"Inevitable" Winners vs. Rule Changes

[dorispulaski]

It's strange to think of changing a rule just to disadvantage someone in particular:sarcasm:

Really? I assure you, the Zayak rule was not made to advantage Elaine Zayak.

And the Witt rule to ban overly sexy costumes was not made to advantage Katarina Witt.

Sometimes rule changes are not as explicit about it, but it is often the case that rules are changed to specifically to disadvantage one skater, or to specifically advantage another.

But it is always the case that all rule changes benefit some skaters and disadvantage others.

 

[dorispulaski]

Bring back the Compulsory Dance! That would seriously disrupt the status quo in ice dance.

Also, maybe it’s just me, but I enjoyed them.

Yes, it would, definitely, I loved them too. You could really tell who were better ice dancers. If they had allowed teams to pick their own music earlier, this might have been more popular with crowds.

In fact, I really think P&C and in fact, most modern teams, would have had a more difficult time excelling in the 1981-1984 quad's set of rules.

P&C have always been weaker in the RD, and every competition would have had 3 CDs and the OSP to navigate before getting to the FD, their strength.

The version of our current rhythm dance, the Original Set Pattern, required teams to create a new compulsory dance to a designated rhythm. The rhythms for that quad were Cha Cha, Blues, Rock n Roll, and Paso Doble. Of the four, only Blues would have been a super great vehicle for P&C. The Cha Cha is not at all easy to put on ice convincingly. Torvill and Dean's was the best of the bunch, and it was not their best program of all time by a long stetch. The two long beats followed by three quick beats is tricky for any team whose timing is not very sharp.

It was very important to convey the character of the dance, too, in those days, a consideration that is often ignored nowadays, and one that I can get quite curmudgeonly about .

And the OSP was also supposed to be creative-OSP's were the source of the next generation's CDs.

Additionally, teams had to repeat their pattern three times during the OSP. The bigger the pattern, the greater the speed. And, the kind of judging esthetics that applied to compulsory figures, also applied to the OSP and the CD's. The three repetitions of the pattern were supposed to exactly overlay each other. This required dancers to have exactly the same speed and edging at the same point in the music. And they were supposed to have excellent timing, as did Torvill & Dean. And to skate so close together you could not fit a sheet of paper between them, at points in the dance, where that was appropriate.

Because CDs are not competed after the Novice level now, the younger teams would be at a disadvantage.

By the Anissina & Peizerat era, judges were being overly forgiving of the requirement for the traces to overlay. In fact, by 2003, teams were not that great on the beat, to my consternation. Timing was being sacrificed to speed.

As to the way CD's were competed then:
CD's had different numbers of repeats. All three CD's were skated at every competition. For the 1981 quad, the groups were:

1980-81 Westminster Waltz (2 repeats), Paso Doble (3 repeats), Rhumba (four repeats)
1981-82 Yankee Polka (2 repeats), Blues (3 repeats), Viennese Waltz (3 repeats)
1982-83 Quickstep (four repeats), Argentine Tango (2 repeats), Ravensburger Waltz (2 repeats)
1983-84 Rhumba (four repeats), Westminster Waltz (2 sequences) Paso Doble (3 repeats)

1981-1982 was particularly difficult for teams that were not natural fast steppers, what with having to skate the Yankee Polka at every competition, and Rock n Roll being the OSP.

Even the FD had its challenges for modern teams, because three distinct changes of rhythm were required. There were some very fast steppers to compete with, for example Bestemianova and Bukin as well as Torvill & Dean, although that was less emphasized than it was in the Sladky & Schwomeyer era.

 

[Autumn Leaves]

Really? I assure you, the Zayak rule was not made to advantage Elaine Zayak.

And the Witt rule to ban overly sexy costumes was not made to advantage Katarina Witt.

Sometimes rule changes are not as explicit about it, but it is often the case that rules are changed to specifically to disadvantage one skater, or to specifically advantage another.

But it is always the case that all rule changes benefit some skaters and disadvantage others.

Yes, the post-olympic change of the backloading bonus affected only Zagitova as she was the only skater capable of backloading all of her jumps.

 

[ruga]

Yes, the post-olympic change of the backloading bonus affected only Zagitova as she was the only skater capable of backloading all of her jumps.

