Should US Figure Skating have training camps like they do in US Gymnastics ?

[mskater93]

What your suggesting is what Champs Camp is - a competition-like setting for GP skaters that uncover things that need to be corrected in the programs. You can't really do a "big brother is watching" kind of thing with regard to eating disorders, etc because this IS the US; people have personal liberties and freedoms.

 

[brightphoton]

Didn't they have a special "Michelle only" camp in 2006, where judges evaluated her in secret and decided she could go to the Olympics, but nobody else saw her skate? (It turned out she wasn't all right, she was still hurt and was quickly replaced by Emily Hughes).

Yes, but that was the legendary, glorious, mythical ***Michelle Kwan***. She practically represented the sport for a decade. It also doesn't happen very often, the only other time I can think of something similar happening was Nancy Kerrigan back in the early 1990s. I think it was one of the Olympics. 1994?

I think they should have a team competition, frankly, I hope they really get it. I hate it when Johnny hates Evan, Alexei hates Evgeni, and Tonya's ex husband beats up Nancy's knee. You never hear of anything like that in gymnastics, and as a subjective sport, there must be some anger and beliefs of favoritism. But it never gets out of hand, that I ever heard. (If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know! )

Not me, I love drama! I wish skaters would tell their rivals that they're going to skate so well that they'll totally blow the competition out of the ice rink, you ladies never had a chance! Figure skating is too nice, I think. Everyone's goals is to just go out, skate their best, and have fun. I like gymnasts better in that respect, because they seem to be honest in that their goals are to medal and place first at competitions. They also express regret if they didn't place well, like Cheng Fei did after the 2008 Olympics. In stark contrast to Alissa after her disaster at 2008 Worlds. She was so flippant and sort of said, tough toenails about the 2 spots, it's not my fault, stop bothering me.

There is PR that says Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin are best friends forever. Uh-huh.

 

[R.D.]

^ I agree, and this is a MUCH bigger phenomenon among female skaters. That's why I find skaters like Wagner refreshing- she is not shy about expressing her desire to be the best. I tend to go for skaters that aren't afraid to show their competitiveness because they're really one of a kind. Everyone else is just too shy/PC to step up.

 

[Johar]

Well, poodlepal, some of those Russian gymnast, like Svetlana Khourkina, weren't shy about being not-so-nice. I remember her getting up and walking along the bench yelling at her teammates.

The skating interviews of "I just gotta go back and train harder and do my best" sound so scripted. The public is more intrigued by rivals than friendships.

 

[MoonlightSkater]

Immoral because a fair, open competition does not decide the team, but some mysterious process behind closed doors does.

They do hold competitions as part of many camps- the results always seem to end up out there, even if camp is closed to the media. Competitions can't necessarily determine the strongest team on their own, though, because unlike skating there are four separate events that not everyone needs to perform in a team situation. If we took the top three from each event, we could theoretically end up with as many as twelve gymnasts - twice as many as allowed at worlds this year. Even though gymnasts will often be in that top three in more than one event, we still end up with too many people for the team. From nationals this year, for example, we'd have more than six gymnasts in this category. The coordinator then has to figure out how to get the best scores across the board from a combination of just six people. Say we take out a vault specialist for someone who is in the top five AA- do our team finals scores go up because of good scores across the board, or do we really miss that vault? Should we send someone who has great potential to score well on bars but offers basically nothing else? What could we gain, what would we lose? Is it a risk worth taking?

Using all-around competition made more sense back when the format was more like 7-6-5 (or 6-5-4), where out of seven gymnasts on the team, six performed every event in finals. Even then, you could take a specialist if you wanted to. Now only three gymnasts have to perform in finals, meaning there is room for a couple of specialists. The specialists can dictate what other scores are needed, meaning your third place all-around gymnast may not help the team much if their highest score is also where we have a strong specialist. Conversely, farther back in the all-around there may be a gymnast with two or three especially strong events in areas where the team has a weakness.

There are so many scenarios to look at.

As for Kim Kelly, the way she was left off the team could have been handled better, but she was clearly not near the level of those on the team. She would've been a liability.

 

[Johar]

Alicia Sacramone hasn't done uneven bars in 5 years.