2025 Skate to Milano Pairs Free Skate

[ramurphy2005]

Geynish wants to continue and she's considering partnering with Marco Zandron, but the citizenship issue would prevent them from attending the 2026 Olympics together as a pair.

He last competed for Spain in February, so he'd still have to wait until next February to even get a release from Spain.

I'm not sure if this would apply to Zandron even if he could get a release from Spain.

https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/International-Olympic-Committee/IOC-Publications/EN-Olympic-Charter.pdf

A competitor who has represented one country in the Olympic Games, in continental or regional games or in world or regional championships recognised by the relevant IF, and who has changed his nationality or acquired a new nationality, may participate in the Olympic Games to represent his new country provided that at least three years have passed since the competitor last represented his former country. This period may be reduced or even cancelled, with the agreement of the NOCs and IF concerned, by the IOC Executive Board, which takes into account the circumstances of each case.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

Uzbekistan can just give out citizenship. It's not a problem

The question is whether or not Uzbekistan will decide to do that for Zandron. And, as @ramurphy2005 has already pointed out, Zandron is not eligible to be released from Spain until after 2026 Worlds, so that would prevent him from competing with Geynish internationally until well after the 2026 Olympics, whether or not he was quickly given Uzbekistan citizenship.

In any case, it will be up to Uzbekistan fed to decide whether they want to send a pairs team to the upcoming Olympics. If not, it's possible for the Kovalevs to make it for the individual pairs event, in addition to their slot for the team event.

 

[NanaPat]

for pairs and ice dance especially, would eventually lead to a country or countries unfairly missing out on earned Olympics spots. It happened to U.S. pairs in 2017, in the lead-up to 2018 Olympics, where two spots were earned but only one spot was available for the U.S. in pairs.

That was under the "old rules". I re-analyzed 2018 under the new rules that limit the number of spots for each country to the number of skaters who qualified for the FP.

Assuming 16 Olympic spots to be given out (which was number given out at that time), this is what I got:

Old rules: CHN, RUS, CAN 3 each
GER, FRA, ITA 2 each
USA 1 (but 2 for worlds)
total 16

New rules: RUS, CAN 3 each
CHN 2 (down from 3)
ITA 2
GER, FRA 1 each (down from 2)
USA 1
CZE, PRK, AUS 1 each (up from zero!)
total 16

with CHN, GER, FRA, USA allowed to send one pair to qualifying competition to try to get another place

So the new rules make more places available for the smaller federations as well as taking care of the situation where a federation gets shorted because it is the last of the 2-spot countries. Under the new rules, the USA would be treated the same as GER and FRA with 1 spot, but with an opportunity to earn a second one.
_______________

Added: AUS, PRK, and CZE qualified at Nebelhorn, as did ISR and AUT

USA and GER had skaters who skated well at Nebelhorn, and could have won spots for their country there if they had been eligible.

JPN and KOR were also at 2018 Olympics in pairs, and I have no idea why for JPN; I think KOR got a free spot as host.

For my research, I looked at ISU pairs results from 2017 Worlds, 2017 Nebelhorn, and 2018 Olympics. Feel free to check my work! And if you can explain Japan, I'm all ears.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

That was under the "old rules". I re-analyzed 2018 under the new rules that limit the number of spots for each country to the number of skaters who qualified for the FP.

Assuming 16 Olympic spots to be given out (which was number given out at that time), this is what I got:

Old rules: CHN, RUS, CAN 3 each
GER, FRA, ITA 2 each
USA 1 (but 2 for worlds)
total 16

New rules: RUS, CAN 3 each
CHN 2 (down from 3)
ITA 2
GER, FRA 1 each (down from 2)
USA 1
CZE, PRK, AUS 1 each (up from zero!)
total 16

with CHN, GER, FRA, USA allowed to send one pair to qualifying competition to try to get another place

So the new rules make more places available for the smaller federations as well as taking care of the situation where a federation gets shorted because it is the last of the 2-spot countries. Under the new rules, the USA would be treated the same as GER and FRA with 1 spot, but with an opportunity to earn a second one.

I was not familiar with old or new rules. What Tony Wheeler discussed is not something I am familiar with. Wheeler is admittedly a huge figure skating rulebook nerd. The podcast is interesting and informative.

In any case, we are beyond the 2017 - 2018 situation, with U.S. pairs having already earned three spots for 2026 Worlds.

 

[synesthesia]

JPN and KOR were also at 2018 Olympics in pairs, and I have no idea why for JPN; I think KOR got a free spot as host.

For my research, I looked at ISU pairs results from 2017 Worlds, 2017 Nebelhorn, and 2018 Olympics. Feel free to check my work! And if you can explain Japan, I'm all ears.

