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Every skater should have a revolution counter implanted, and when it reaches a certain number, be forced to retire ;-)
Raising minimum age for seniors from 15 to 17?
- Thread starter moonvine
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Every skater should have a revolution counter implanted, and when it reaches a certain number, be forced to retire ;-)
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Oh, with all due respect, baloney
If you do it right, you can have a long and healthy career. In sports far more dangerous to your health than figure skating. I can’t stand the man, but Tom Brady comes to mind
If you have a sport where the point to get it done as fast as possible so you can be a superstar at 15, because you won’t be one at 16, that’s no sport at all :confused2: And since the only discipline I am 300% invested in you have no hope of winning gold at 16 unless many others splat, I have no axe to grind
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That's why it was better in the good old days. Skaters would go all out form ages 16 to 19 and try to win some medals. Then they would hook on to an ice show and make money prancing and gliding without killing themselves.
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And since the only discipline I am 300% invested in you have no hope of winning gold at 16 unless many others splat, I have no axe to grind
How many of the Olympic medallist (of any shade, never mind gold) male skaters since Dick Button have even been under 21? And how many of the women over?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_medalists_in_figure_skating_by_age
There have actually been quite a few men under 21 who won an Olympic medal, including Viktor Petrenko, Nathan Chen (team), Jason Brown (team), Yuzuru Hanyu, Evgeny Plushenko, Shoma Uno, Alexei Urmanov, Denis Ten, Ilia Kulik and Stephane Lambiel. (Youngest was Scott Allen, bronze in 1964, 14 years 363 days old.)
The three medalists in Special Figures in 1908 (the only time this event was contested) were 19, 36 and 44.
Ladies over 21 include Lu Chen, Sasha Cohen, Michelle Kwan, Kaetlyn Osmond, Katarina Witt, Nancy Kerrigan, Midori Ito, Ashley Wagner, Irina Slutskaya, Yuna Kim, Sonia Henie, and Carolina Kostner.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_medalists_in_figure_skating_by_age
There have actually been quite a few men under 21 who won an Olympic medal, including Viktor Petrenko, Nathan Cen (team), Jason Brown (team), Yuzuru Hanyu, Evgeny Plushenko, Shoma Uno, Alexei Urmanov, Denis ten, Ilia Kulik and Stephane Lambiel. (Youngest was Scott Allen, bronze in 1964, 14 years 363 days old.)
The three medalists in Special Figures in 1908 (the only time this event was contested) were 19, 36 and 44.
Ladies over 21 include Lu Chen, Sasha Cohen, Michelle Kwan, Kaetlyn Osmond, Katarina Witt, Nancy Kerrigan, Midori Ito, Ashley Wagner, Irina Slutskaya, Yuna Kim, Sonia Henie, and Carolina Kostner.
Thank you. Lot of wonderful, will-be-forever-remembered names there in both lists...
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Maybe they could, you know, do some studies and take action (or take no action) based on the results? Like they did with the quad twist?
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Oh, with all due respect, baloney
If you do it right, you can have a long and healthy career. In sports far more dangerous to your health than figure skating. I can’t stand the man, but Tom Brady comes to mind
If you have a sport where the point to get it done as fast as possible so you can be a superstar at 15, because you won’t be one at 16, that’s no sport at all :confused2: And since the only discipline I am 300% invested in you have no hope of winning gold at 16 unless many others splat, I have no axe to grind
With all due respect, baloney right back at you
. Just because you can point out examples of outliers like Tom Brady or Carolina Kostner, doesn't mean that everyone can do it. I could come right back and point to many skaters who had success young who also went on to have long careers, and by your own logic that would disprove your entire argument about how training difficult jumps at a young age is dangerous and bad for the sport. But we don't make judgements based on anecdotal evidence. I could also say that 15 year olds could avoid getting injured by "doing it right" by your own logic. Like it or not, extreme sports like figure skating or gymnastics or football are not natural and do take a big toll on the body, no matter how "right" you're doing it. And like it or not, after a certain age, you are no longer in your peak physical shape, and for a lot (if not most) people, they can no longer bear the intense loads that these elite athletes can take, and the risk of injury becomes higher. And the longer you repeat this wear and tear on the body, the more your body breaks down.
There are some people, however, who are naturally more inclined to take this wear and tear for a longer amount of time, like Tom Brady or Carolina Kostner. And yes, they probably had healthy training regimens too, but that is only part of the story. Saying that you can just "do it right" is demeaning to the many athletes who were super talented and were doing everything "right", but who's body's just couldn't take the extreme loads for that many years.
Anyways, I agree that if you increase the minimum age restrictions in the name of physical health, a maximum age restriction would make just as much sense. However, I disagree that either of these measures should be taken.
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I am not familiar with the quad twist study, but I would say that the chief challenge is that all these studies are longitudinal, gathering data over decades of case studies.
It took years and years before people started noticing that American football players suffered disproportionately from dementia in old age from all the concussions they endured as young athletes. Or for that matter, that baseball players who relied on steroids to hit home runs in the 1970s started dying of cancer 30 or 40 years later.)
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Jimmie Santee was talking about the quad twist study over Skate Radio. In short, what he said they found was that the quad twist was not significantly more dangerous than the triple twist if done correctly, but was more dangerous if done wrong. This led to the quad twist being devalued to the point it is seldom done anymore. I don't know the methodology of the study.
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We won't *know* until all these athletes are 40, 50, 60. Even if we were to start doing studies, like, now, which for a niche sport like skating I can't see happening.
In the meantime, "It's a dangerous sport" means little to me. That's what football fans said. The sport is nasty, brutish and short, deal with it.
