Article by Janet Lynn

Article by Janet Lynn

http://www.iceskatingintnl.com/archive/features/A measured fall from freedom.htm

Thanks for the link to the article. Very interesting read.

Granted skating is hugely less popular in the US that it was, but is that so in other countries?

Certainly it is wildly popular in Japan and Korea today. Ross Miner commented on the fact that tickets for the men's event at NHK sold out in "3 minutes".

Has the popularity of skating waned in Canada? In Germany? In France? In Russia? In Italy?

I hope our non-USA members will tell us.

Thanks, Mr. Rossano!

I believe generally speaking the scoring system has changed for the better. The more I study it, the more I like it. Though there are a lot to be improved. Regarding to popularity, it will be more unpopular in US with or without scoring system changes. The judging scandal really did the work to hammering down this sport imo. But there are huge cultural background and many factors contributed to it.

I'm all for loosening up in some areas in CoP but it should still be based on CoP. 6.0 should be thrown away forever because it was too roughly designed and measured, and reputationally based.

I read this article earlier and I agree with everything Janet Lynn had to say.

Especially the part about youth, and how they measure great performances of the past by today's COP, and find them lacking. Ahhh, the ignorance of youth.

Me, I don't have neither the time nor the desire to educate the ignoramus, let them wallow in their own stupidity and superiority.

I did find this to be an interesting read, and I agree with her sentiment; I don't like what skating has become under the COP. But the difficulty is the fact that skating is a judged sport, and you have to have some objective measurements to determine who wins and who loses.

My favorite line:

Teach skaters how to skate a resplendent language on ice with necessary self-government and set them free to beautiful music.


A resplendent language on ice. What a beautiful way of describing the element that calls me to skating every time.

I also agree with Janet. The fact that skating may still be popular in Japan and Canada has more to do with particular skaters than an enduring interest in the sport. And it doesn't change the fact that skating is on life support in the biggest media market, the US. One thing that needs to change, in my opinion, is the rewarding of tricks, like adding a Biellmann to a layback or twizzles to footwork to raise the levels and gain extra points. These elements are not the measure of a good skater. I see little kids doing Biellmanns at public skating sessions. But a beautiful classic layback, like Janet's or Sasha Cohen's, is rare. That is what should be rewarded, if a point system is to be used. I would get rid of levels altogether, in the long program at least. And the presentation mark needs to be revised, too. There are too many elements. I read that originally, the 6.0 system was going to be retained for the second mark. Too bad that view didn't prevail.

While interesting and well written, I think the article leaves out Larger forces at work in our societies. And the very nature of our cultures. Technology is fast making us very different people. And that is one reason why skating is looseing popularity with the general public. It does help to have your country have big, popular stars, but look at the Attendance at SkateFrance, which I have been watching this week after having made a DVD from Univ. Sports. Stop the video and look at the stands....just as bad as SkateAmerica. We live in a world where the average young person's attention span is 2-3 seconds....Dont believe me? Watch an MTV music video....I cant...it is too distracting....watch the young casual fans watching a Mirai or an Alissa skate and they still are constantly checking their cell phones.....You think skating is big in Korea? I have to wonder if maybe Yu-Na is big in Korea. At SkateAmerica Lake Placid, the Koreans came by the bussful from NYC to watch her, but almost all of them watched almost none of the rest of the skating....The sport is still popular in Canada and Japan. I just hope I am wrong about the US, but things arent looking all that good....

jenaj said:

One thing that needs to change, in my opinion, is the rewarding of tricks, like adding a Biellmann to a layback or twizzles to footwork to raise the levels and gain extra points.

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ITA. One huge problem is that the programs are just too hard now. Clean programs are so rare that there isn't anyone to get excited about. Adding to the frustration, at least for me, is that the announcers really don't get excited either. And why should they? They aren't even sure if they saw a "good" program, given that nobody knows until the marks come up whether jumps were fully rotated or spins achieved a certain level. Under 6.0 I had a good idea after watching a program where it would place. That isn't the case now, so I just wait until programs post on YouTube so I can just watch the "good" ones.

Janet is dead on right describing most skater's programs today. She epitomizes the basics that made skating beautiful. CoP needs reform. 6.0 wasn't always fair but neither is CoP. Judging must become transparent.

