ISU releases official agenda with proposals for 2024: age limits, jump limits and more

[4everchan]

Oh, I dunno. One reason my partner and I got along so well was that we were both night owls. The only time we skated before about 10 a.m. was at competitions when pairs practice times were fixed, and then we did a lot of languid stroking and hanging on the boards "discussing with our coach". To this day my favourite time to skate is the hours around midnight, which has been a help over the recreational years because I could rent cheap private ice at that time at municipal arenas.

On the other hand, any morning lark who dares chirp at me better have a good medical insurance plan. When I was at UBC getting my starter degree, my BA, I chose my optional courses in part by their scheduled time. Any otherwise interesting-sounding course that started at 8:30 a.m. was regretfully crossed off my list while I looked for some other course that started at 10:30 or later.

Fair enough but I would think you are a special case.

 

[Diana Delafield]

Fair enough but I would think you are a special case.

Well, of COURSE we were special!

I probably knew a lot of skaters who were up before dawn to get to the rink, as the standard athlete bio goes. I just wasn't awake myself at that time to know who they were

 

[Arigato]

9am is not early at all

If you go to bed at 3 or 4 a.m. it can be. I'm a night owl. Hoot! Yuzu used to skate alone at 1 - 2 a.m. at times, when he was working on a jump. Relentless.

 

[4everchan]

If you go to bed at 3 or 4 a.m. it can be. I'm a night owl. Hoot! Yuzu used to skate alone at 1 - 2 a.m. at times, when he was working on a jump. Relentless.

I am a night owl too but when I was swimming, it had to be 630am every morning... and I adapted. I think 9am is really not a big deal honestly.

 

[Arigato]

I am a night owl too but when I was swimming, it had to be 630am every morning... and I adapted. I think 9am is really not a big deal honestly.

I see you as amazing, then. I could never adapt. I need more restorative sleep. And you know how people say, "Well, then, go to bed earlier!" I can't do that. When I was a kid, my mom had a horrible time getting me out of bed in the morning for school. I really like the feel of late night. It's when I'm at my creative best for coming up with and working on ideas. Swimming at 6:30 a.m., I'd probably fall asleep in the water and drown.

Ha.

 

[4everchan]

I see you as amazing, then. I could never adapt. I need more restorative sleep. And you know how people say, "Well, then, go to be earlier!" I can't do that. When I was a kid, my mom had a horrible time getting me out of bed in the morning for school. I really like the feel of late night. It's when I'm at my creative best for coming up with and working on ideas. Swimming at 6:30 a.m., I'd probably fall asleep in the water and drown.

Ha.

The swimming was alright but I was in college back then and I slept through my morning classes

 

[Diana Delafield]

If you go to bed at 3 or 4 a.m. it can be. I'm a night owl. Hoot! Yuzu used to skate alone at 1 - 2 a.m. at times, when he was working on a jump. Relentless.

Welcome to the club. Go to bed at 2 a.m., am woken by cat at somewhere between 9 and 10, every night. Middle of the night is the best time to skate, if your rink is open 24 hrs. No spectators except the rare night maintenance worker passing through, silence except for your own music or the hiss of a blade. So peaceful, and so few distractions to your progress.

 

[Diana Delafield]

The swimming was alright but I was in college back then and I slept through my morning classes

Your professors must have loved that. The kid who wafts in on a cloud of chlorine and then snores throughout the lecture.

Our dentist had a chairside assistant who had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to get to her synchro swim team's practices three mornings a week. You learned not to book morning dental appointments on those days. By noon she'd be wired enough on coffee to be able to direct her sprayer on your teeth, and not shoot the water down your neck or up your nose.

 

[el henry]

Spousal Unit deliberately taught 8 o'clocks and 9 o'clocks. As he said, there are no innocent bystanders at an 8 o'clock class, and he felt he got better students. Considering some of his classes attracted fluff seekers, the time of day weeded them out.

For those who fell asleep, he stopped lecturing and stood in front of the student. The class was silent. He dropped a very heavy book on the floor. Student wakes up. He continued with his lecture.

And if you looked on the vaunted "Rate My Professors", his lectures pretty much got good reviews. Except from sleepers.

