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I was more thinking about these multiple jump combos that work so well with music... of course, 30 years later, difficulty may be higher.... it wasn't about who can put the most quads and triples for me
How would you change the rules for jump combinations/sequences?
- Thread starter AxelLover
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- Dec 9, 2019
I had completely forgotten this 4T + 3A + 1Eu + 3S + 1Eu + 3Lo (yes after an Euler) sequence, but it was in nothing looking like a program (and wouldn't have been, knowing a bit of his aesthetic perfectionism) and wasn't perfect; it's just entertaining and an example of "unlimited combination/sequence":
This compilation reminds us that he planned to be the first Senior skater to land a 3A + 3Lo but he reinjured his ankle and had to water down his layout to 3A + 2T:
Speaking of watering down and of his Dark Messenger program, in the Saga stop it included a 3A + 3T + 3Lo but videos have been deleted (toxic antis are really a sore). He didn't have great jump stability in Saga which many fans attributed to a smaller rink, anyway he didn't jump this combination in the Miyagi stop.
I'm sure that other skaters have had that sort of inventive combinations or sequences in shows Finales, apart from Shizuka Arakawa?
Which reminds me of Mao Asada's figures, why wouldn't figures be allowed as steps or elements? In the times of compulsory figures, usually skaters would have ugly postures which would have disgraced a program but I don't think that Mao Asada was more watchable? Yuzuru Hanyu sometimes had what could be called figures in his programs, and I read that Kazuki Tomono (and maybe Sota Yamamoto?) was practising figures. I don't know if some others are (Jason Brown? Deniss Vasiljevs?)
This compilation reminds us that he planned to be the first Senior skater to land a 3A + 3Lo but he reinjured his ankle and had to water down his layout to 3A + 2T:
Speaking of watering down and of his Dark Messenger program, in the Saga stop it included a 3A + 3T + 3Lo but videos have been deleted (toxic antis are really a sore). He didn't have great jump stability in Saga which many fans attributed to a smaller rink, anyway he didn't jump this combination in the Miyagi stop.
I'm sure that other skaters have had that sort of inventive combinations or sequences in shows Finales, apart from Shizuka Arakawa?
Which reminds me of Mao Asada's figures, why wouldn't figures be allowed as steps or elements? In the times of compulsory figures, usually skaters would have ugly postures which would have disgraced a program but I don't think that Mao Asada was more watchable? Yuzuru Hanyu sometimes had what could be called figures in his programs, and I read that Kazuki Tomono (and maybe Sota Yamamoto?) was practising figures. I don't know if some others are (Jason Brown? Deniss Vasiljevs?)
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You mean Sofia Akatieva? From the aesthetic standpoint I don't like the moments she suddenly changes from the nice landing position of the 3T to go for the 2A (for example the moment on the border of 20s and 21s in the video). But other than that thoose axels of hers are pretty.
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I remember those 3A+3Lo combos Yuzuru did at the Japanese Nationals very well. A thing of beauty.
First under IJS, maybe
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It would be perfectly legal to perform a full or partial school figure during a free skate. (Or short program, for that matter.) They'd just be considered as additional skating movements/transitions.
The problem is that 1) they wouldn't earn any element points, and 2) they would take a lot of time, even if you only skated the pattern once on each foot and didn't trace it a second and third time. I'd say the best bet would be something like back change loop or paragraph loop, which would probably be the most visually interesting to watch and loop figures are smaller and therefore take less time to skate.
Maybe as the opening moves at the very beginning of a program. Here are examples of pro/show programs beginning with figures skills, but by the second circle the skater is including turns from multiple different figures on the same circle:
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Or possibly just one pattern of the loop(s), or one foot (half the pattern), in a step sequence or choreo sequence, probably beginning or end. One circle on each foot with multiple different turns, as in these links, rather than trying to do pure excerpts from the official school figures, could be planned to fulfill the "clusters" requirement in the leveled step sequence.
They can be done beautifully, as shown in the links above.
Would go better with slower music.
There would be more time for including these kinds of skating moves before/between elements if one jump pass is removed from the free skate without reducing the time.
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First under IJS, maybe
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It would be perfectly legal to perform a full or partial school figure during a free skate. (Or short program, for that matter.) They'd just be considered as additional skating movements/transitions.
The problem is that 1) they wouldn't earn any element points, and 2) they would take a lot of time, even if you only skated the pattern once on each foot and didn't trace it a second and third time. I'd say the best bet would be something like back change loop or paragraph loop, which would probably be the most visually interesting to watch and loop figures are smaller and therefore take less time to skate.
Maybe as the opening moves at the very beginning of a program. Here are examples of pro/show programs beginning with figures skills, but by the second circle the skater is including turns from multiple different figures on the same circle:
- YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.- YouTube
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Or possibly just one pattern of the loop(s), or one foot (half the pattern), in a step sequence or choreo sequence, probably beginning or end. One circle on each foot with multiple different turns, as in these links, rather than trying to do pure excerpts from the official school figures, could be planned to fulfill the "clusters" requirement in the leveled step sequence.
They can be done beautifully, as shown in the links above.
Would go better with slower music.
There would be more time for including these kinds of skating moves before/between elements if one jump pass is removed from the free skate without reducing the time.
Wow! I didn't know Alexander Abt performed 3A+3Lo in competition. I keep forgetting that some skaters in the late 90s and early 2000s were showing pretty crazy jumps and combinations.
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Wow! I had read I don't know where that there had only been a Russian Junior who jumped it once... Thank you! And it was the real thing, back in 1998!First under IJS, maybe
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It would be perfectly legal to perform a full or partial school figure during a free skate. (Or short program, for that matter.) They'd just be considered as additional skating movements/transitions.
The problem is that 1) they wouldn't earn any element points, and 2) they would take a lot of time, even if you only skated the pattern once on each foot and didn't trace it a second and third time. I'd say the best bet would be something like back change loop or paragraph loop, which would probably be the most visually interesting to watch and loop figures are smaller and therefore take less time to skate.
Maybe as the opening moves at the very beginning of a program. Here are examples of pro/show programs beginning with figures skills, but by the second circle the skater is including turns from multiple different figures on the same circle:
- YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.- YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Or possibly just one pattern of the loop(s), or one foot (half the pattern), in a step sequence or choreo sequence, probably beginning or end. One circle on each foot with multiple different turns, as in these links, rather than trying to do pure excerpts from the official school figures, could be planned to fulfill the "clusters" requirement in the leveled step sequence.
They can be done beautifully, as shown in the links above.
Would go better with slower music.
There would be more time for including these kinds of skating moves before/between elements if one jump pass is removed from the free skate without reducing the time.
I meant very simple, brief figures, and I imagined it communicated along with the moment they would be drawn, with the layout. Thank you for the impressive videos!
School figures as they existed in standard ISU competition from the 1890s until 1990 were pretty simple (1 or 2 turns per circle, or the rockers and counters happened at the change from one circle to another with just a continuous edge along the whole exit circle) but they were not especially brief because each whole pattern was skated 3 times on each foot.
Also everybody did the same patterns. So there was no need to communicate a layout.
Or are you thinking of "special figures" or "fancy figures," where skaters made up their own patterns and submitted them before skating them?
That was part of the sport at its beginnings in the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th century, competed at the 1908 Olympics:
And also this kind of thing is now promoted by an organization called the World Figure Sport at their World Figure & Fancy Skating Championships.
There skaters made/make up their own complex patterns, often symmetrical and therefore repetitions compared to the combinations of edge skills shown in the program videos I linked earlier.
Certainly someone could include those kinds of skills as transitions or within a choreo sequence or step sequence in today's programs.
If you want to see the kind of skills involved, just watch the one-foot clusters in today's singles' step sequences aiming for level 4, or the one-foot turns sequence in today's free dances. Although those also include twizzles, which were not part of either standard school figures or special/fancy figures.
However, the main point of both versions of figures was the pattern drawn on the ice, which required clean ice without other markings so that the tracings would be very visible -- the recent competitions in Lake Placid use black ice, which makes the tracings even more visible.
This would never be true in today's freeskating programs, because each skater uses the whole ice surface for their programs, and for their warmups, so even by the time the first skater starts their program there wouldn't be significant areas of clean ice and by the time the 12th skater after the last resurface starts their program, after two warmups and 11 previous skaters, the ice would be very marked up already. The tracings that the current skater just made would not be easy or often possible to distinguish from all the other markings already on the ice.
And there's no way that the whole surface would be resurfaced between every skater.
With school figures competition, skaters only used a small patch of ice, and the next skater would use another patch further down the ice.
Resurfaces were sometimes done on part of the ice at a time with manual equipment.
But it was all a time-consuming process, which made that an expensive part of the competition to run, especially since it wasn't a part that audiences were interested in buying tickets for or TV networks in spending much if any time to broadcast.
Including brief sections of figure-like skills in free programs would not add significant time and would not require clean ice. But they wouldn't showcase the patterns drawn on the ice the same way that figures competitions (or programs like John Curry's linked above), executed on clean ice, did.
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- Dec 9, 2019
I just meant facultative fancy figures, the pattern being part of the choreography. I suppose that camera people would also have to learn how to best film it! This being said, a strong-minded and skilled skater knowing that their short program would be skated just after a resurfacing might skate one requiring clean ice now that the order is determined by World Standing? There's the 6-minute warm-up though.
Not sure what you mean by "facultative" here.
But yes, skaters are and always have been perfectly free to include patterns of edges in their free program choreography, with the knowledge that free programs are not skated on clean ice and don't take the patterns drawn on the ice into account in the scoring.
Except the skate order will change from one competition to the next, and skaters may not know their skate order until a few days before the competition on account of potential withdrawals and replacements.
Plus the skate order determined by World Standing applies only to some competitions (ISU championships and Grand Prix only?), not all competitions.
But skaters tend to skate the same free program for the whole season. They're not going to have one program that they use when they find out they're scheduled to skate soon after the resurface and a completely different one if they're scheduled to skate 10 skaters later.
Definitely also a consideration.
