I agree having a horse in the race is a huge factor to boost popularity of any sport in any country. Just one more reason to fight any trace of fed, reputation or national bias and cherish the chances of all skaters, especially those from small feds. Just and transparent scoring is the answer!
Yes.
For the initial interest that gets them into the rink or into lessons in the first place, yes, jumps are probably more likely to attract little boys than little girls. Depending on the kid.
So maybe we can agree there is no one element drawing in more kids than any others. And, yes, many things depend on the local customs. No way to see figure skaters practicing on the ice if you come for general ice where I live (apart from the "showing off" kids")...
I agree big time that the biggest motivator for young kids has little to do with athleticism (i.e. jumps).
I think that skating fast might be an attraction, too, though.
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I mentioned speed in my post. Its a means not an end. The end being elegance and seamlessness, fluidity. Otherwise speed skating evidently would be the choice.I think that skating fast might be an attraction, too, though.
I was going to say, "especially for boys." but I remembered a Kristi Yamaguchi story. Kristi went to a skating camp at age 9. She was so tiny and shy that she went off and hid in the corner. One of the coaches skated over and befriended her with, "Your name is Kristi? That's my name, too! Would you like to be on my team for this session?"
So they all lined up for the first exercise which was to skate down the the end of the rink and back as fast as you can. Zip, zip, our Kristi was down and back before the other kids hardly got started. And that's how Kristi Yamaguchi met her life-long coach Christy Ness.
Kristi used to race her husband, so I heard, professional hockey player and Stanley Cup winner Bret Hedican. Bret could win at the short distances but Kristi had better endurance.
(Caveat: So I have read. I cannot be 100% sure that all my Kristi Yamaguchi stories are really true.
There is actually a sport of circle-drawing, with tournaments and even a world championship, which claims an enthusiastic participation and fan base. Competitors are judged on three marks, technical ability, artistic merit, and speed.
Lori Fung, first ever rhythmic gymnastics all-around Olympic Champion, represented Canada.
So, sure, if you are talking about people who were born after 2000, maybe they don't know about her or the sport.. though Canada won 5 medals including the team event at the most recent Commonwealth games all the other athletes, even the Olympic champions, get very little recognition from the casual fans. Outside Patrick Chan, Kurt Browning and Tessa and Scott, very few figure skaters are well-known from the public. Joannie Rochette is because of tragic circumstances as well as her courage. A lot of Canadians at this point, wouldn't even remember Kaetlyn Osmond's world title. It's a very different culture but it doesn't mean that people who do follow olympic sports don't know about rhythmic gymnastics. It's a tempting generalization to make but it does remain, a flawed statement.
Yes indeed the discussion was specifically about youth engagement
Well, right now, the Canadian youth, in general, is of course, not engaged in rhythmic gymnastics - besides those who follow Olympic sports. The recent successes of artistic gymnastics and continued success in trampoline is bringing young athletes to the sport. Nothing like that in rhythmic gymnastics. Figure skating is still doing well but is just starting to recover from covid lockdowns.
As this is pretty much "me and my friends" kind of argument, actually I know quite a few people who enjoy watching selected individual programmes or skaters when shown to them specifically on a screen, but would never get invested in watching comps as they believe FS judging to be rigged in general so they do not see the point. Why? Because it is too subjective and lacking general transparency by default which makes people distrusting it, which gets further strengthened by some highly publicized highly problematic cases.I guess that is "association" bias, which is natural (I am including myself) we are are influenced by what we know in our everyday life/
I don't know one person who currently does not watch skating who doesn't watch it because of scoring bias. Rules, yes (why is that jump worth more than that jump? Why does someone with a fall win over a clean skate?) But that is not bias, but complexity. They don't know, or care, if skating is "biased", it's that the rules themselves make no sense to them.
Mostly they do not want to watch men skate to music in costumes and they don't care if they do 85 revolutions in the air, as long as there is music and costumes, nope. I hate this attitude, but there it is.
The sports we love are the sports we love, and that is also how we grew up. I don't know one soul who watches, or cares to watch, men's soccer (will watch women during the Olympics), but football? It's a religion.
