How should ISU address potentially dangerous elements?

[sisinka]

Updated!
https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/t...dangerous-elements.98149/page-10#post-3281675

Another group I created was "multiple quad skaters" with quad jumps being executed at competitions. In this case there is nobody over 30 years of age, the oldest is Yuzuru Hanyu being 27 years old (Olympics 2022). The group of "multiple quad skaters" is still very young, but there is also a possibility that injuries may effect longevity thanks to enormous overloading. We need to wait and see.


"MULTIPLE QUAD SKATERS" - three and more quad jumps, one of them being loop / flip / lutz / axel attempted or landed at competition in Free Program:

Yuzuru Hanyu - born in December 1994 - landed one quad toeloop in SP and two clean quad toeloops and another two falls in quad salchow and axel in FP at the Olympics 2022, but landed quad loop in SP and four quad jumps in FP at World Championships 2017 (in 2022 he was 27 years old)

Shoma Uno - born in December 1997 - he executed three different quad jumps (flip, loop, toeloop) at World Championships 2024 (26 years old)

Nathan Chan - born in May 1999 - landed two quad jumps in SP and five quad jumps in FP at the Olympics 2022 (he was 22 years old)

Vincent Zhou - born in October 2000 - four different quad jumps (two of them with negative GOE) at World Championships 2022 (he was 21 years old)


still competing:

Boyang Jin - born in October 1997 - quad lutz + salchow + toeloop in FP at Olympics 2018, at 4 Continents Championships 2024 with quad lutz / toeloops (2x) (being 26 years old at that moment)

Dmitri Aliev - born in June 1999 - landed quad lutz + salchow + toeloop (toeloop was planned twice) at Sr. Russian Grand Prix Final 2024 in February 2024 (being 24 years old at competition)

Makar Ignatov - born in June 2000 - jump content with quad loop + salchow + toeloops (2x) in 2023/24 season, last competition in February 2024 (being 23 years old at competition)

Adam Siao Him Fa - born in January 2001 - quad lutz + salchow + toeloops (2x) in 2023/24 season (23 years old at last competition)

Petr Gumennik - born in April 2002 - landed quad lutz + loop + salchows (2x) at St. Peterburg Championships 2024 in January 2024 (being 21 years old at competition)

Yuma Kagiyama - born in May 2003 - quad flip + salchow + toeloop in 2023/24 season (20 years old at the end of the season)

Evgeni Semenenko - born in July 2003 - one of jumps contents includes quad loop + salchow + toeloops (2x) in 2023/24 season (20 years old at the end of the season)

Mark Kondratiuk - born in September 2003 - clean quad lutz + toeloop + salchows (2x) at Sr. Russian Grand Prix Final 2024 in February 2024 (20 years old at the end of the season)

Shun Sato - born in February 2004 - quad lutz + flip + toeloops (2x) at Japan Open 2021, he landed quad lutz + toeloops (2x) at Four Continents Championships 2024 (in season 2023/24 his content was with lutz and toeloops) (20 years old at the end of the season)

Gleb Lutfullin - born in March 2004 - usually competes with quad loop + toeloop + salchows (2x) in 2023/24 season (20 years old at the end of the season)

Mikhail Shaidorov - born in June 2004 - jump content with quad lutz + flip + toeloops (2x) at World Championships 2024 (being 19 years old at competition)

Ivan Popov - born in July 2004 - attempted quad flip + salchow + toeloop in October 2023 in 2023/24 season (being 19 years old at competition)

Ilia Malinin - born in December 2004 - quad axel + lutzes (2x) + loop + salchow + toeloop at Grand Prix Final 2023 and World Championships 2024 (being 19 years old)

Kao Miura - born in June 2005 - attempted quad salchow + loop + toeloops (2x) at World Championships 2024 (being 19 years old at competition)

Grigory Fedorov - born in July 2005 - competes with quad lutz + flip + toeloop in 2023/24 season (18 years old)

Arseniy Fedotov - born in September 2009 - competes with quad lutz + salchow + toeloop in 2023/24 season (14 years old)

Lev Lazarev - born in November 2009 - competes with 4 lutzes (2x sometimes) + flip + toeloop in 2023/24 season (14 years old)

-------

Matteo Rizzo is cathegory on its own, he lands other then toeloop / salchow, but he attempts two quad jumps in FP. Which means that I don't want to put him into "multiple quad skaters" group, but I want to mention that he is able to execute quad loop, which is rarely seen.

Matteo Rizzo - born in September 1998 - landed quad loop + toeloop at Grand Prix in Canada and Finland in 2023 (with positive GOE in Canada).

Andrei Anisimov - born in June 2004 - attempted quad flip + loop + salchow in 2022/23 season, in 2023/24 season it was quad flip + salchow + toeloop attempted, in FP there were one or two quad jumps (salchow + toeloop), while quad flip was executed in SP. So he is not fitting my multiple quad cathegory in FP as well, but I put him to Matteo.

Alexei Erokhov - born in September 1999 - competed with quad loop + salchow + toeloop in 2021/22 and 2022/23 season, in Stress Fractures Thread - https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/t...s-in-figure-skating.98339/page-3#post-3286073 @CrazyKittenLady described his journey through injuries. In 2023/24 season he executed quad salchow + toeloop.

-------

Daniel Grassl - born in April 2002 - attempted quad lutz + flip + loop in 2022/23 season, he didn't compete this season, so we have to wait for next season's jumping content.

 

[CrazyKittenLady]

Andrei Anisimov - born in June 2004 - attempted quad flip + loop + salchow in 2022/23 season, in 2023/24 season it was quad flip + salchow + toeloop attempted, in FP there were one or two quad jumps (salchow + toeloop), while quad flip was executed in SP. So he is not fitting my multiple quad cathegory in FP as well, but I put him to Matteo.

At the 2022 Panin Memorial Andrei went for 4F, 4Lo, 4S in the FS, which would put him in your multiple quad category in the FS after all. But it was a non-standard layout for him.
http://rez.fskating.spb.ru/images/result/2223/0508102022Panin/ooeaaeMC__Scores.pdf (4th place)

ETA: just realized you are looking at the 23/24 season, so the point is moot anyway.

 

[CrazyKittenLady]

@sisinka, if you haven't done already, you should get in contact with @eppen. I believe they have a very comprehensive database of skaters attempting quad jumps through the years.

