- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
I did not know this. What did they do to kill it?
One thing they did was to prohibit Olympic eligible skaters from participating in any kind of competition format unless they used ISU judges and followed ISU regulations and scoring. This was the end of the pro-ams. Basically the ISU wrapped their skaters up with many restrictions as to what they could do, holding over them the threat of disqualifying them from participating in the Olympics. Even the privately sponsored cheesefests had to have ISU judges from three different countries, etc.
I don't, however, think that this was the main reason for the decline in interest in figure skating in America. I think that the main reason is just cultural drift with respect to people's tastes in entertainment.