Well to some extent it affected Panenkova and Kostornaia too, since they had 0/7 layout. But when making this rule, ISU wanted to encourage less jumps in the first minute and didn't expect someone to take it that far. It was almost certain that ISU would change this after Alina won gold in OG. (OT, but I'd rather have Zagitova rule removed, because instead of diverse layouts we now have everyone do 4/3 as almost all skaters are capable of putting 3 jumps in the second half).

 

[ankifeather]

I just want a system where:
1) GOE and PCS panels consist of separate people. If that's too much to add 9 people they can merge GOE panel with Technical Panel.
2) GOE is not assigned as a number, but by selecting criteria. Only criteria 50% of judges selected gets taken into account and the number is calculated.
3) Heavy punishments for biased judges. I have seen some judges overscoring skaters from their country by 8-10 poinst and underscoring their competitors by similar amount. These judges still judge at the important events and their scores change the placement drastically (see: Kazakh judge at Worlds and 4CC for example).
4) AI measurements of height, rotation speed, distance, edges, rotation. Expensive - yes, worth it - YES.

Couldn't agree more with these.
For point 1) the PCS panel should also not be provided with the skater's jump and program layout before and during judging and will not be informed of the skater's TES when marking.

For point 3) any judge who gave points that deviates by more than 8 points to any skater gets a published warning the first two times, and gets automatically disqualified on the third time. And to really provide good incentive to stop this, any country with more than 2 judges disqualified or 5 warnings in a year in a certain discipline automatically looses one spot for that discipline the next year.

For point 4) Once machine reading becomes common, any jump not over a certain height and distance cannot get more than GOE +3, and any jump over a certain height and distance get another 0.5 point. Machines should be designed to disregard any pre-rotations on the ice in calculating the rotations as well.

Other rules that should be changed:
1. Women PCS should be at 100%
2. Quads allowed in short program for women
3. Remove the 80% reduction in BV for the 4T-3A. No one in their right mind would consider the 4T-3A is the same level of difficulty as 4T-3T

 

[katymay]

I would eliminate the PCS score all together. I don't think it is necessary, and often it is a way for judges to manipulate 'their' skater up the ranks. Most of the time, the tech score (with GOE which somewhat duplicates PCS) placings are the final placings, so what is the point of PCS? Get rid of it.

 

[pearly]

Get rid of the PCS corridor. I'd be perfectly happy to see a 9.5 for skating skills and a 4.0 for choreography if that is the reality.

 

[ruga]

But if there's no PCS what would motivate skaters to skate actual programs and put effort into performing? Or will figure skating become just an element competition? Though I'd enjoy seeing a segment of purely jumping and spinning (they have something like that in Russian novice comps).

Now I think that there should be less components - 5 is too much, judges are too busy evaluating GOE and have too little time, so the average scores given for each components are very similar, even though transitions and performance for example. So my idea is to turn components into 3 parts: skating skills, transitions and performance. Interpretation could be merged with performance, and composition has nothing to do with skater anyway and is reflected in transitions and interpretation. SS and TR are also more objective therefore they make 2/3 of the PCS score.

 

[yume]

Get rid of the PCS corridor. I'd be perfectly happy to see a 9.5 for skating skills and a 4.0 for choreography if that is the reality.

 

[WeakAnkles]

Yes, it would, definitely, I loved them too. You could really tell who were better ice dancers. If they had allowed teams to pick their own music earlier, this might have been more popular with crowds.

In fact, I really think P&C and in fact, most modern teams, would have had a more difficult time excelling in the 1981-1984 quad's set of rules.

P&C have always been weaker in the RD, and every competition would have had 3 CDs and the OSP to navigate before getting to the FD, their strength.

The version of our current rhythm dance, the Original Set Pattern, required teams to create a new compulsory dance to a designated rhythm. The rhythms for that quad were Cha Cha, Blues, Rock n Roll, and Paso Doble. Of the four, only Blues would have been a super great vehicle for P&C. The Cha Cha is not at all easy to put on ice convincingly. Torvill and Dean's was the best of the bunch, and it was not their best program of all time by a long stetch. The two long beats followed by three quick beats is tricky for any team whose timing is not very sharp.

It was very important to convey the character of the dance, too, in those days, a consideration that is often ignored nowadays, and one that I can get quite curmudgeonly about .

And the OSP was also supposed to be creative-OSP's were the source of the next generation's CDs.