 

[eppen]

It means that the dynamics of the take off is slowering a little bit after 25 year of age. Most probably enough to land all triple jumps in men cathegory. Valter Virtanen is 36 years old and lands triple jumps. More retired skaters are landing triple jumps at shows.

Talking about men's cathegory only... and thinking about quad jumps in higher age...

If we look at "QUAD SKATERS" - men landing quad jump / jumps (toeloop or salchow, not more then three quad jumps in FP) being close to 30 years of age...there are not many. From those I do remember:

Alas, the unofficial quadster historian has some statistics to offer... I have 597 skaters (men and women) who have attempted at least one quad in their careers and the average age of the last attempt is little over 20. For the about 500 men, the average age at last attempt is a little over 21. For the retired about 280 men the average age is a little over 23. With that in mind, doing quads in their late 20s is pretty good. But just the oldest get listed here.

Sketers with quads attempted in their 30s (the age when they last attempted a quad)
Eldredge, Todd - 30 (6 attempts of 4T, but started at 28 years of age!)
Zhang, Min - 30 (4T and 4S regularly up until his last season 2005-6, at least 74 attempts in 12 seasons)
Plushenko, Evgeni - 31 (only 4Ts and one 4Lz, at least 138 attempts in 17 seasons)
Brezina, Michal - 31 (4T and 4s, in his last years only 4S, 135 attempts in 12 seasons)
Messing, Keegan - 31 (4T mostly, some 4Lz, 151 attempts in 13 seasons)
Menshov, Konstantin - 32 (4T mostly, some 4S, at least 136 attempts in 8 seasons)
Voronov, Sergei - 32 (4T mostly, a few 4Lo in his last season, 156 attempts in 12 seasons)
Bychenko, Alexei - 33 (4T only, 125 attempts in 14 seasons)
*Virtanen, Valtter - 33 (4T only, 61 attempts in 11 seasons - he has been talking about maybe going for it again)
*Oda, Nobunari - 36 (4T only, 54 attempts in 20 seasons, the oldest skater to do a successful quad!)

29-year-olds
Abbott, Jeremy (4T)
Dmitriev Jr., Artur (4T, occasional 4Lo, 4Lz and 4A)
Fentz, Paul (4T)
Joubert, Brian (4T, some 4S)
Li, Chengjiang (4T, 4S)
Liebers, Peter (4T)
Nakaniwa, Kensuke (4T)
Ponsart, Romain (4T, 4S)
Stojko, Elvis (4T)
Van der Perren, Kevin (4T)
Weiss, Michael (4T, some 4Lz)

28-year-olds
Besseghier, Chafik (4T, 4S)
Dambier, Frederic (4T)
Kvitelashvili, Morisi (4T, 4S)
*Ma, Jimmy (4T)
Milyukov, Konstantin (4T, 4S)
Reynolds, Kevin (4T, 4S, some 4Lo)
Rippon, Adam (4Lz, some 4T & 4S)
Verner, Thomas (4T)
Weir, Johnny (4T)

27-year-olds
Abt, Alexander (4T)
Bradley, Ryan (4T)
*Brown, Jason (4T, 4S)
Chan, Patrick (4T, 4S)
Dinev, Ivan (4T)
Fernandez, Javier (4T, 4S)
Han, Jong-in (4T)
Hanyu, Yuzuru (4T, 4S, some 4Lo & 4Lz & 4A)
Hochstein, Grant (4T)
Kerry, Brendan (4T, 4S)
Kolyada, Mikhail (4T, some 4S & 4Lz)
Kostin, Konstantin (4T)
Liu, Anthony (4T)
Majorov, Alexander (4T)
Miner, Ross (4T, 4S)
Takahashi, Daisuke (4T, 4F)
Tanaka, Keiji (4T, 4S)

(Then there are 102 those who are older than the average retired age, ie 24 to 26. 40 of these have attempted multiple quad types in competition.)

Almost all of the older men have already retired (* marks the still active skaters) and they're also mostly of the older generation in the sense that being able to do multiple quads was really not necessary at their active years. But with a 4T you could do 1+2 layouts easily enough. Add 4S and you will get to 2+3 - this of course became possible only in the 2010-11 season when two quads were allowed in the SP. Oh, and no women get to this list since the oldest to attempt have been in their early 20s.

Until the 2015-16 season there were about 10-15 skaters/season in the world who attempted multiple quads and they mostly did 4T and 4S. Since then the numbers have grown quite fast and this ending season 2023-24 saw 90 skaters with multiple quad types (65 with 2, 20 with 3, 4 with 4 and one with 5 - Ilia did not do the 4F in 2023-24). There are now about 300 active skaters who have at least once attempted a quad, almost 130 of them have attempted more than one type at some point of their careers, and 90 did this in 2023-24. These figures are for both women and men.

This trend of learning and executing multiple quad types got very strong after the pandemic which means that most of the skaters are still young or very young - the average age is about 19 years for all multiple quadsters, about 20 for men and almost 14 for women. 32 of the 129 have competed only in Novice or Junior level. The oldest still competing multiple quadsters are in their mid to late 20s - Kevin Aymoz, Boyang Jin and Yaroslav Paniot, all about/soon 26.

I have not done any statistics of how long men have been able to keep up with multiple quads, but most of the ones who have continued doing quads into their 30s have only had one type. Kevin Reynolds was one of the first to ever go for 3 different types, and the 4Lo was there in his second to last season, Sergei Voronov tried to add a 4Lo in his last season, Yuzuru Hanyu tried to add the 4A, but dropped the 4Lo or 4Lz in his last season. Javier Fernandez did both 4T and 4S until the end of his career with excellent results.

I would suspect there is a huge difference between say Evgeni Plushenko who attempted his first quad at the age of 14 and continued until his 30s with that 4T and Shoma Uno who started at 16 and ended at 26 with 4T, 4Lo and 4F (he dropped the 4S from his repertoire for his last season). Shoma has almost 350 quads in competition, Plushenko about 140. But thinking of repetitions in practices Shoma's 4 quad set probably required quite a lot more work to keep it going than the single 4T. I read Nathan Chen's biography some time ago and remember being absolutely shocked to realize that his jump reps per normal practice day was about a 100 when he was suffering from injuries... Of course, coaching methods have changed a lot since Plushenko's days and I can only hope the current skaters are better prepped in every possible way to tackle their quad loads than the 1990s skaters were.