I agree with a lot of things Janet says but I don't think it's that simple. I think in some ways the new scoring system does reward basic skating skills - it seems to reward a skater like Patrick Chan, for instance. The scoring system seems to regard him as far above nearly all his competitors and not for his jumps. So, I don't know.
Still, I guess Janet's point wasn't so much that the wrong people win but that the new system promotes awkward and joyless programs. I agree with what she says about the footwork sequence and the spins. I absolutely hate that skaters scrape out high levels for contorting their bodies even if the lines are ugly. If you truly have a beautiful bielmann or donut or I spin, great, use it. But skaters these days do horrid versions of those spins and get the points anyway just for doing it. Yick.

Am I the only that think Janet Lynn is barking up the wrong tree as most of the members to this forum are. The IJS does nothing but award points for different skating elements. If you do more difficult elements you get more. If you do easier elements you get less. If you do it well you get more. If you do it badly you get less. It has no control over what elements the skater does, who the skate choreographer is, or what music they choose or how much they care about skating skills. The skater, coaches, and federation are who have say and control in that department. If a skater wants they can do nothing but skate in circles to beautiful music. They will still be awarded points. If skater chooses to listen to music and work on there skating skills the ijs will shower them with points- aka yuna kim , patrick chan, daisuke takashi, jeremy abbott, etc but it also up to the skater , the coaching staff and the federation to promote that. It is not the job of an impartial judging system which trying to do its job which is being impartial. Mrs. Lynn need to be talking to skating clubs and the federation about building basics and the importance of program components not a judging system that just award points for what skater do best(what ever that may be.)

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, that's simply not true. There are many rules about which elements must and must not be used in which programs. The skaters and choreographers have a lot of restrictions to work around. People with expertise discuss these rules in many threads here.

This is a typical eloquent expression of personal opinions, even if they are those of a well respected person, that are based on non substantiated premises. Lynn may lament the lack of beauty in skating per her preference, but that is no grounds for negating all improvements in the sport since her days and linking her wistfulness to the loss of popularity of figure skating in the US, the causes of which have not been identified and validated with any comprehensive study and survey. But it is extremely unlikely to be due to a sole factor which happens to be a personal peeve.

Spun Silver said:

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, that's simply not true. There are many rules about which elements must and must not be used in which programs. The skaters and choreographers have a lot of restrictions to work around. People with expertise discuss these rules in many threads here.

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IJS rules and regulation concers what qualifies as a legal element -definition of that element, how many points it is worth and how to apply goe. There was an Indain Pair Team that wasn't able to complete any of the technical elements in the the short program. They still scored points for PCs. Skater don't have to due lever 4 spins,hectic footwork, fugly positions or quads to score points. They are not requirements.

There are a couple of different ways in which rules require, restrict, encourage, or discourage certain kinds of technical content.

1) Short programs have always required exactly 7 or 8 (depending on the year) specific elements or kinds or elements with significant penalties for not meeting the requirements.

2) Free programs in Lynn's day had no explicit requirements or restrictions that I'm aware of. There were expectations of the different kinds of elements one would expect to find in a singles (or pairs) free skate, but no explicit penalties for doing too many or too few -- it was up to the judges to reflect the balance of the program as they perceived it.

By the 1980s there started to be restrictions on repeating triple jumps (Zayak rule) and then requirements and limits on the numbers of jump combinations and/or sequences in the free skate.

In the mid-1990s, the ISU introduced well-balanced program guidelines to encourage all skaters to include a minimum number of spins and at least one step sequence in their free program. By about 2000 those guidelines became requirements -- e.g., at least one jump combo but no more than three, at least four spins, one step sequence, and one spiral sequence (ladies) or field moves sequence (men) -- with deductions for omitting requirements (or repeating too many jumps or doing too many combos).

Look at Plushenko's free program at 2000 Worlds for an example of what happened when the skater left out spins to try to fit in more jumps. I think 2000 NHK, where Slutskaya with a couple of visible errors beat a "clean" performance by Butyrskaya, is another example. Butyrskaya did do steps and spirals during her program, but not really in what could be considered official sequences (especially step sequence), so she might have been penalized for lacking a "required" element in the free program.