Additionally, teams had to repeat their pattern three times during the OSP. The bigger the pattern, the greater the speed. And, the kind of judging esthetics that applied to compulsory figures, also applied to the OSP and the CD's. The three repetitions of the pattern were supposed to exactly overlay each other. This required dancers to have exactly the same speed and edging at the same point in the music. And they were supposed to have excellent timing, as did Torvill & Dean. And to skate so close together you could not fit a sheet of paper between them, at points in the dance, where that was appropriate.

Because CDs are not competed after the Novice level now, the younger teams would be at a disadvantage.

By the Anissina & Peizerat era, judges were being overly forgiving of the requirement for the traces to overlay. In fact, by 2003, teams were not that great on the beat, to my consternation. Timing was being sacrificed to speed.

As to the way CD's were competed then:
CD's had different numbers of repeats. All three CD's were skated at every competition. For the 1981 quad, the groups were:

1980-81 Westminster Waltz (2 repeats), Paso Doble (3 repeats), Rhumba (four repeats)
1981-82 Yankee Polka (2 repeats), Blues (3 repeats), Viennese Waltz (3 repeats)
1982-83 Quickstep (four repeats), Argentine Tango (2 repeats), Ravensburger Waltz (2 repeats)
1983-84 Rhumba (four repeats), Westminster Waltz (2 sequences) Paso Doble (3 repeats)

1981-1982 was particularly difficult for teams that were not natural fast steppers, what with having to skate the Yankee Polka at every competition, and Rock n Roll being the OSP.

Even the FD had its challenges for modern teams, because three distinct changes of rhythm were required. There were some very fast steppers to compete with, for example Bestemianova and Bukin as well as Torvill & Dean, although that was less emphasized than it was in the Sladky & Schwomeyer era.

Doris Telling It Like It Is.

And she's 117% right.

:agree:

 

[WeakAnkles]

I would eliminate the PCS score all together. I don't think it is necessary, and often it is a way for judges to manipulate 'their' skater up the ranks. Most of the time, the tech score (with GOE which somewhat duplicates PCS) placings are the final placings, so what is the point of PCS? Get rid of it.

The problem isn't the idea of PCS; it's the execution. And the problem with the execution has more to do with nationalism than anything else. I've always thought the solution would be for the ISU to have a block of professional judges, trained much like American baseball trains its cadre of professional umpires, who are not affiliated with any national skating organization. Until the politics are removed, PCS will always be vulnerable to manipulation for national federation shenanigans.

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

It's strange to think of changing a rule just to disadvantage someone in particular:sarcasm:

In a sense, rule changes that benefit a skater (or a few skaters) disadvantage everyone else. The SP 3A helped Mao, and really disadvantaged others because she was the only one doing the jump consistently when the change was implemented. Probably another one that comes to mind is the "Bielmann everything" one that helped Irina Slutskaya but didn't do much to help top rival Kwan.

 

[Ice Dance]

OK, the P&C thing.

1. Mandate toe-tapping & obvious rhythms.
2. Require low-level, mid-level, and high-level positions in the twizzles.
3. At least one lift must be acrobatic & over the head.
4. Eliminate the stationary lift.
5. Dance spins must involve a change of partner guiding the spin. (I don't know how to say this, but I'm thinking that basically if the lady has to be in charge of the rotation as much as the man, that could royally muck up a lot of dance spins that benefit from having guys with really great rotational speed).
6. Require one reverse lift. (Lady lifting the guy).
7. Drop the GOE back to + and - 3.
8. Mandatory negative GOE for all wobbled twizzles.
9. Mandatory -3 for all falls.
10. Mandatory -2 for a foot down in a spin.
11. Mandatory -2 for a foot down in the twizzles.
12. Mandatory -2 for any obvious trip in a footwork sequence.
13. No plus GOE for patterns below level 2.
14. Mandatory difficult transition into the twizzles.
15. Mandatory triple twizzles in the footwork.
16. Mandatory negative GOE for any loss of balance in a lift.
17. No identical footwork patterns for any dance teams.
18. No added applied beats. All beats must be naturally in the music.
19. Increase the technical points awarded for levels.
20. Swap out GOE criteria terminology like "floating," "seamless," "flowing" and "effortless." Replace them with "sharp," "exact," "powerful," and "dramatic."
21. Eliminate separate points for choreographic elements and make them part of the transitions score.