It remains to be seen what this tendency to do multiple quads will mean to career lengths, it is far too early to draw any conclusions. The current (Russian) novice/junior skater generation is kind of a guinea pig in that respect. I hope they will survive!

E

 

[eppen]

In 2023-24, the most ambitious quad layouts attempted were 0+4, 1+4, 2+4, 2+5, 2+6, 48 such layouts in total. These would all require at least 3 different quads. 13 skaters and Shoma is the senior here at 26, Lazarev the baby at 14, average age 20.

0+4
Lev Lazarev 4 times T S Lz (once all 4 jumps with GOE+)

1+4 (these are mistakes, coz ofc the intention was to do 2+4)
Adam Siao Him Fa once T S Lz
Makar Ignatov once T S Lo

2+4
Adam Siao Him Fa 8 times T S Lz (once all 6 jumps with GOE+)
Makar Ignatov 5 times T S Lo
Mark Kondratiuk 4 times T S Lz (once all 6 jumps with GOE+)
Gleb Lutfullin 4 times T S Lo
Shoma Uno 4 Times T Lo F
Ilia Malinin 3 times T S Lz / T S Lz A (once all 6 jumps with GOE+)
Kao Miura 3 times T S Lo
Mikhail Shaidorov 3 times T F Lz
Grigory Fedorov 2 times T F Lz
Petr Gumennik once S Lo Lz
Egor Rukhin once T S Lz
Evgeni Semenenko once T S Lo

2+5
Adam Siao Him Fa once T S F Lz

2+6
Ilia Malinin 2 times T S Lo Lz A (and the one at Worlds was the first time ever this was done with GOE+ for every jump)

Despite their youth, most of these guys have been attempting quads for quite some time: Shoma started in 2014, Adam and Makar 2016, Mark & Evgeni 2017, Petr, Gleb, Kao & Egor in 2018, Mikhail 2019, Ilia 2020. Grigory & Lev started in 2021 at 16 and 11 years of age respectively.

Their career totals (so far) are also pretty impressive: Shoma 346 (numero Uno in this category, pun fully intended), Adam 220, Kao 178, Makar 165, Ilia 141, Evgeni 120, Petr 113, Gleb 108, Mark 103, the rest below 100 (but just that you know, Lev has 72 at the age of 14).

E

 

[eppen]

To give this discussion of older quadsters a bit more context, I suddenly remembered that I actually have data on single skater careers at the top level since 1947... These are skaters who have at least once in their careers participated in the Worlds and there is enough data on their date of birth and career.

The average retirement age for top men who started their international senior careers before 1994 is a little over 23 years (why 1994 see here). That's for 283 skaters. Those who began in 1994 or after and have since retired, the average age was a little higher, about 24,5 years (212 skaters). And if every top man who still skated in the 2022-23 season would have retired all of a sudden, then their average age would have been 23,5 years (52 skaters).

In a list of 512 skaters, there are only 24 skaters who ended their careers at 30 years of age or later - that's about 5%. Then there are 88 27- to 29-year-olds, about 17%. The 10 guys who have so far jumped quads in their 30s is about 2% of all male quadsters, which is somewhat compatible with the 5% - about half of the guys in the career material skated before the quad era after all.

This is something to keep in mind when in about 10 to 15 years time it is time to review the fates of the current quadsters

There was also some discussion above on whether practice or show jumps should be taken into consideration. I think not. Single jumps in practices and/or shows are relatively easy to achieve if a skater is able to maintain some kind of feel for his jumps. And they can also train a lot of jumps (and attempt them even in shows) that NEVER progress to competition ice.

For example, Javi threw an almost perfect 4Lo in the jump battle section of one Fantasy on Ice show in 2016 and as far as I know, he had really not trained it much before that. I suspect he trained it in the fall 2016 to put it into competition program, but it never worked well enough. Vladimir Samoilov did all quads but 4A in a show in Russia in 2019 and what he usually does is 4S and 4Lz (occasional 4Lo).

Some skaters have also trained to get their quads back after long times of not doing them - Kurt Browning did a 4T in 2008 to celebrate 20 years from the first ever clean 4T and he was almost 42. Also, Stephane Lambiel did a 4T at Fantasy on Ice 2022 at the tender age of 37. Nobunari Oda also did quads in shows before he started competing again (in 2022) - he is also reported to have attempted 4S and 4Lz in a 2018 show when he was 31. Those two jumps he has never tried in competition.

Jumps out of program on practice ice or in shows are not the same thing as attempting quads in competition programs.

E

 

[sisinka]

@sisinka, if you haven't done already, you should get in contact with @eppen. I believe they have a very comprehensive database of skaters attempting quad jumps through the years.

Thanks for idea. I wanted to make a contact after your post, but @eppen was faster.

 

[sisinka]

All posts.

Hello and thank you very much! Those are great details!

I need to verify if I understand it well.
1) You are counting quad attempts at competitions. Not only ISU but also Russian domestic competitions? Also US domestic competitions?

2) Quad attempt - means any quad which is marked in protocol? Even underrotated (<, <<), with falls, negative GOE?

And is it possible to make even more detailed datas? I would have some ideas, if I can...?

...
There was also some discussion above on whether practice or show jumps should be taken into consideration. I think not. Single jumps in practices and/or shows are relatively easy to achieve if a skater is able to maintain some kind of feel for his jumps. And they can also train a lot of jumps (and attempt them even in shows) that NEVER progress to competition ice.

...Jumps out of program on practice ice or in shows are not the same thing as attempting quads in competition programs.

I do agree.

 

[CoyoteChris]

My opinion is that the focus should be on pairs. Every athletic endeavor carries some risk of injury -- as does living your normal everyday life. Truly serious injuries, I believe, are very rare in singles skating and in ice dance. For the most part, when you crash into the boards you pick yourself up and go on witjh the program, ala Midori Ito.

But pairs is more like, say, trapese. Some regularly expected elements are inherent;ly scary. For one thing, in contrast to singles, in addition to managing your own part, there is also risk of getting hit in the head by a partner's skate in a side-by-side spin (doing it really close together gets extra GOE) or having your partner stumble on a bad chunk of ice while carrying you, helpless, in a extended position ten feet in the air, or just mis-managing the timing on a throw jump.

Ice dancers have to take care of their partners; too, but it seems like even in an aborted lift the team is almost always able to extricate themselves without medical calamity.

