- Joined
- Sep 10, 2009
JSF will come up with the preliminary decision on 23rd at their council meeting. Currently both sides are not sending their athletes to the countries: China to Japan- their badminton and archery teams, Japan to China- triathlon athletes and a yokozuna (sumo grand champion) Hakuho, who is btw Mongolian by origin/passport and not a Japanese national at all. Besides Team Japan there are two other Japanese who are assigned to CoC: Mirai Nagasu with her double citizenship and Yuko Kawaguchi, the ex J-passport holder. Chinese athletes for NHK Cup are Li, Sui/Han and two dance teams whose names I completely forgot.
I do hope that things will come down. Otherwise GPF in Sochi will be a stupid farce without top skaters. Russia is not interested in it at all. In the worst case scenario, and considering that ISU won't pay for the event's relocation (unless Putin will do it again ), ISU should reassign skaters as #11/#7 for other GPs. That will be a fair play in this situaton. This ISU keeping quiet is getting annoying.
I hope the Japanese skaters can go to CoC and the Chinese skaters to NHK, as both events will be much better for it. However, if that is not possible, why should they be given new assignments? How is that fair to the skaters in those GPs that will be expanded, who will have to compete against bigger and stronger fields than they would have otherwise? The ISU doesn't give new assignments to skaters who miss events due to medical reasons, or because of visa problems; they don't get to go to the GPF - so why do skaters deserve some sort of compensation because they can't go due to political decisions? And these are political decisions; though it's not their fault, it's not as though it is physically impossible for the skaters to go. 2011 Worlds were postponed and moved because it was not possible to hold an event in Tokyo at that time - for anyone. This is not the same situation, and I don't know that the ISU should enact a new policy because of it.
The GPF is often missing top skaters who miss events for medical reasons, because they skip the fall season, whatever. Looking at the seeded skaters (top six from Worlds), you have 1 pair, 1 man and 1 lady who are potentially affected, which won't make the GPF a "stupid farce".
Considering the topic of this discussion is supposed to be Dai, I agree that it would be better to start a thread in The Edge.
I don't think that "medical reasons" is a fair comparison here.
Well. :think: