Increase advancement (to FS) in Pairs from 16-20 in ISU Champs?

[gsk8]

Israel and Great Britain put forth a proposal to ISU for increasing total number of competitors in Pairs that advance to the free skate from 16 to 20 in ISU Championship events.

Source (59th ISU Ordinary Congress, Las Vegas, June 2024): https://bit.ly/4bEWnb4

What are your thoughts?

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Not enough. Should be 24 in the Free Skate for all categories.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[FlossieH]

I think 20 is sensible for pairs if they want to keep it lower than singles. It is what Ice dance has already at both Euros and Worlds. Pairs currently has 16 for Euros and 20 for worlds. I think it should be the same for both championships (and also for 4CC).

Ideally, all four categories should be treated the same. However, the 'extra' groups this would create in pairs and ice dance would slightly increase the time needed.

 

[skylark]

This would be great. We need to see more pairs skating!

 

[skatesofgold]

Yeah, I actually like this proposal.

 

[Mathematician]

I say the more skating the better

 

[RUKen]

Israel and Great Britain put forth a proposal to ISU for increasing total number of competitors in Pairs that advance to the free skate from 16 to 20 in ISU Championship events.

What are your thoughts?

Twenty pairs have advanced to the free skate in the World Championships since 2019. I think this proposal is intended to extend that limit to the European and 4CCs Championships. There are often fewer than seventeen pairs in these events, but in the 2024 Europeans, there were eighteen entries, and two were eliminated before the free skate.

I see no reason to have fewer free skate teams in Euros/4CCs than at Worlds.

 

[saine]

Twenty pairs have advanced to the free skate in the World Championships since 2019. I think this proposal is intended to extend that limit to the European and 4CCs Championships. There are often fewer than seventeen pairs in these events, but in the 2024 Europeans, there were eighteen entries, and two were eliminated before the free skate.

I see no reason to have fewer free skate teams in Euros/4CCs than at Worlds.

They're returning to 16 pairs advancing at Worlds next season, so the proposal is to keep it at 20. It refers to rule 378, paragraph 5e), which is for the 2024-25 changes for Worlds when the qualifying rounds return.

I'd like it to be 20 for all four championships, instead of having them all be 16 again.

 

[4everchan]

make it 20, scratch the qualifying rounds

 

[cheerknithanson]

This is one proposal I actually agree with.

 

[RobinA]

I say the more skating the better

I say the better skating the better. Pairs is such a mess right now, I'm not sure I could bear to watch numbers 16-20.

 

[Jumping_Bean]

I say the better skating the better. Pairs is such a mess right now, I'm not sure I could bear to watch numbers 16-20.

You've been watching them at the last two Worlds and somehow managed to survive. Unless, of course, you actually haven't been watching, but then nothing was changing for you either way

 

[Rebecca Moose]

No. The lower ranked pairs are already a frightful watch.

 

[saine]

I, for one, am happy that Urgent Proposals 17/18 were accepted as drafting matters after being made invalid after the Qualifying Rounds were eliminated.

The ISU Members agreed, keeping it at 20 is a good idea!

 

[Mathematician]

I say the better skating the better. Pairs is such a mess right now, I'm not sure I could bear to watch numbers 16-20.

I've heard the international pairs scene is struggling severely now so you may be right. But only having 10 pairs at RusNats for example was surely lacking.

 

[figureskatingandrainbows]

Are some of the lower-ranked pairs a little scary to watch? Yes. But is pairs nearly as doom-and-gloom as people say? No. There are so many lower-ranked teams who have burst onto the scene, and a lot of new teams who I think can make a lot of improvement. If you look at the SP results from Worlds this year, the score needed to qualify for the FS (with 20 teams) was a 54.69 where the only mistakes were a stepout on a SBS 3T and a messy spin. That's really not a bad score or skate, and all of the teams who are near the bottom of the 20 are teams that are newer and have a lot of promise. For comparison, the 2019 WC had only 19 teams entered, and the last place team scored a 48.66. So, while we may not be at the heights of the 2014-2018 Olympic quad yet, the scores and number of teams entered without the Russians present is far better than in years prior, and the 20 pairs will help further the development of some of those young teams. It won't make a difference at 4CC, because we're probably not going to have more than 16 teams competing there anyways, and Europe has a lot of exciting new teams that deserve to skate their free skates.

 

[Dreamer57]

I think 20 pairs is a reasonable number for all ISU championships, matches ice dance. Also, if teams achieve the qualifying scores for worlds then they deserve to be able to show both their programs.

 

[Diana Delafield]

I think 20 pairs is a reasonable number for all ISU championships, matches ice dance. Also, if teams achieve the qualifying scores for worlds then they deserve to be able to show both their programs.

As far as I know, the reduced number of pairs vs dancers has been time -- for safety reasons, warm-up groups in pairs are reduced to 4, so there would be five groups in the event, taking up more time, possibly needing an extra ice cleaning, extending streaming time (if any), just making the event that much longer and probably more expensive to run. Frankly, I think dance warm-ups are more dangerous because of the unpredictability of their directions, as opposed to pairs who are more obvious (to other pairs) as to what they're setting up to do and where they'll be on the ice at that instant. But I've never been in a dance warm-up group in a competition, so what do I know

 

[saine]

Frankly, I think dance warm-ups are more dangerous because of the unpredictability of their directions, as opposed to pairs who are more obvious (to other pairs) as to what they're setting up to do and where they'll be on the ice at that instant. But I've never been in a dance warm-up group in a competition, so what do I know

Nadiia Bashynska included her experience of the Grand Prix Espoo free dance warm-up that had the ref stopping it to tell everyone to be safer. Apparently she had a collision that wasn't on camera. I time-stamped to where she starts talking about it. Definitely sounded chaotic.