For singles, allowing back flips does seem like tempting fate. My opinion is that from the fans' perspective, the risk is not worth the reward. The reward is to see a cool move , while the risk is to see (or to hear about at the lower levels) a skater who broke his neck .(Will pairs teams be allowed to present side-by-side back flips if the element is approved for men and for women separately?)

Well put. I was there when Jessica Dubee got hit in the face with her partner's blade less than 2 inches from her eye....and who can forget Ashley and Tim....Second after the short program, they placed fifth overall, following two falls in the free skate. The second fall involved Cain being dropped on her head while exiting a lift, seemingly being knocked unconscious briefly, before getting up and completing the program. Or J. Paul Binnebose? Or even a Chinese pair where she got up and got silver, IIRC? PaulE and I were in the front row watching practice at Portland SA IIRC when Sui Wenjing fell hard and (again IIRC ) Han Cong Had to pick her up and comforted her and talked to her after she slid into the boards...just a few feet from our faces.....? (There is no way I could take a movie or pic of that in my own moral system but I can still see it in my mind....I still wonder what he whispered to her)And yet, I am not a fan of Gymnastics but I heard that we lost 3 good gymnists at the Oly trials to injury the last few days? In that sport, there is NO room for error during some of the moves.. They are in the same boat as Skating.
For me, I dont care if a parent signs off on a child doing a dangerous sport...society must protect children from children and their parents. And that is a tough statement. And what does dangerous mean?????, But we at least try to protect Children from abuse, mental and physical, as well as sexual...but who can determine an age of consent? Not an easy question.
I have seen very few injuries (but they do occur) in aircraft racing in 25 years of watching live....but much death....I have never seen a child pilot die, or crash. IMHO if an adult wants to mountain climb or aircraft race, it is something I would never do to MY family but it is something I dont condone as stopping. So do we put an end to endless attempts at the ever more dangerous tricks in skating or ?

 

[CoyoteChris]

Very interesting thread, for me , as obviously everyone has an opinion as to what is dangerous and what is the risk reward for any element should be and what is estetically pleasing. I see no thrill in backflips and also little danger to the head if any sort of viable takeoff is made. And too we had skaters in the recent past that did beautiful artistic spirals that probably carried comparitively little risk to the head but just arent worth the reward. Anymore. But then I am a Jason Brown fan kind of a guy.
I have seen anouncers and IIRC even tech controllers fail to recognize Quads as they were done so fast and cleanly and I got a new nickel that says this issue will get worse as Qints show up. I cant even believe Simone Bile's dismounts???

Simone Biles Debuts New Double Double Beam Dismount | Champions Series Presented By Xfinity

Simone Biles is the first person in history to perform a double-double dismount on the balance beam in competition. Watch her full beam routine from U.S. Gym...

youtu.be

 

[eppen]

Hello and thank you very much! Those are great details!

I need to verify if I understand it well.
1) You are counting quad attempts at competitions. Not only ISU but also Russian domestic competitions? Also US domestic competitions?

2) Quad attempt - means any quad which is marked in protocol? Even underrotated (<, <<), with falls, negative GOE?

And is it possible to make even more detailed datas? I would have some ideas, if I can...?

I started to think about quads some time ago and it has escalated since then a lot (more about the process and sources here). Read that and you will know a lot more!

At the moment my list of quads since 1983 contains 17289 attempts - and yes, these include everything that has been deemed as a quad in protocols (and for the 6.0 period, what has looked like a quad attempt in videos or other sources). International and national comps alike, everywhere in the world. My estimation at the moment is that there could be at least 800 attempts without evidence and these come mostly from Russian national scene (2000-14) and from China (1995-2010).

There will always be competitions without protocols and the fact that quads are currently being attempted at almost every level of competition means that it is impossible to get them all. But I think the 17000 strong list is a fairly good representation of what has been and what is going on in the quad scene.

Then I have a list of skaters who have trained or attempted quads sometime during their career. This contains 698 names - a hundred who never tried a quad in competition and the rest 598 attempted at least once in competition (one more compared to the previous post coz Nicholas Brooks just attempted his first quad at Broadmoor Open). Again, probably a very good representation of the competitors, but particularly skaters never having entered the international scene could be missing. The group of those who only ever trained is probably a sample of some kind, but very difficult to determine from how large a mass of skaters.

If you have further questions, I suggest we take this to private messages so that we don't take over this thread with that conversation!

E

 

[CoyoteChris]

Just curious. If you could lay down your money to go to USFS nats 2025, vs any nats from say 4 years ago to 20 years ago or any SA for that matter, how many would pic the coming nats and how many a prior nats, and for how many would the danger of the elements be a factor?
Chris not a NASCAR fan.

 

[sisinka]

I started to think about quads some time ago and it has escalated since then a lot (more about the process and sources here). Read that and you will know a lot more!

At the moment my list of quads since 1983 contains 17289 attempts - and yes, these include everything that has been deemed as a quad in protocols (and for the 6.0 period, what has looked like a quad attempt in videos or other sources). International and national comps alike, everywhere in the world. My estimation at the moment is that there could be at least 800 attempts without evidence and these come mostly from Russian national scene (2000-14) and from China (1995-2010).

There will always be competitions without protocols and the fact that quads are currently being attempted at almost every level of competition means that it is impossible to get them all. But I think the 17000 strong list is a fairly good representation of what has been and what is going on in the quad scene.

Then I have a list of skaters who have trained or attempted quads sometime during their career. This contains 698 names - a hundred who never tried a quad in competition and the rest 598 attempted at least once in competition (one more compared to the previous post coz Nicholas Brooks just attempted his first quad at Broadmoor Open). Again, probably a very good representation of the competitors, but particularly skaters never having entered the international scene could be missing. The group of those who only ever trained is probably a sample of some kind, but very difficult to determine from how large a mass of skaters.

If you have further questions, I suggest we take this to private messages so that we don't take over this thread with that conversation!

E

Your database must be impressive. Reading your story... that is how big things begin...interest and wish, tons of hard work, going forward step by step. I am sometimes so proud that figure skating has people who can give so much effort and time into things helping to analyse and improve sport we love.

Talking about quad jumps in this Thread is OK, I believe. Quad jumps are dangerous elements, they for sure lead to overloading injuries. So it is question if to speak about quad jumps in Stress fractures Thread or here, but we started here, so let's keep it like this. At least for now.

Reading your article - I like Japanese database a lot, but they didn't include 2023/24 season yet.