As for skaters waking up for early practice, another story about Jason (I'm sorry, he's the skater I know the most about. )

As a teen, Jason's parents insisted he live at home with his family and attend public school. Therefore, practice times were exceedingly early. His parents said to him, we will get up at whatever hour of the morning and drive you to practice. But this has to be your idea. We are not waking you up for practice. You need to want it enough to get yourself up and to get us.

the rest is history. (as in he went to practice)

 

[4everchan]

Spousal Unit deliberately taught 8 o'clocks and 9 o'clocks. As he said, there are no innocent bystanders at an 8 o'clock class, and he felt he got better students. Considering some of his classes attracted fluff seekers, the time of day weeded them out.

i never missed a class.... i was always there, but.... sleeping I was able to take notes and listen enough to manage... it became a running gag as I was always sleeping but would ace the exams

For those who fell asleep, he stopped lecturing and stood in front of the student. The class was silent. He dropped a very heavy book on the floor. Student wakes up. He continued with his lecture.

That's called bullying in our generation. plus, as I slept pretty much in every morning class for two years, that's a lot of books destroyed in the end Really, I did talk to the teachers telling them I was in the swim team yet being a musician on top of college and I got some slack especially since I had great grades. Over achievers can earn respect despite misbehaving

And if you looked on the vaunted "Rate My Professors", his lectures pretty much got good reviews. Except from sleepers.

I never reviewed any of my teachers.... I was sleeping, it wouldn't be fair to them....

As for skaters waking up for early practice, another story about Jason (I'm sorry, he's the skater I know the most about. )

As a teen, Jason's parents insisted he live at home with his family and attend public school. Therefore, practice times were exceedingly early. His parents said to him, we will get up at whatever hour of the morning and drive you to practice. But this has to be your idea. We are not waking you up for practice. You need to want it enough to get yourself up and to get us.

and that's why I was up at 5am, getting in the car at 5:45 am and reaching the pool at 6:30am. I loved it.

the rest is history. (as in he went to practice)

when I decided to stop swimming to focus only on music, I kept the same schedule for a couple years... but instead of swimming laps at 630am I was doing scales

I got a bit older and my natural came back... I stopped going to school early to practice and I stayed up instead. Often until 3 or 4am every night. I fell asleep a couple times and had the black keys embedded in my forehead.

Gosh I miss being young


The point I was making, and to get back to topic is that really, when you are dedicated about something, the schedule is secondary. You make it work. I have never heard a skater withdrawing from an event because they had to compete at 9am

 

[saine]

Urgent matters have been tabled.

Most notable is Israel and Great Britain wanting to keep 20 pairs advancing to the free skate for the development of the discipline.

 

[TontoK]

Urgent matters have been tabled.

Most notable is Israel and Great Britain wanting to keep 20 pairs advancing to the free skate for the development of the discipline.

I found a less notable proposal to be interesting.

The Ice Dance Tech Committee proposes adding the Ten Fox and Hickory Hoedown to the list of patterns.

The rationale is that these are good dances for beginners and development dancers. I don't often think of the ISU being overly concerned with beginners, but here is evidence that they are.

PS. I've never heard of these dances.

 

[Jumping_Bean]

The Ice Dance Tech Committee proposes adding the Ten Fox and Hickory Hoedown to the list of patterns.

Ten Fox pattern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzH9mHWs8bg
Hickory Hoedown pattern: https://youtu.be/GqYyptqYn0I?si=ffkry_ezOsUkgUpY

 

[Diana Delafield]

I found a less notable proposal to be interesting.

The Ice Dance Tech Committee proposes adding the Ten Fox and Hickory Hoedown to the list of patterns.

The rationale is that these are good dances for beginners and development dancers. I don't often think of the ISU being overly concerned with beginners, but here is evidence that they are.

PS. I've never heard of these dances.

The Ten Fox must have been around forever because I learned it long ago and far away. The Hickory Hoedown I've only heard of but have never seen it done.

[Edit: Now that I've watched the video, I've seen little kids doing it at my club, just didn't know it was that dance. They use different music that doesn't sound cowboy-ish.]