Now some of these rule changes I would really hate, some of them are directed specifically to undermine P&C, and some of them are to undermine the field as a whole. Undermine the field as a whole & the athletes that benefit are the young ones coming up who are generally more adept at learning new requirements at a younger age. Then a bunch of these changes aren't directed at any team at all but simply there to ensure harsher consequences for mistakes and real movement when those mistakes occur. Which they will. Inevitably. To everyone sooner or later, including the top team in the world.


I disagree that compulsories would make a big difference. 50% of compulsory scores were PCS. Add that to the sky high GOE we saw for established teams with low levels last season, and you've got little to no movement.

 

[Baron Vladimir]

Yes, it would, definitely, I loved them too. You could really tell who were better ice dancers

Not exactly! Or you think Fusar Poli/Margaglio and Domnina/Shaballin should have won Olympics based on their better compulsory segments? I would say that based on compulsory you could tell who were better only in the compulsory portion of that recomendended dance, not really who were better 'dancers' overall. E: Its like to say that skaters who were better in step sequence and got higher score there must have better skating skills' (demonstrated during the whole program) score. I dont think thats always the case.

 

[dorispulaski]

The CD did a great job of placing who should be in the top 5, and top ten, and revealed weaknesses quite pitilessly, particularly when 3 different CDs had to be done in every competition.

Domnina and Shabalin did absolutely the best Tango Romantica in their competition in 2010. However, the team staged the most inappropriate short dance ever, which not only did not meet the published SD requirement of being a folk dance, but also insulted one of the two hosts of the Olympics, the indigenous peoples of British Columbia. Perhap even more important, Shabalins's knees were in terrible shape, so the team had to divise those strange straps so he could do all those lifts. And thus, they did not win.

However, they were great ice dancers, of that there is no question.

 

[Baron Vladimir]

Well, that was mostly the case in 6.0 system, who by its rules didn't allow that much of a shifting in placements after the first segment of a dance/short program. In COP, you were able to jump from 5th to 1st, or 10th to 3rd after the first portion of the skating. Regarding P/C situation in compulsory portion/patterns of the dance, i think is reasonable to expect (based on some past results with other skaters in past competitions too) that some of more expirienced skaters have better chance to beat them there, but that is just because those expirienced skaters trained (and had chances to perform in a competition) compulsory segments more time during their career. I think, that is more dependable of who trained more (who is more expirienced with) compulsory, not who is better dancer overall. To me, compulsory is just one part of the dance, just like twizzles, lifts or components are. Maybe it should weight more, but i don't think that would stop P/C to wining, knowing they've already been in the situation where they finished 4th after the short dance and still winning it all at the end. The one who can beat them are probably Katsalapov, as a former Olympic bronze medalists (if he can gain that kind of form with the new partner), Stepanova/Bukin (cause they've already been able to beat them in Juniors World), or some new team who was winning Juniors in recent years. That probability is the most dependable of P/C skating and type of mistakes they can make from competition to competition.

 

[dorispulaski]

OK, the P&C thing.

1. Mandate toe-tapping & obvious rhythms.
2. Require low-level, mid-level, and high-level positions in the twizzles.
3. At least one lift must be acrobatic & over the head.
4. Eliminate the stationary lift.
5. Dance spins must involve a change of partner guiding the spin. (I don't know how to say this, but I'm thinking that basically if the lady has to be in charge of the rotation as much as the man, that could royally muck up a lot of dance spins that benefit from having guys with really great rotational speed).
6. Require one reverse lift. (Lady lifting the guy).
7. Drop the GOE back to + and - 3.
8. Mandatory negative GOE for all wobbled twizzles.
9. Mandatory -3 for all falls.
10. Mandatory -2 for a foot down in a spin.
11. Mandatory -2 for a foot down in the twizzles.
12. Mandatory -2 for any obvious trip in a footwork sequence.
13. No plus GOE for patterns below level 2.
14. Mandatory difficult transition into the twizzles.
15. Mandatory triple twizzles in the footwork.
16. Mandatory negative GOE for any loss of balance in a lift.
17. No identical footwork patterns for any dance teams.
18. No added applied beats. All beats must be naturally in the music.
19. Increase the technical points awarded for levels.
20. Swap out GOE criteria terminology like "floating," "seamless," "flowing" and "effortless." Replace them with "sharp," "exact," "powerful," and "dramatic."
21. Eliminate separate points for choreographic elements and make them part of the transitions score.