I haven't kept track of all the changes for pairs over the years, but as of the mid-1990s the guidelines for pairs freeskate didn't leave much room for variation because there are so many different kinds of pair elements that the guidelines recommended and then required something like "at least one but no more than two" (death spirals, throw jumps, twist lifts, etc.)

So that's where things stood at the end of the 6.0 era -- the free program was much more homogeneous in the number of each kind of element than it had been for most of the 20th century, and there were some very explicit requirements that would be penalized if omitted, but there was also still room for skaters to emphasize their strengths and deemphasize their weaknesses.

Then the IJS took over. And instead of just requiring a minimum number of each kind of element, instead the new well-balanced rules imposed maximums for each kind. But if you want to earn as many points as your competitors, you'd better fill all the element slots allowed, because doing fewer elements gives you fewer opportunities to earn TES points. So if the minimums and maximums for each kind are effectively identical, then every skater will have the same number of each kind of element, unless they make mistakes or choose to leave something out or choose to include an extra element at the end they know they'll get no points for. Thus the similarity in program content across the entire field.

The exact numbers of elements have changed over the last 8 years (one spin has been deleted, and one of the sequences has changed from leveled to "choreographed").

In addition, the new well-balanced rules also required specific elements within the general categories. In addition to the preexisting rules about jumps and jump combos, an axel jump (single, double, or triple) was now required in the free skate. Of the three or four allowed spins, one must be a combo spin, one must include only one basic position, and one must have a flying entry, and also no two spins can have the same IJS code. That rule is designed to ensure that all skaters showcase certain basic spinning skills, but especially with only three spins available now, each of which has to fill one of those requirements while maximizing potential points, there's no opportunity for skaters to do a different kind of spin that would fill one of the already-filled requirements in order to showcase their own unique skills or enhance the choreography at the expense of technical points.

3) The Scale of Values lays out exactly how much each specific element is worth in both base mark and grades of execution. This allows skaters to strategize their program content to earn the best theoretical base mark, or to aim for the best actual technical score they personally are capable of, taking likely GOEs into account. That's a big advantage of the IJS.

However, in many cases, especially for jumps but also for higher vs. lower levels in other elements, the differences in GOEs vs. base marks are such that it's clearly more valuable on paper to do a harder element with small flaws (or, right now, with major flaws on rotated quads and triple axels) than to do an easier element exceptionally well. So just looking at the SoV skaters and coaches would often choose to add difficulty before perfecting quality.

Also, if you clearly rotate a jump or clearly execute the right combination of features on a non-jump element, you will get credit for the element in the base mark. The technical panel calls are not matters of personal opinion (yes, sometimes differences in human perception play a part in the so-called gray areas if the execution of rotation or feature was borderline), whereas the GOEs from judges are more subjective and variable, and initially international judges were overly hesitant to award the highest positive GOEs. So it became even more true that doing a harder element just barely adequately was often more valuable than doing an easier element very well.

Hence the tendency of skaters to aim for doing level 3 or 4 spins and steps (and spiral sequences when they were leveled) if they had any hope of getting credit for the features, because they might know in advance or have reason to expect that doing an easier element with better quality would not earn them as many points.

And so complicated spins and step sequences became the norm and simple ones done well became rare.

4) The way the IJS defines and scores jump sequences, combined with the limits on total number of jump elements, means that some ways that skaters used to link jumps together as a kind of extra difficulty now continue to add to the risk of mistakes without adding points and in some cases subtracting points from the base value (e.g., 0.8 sequence multiplier, or using two jump slots for two jumps very close together that would have been considered a single sequence in the old system). So those kinds of jump series are no longer worth doing.

5) The way the levels are defined for various elements require or encourage most skaters to include the same features if they want to earn a higher level.

Anything that used to enhance and give extra technical difficulty to a spin or step sequence but that does not qualify as a feature is no longer an asset to the base value. If it's also likely to result in lower GOE, or at least not add to the GOE or not significantly, there's no reason to do it. For example, holding the free leg in a well-turned-out attitude position in a layback spin will earn fewer points than holding a position that also counts as a feature, even if it's less attractive. So the skaters with enough flexibility to enhance their laybacks in multiple ways will choose the enhancements that give them higher levels even if other choices might be more beautiful.