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- Jun 21, 2003
I think that fancy figures would be inappropriate for a free skating program because there is no real gliding involved, mostly just tight twists and turns achieved by wrenching your body around and waving your arms, (At least, that is the impression I have formed by watching today's skaters try them for fun.)
As for those big, round circles of traditional school figures, I say
Now lean back and you've got a Brian Boitao spread eagle.
As for those big, round circles of traditional school figures, I say
Now lean back and you've got a Brian Boitao spread eagle.
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- Aug 8, 2023
I was more thinking about these multiple jump combos that work so well with music... of course, 30 years later, difficulty may be higher.... it wasn't about who can put the most quads and triples for me
It's fun. I wonder if such passes could be incorporated into ChSq? I don't think anyone right now has the ability to effectively perform a 5-jump pass with adequate BV to replace their standard layout. Akateva's is the only satisfying one I've seen, and even then it's surely twice as difficult in an actual program.
Well jumps themselves pose an aesthetic question. The thread is about jumps and I think the prodigies perform quite well.Thanks for posting that. This is way cool.
No, we do not look to young teenage jumping prodigies for lessons in esthetics. It's a jump tournament.I found it very entertaining.
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- Feb 22, 2016
I don't see the need for changing the rules for that. At least it's still much better than it used to be in the early iteration of COP where you could get hit with null points for zayaking which was ludicrous. I'd like to see ... a planned double jump (not axel) with some special feature being rewarded somehow, I don't mean arms aloft but let's say arms on your hips or a beautiful delayed rotation like in the programs of skaters in the 80s/early 90s
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- Jun 21, 2003
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. To me, no combination/sequence rivals a beutifully executed solo jump in terms of esthetic satisfaction.
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- Aug 8, 2023
I probably agree. Solo-jumps allow for more satisfying exits, and tend to be far taller. Sequences can be more powerful, but if we mean aesthetic in the more sophisticated, conventional sense then solo jumps should be our winner.
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- Dec 9, 2019
As we are into delayed/fancy jumps, one rule I would definitely change but not in relation with combination, is to allow "small" jumps to be choreographic elements without occupying a jump pass. (When I say small, I know that a delayed Single Axel can be massive!) There again, with a mention in the proposed layout?
The trick would be how to word this in the rules.
If you just say that single-revolution jumps don't occupy a jumping pass, then every time a skater pops an intended triple/quad they would get a free do-over.
Doing a single jump at the end of a program after all the jump boxes had been filled, whether as an isolated move or as part of the choreo sequence, would mean it would be called and asterisked, so no plus or minus to the technical elements score, but judges would be free to reward it in PCS. Or, actually, if it's part of the choreo sequence they can also reward it in the GOE for the sequence. No need for rule changes for skaters to take advantage of this option.
It could also be possible for the ISU to introduce a new element designed to encourage these kinds of jumps. For example, a leveled "small-jump sequence" with specific requirements (e.g., minimum three and some maximum number of jumps with no more than 1.5 revolutions each, don't require one-foot backward edge landings, up to two or three steps or turns permitted between jumps) and level features. Low base value for level base and high base value for level 4.
There could also be a similar leveled "field moves" sequence element that would include not only spirals but also spread eagles, Ina Bauers, hydroblading, shoot-the-ducks, lunges, and maybe allow sliding moves on other parts of the body. And a leveled "school figures variation" element that would require a symmetrical pattern of two or three connected circles with turns and loops on them, skated once on each foot.
Level features to be determined. I have all sorts of ideas for each of those three possible elements. Skaters could have the option to include one or two of those sequences in the free skate, for base value and GOE points, in place of the current choreo sequence.
The advantages of the choreo sequence, though, as currently defined, are that it's easier for the tech panel to call and it gives the skaters more flexibility about combining low-rev jumps and other aerial moves, steps/turns, field moves, and sliding moves in whatever combination works for their skills and their program concept.
A split flip or delayed axel within a choreo sequence at the end of a program is an option with no penalty. The problem, under the current rules, is that there would be a penalty for including a listed single jump like that before the final intended jump pass. But many skaters already save the choreo sequence for after all the jumps are done.
Or if they want to put the full choreo sequence mid program to match the music and theme, and they also want to include an enhanced listed jump like split flip or delayed axel as an isolated jump, they can save that solo enhanced single for later, after the last official jumping pass.
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- Aug 8, 2023
I say it would work great in ChSq to allow doubles for women and triples for men.
I don't think it would be difficult with the rules outside of ChSq either. It would just need to be planned in specific order. I think though with all of the jumping passes already it could be overwhelming. It would probably need to replace a current element, but which one? I don't think any passes should be removed from FS, and I don't think the FS needs to be any longer. So, I would just allow jumps in ChSq or even StSq as transitions.
I wonder if skaters would come up with interesting moments like single-jump spin entries or something as well. I do think allowing choreographed jumps would open many possibilities. At this point I don't think they should be their own scored element though (as I went to retroactively like your post, I realize you basically suggested the same).
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- Dec 9, 2019
I was thinking more of a delayed Single Axel, or a beautiful Loop, or, as evoked in this thread or another? a Walley... Something where the jump wouldn't be there to get a maximum of rotation but to be a sort of ample respiration, or the like?
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