Well, Hobbes' maxim was not much help for football and I'm not convinced it's right for skating
ETA: and writing this after I saw @HappySkates, I don't know that we disagree that much
Of course professional athletics stresses the body far more than many other occupations. So someone may not last as long as a Tom Brady. But they *should* last as long as my other fav Jason, Jason Kelce (Sorry, can't resist the temptation to drop those Birds references in) And any sport premised on cramming your entire career into two or three years and losing your ability at 18 is no sport for me
In the meantime, "It's a dangerous sport" means little to me. That's what football fans said. The sport is nasty, brutish and short, deal with it.
Well, Hobbes' maxim was not much help for football and I'm not convinced it's right for skating
ETA: and writing this after I saw @HappySkates, I don't know that we disagree that much
Of course professional athletics stresses the body far more than many other occupations. So someone may not last as long as a Tom Brady. But they *should* last as long as my other fav Jason, Jason Kelce (Sorry, can't resist the temptation to drop those Birds references in) And any sport premised on cramming your entire career into two or three years and losing your ability at 18 is no sport for me
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We won't *know* until all these athletes are 40, 50, 60. Even if we were to start doing studies, like, now, which for a niche sport like skating I can't see happening.
In the meantime, "It's a dangerous sport" means little to me. That's what football fans said. The sport is nasty, brutish and short, deal with it.
To me the big difference is between adults (who make their own decisions and must live with the consequences) and children (who are guided by adult decision-makers, which decision-makers may have many various agendas).
Every successful quarterback in the NFL can look forward to knee replacement surgery at 50. On the other hand, they have $50,000,000 in the bank.
In figure skating we worry about setting off eating disorders in young skaters, but the sport that concerns me the most in this regard is sumo wrestling. Force-feeding a 12-year-old child to get him up to 300 pounds -- what will he balloon up to when his sports career is over?
On the other hand, I guess 15-17 is sort of in-between. Not exploited children, but not accountable adults either.
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So it legally and morally makes no difference. And having 17 year olds in juniors is a measure I don't look forwards to at all.
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It really depends on the sport. There are plenty of elite runners who are still very competitive on the world stage in the 100 and 200 meters at age 35 and up. Same goes for endurance cycling, provided you avoid bad crashes, which is not easy in that sport. Cycling actually has U23 men's divisions at the World Championships and U25 special jerseys and awards at other big races because the peak years for a cyclist come after many miles in the saddle and are seen as between about age 25 and 32.
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I don't think it is a legal or moral argument anyway. As a practical argument, I cannot see that there is any support or even serious discussion of changing the age limits, other than the idle chit-chat we read on Internet message boards.
For better or worse, I do not believe that there is any way to prevent adults from pushing children as hard as they can be pushed, nor is there any way to discourage talented children from wanting to be pushed.
As a legal matter, there are laws against child labor, but it would be a stretch to apply them here. As a moral issue, I think all we can hope for is that the adults in children's lives earnestly consider what is best for the child. (There are worse forms of child abuse that forcing someone to learn a triple Axel.)
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Agreed about the age differences and gaining too much weight is just as bad as maintaining artificially low weight. Those members of the offensive line who pretty much need to bulk up to over 300 pounds are inviting all sorts of health issues later.
But also as you said, if you are over 18 and have stars in your eyes and possible big dollars in your pockets, legally
that’s on you. Under that age, older and supposedly wiser minds should prevail
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I think that this is a statement of the problem, rather than a prescription for a solution. I think that by and large it is the parents, coaches, and other adults who are making the decisions. These are the same adults who start fist fights if a call goes against their child in Little League.
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Absolutely. I think “stage parents” cannot always be trusted and are more invested than their kids, whatever the sport.
You had earlier mentioned child labor laws, and while practically speaking they of course are not applicable, for me they can be analogized. Certain child labor laws prevent activities defined as “hazardous occupations”. One we had to explain when I was enforcing child labor laws quite a bit to store owners was deli meat slicing. In my time, that was an HO for under 16 year olds. They couldn’t do it. And we didn’t fine the 15 year old, we fined the owner.
Now, that 15 year old could have been the most responsible person on the planet and the best and safest slicer anyone had seen anywhere. But it was defined as an HO and they couldn’t do it.
Maybe that’s why, philosophically, arguments against minimum ages or raising minimum ages, don’t resonate with me. The exception doesn’t obviate the rule
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About child labor laws, I think the best analogy would be the rules that cover child actors and entertainers. As I understand it there are quite detailed lists of exactly what you can and cannot require of a child employed in a show-business setting.
I am old enough to remember arguments about the schools being in recess for 6 weeks in the fall so the children could help get in the harvest. On the one hand, children have the right to an education; on the other, you can't have crops rotting in the fields. As I recall there was a state law at that time that you had to be 16 to get a driver's license. But you could get a license to drive a tractor from farm to market on a public road at 14. You could drive a tractor (or even a harvester) on your own family farm at any age.
I am old enough to remember arguments about the schools being in recess for 6 weeks in the fall so the children could help get in the harvest. On the one hand, children have the right to an education; on the other, you can't have crops rotting in the fields. As I recall there was a state law at that time that you had to be 16 to get a driver's license. But you could get a license to drive a tractor from farm to market on a public road at 14. You could drive a tractor (or even a harvester) on your own family farm at any age.
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Still no-one can explain to me why 17, instead of 15? Seventeen seems a very random number. For those who crow about Seniors being for adults, it's not the age of majority; the only thing I can think is that most girls have stopped growing upwards by 17, but a good many have stopped at 15 too, and many 17 year olds still have yet further bodily development to come.
So frankly, I still see no reason for a raise to 17 beyond "help my favourite over-17 skater is being beaten by 15 year olds".
So frankly, I still see no reason for a raise to 17 beyond "help my favourite over-17 skater is being beaten by 15 year olds".
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