Of the various enhancements that do add to the levels, some are just a little more difficult than doing the basic element well, some moderately difficult, and some much more difficult. Therefore the vast majority of skaters will choose the easier features and few will choose features that are too hard to get credit for. (With some exceptions. E.g., Rachael Flatt and Joannie Rochette don't have the body type to do as many flexibility moves in their spins as some of their competitors, so they chose to develop the skills to make use of the opposite-direction spinning feature that most skaters don't bother with.)

Also, there's no value to doing just one feature in a spin or sequence, since the minimum to earn a higher level is 2 features for level 2. That leaves out some of the examples of basic spins with one enhancement that we used to enjoy under 6.0. And the "variety of steps and turns" feature is mandatory for any step sequence aiming at level 2 or higher, so there's no reason to cultivate skills to do step sequences that consist only or primarily of steps (and little jumps) or only or primarily of turns, or the same kinds of turns in different directions.

Well, now the senior men have a choreo step sequence in which they can emphasize other kinds of step skills. But that doesn't help the juniors or the ladies.

Some of these reasons for similarity of content between skaters are inevitable results of any attempt to tell skaters what's expected of all of them (what constitutes a well-balanced program). That's true under either judging system; if today's well-balanced program rules were used with 6.0 judging, we'd see the same similarity in program content.

Personally, I don't see the need to be so exact about exactly 7/8 jump passes, exactly 3 spins, etc., in free programs. I think there could be ways to rewrite the well-balanced rules to give more flexibility and still keep the optional elements comparable to each other according to each skater's choice. But so far the ISU hasn't seen it my way.

Some of the similarities are due to de facto requirements, not de jure. Skaters are free to choose other elements and other features, but if the elements they prefer to do are worth fewer points or are less likely to be credited, they have reason to leave them out and do the same ones that everybody else does.

Are there ways that the well-balanced rules, the GOE values, and/or the level definitions can be rewritten to give skaters more freedom in choosing to do easier elements with hope of reward in GOE and/or PCS or in choosing less common features with expectation of sufficient reward?

Going back to a situation with no restrictions at all is probably not the way to go. There are reasons those restrictions were put in place to begin with. Take them away, and skaters will again find ways to exploit that freedom the same way that they now exploit the restrictions. But I think there should be more of an effort to design the restrictions to give structure and equivalencies to variations between skaters, rather than to try to homogenize everyone into demonstrating the exact same sets of skills.

The older generation people have been having hardtime to adopt the new ideas. Dick Button hated CoP so much that he said it all the time on air. I think the younger people adapted it well. There are many beautiful, artistically superb programs under this new system.

Bluebonnet said:

I believe generally speaking the scoring system has changed for the better. The more I study it, the more I like it. Though there are a lot to be improved. Regarding to popularity, it will be more unpopular in US with or without scoring system changes. The judging scandal really did the work to hammering down this sport imo. But there are huge cultural background and many factors contributed to it.

I'm all for loosening up in some areas in CoP but it should still be based on CoP. 6.0 should be thrown away forever because it was too roughly designed and measured, and reputationally based.

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Agreed. Personally I think the decrease in popularity is not so much about judging as about lack of interesting skaters. Where there is a star, there is a fan. After Kwan's retirement, there has not been any American skater that could step up to the plate. Sash Cohen, who could not even win a World championship? Evan Lysacek, whose skating was deemed boring by many despite his winning the Olympic? Without a star like Yuna of Korean or Mao/Dai of Japan, the popularity in US is of course destined to go for the worse.

When I talk about "star qualities", I don't mean supreme skating skills that only the experts can appreciate. I mean such qualities as the elegance of Mao and the dance of Dai that even a casual fan could watch in awe and admiration.

As the post above said if the skater or skater's staff seeks to score the highest points possible the easiest way of course ther is only going to be a few ways to do that. And it makes no logical since to have easier elements score equal or more than harder elements. If the skater seeks just outscore there counter parts they can definitly utilize there program components since most seem to only focus on the technical. Exhibition and shows have no rule regulation or requirements at all.