[

 

[labgoat]

Ten Fox pattern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzH9mHWs8bg
Hickory Hoedown pattern: https://youtu.be/GqYyptqYn0I?si=ffkry_ezOsUkgUpY

Hickory Hoedown is my least favorite dance ever...

 

[lariko]

It's kinda really weird to see right now during the Paris Olympics the press going gaga and all misty-eyed over 13 and 14 y.o. skateboarders. I guess, in some sports, the concern for the wellbeing of the contestants is just not there.

 

[eppen]

Did not have too much time and energy at the time when this thread was at its most active. But having now read through most of it, just a few historical pointers that came to mind. Mostly about jumps and especially quads (cannot help myself, can I?).

It was an eye opener to go through free skates from the 1970s and 1980s - the number of jumps could vary from 7-8 to even over 15. This changed in the early 1980s as after 1984, most men at least were doing 7-8 jumps in the free. This maybe as a response to the 5 min free changed into 4,5 min after 1983-4 and of course the Zayak rule approved in the 1982 ISU congress. The 8 jump free remained the norm even without any kind of written rules until the IJS made the conventions into rules. The reduction of the jumps to 7 happened at the same time as the free length was changed to 4 minutes for all.

The quads then. Until the late 1990s they were attempted by very few skaters and in very low numbers. The 1996-7 season with 20 attempts was a huge upward change... After that everything happened very quickly and by the early 2000s, some 300 quads were attempted per season and the number of skaters going for them had increased from 9 in 1996-7 to 32 in 2002-3.

The IJS stopped that development very quickly. It was quite harsh particularly towards any kind of underrotations. The current nuanced q-<-<< did not exist - if the jump was deemed under, it was automatically downgraded. So, if a 4T could at best bring a skater as many as 12,47 points with the 9,80 BV (this was the top score in 2008-9), it seems to have been a greater concern that the jump could be deemed unrotated and the BV would drop to 4,00 and with the negative GOE the score could be just 1,00 point... Scare big enough to stop weaker jumpers from even trying since just a cleanish 3T or 3S would give a much better result. This continued even when the BV for 4T was raised from 8,00 to 9,80 and for 4S 8,50 to 10,30. The high BVs were not enough to tempt a lot of skaters to try quads.

This was changed after the 2009-10 season when the Olys were won without a quad and this was discussed widely in the community (and in the media). ISU drew (quick?) conclusions as to the direction it wanted to go and for 2010-11 there were significant changes for jumps and scoring. Firstly, the second quad in the SP was allowed - this encouraged developing multiple quad types. Secondly, the scoring was changed to support risk taking. The BV for 4T was raised to 10,30 and for the 4S to 10,50. But more significantly, under rotations were introduced in addition to downgrades. And it was made sure that even a bad 4T attempt would yield more points than an ok 3T - a 4T< BV was 7,20 and even with a fall that was 4,20 compared to a 3T+GOE 0 at 4,10. No wonder skaters who had trained quads brushed them up and put into program soon after.

Patrick Chan and Timothy Goebel were compared in some posts for jump numbers - Timothy got to 102 attempts in his career with two different quads, Patrick got 119 with mostly just 4T. Patrick was the most prolific quadster in the 2011-12 season with 23 attempts - Goebel had the same honor for 3 seasons back in the day with similar jump numbers. Goebel got around 68% success rate (jumped looking clean or with GOE 0 or over) and Patrick got to around 66%. Not so great difference after all?

After the changes took place, things took a couple of years to develop but in a few years 1+3 quad layout started to become the norm. More skaters started to have more than one quad and the 2-quad SP started to get normal around 2015-16. Such new generation skaters as Boyang Jin and Nathan Chen challenged the old guard who upped their game etc. The numbers of quadsters and quad attempts increased very quickly in the last part of the 2010s.

I don't know if the change in the repetition rules came because Kevin Reynolds did a few comps where he went for the 4 quad free with just 4T and 4S (three at least). Nathan did the same once before he learned the 4Lz and 4F. They were the only ones to do that early on as far as I know, everyone else had 3 different quads.