Now some of these rule changes I would really hate, some of them are directed specifically to undermine P&C, and some of them are to undermine the field as a whole. Undermine the field as a whole & the athletes that benefit are the young ones coming up who are generally more adept at learning new requirements at a younger age. Then a bunch of these changes aren't directed at any team at all but simply there to ensure harsher consequences for mistakes and real movement when those mistakes occur. Which they will. Inevitably. To everyone sooner or later, including the top team in the world.


I disagree that compulsories would make a big difference. 50% of compulsory scores were PCS. Add that to the sky high GOE we saw for established teams with low levels last season, and you've got little to no movement.

Of Ice Dance 's above list, I think

1. Requiring obvious, toe tapping rhythms
4. Eliminate the stationary lift

18. No added applied beats. All beats must be naturally in the music.
19. Increase the technical points awarded for levels.

20. Swap out GOE criteria terminology like "floating," "seamless," "flowing" and "effortless." Replace them with "sharp," "exact," "powerful," and "dramatic"

21. Eliminate separate points for choreographic elements and make them part of the transitions score.

are both feasible to implement and would disadvantage P&C.

Other possible requirements would be requiring one lift with a one foot section by the man to get level 4, reverting to a shorter time allowed for lifts, and giving extra GOE for creativity in lifts.

Another rule would be to go back to the requirement of perfect timing to receive PCS of above 9 in the PCS component including timing.

The tricky thing with making rule changes is that a rule made to one team's disadvantage affects teams with similar strengths and weaknesses too. Consequently, if a rule affects P&C negatively, say because of their limited lifting repetoire, or their limited tempo palette, Hubbell & Donohue who have the same issues would be negatively affected, too. The Lifting issues and changes might well affect Sinitsina & Katsalapov.

It is quite often the case that such focussed rule changes elevate the unlikely, and do not aid those they were thought to aid all that much.

 

[Jules99b]

I think changing the GOE to -5 to +5 was a mistake. There's too many rules that go along with each of those rankings that judges don't know them all and go by gut in the moment. Because of that, teams like Papadakis/Cizeron are given fives in GOE often because of name and reputation. Not that this wasn't happening in the +3 GOE era but now the point cap is much larger and, in turn, the advantage to getting a +5 is much more than it used to be. Plus, teams like Hubbell/Donohue, who got a level 2 spin once, still end up first with technically less difficult elements. Bring the GOE back down, give more penalties to teams performing level 2 or 3 elements and reevaluate what constitutes a level 3 vs a level 4 element and we could see the gap start to shrink back down.

 

[medoroa]

Prior to 2007/2008ish (maybe someone else can provide a more exact time), URs and incorrect edges were rarely penalized. It is my understanding that while there were rules to penalize these mistakes, they were rarely used.

This is untrue; if you look at the protocols for the 2006 Olympics, men like Joubert and Takahashi performed 4T that were on the border of UR calls by current rules but they received a 3T call and 3T points with negative GOE. (You might not notice them since they're called as 3T rather than 4T<, but you can count the rotations yourself in videos.) An UR quad was considered a badly-performed triple, same with UR triples being called as bad doubles. Skaters like Asada and Miyahara would not have won much by the rules as they were then, so although edge calls became more strict as IJS developed, by and large Asada didn't have it AS bad as she could have.

As for bringing back CD, I really want them to and I probably won't bother with senior ice dance this season since they're only doing half (half!!!) a PD. But there was a lot and lot of, um, heated discussions about CD back when they were performed, too. I still remember Canadian outrage over Bourne/Kraatz placing under Grishuk/Platov, so I don't think bringing CD back will make the fans think the scores or placements are more "fair". A lot of fans just think their favorite losing isn't "fair", so...

 

[Arbitrary]

The best possible solution for rules in that ideas field was introduced ~15 years ago in the "Star Wars Expanded Universe".
One of authors (Anderson?) invented an new type of board/card game the so-called "Random Sabbak" were rules changed on the fly during the game.

Consider you're playing a Poker (card game) and in the middle the gambling computer randomly decides you're within the Bridge game rules now. Continuing on the fly with the same set of cards you already have.

Like first having all the contenders to skate and next to somehow randomly decide what are the GOE rules, BV of each element, rules to judge the PCS etc.
Would be a funniest competition to watch.

Just remember whatever rules you invite the big feds will adopt faster than others.