Maybe the final outcome would have been less controversial, if the vice-president of the Russian federation was not the technical controller for this competition and the wife of the Rusfed's director general was not one of the judges.... as for the sake of transparency such roles should obviously be never combined together, and that was perfectly within ISU competences not to allow it by adopting appropriate rules to avoid obvious conflicts of interest.
Good to see at least a slap on the wrist. Now, I hope to see that French judge get one too.
), yet those same fans come back time and again. And new fans every year.Which one?
Well, you have never met such people so you may doubt whether they exist at all. I have met them many times, in different walks of life, and in different periods of my - not so short - life so I have no doubts they do in fact exist and I need no more proof of that. This in spite of the fact that skating (not figure skating) for fun as a form of winter entertainment and a winter pastime is rather popular here...Agreed, the fact that I know no one who uses (assuming for the sake of argument) systemic unjust biased scoring, as an excuse to refuse to watch skating, is absolutely "my friends and family and one random guy I see walking down the street."
Anyone else's statement that everyone they know who refuses to watch figure skating refuses because of (assuming arguendo) systemic unjust biased scoring is also "my friends and family and one random guy walking down the street".
For skating, neither is the absolute objective truth, both are just observations based on our experiences. We will never know whether many people stay away from skating for those reasons, or just a few, without those wonderful mythical outside studies I would love to see on many things in skating. (I'm not being snarky. I would love to see them. But that would be an alternate universe).
My argument is also that figure skating has no more a perception of systemic unjust biases than any other sport. Fans of the NFL don't cry about the random unjustness of one ref, but about how the whole system is biased against their favorite, objectively wonderful team, (and you don't want to know about the "rigged NFL" conspiracy theorists, who clearly have too much time on their hands and an amusing overestimation of their critical thinking skills, who have discerned "obvious" patterns that the rest of us mere mortals are just too stupid to get
So just another part of my experience that perceptions of judging do not affect viewing of sports.
Well, you have never met such people so you may doubt whether they exist at all. I have met them many times, in different walks of life, and in different periods of my - not so short - life so I have no doubts they do in fact exist and I need no more proof of that. This in spite of the fact that skating (not figure skating) for fun as a form of winter entertainment and a winter pastime is rather popular here...
Now, how numerous they are and how representative of a bigger population their views are, none of us knows without research, right. But it stands equally true for the claim they form an important fraction of non-watching non-fans as for the opposite statement that they are just a tiny insignificant minority of them all. Who knows, who can tell? One thing that can be said for sure based on our combined experience, is that they happen to exist, even though you have never met them
As for the NFL argument, I am sorry but my intuition is that team sports fandoms and individual sports fandoms have very different dynamics. I never watched NFL in my life, and I assume not many people in my country did, as it is not popular in Europe at all. I suppose, though, the fandom dynamics is more comparable to that of soccer, a highly popular sport here, with huge money involved, and based on teams. Now, these teams or better say, clubs, have been a part of their local environment in many localities for ages, and rooting for them to some extent is a part of the local identity. They are often huge contributors to various events and undertakings in the neighborhood. Individual players and coaches come and go but the team/club stays there and generation after generation roots for them, no matter what. Each match is a huge event drawing in crowds, regardless of the results. Participation alone offers a huge reward in the sense of belonging to a community. Similar for international soccer competitions where people mostly just root for their country at the times of the games, with all the city streets dropping empty and then going wild with joy or tears, no matter what.
That's a very different dynamic from a sport where you mostly root for individual athletes whose careers are relatively short, especially when compared to teams/clubs. Now, if you come from a country which is not a big fed, with scarce or hardly any medal chances, your patriotic motivation is not that strong so you are more picky about whether you follow a sport or not, and what you expect from it. Judging perceived as rigged can be a huge no-no factor in such circumstances, believe me
judging is not perceived as rigged by those who do not already follow the sport. (and I invite our Mexican friends to correct me or to offer their own experiences as I am not Mexican and do not live there).