I would be interested in these datas:

A) 597 skater with quad attempts at competitions - what are numbers for men and women separately?

B) 300 active skaters who have at least once attempted a quad at competition. Again - how many men and woman?

C) 2023/24 season - how many skaters with ANY quad attempts (you mentioned 90 with more than one type of quad only)? How many with any quad? How many men / woman, Junior / Senior skaters? (Four cathegories - Junior Women, Senior Woman, Junior Men, Senior Men).

D) Is it possible to count the retired age of quad men and women separately?
(Retirement age's comparison is great. But to decide whether quad jumps decrease longevity because they increase number of serious injuries, we need to count quad skaters only. And compare it with non quad skaters average age of retirement.) I do realise that many of them are still skating, so the sample of women will not be big. Also it will be misleading mostly with women because some of them attempted quad jump, but didn't attempted or practised it regularly (so they will belong into quad group, but heath issues can be milder.)

 

[eppen]

Reading your article - I like Japanese database a lot, but they didn't include 2023/24 season yet.

I suspect that the people who did it called it a day after 2022-23 for whatever reason which is sad. I love it for the ease of searching single elements, the others are just not very good with that.

A) 597 skater with quad attempts at competitions - what are numbers for men and women separately?

598 now - the summer comps are often used for trying out new elements. 506 men and 92 women.

B) 300 active skaters who have at least once attempted a quad at competition. Again - how many men and woman?

304 active skaters (as far as I know): 224 men and 80 women.

C) 2023/24 season - how many skaters with ANY quad attempts (you mentioned 90 with more than one type of quad only)? How many with any quad? How many men / woman, Junior / Senior skaters? (Four cathegories - Junior Women, Senior Woman, Junior Men, Senior Men).

223 skaters: 173 men and 50 women. The division by age group is not very easy since one skater may skate in eg novice-junior and junior-senior categories. Women are easier - 45 are in junior or novice age and then 3 are senior and for the rest I have not been able to find a year of birth. Of the men, about 40 are still juniors and the rest are eligible for senior (but men tend to skate longer in the juniors). But then there are about 10 without year of birth.

D) Is it possible to count the retired age of quad men and women separately?
(Retirement age's comparison is great. But to decide whether quad jumps decrease longevity because they increase number of serious injuries, we need to count quad skaters only. And compare it with non quad skaters average age of retirement.) I do realise that many of them are still skating, so the sample of women will not be big. Also it will be misleading mostly with women because some of them attempted quad jump, but didn't attempted or practised it regularly (so they will belong into quad group, but heath issues can be milder.)

294 retired quadsters: 282 men and 12 women. For men, the last quad they attempted happened btw 14 and 34 years, average being a little over 23. For women, the last quad attempted btw 12 and 23 year, average almost 17 years. BUT note here, their retirement age can be different from the age at last attempt.

Establishing a correlation between retirement and problems caused by specifically quads is a very very tricky question. Jumps in general tend to be bad for a human being - most women have never ever tried a quad but still retire because of health problems - possibly - related to jumps. Though bending yourself into all those spin positions also creates health problems for many women...

Plus finding out exactly what led someone to retire is really not possible with the data we have available. What I would love to see is a very large qualitative study of what retired elite skaters think of as the reasons why they decided to stop competing...

The retired men tended to start quads in their mid- to late-teens (average 19) whereas the active ones are early- to mid-teens (average 16) when they start jumping quads. They also attempted very few of them compared to the current skaters, so the data on their careers is not directly comparable to what happens right now.

Coaching quads/jumps and even equipment have changed a great deal since the early days and I imagine that the current skaters are prepped better for the wear and tear that the jumps produce. Well, at least if they are working with people who really pay attention to their skater's health. Reading Nathan's bio was truly eye opening since he was nursing some kind of injury most of his senior career and still managed huge numbers of jumps on practice and competition ice over a period of about 8 seasons.

I think i mentioned earlier that we are now seeing the first time when a lot of very young boys and girls - pre-teens and early teens - attempt a lot of quads, multiple types and with 0+2-4 layouts. It will take a few years to see what happens to them when they grow up.

For women, there is little data since the number of retirees is small. And the only ones of them who have considerable numbers of quads are Trusova (98) and Shcherbakova (40).

Also, finding a comparison group particularly of men who have not tried quads is hard - almost all elite men are quadsters (even Jason Brown has 26 quad attempts) and have been so for a couple of decades. Who would then be in the control group? Non-elite men? Going back in time to find non-quadster elite men would also be problematic since the sport has changed in many ways.

So, IMO with what we know at the moment, it is not really possible to draw conclusions on how bad quads are to a skater's health and/or do quads make their careers shorter...

E

 

[lariko]

@eppen I missed ya! I was wondering if you count the jumps from Russian jumping tournament and does it impact your annual count significantly?

 

[eppen]

@eppen I missed ya! I was wondering if you count the jumps from Russian jumping tournament and does it impact your annual count significantly?

It has been a busy and tiring winter, so I had to cut part of the time I could spend on FS, turned out it was GS But now things are blissfully slowing down!

Alas, the jump competitions such as the Russian event or Broadmoor one do not release protocols. I don't even know how they evaluate the attempts because they're not necessarily the same stuff they do in normal ISU rule comps. So they're not included.

I am more troubled with the team comp which features jumps in programs which are usually also the normal competitions programs for the participants. But again, no protocols despite the fact that did have judges and scores were given.

The significance of the jumping tournament for the total annual count is not particularly great because they're standalone jumps and cannot be used as part of the statistics for anything else except total counts. And even there I am not sure how the classify them. I have not included the pro-am comp jumps that I've seen from the 1990s/early 2000s in the statistics, though they are in the total count.

ADD: I had not watched it but now looked up and found (ofc on GS) links to the whole comp that worked (my VPNs have stubbornly refused anything Russian the whole season). Surprisingly unexciting - a bit like watching a scored practice session... I stopped watching the jumps and just checked the scores after a couple of skaters in the qualifying rounds... Men did 100 which is a bit more than at the Worlds this year (75). So, about 4% of the 2023-24 total score from conventional comps. But as said earlier, they are difficult to compare with what gets done in program. Much easier IMO despite the time limit and some kind of pressure to perform.

2023-24 total was a staggering 2425 (2022-23 2015) so the jumping tournament ones would represent some %s of that.

