No more laybacks?

[TT_Fin]

Viveca Lindfors was able to lift her shin so up that knee was in to the level of her head. She had lots of back problems. I cannot remember if she did it in competions, but she has posted in her ig some photographs about it during her active years.

 

[Bluediamonds09]

I think that if Wakaba could do Bielman she would do it. She just can't. Liza finally started to do a one hand Bielman after years of plain haircutters. I wonder what she had to overcome to get there. Well, her motivation to get to the Olympics is just astonishing.

Agree about wakaba. Sometimes it's impossible to do that position. It's basically a requirement or you may be seen as a weak spinner which, in my book, just isn't true. About Liza, well, she attempts the position but the foot is more behind / below the head instead of above it. Same for samodurova, and other women. It's just so detrimental to the back, and becomes formulaic.

 

[Bluediamonds09]

How many skaters have injured their backs doing Biellmanns? I almost prefer skaters that don't do it, like Wakaba, her haircutter with the arm extended is beautiful.

I imagine many struggle with back problems, viveca, evgenia, yelim, Elena R, Caroline, Tessa H ?

 

[Petrushko Sashenko]

I agree 100%. I also believe that a Biellman Spin has a higher base value which is why they became so much more frequent. Irina Slutskaya never had a great layback but, she had that Biellman and she used it to the hilt.

Slutskaya's layback was fantastic back then, she had a great back arch and the spin was fast and controlled, maybe the leg position wasn't the ideal always (in the ways Cohen's, Sarah Hughes' and Nikodinov's were back in that day).

If you put layback spins from the top two skaters from that era (i.e. Slutskaya and Kwan) back to back on a split screen, you'll see how great Slutskaya's Lbs was.

 

[mrrice]

Slutskaya's layback was fantastic back then, she had a great back arch and the spin was fast and controlled, maybe the leg position wasn't the ideal always (in the ways Cohen's, Sarah Hughes' and Nikodinov's were back in that day).

If you put layback spins from the top two skaters from that era (i.e. Slutskaya and Kwan) back to back on a split screen, you'll see how great Slutskaya's Lbs was.

She definitely improved it when she switched it to a catch foot in 2002. The Layback she did in 2000 was not nearly as good. It's her final spin so you can just FF to the end. This is her Carmen LP

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[draqq]

This is principally why I believe the ISU should consider a choreo layback spin element instead, where the point is to DO the layback please. Most of the levelled layback spins look the same anyway from all the ladies: 8 revolutions, then a side twist (or 8 revolutions IN a side twist), then a haircutter, then a Biellmann. It's predictable and boring. And then on top of that, the spin has become about the Biellmann at the end of the spin instead of the actual layback position. Sometimes I see terrible laybacks but because of the blurring Biellmann spin at the end, it gets +4/+5 GOE anyway.

All I want to see is a fast, centered layback spin with the back parallel to the ice and a nice attitude leg position. All the other contortions are nice but rather unnecessary to what I think should be about the layback - hence the name of the thing.