I like best. I don't care what other fans with different interests like. I don't care what the skaters want. There are enough fans like me to pay all your bills if only you'll give us what we want."
Last edited:
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2006
That's a narrow definition of advocacy. These boards are widely read. Posts here constitute public speech, albeit anonymous.
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2006
Good grief. You make our dear MM sound like a megalomaniac.
It's not his job to provide the constructive proposals. He's not a technical specialist or skater, he's a bigtime, super-articulate, respected fan -- who's also a professor trained to tell the truth, not to endorse errors. So he thinks COP is a crappy system and he says why. You seriously think that's wrong??
All sports depend on fans today, regardless of how it was in 1850 or 1900. It's normal for sports to change to address fan needs and desires. Which baseball field now is getting torn up so batters can hit more home runs? (That seems hilarious to me.) Of course not all fans will agree, thank the Lord. And fan feelings are not the sole factor in changing a sport. But they are a valid factor since, yes, they ultimately buy the product and thus pay the bills, and I don't think skaters are happy about the shrinking audiences. How could they be?