E

 

[lariko]

It has been a busy and tiring winter, so I had to cut part of the time I could spend on FS, turned out it was GS But now things are blissfully slowing down!

Alas, the jump competitions such as the Russian event or Broadmoor one do not release protocols. I don't even know how they evaluate the attempts because they're not necessarily the same stuff they do in normal ISU rule comps. So they're not included.

I am more troubled with the team comp which features jumps in programs which are usually also the normal competitions programs for the participants. But again, no protocols despite the fact that did have judges and scores were given.

The significance of the jumping tournament for the total annual count is not particularly great because they're standalone jumps and cannot be used as part of the statistics for anything else except total counts. And even there I am not sure how the classify them. I have not included the pro-am comp jumps that I've seen from the 1990s/early 2000s in the statistics, though they are in the total count.

ADD: I had not watched it but now looked up and found (ofc on GS) links to the whole comp that worked (my VPNs have stubbornly refused anything Russian the whole season). Surprisingly unexciting - a bit like watching a scored practice session... I stopped watching the jumps and just checked the scores after a couple of skaters in the qualifying rounds... Men did 100 which is a bit more than at the Worlds this year (75). So, about 4% of the 2023-24 total score from conventional comps. But as said earlier, they are difficult to compare with what gets done in program. Much easier IMO despite the time limit and some kind of pressure to perform.

2023-24 total was a staggering 2425 (2022-23 2015) so the jumping tournament ones would represent some %s of that.

E

Makes sense. Though it was my fav competition all season with all the ardor going on

 

[eppen]

@lariko I did browse through the each section and got 171 quad attempts for both men and women. BUT that is ofc only the scored attempts, because they did a lot more in reality. That it was a bit more like a stressful practice session is indicated IMO by the two girls, Kira Trofimova and Alena Zhilina who before that had never tried a quad in competition. Trofimova tried once after this, but Zhilina - despite having been videoed landing (sort of) all the quads except 4A, still has not got one in a competition. She did two in the jump comp probably because it is easier than doing a quad in a competition program...

I have included the Elements section from the Russian novice comps, but they are a relevant part of those competitions. It is also often the first time skaters go for a quad. It is also a significant indicator of the current trend of very young skaters going for quads. Samsonov was the first in 2018 and that season he was the only one. In 2023-24, there were 72 quads in the Elements and more than twice the attempts from 2022-23 (33)!

 

[sisinka]

Thank you for great answer @eppen !

...
So, IMO with what we know at the moment, it is not really possible to draw conclusions on how bad quads are to a skater's health and/or do quads make their careers shorter...

We can for sure say that quad jumps practise creates bigger load on body in comparison with double or triple jumps.

Overloading injuries are big chapter and probably we will never be able to cover it all as skaters don't visit doctors with every overloading injury they have.

Number of repetitions is big problem in Figure Skating. In Stress Fractures' Thread there are many examples of skaters overloading their bodies thanks to excessive number of jump repetitions quad jumps including.

...
- Christopher Bowman - "...What Bowman had was a stress fracture of his fibula, a result of a training regimen in which it was commonplace to do 35 triple flips, landing on his right leg..."(https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-07-27-sp-1703-story.html )

- Michael Weiss - "...Weiss made changes in his training this year, stifling his tendency to go hard all of the time. ...He no longer attempts quadruple jumps during both his morning and afternoon training session. Now, he tries the body-jolting quads only in the afternoon and, instead of grinding out 20 a day, he prefers to do around five." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...lympics/50bd2c82-46bc-4fa0-8c9f-23242b28f23b/ )

- Shoma Uno - "...I remember that interview last season after summer training camp (in 2013) where he himself admitted that the 3A had become the main thing on his mind skating-wise, to the point that he would be training up to 100 a day and only landing a handful, without even getting the rotation right on most of those, while the rest were falls for the most part. And that, although falling hurt, he wanted to keep jumping until he at least got a good one since he "hadn't gotten seriously injured yet from all those falls." (https://www.fsuniverse.net/forum/threads/the-shoma-uno-fan-thread-go-for-número-uno.94182/page-2 )

- Daisuke Takahashi - "...According to the Japanese media, the injury happened on Tuesday, 26th of November (2013); but they also showed a video recording from Saturday, 23th, the last day of the weekly practice, when Daisuke Takahashi, attempting quad jumps, fell more than 30 times in one hour and a half..." (https://www.insideskating.net/2013/...se-healing-process-and-long-term-consequences)

- Diana Guseva - "...At the same time as Anya (Shcherbakova - season 2017-18), I had an injury - a stress fracture, very unpleasant. It took me a long time to recover, and after I got on the ice, I couldn't train like before. My workload was significantly reduced and I was unable to recover. Then Eteri Georgievna advised me to try dancing... I understood that after the injury I would not be able to jump two hundred jumps per training." (https://www.championat.com/figuresk...nie-s-zagitovoj-vostorg-ot-tuktamyshevoj.html )

- Aleandra Trusova - "...I jumped so many times... To learn the Axel I jumped 50 times per training after two free programs with five quadruples, for a month. Every time." (https://www.sports.ru/figure-skatin...-sezone-cherez-tri-dnya-vyshla-na-led-s-.html )

- Timothy Goebel - "...when we started putting in the numbers on the really hard stuff, if we had waited until we were older — when I was learning the [quad] salchow I was doing 20 to 30 a day at least, maybe more. When I was talking to Audrey, trying to figure out why I couldn’t really train, I was like, this is how I used to train, and when I told her the amount of repetitions I did when I was starting on stuff, she was like, “What were you thinking?!” And I know that the success I had from 1999 to 2002, it was a tradeoff. What I gave up for success early on, I lost in real longevity. Even with Frank I was doing six to eight of each quad on every session every day. That’s a lot." (https://manleywoman.com/episode-49-timothy-goebel/ )

- Roman Savosin - "...was mentioned in one of Petr Gumennik's interview - "...Roman Savosin recently talked about his training process in the “Skate Move” podcast and noted that he does quadruple jumps in small quantities - only a few times per session." (https://sport.rambler.ru/figureskat...at-mira-malinina-syao-him-fa-shou-tutberidze/ )

- Petr Gumennik - "...If everything goes well before the competition, then you shouldn’t do quadruple jumps just like that. Between competitions you can do a lot of jumps. The day before yesterday I did a 3-4 cascade about 30 times, there were few successful attempts, but overall there were a lot of attempts. Now I’ve decided to improve my quadruple toeloop, and it works well separately." (https://sport.rambler.ru/figureskat...at-mira-malinina-syao-him-fa-shou-tutberidze/ )

At the moment we don't have chance to get to know number of jump repetitions with types and number of rotations. Because this is one the most important things in case of overloading injuries. And other factors - age, nutrition, overtraining in non jump elements, weaknesses of the skater (congenital or gained), growing period, sex...

