Again, the competing in any level does NOT apply to adults at this time and it sounds like it will be quite awhile before it's even considered. There's also a lot of American skaters who will not compete at the international adult events because of the free-for-all approach of those events with self reporting of levels.
eeek! Yeah, that's not so great. What a crapshoot on which level is "fair" to skate in.
In the standard track, there are blocks to skating down several levels: Once you compete in a qualifying competition at a given level, you are not allowed to compete at a lower level.
I don't know how this will shake out with standard levels below Juvenile and with Excel competitions. I think some scenarios have been covered in the documentation for the rule change and others will still need to be addressed.
If and when something similar comes into effect, I'm sure there will be similar restrictions. E.g., if you have competed at Adult Sectionals or Adult Nationals in a freeskating event that does not permit "skating up," you will not be able to enter lower level events in other competitions.
Everything is more complicated for adults because adults may have passed the relevant tests decades earlier when rules were different.
And also adults often lose skills with aging, so sometimes "skating down" would be appropriate, albeit difficult to regulate as to when it is or is not.
But the majority of kids will never skate in a
qualifying event. From a "who is going to the olympics" perspective, that's fine. But it really hangs the excel or recreational skaters out to dry. My rink is full of skaters who skate in the "competitive" track, but the majority is at the no test, pre-pre, or prelim levels, with a rare few doing intermediate or novice. None of them do "qualifying" competitions ever, but they also never skate the excel track either. Excel or "recreational" seems to get treated like a dirty word. They like to be able to call themselves a "competitive" skater skating in the "competitive" pipeline, even though they're only prelim, or they're intermediate or novice but have never gone to an actual qualifying event because they don't have anything above a double lutz. I know non-qualifying competitions "don't really matter", but this seems to open the floodgates for a race-to-the-bottom in non-qualifying competitions as much as adult competitions.
Those tests are HARD! I am working on Silver and it will be at least another year before I will feel comfortable testing. The adult Gold test is really difficult and anyone who passes it is in possession of pretty darn good skating skills. We NEED more adult skaters in those Gold Medalist jackets!
I passed Adult Pre-Bronze to Adult Gold MIF in the space of roughly 2 years, starting at age 26. My only previous skating experience was passing LTS levels the
SINGLE year of skating I did as a kid at age 14. No MIF as a child at all, just LTS levels.
Cutting out all of the time spent on jumps/spins, I think it took about 2 months for pre-bronze and 3 months for bronze. Then 5 months for Silver. Then about 8 months for Gold.
Intermediate (21+) took me 1.5 years. I'm expecting Novice (21+) to take me at least 2 years, but probably 2.5 to 3 years. Junior and Senior might go a bit quicker since they are less of a leap up from Novice.
And yet, everyone on the internet tells me my skating skills are trash. They also say the amount of ice time I do per week (7-9 hours), I should be improving much more quickly and that it's taking me way too long to improve given the amount of weekly ice time I do. These could just be angry, hateful armchair analysts that the internet is famous for, but I don't think it's inaccurate, considering I'm sure I would be in the bottom half of an event at Adult Nationals. I would be lucky to be middle of the pack in that kind of competition.
On the other hand, I know plenty of adults who REALLY struggle to pass Silver and Gold. So I have never had a problem with adults getting their Gold Medalist jacket early. Some of these adults are struggling because it's hard for them. Some of them are struggling because they can't put 7-9 hours in every week. I see myself as someone who has no talent for it, but just improves from the sheer number of hours I put into it. AKA the turtle finished because turtle did not give up, even as all the internet hares were making hateful comments about how slow turtle is to reach a goal.
Moral of the story: The speed at which adults improve varies WIDELY, and it's not just how many skating hours per week or their starting age, it's also just them and how quickly they understand it or not.
Looking at the Skating magazine USFSA sends out every month, the list of kids passing Senior MIF every month is huge. The Adult Gold MIF list is always tiny. I've never seen a problem with that. It's likely proportional to how many adult skaters vs kid skaters there are.