Wikipedia says the following:

Figure skating at the 2018 Winter Olympics – Qualification - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

North Korea originally missed the deadline to submit entries and was replaced by the first alternate, Japan. However, following negotiations with South Korea, the North Koreans agreed to send the athletes after all and IOC agreed to extend the deadline. ISU clarified that North Korea's quota place has been given to Japan and that an additional entry in to the competition is up to IOC.​

​

 

[deedee1]

Congrats to the qualified teams, and all the best at the Oly Games!

Happy for the Japanese , and sad for the Kovalevs 'cause I am always a big supporter of veteran skaters;;;

 

[NanaPat]

Wikipedia says the following:

Figure skating at the 2018 Winter Olympics – Qualification - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

North Korea originally missed the deadline to submit entries and was replaced by the first alternate, Japan. However, following negotiations with South Korea, the North Koreans agreed to send the athletes after all and IOC agreed to extend the deadline. ISU clarified that North Korea's quota place has been given to Japan and that an additional entry in to the competition is up to IOC.​

​

Thank you.

The only remaining question is why the quota place was given to Japan when BLR, GBR and ESP were ahead of them at Nebelhorn. It was probably because the Japanese pair was going to be there anyway for the team event. This way they were adding starters for the pairs (an extra flight, in fact) but not adding athletes, so they didn't have to produce two more spots in the athlete's village!

I guess having to add extra flight(s) for the host country is what led to the total number of qualifies in each discipline to be cut to one less than 5 flights worth (two less in the case of dance) to accommodate the "extra" host spots. I wish they would select one (or two, for dance) more entries at the qualifying competition if the host doesn't need those "extra" spots (as with Italy this time around).

 

[ice coverage]

... The only remaining question is why the quota place was given to Japan when BLR, GBR and ESP were ahead of them at Nebelhorn. ...

At 2017 Nebelhorn pairs competition, Japan placed ahead of -- not behind -- BLR, GBR, and ESP.

JPN eleventh, BLR twelfth, ESP thirteenth, GBR fourteenth.

49th Nebelhorn Trophy 2017 - Pairs

www.isuresults.com

 

[NanaPat]

At 2017 Nebelhorn pairs competition, Japan placed ahead of -- not behind -- BLR, GBR, and ESP.

JPN eleventh, BLR twelfth, GBR thirteenth, ESP fourteenth.

49th Nebelhorn Trophy 2017 - Pairs

www.isuresults.com

Thank you, thank you.

I was looking at the FS results, thinking they were the overall results. They were close enough to get the same qualifiers, until I got down to Japan!

 

[readernick]

Wrong thread

 

[CoyoteChris]

Congrats to JPN and CHN! If this were easy, they would call it golf.

 

[Budapest2006]

IMHO, judges are just human and influenced by the crowd. It isn't always some grand scheme. Domestic skaters almost always get a boost when skating at home. Alysa's scores at last worlds are an example. She's a nice skater but rather slow. She usually isn't going to get the best PCS, but the crowd reaction made her skate seem better. Reputation also subconsciously influences the judges. I think the same thing happened with the Chinese team. They had the home crowd on their side and the "best" reputation of the teams outside of the top 2. It's not fair, but figure skating isn't always fair. Holding this type of competition in a more " neutral" country might be better.

I agree that holding this competition in China, knowing that China was fighting for 3 Olympic spots (that they all earned), wasn't the best choice

 

[Kittosuni]

I agree that holding this competition in China, knowing that China was fighting for 3 Olympic spots (that they all earned), wasn't the best choice

I'm too lazy to look up the exact date but I think China was awarded the hosting rights way before knowing if they needed to fight any spots there and even before worlds where spots were earned and allocated there.

 

[Budapest2006]

I'm too lazy to look up the exact date but I think China was awarded the hosting rights way before knowing if they needed to fight any spots there and even before worlds where spots were earned and allocated there.

Probably, but it was almost expected that they would get to fight for (extra) slots at this competition, knowing the global level of China, and that they would be in the mix to actually earn these slots. And I think home avantage helped for women's and ice dance's slots. Maybe they wouldn't have earned it in another place. But congratulations and good for those who qualified, it was deserved anyway

 

[saine]

I'm too lazy to look up the exact date but I think China was awarded the hosting rights way before knowing if they needed to fight any spots there and even before worlds where spots were earned and allocated there.

The original bid document (here) has the deadline for bids at September 20, 2024. Way before China would have known that they would need to qualify 3/4 spots here.

They got the event because no one else had a better bid than them. They're willing to spend money on the events so they host them.