The next big changes took place after the 2017-18 season. The number of jump passes went down to 7 and the GOE scale plus how the GOE is calculated changed. However, the basic principles of scoring did not change - a not so great but fully rotated quad attempt is still better than a clean triple. Consequently, these changes did not have any impact on how eagerly skaters were training and attempting quads. Especially after the pandemic, things have really gone through the roof. Last season more than 2430 attempts at all levels from novice to senior, domestic to international.

As a side note, whining about low BVs seems rather ridiculous thinking of how lenient the system is. Only one 4A attempt (by Artur Dmitriev Jr. in 2017-18) took place when its BV was 15,00. It was dropped to 12,50 in 2018-19 and Dmitriev still continued to try... Hanyu joined in a little later etc.

As far as I could find out, there seem to be no plans to revise the scoring system after the 2025-26 season, just cut one jump pass from the free. The same incentives to learn and attempt quads in competitions still exist. Multiple quads will make it easier to negotiate the new repetition rules. Had ISU really want to bridle the quads, they could have changed scoring (again). It will be interesting to see what (if anything) changes in 2026-27, but I would imagine that quads still remain an important element to have.

The time reduction to 4 minutes for the free changed the timings of different element groups a little bit - about 10-15 seconds less is used to jump prep and jumps. But more significantly, it did take away the "breaks" from the middle of the program which allowed the skaters to rest before the second jump passes. This was often also the time (10-30 s) for "developing choreo" although in reality it might have been spent standing in one place... However, looking at the 2023-24 programs of Adam Siao Him Fa, Yuma Kagiyama and Ilia Malinin, it was interesting to note that each had an extra 20 s or so that was not used for anything specific - for Adam and Yuma it was before the 2nd part jump passes and for Ilia towards the end between the spins. No such thing eg in Jason Brown's free where every second is used to prepping or executing elements apart from the standard intro (around 20 s for Jason, 20 for Adam, 13 and 14 for Yuma and Ilia respectively).

Despite my obsession with the quads, I am not partial to having jumping competitions - I watched the Russian version of it from last spring and was bored most of the time. The format was that of a glorified practice session which was also shown by skaters not ever having attempted quads in competition programs putting them on there. So much easier...

E

 

[lariko]

Despite my obsession with the quads, I am not partial to having jumping competitions - I watched the Russian version of it from last spring and was bored most of the time. The format was that of a glorified practice session which was also shown by skaters not ever having attempted quads in competition programs putting them on there. So much easier...

I loved it and had absolute blast, particularly with Popov snatching unexpected silver It was so upbeat and pumped, exactly what the regular SP/FS format doesn't have until like the last 6. It is like the missing component, and I am so happy it is now a part of the Russian Seasons.

 

[TallyT]

Despite my obsession with the quads, I am not partial to having jumping competitions - I watched the Russian version of it from last spring and was bored most of the time. The format was that of a glorified practice session which was also shown by skaters not ever having attempted quads in competition programs putting them on there. So much easier...

A really intense practice session can be great and absorbing to watch, but these rather vacuous jumping competitions weren't as good as those.

 

[Bookseller]

Spousal Unit deliberately taught 8 o'clocks and 9 o'clocks. As he said, there are no innocent bystanders at an 8 o'clock class, and he felt he got better students. Considering some of his classes attracted fluff seekers, the time of day weeded them out.

For those who fell asleep, he stopped lecturing and stood in front of the student. The class was silent. He dropped a very heavy book on the floor. Student wakes up. He continued with his lecture.

And if you looked on the vaunted "Rate My Professors", his lectures pretty much got good reviews. Except from sleepers.

As for skaters waking up for early practice, another story about Jason (I'm sorry, he's the skater I know the most about. )

As a teen, Jason's parents insisted he live at home with his family and attend public school. Therefore, practice times were exceedingly early. His parents said to him, we will get up at whatever hour of the morning and drive you to practice. But this has to be your idea. We are not waking you up for practice. You need to want it enough to get yourself up and to get us.

the rest is history. (as in he went to practice)

Adam Rippon said he got up extra early and made breakfast for his younger siblings and got them ready for school, so that when his mom got up, she only had to take him to the rink and he could get there early. It's all about motivation. Both guys did pretty well in skating!