There is question how much number of quads at competitions or number of seasons with quad attempts may help to determine some facts. If it can help at all. But let's try. Usually every journey starts from zero.

There are informations taken Stress Fractures Thread that Ilia Malinin (born in December 2004), Sota Yamamoto (born in January 2000) and Alexey Erokhov (born in September 2009) already had more stress fractures. Thanks to @surimi and @CrazyKittenLady for posts.
- Sota - https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/t...s-in-figure-skating.98339/page-2#post-3286055
- Alexey - https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/t...s-in-figure-skating.98339/page-3#post-3286073
- Ilia - https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/t...s-in-figure-skating.98339/page-3#post-3286145

Dates of fractures:
- Sota - March 2016, July 2016, September 2016
- Alexey - October 2018, probably February 2019 (Russian Junior Cup Final), November 2020
- Ilia - December / January of 2019/20 season, probably around January 2021 (not official source), November 2022.

Dates of quad jumps at practise or at competition:
Ilia was posting quad jump videos from practise…
- Ilia – 4 salchow – on ice practise – July 2019, first 4 toeloop on ice – July 2020, 4 lutz on ice – November 2020 (in between there was pandemic).

As to Sota and Alexey I have no idea, so I went on Skating Scores and look at jump content from there. But they had to train quad jumps at least one season sooner before adding it at competitions.
- Sota – in 2014/15 season, I didn‘t see quad jump in content. But in 2015/16 season – 4 toeloop in Free Program at JGP Poland, JGP USA, Junior Grand Prix Final, two 4 toeloops at Junior Japanese Nationals in December 2015, two 4 toeloops at Japan Western sectionals in October 2015.
- Alexey – in 2016/17 season 4 toeloop in Free Program content. In 2017/18 season jump content in Free Program was two 4 toeloops and one 4 salchow, at two Senior Russian competitions he included 4 toeloop in Short program as well. Based on @CrazyKittenLady's information he was re-thinking to add 4 flip to the program, which means that in 2018 he was training 4 flip.

Dates of quad content and stress fractures are quite fitting, right? For sure quad jumps practise had big impact on overloading and overloading injuries. But we would need to know number of quad jumps repetitions and number of other jumps repetitions per day to make precise analysis.

Of course if they were attempting 30 quad jumps per day (which was mentioned more times that skater with stress fracture had excessive number of repetitions – as to quad jumps Michael Weiss, Timothy Goebel or Daisuke Takahashi mentioned it, Shoma with 100 repetitions of triple axel..). In such case we could clearly say that those stress fractures were caused mainly by quad jumps / triple axel practise.

One thing we need to take into account – child bodies are light comparing to grown-up skaters. Jump takes less energy. Which means that skater with prepubertal body is capable of executing bigger number of difficult jumps per practise comparing to grown-up skater. And ladies with prepubertal bodies are even in bigger advantage, because their strenght, endurance and other parametres are increasing in different age comparing to boys. In the same moment prepubertal bodies are more vulnerable, muscle mass is not protecting joints enough, bones are not matured. Beginning of puberty means growing in height, it also means increasing of weight. If skaters and teams starts to decrease number of calories to avoid higher weight, it only helps to suffer from overloading injury sooner or later.

Nathan's heel stress fractures and avulsion fracture are also another "more then one" fractures from overloading. Did it happen in time when he was jumping a lot? Heel injury - summer 2014, avulsion fracture - January 2016. His coach Rafael Arutyunyan mentioned in an interview that for some time Nathan was doing more jumps then he was adviced by him, it led to health troubles of course.

A) Do you have Nathan's quad content from competitions before and around time of fractures? And number of jumps repetitions?

B) I would like to ask you to share Nathan Chen's informations about training regime with jumps repetitions from the book.
You already mentioned it.

I would like to include Nathan's datas into Stress Fractures' Thread. I am very thankful for all those sort of informations as it may help next generations to re-think training overloading and hopefully help at least some skaters to avoid stress fractures and overloading injuries.

Once again overloading injuries are caused from overloading, it may very well happen thanks to triple jumps. But quad jumps create bigger load on body which means that less attempts are needed to overload skater's body. From skater's interviews above they are not aware of this...until it is late.

Even now we can look at your number and say some suggestions. And datas from following years will or won't support these suggestions.

You wrote names of skaters being 27 and more years old to attempt quad jump or quad jumps. If I counted correctly:
- 47 skaters were 27 years old or older.
- 37 skaters were executing 4 toeloop or salchow.
- Another 10 skaters attempted another type of quad jump.
But correct me if I am wrong...I think that those other types of quad jump had very low number of attempts, I do expect that skaters probably didn't train them regularly or too intensively. I look at Japanese page - Jason Brown with 4 salchow - 6 attempts. Daisuke Takahashi with 4 flip - 5 attempts. Yuzuru Hanyu attempted 4 lutz 3 times at competition (all fully rotated).

On the contrary if you look at my list of skaters with more than three quad jumps and other than toeloop and salchow (there would be better definition and grouping of skaters, maybe you will come with some) - Nathan, Boyang, Vincent, Shoma, Yuzuru who are not competing at the moment, their age of last competition = last quad attempts was not that high. Yuzuru is the oldest being 27 years old. So we may very well start with first suggestion that more types of quad jumps are making careers shorter. Not really that one injury would force retirement or break from competing. But it definitely should be followed what is the age of retirement / competition break of skaters with multiple types of quad jumps.

As you mentioned not everybody retires citing injury, but we need to realise that frequent injuries and constant pain are creating trainign process much more difficult and exhausting. Which may play significant role in losening motivation and mental exhaustion.

Another topic. Skaters age when quad jumps are started to be attempted. You already mentioned that many years ago it was late teen age, then it moved to middle and early teen age.

Maybe you could create separate groups based on age of first quad attempts at practise or first quad attempts at competition and then compare different things - for example injuries, retirement in following years.

What is VERY important - not only follow top skaters, but even more closely to follow skater who didn't make it to the top or skaters shining for one senior season and then disappearing.

Teens with quad jumps:

- Evgeni Plushenko - "...At age 14 he landed a quad for the first time..." (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yevgeny-Plushchenko )

..."The 31-year-old Plushenko is the only modern-era figure skater to win medals in four Olympics.... But I have 12 surgeries. I’d like to be healthy.” (https://nypost.com/2014/02/13/evgeni-plushenko-bows-out-of-figure-skating-with-bad-back/ )

..."About withdrawing from Olympics 2014:
...Evgeni Plushenko: ...One of the titanium bolts in my spine structure broke. And, as my surgeon said, if I had performed and even landed successfully a quad, I might not have died, but remained disabled...After Sochi, I underwent four spinal surgeries. This is a consequence of loads. In preparation for the Olympics, I started training ahead of time..." (https://fs-gossips.com/6168/ )

12 surgeries till Sochi, another 4 after...

- Artur Gachinski - "...I had two spine surgeries after I finished skating...
...I started jumping triple axels too early. Started jumping all quads too early. So, at 13, I was already jumping axels, at 15, I was doing quadruple toe loops and salchows, and at 16-17, I mastered loop, lutz, flip. It’s just that at that time, no one recorded the training sessions, and no one posted them on social media. But I kept the videos for myself...

...The peculiarity of my body was that the channels in the spine were very narrow, and accordingly, the passage was not very good...And the back simply couldn’t withstand the loads..." (https://fs-gossips.com/tag/artur-gachinski/ )

- Timothy Goebel - "...when we started putting in the numbers on the really hard stuff, if we had waited until we were older — when I was learning the [quad] salchow I was doing 20 to 30 a day at least, maybe more. When I was talking to Audrey, trying to figure out why I couldn’t really train, I was like, this is how I used to train, and when I told her the amount of repetitions I did when I was starting on stuff, she was like, “What were you thinking?!” And I know that the success I had from 1999 to 2002, it was a tradeoff. What I gave up for success early on, I lost in real longevity. Even with Frank I was doing six to eight of each quad on every session every day. That’s a lot."

... I had been injured for most of that year and wasn’t skating that well in general. (season 2002/03)...

...There was no one particular injury that stood out, just kind of a lot of nuisance injuries, overuse injuries. ... every time I started making some progress toward getting back to where I was, some other thing would happen and I’d be off the ice for two or three days or having to cut back. So the whole time I was there I never got to train properly... And at that point I couldn’t physically do that any more. I always felt like I was in a situation where I could do a mediocre job of training and survive through the competition, or train properly and then take a very big step toward the chance of not being able to compete at all. So it was a very difficult situation to be in, as an athlete who’d been very successful, to not to be able to work in the way that I knew I needed to, to achieve the same results.

...On still being in pain after retiring from amateur competition: I think it’s a combination of various different things. Being an elite athlete in any sport, when you get to the twilight years of your career, your body just doesn’t recover as quickly... I think we just started working non-stop when we were young and we weren’t physically strong enough to deal with the impact of landing and all the physical stuff."(https://manleywoman.com/episode-49-timothy-goebel/ )

...“When I withdrew from Nationals (2004), I was suffering from a few different injuries. I was having problems with my landing hip, my back, and also the hamstring on my takeoff leg..." (https://www.absoluteskating.com/index.php?cat=articles&id=2005timgoebel )

..."Goebel said overuse injuries in his ankles, knees and hips threw him out of alignment like a wrecked car." (https://www.espn.com/olympics/columns/story?id=2209155 )

There are also another questions...but they are more concerning in ladies cathegory. For men we can say that there are more senior skaters than junior skaters with quad jumps.

C) If you could write how many from ACTIVE quad skaters are less than 20 years old (GROUP teen), 20 years old and older (GROUP 1) and 22 years old and older (GROUP 2). At 22 most of skaters have grown-up body building with just small changes in following years. Groups for both men and women. I think there are more men in 20+ and 22+ age. Which means that men are capable of executing quad jump even with grown-up body. Not the same for ladies.

If you would look at jump content, I am sure that you would see that most of senior men kept their quad jumping content from junior stage - executing the same number of quad jumps. I also believe that more male skaters have more difficult quad jumping content then they had in junior cathegory. And some skaters had no quad in juniors, but added some quad in seniors. But the same cannot be written about ladies. but senior can be skated since 17, sooner since 15 which is still teenage age.

D) For the future it could be intersting to know if quad men in high teens had more difficult quad content comparing with 20+ and 22+ group. And comparing each man 20+ and 22+ if he indeed kept the quad content from teens or even added difficulty. But it would be a lot of work, so I don't ask you to do that.

When I find time I will write something about ladies.

 

[sisinka]

On April I asked @Arigato if he has some informations how Adam trained his backflip.

Ilia Malinin posted his final learning process of backflip on the ice. He is using assist of two men with harness.
Scott Irvine's Instagram page - https://www.instagram.com/reel/C88gBWZOOjN/?igsh=eXE2N243NzNpaWs=
Ilia's fan page on Twitter - https://x.com/TheIliaSociety/status/1808623397015843060

At the end of April Adam Siao Him Fa described his backflip's learning process:
...“My coach had experience in gymnastics, and he also did backflips on the ice. I learned from him. To ensure safety, I first practiced on the floor, doing it every day for two weeks. With a harness and helmet, I did it step by step. On the first day on the ice, I was scared and couldn’t do it. I was told not to do it if I was feeling uneasy. But the next day, I felt confident and thought I would give it a try.” In the end, he says he mastered it on the ice in two days." (https://fs-gossips.com/12284/#google_vignette )

I am very glad that Adam described how he learnt this element. It is visible that both him and coach realised that it is dangerous element, so they went step by step carefully.

And seeing video of Ilia with harness I am glad as well. Both men took time to show carefulness with backflip element.

But still I don't understand that switch from "dangerous and banned element" into "not dangerous and popular element" cathegory.

... I see no thrill in backflips and also little danger to the head if any sort of viable takeoff is made...

I think there is danger to injure multiple parts of body from head to shoulders, forarms, wrists. Unsuccessful attempts off the ice definitely shows these possibilities.

Also executing backflip towards the end of program is not helping (some user already mentioned it and I agree). Especially after 7 jump elements. Adam is great jumper and even his backflip at the end of the program was underrotated and landed with difficulties.