PrincessLeppard said:I was at Worlds in DC, and I used to live in Europe, land of Eurosport, who used to show all phases of the competition and all skaters. This is how I know, even though skater #30 might not be able do much more than a 2A, I want to watch them anyway. Because I'll never be able to do a 2A.
Skater #30 can do more than a 2A. All the skaters who placed top 15 in their qualifying groups and made the cut to the short program in DC (and in Minneapolis 5 years earlier, and probably all the Worlds in between) were capable of landing at least a couple of triples.
IIRC, every single skater in the qual rounds in DC managed to stand up on at least one triple *or* a double axel, although in some cases it was only one such difficult jump and may have been slightly cheated or two-footed. (The badly cheated or two-footed ones I wouldn't count.) That includes the skaters who finished 20th or lower in the qual groups and didn't get anywhere near qualifying for the short program and the top 30. The ones who came close to qualifying included some quite accomplished and interesting skaters who just happened to have a bad day that day.
Joe wrote:
I'm not atrong on killing the QR but I do think there are too many contestants who are not of World Champion calibre. If you have been to Worlds, you know that the last two groups of six in the LP haven't a prayer of getting a medal, and those in the 3rd group would have to have everyone ahead of them have a meltdown. Not likely.
I would disagree.
I assume by "the last two groups of six" you mean the skaters ranked 13-24 after the short program, who skate in the first two groups of the evening chronologically, and by "those in the 3rd group" you mean the skaters ranked 7-12 after the short.
Are you saying that these skaters are "not of World Champion calibre"? Or that even if they do skate better than the final group, skate order and factored placements (or large numerical leads under code of points) will prevent them from medaling anyway?
Of course one major purpose of holding a World Championship is to determine the world champion, and only a handful of skaters show up at the event each year prepared to compete for that title. Sometimes no one really does and the title goes to the least worst by default; sometimes you get a great event in which the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or even seventh best skater skates well enough to win in a leaner year.
But a World Championship is also a meeting of top skaters from around the whole world, a chance for them all to show their stuff to the world and to measure themselves against each other. There are well over 24 skaters per discipline in the world who are of a calibre to merit that opportunity -- unfortunately some of them come from countries with deep fields and don't make their countries' world teams, others do go to Worlds but have a bad day in qualifying or in the short program and don't make it to the final. That doesn't mean they're bad skaters. Many of them are good skaters. Many of those who get to the final round but not to the top-6 final warmup group are very good skaters indeed. Just because they aren't at this moment great skaters, or didn't skate their best that day, doesn't mean that they may not be able to challenge the best in the world next year or next week, or even with exactly the same performances in front of a different judging panel.
As a ticket-buying fan, I lament that some interesting skaters don't make it past quals or the short program cut, and I would not like to see even more skaters cut, especially if the price of the tickets were not reduced comparably.
The competition organizers would prefer to keep the prices up -- they could take in more money that way and the costs of holding an additional warmup group on long program day are negligible compared to the costs of setting aside a whole day for qualifying rounds.
The skaters themselves and their federations of course want the opportunity to qualify for the final because it brings prestige, exposure, experience, and a ranking (which will help provide additional opportunities in the future).
Judges are limited by the number of hours they can stay alert to judge a large group of skaters. Code of Points might help the problem to some degree in that there's no real need to compare each skater to all the previous ones, but physical and mental fatigue will still be issues. If the consensus so far is that 30 short programs or 24 longs is the limit (keeping in mind that the short programs are, naturally, shorter), who are you to say that they shouldn't have to handle more than 18?
If you yourself don't enjoy the lower groups, you have the option of arriving late.
Personally, I enjoy watching good skaters even if they're not having a good day or don't have the highest level skills to ever be "great" skaters or win world medals. But you know something? Sometimes they do surprise you with a great skate from the lower groups. And sometimes they do go on to start winning medals at the top levels sooner than you might expect.
As for getting rid of qualifying rounds -- the only things that bother me about them are that the points carry over to the final, that the groups can be unbalanced, and that some events need them and some don't. There aren't easy solutions to all the problems they raise, but there isn't an alternate easy solution to the problems they try to solve: 40 or 50 skaters is just too many for one judging panel to judge. But 18 is not too many.
If you're so eager to make it easier on the judges in the final round, how are you going to deal with the problem of judging fatigue in the short program if you don't cut it down? Use different separate panels, or maybe rotate judges in and out so they get some longer breaks? That *might* work with Code of Points, if and when the different judges' uses of the numbers get more standardized. But not yet. And definitely not with an ordinal system.
Plus the whole reason the long program was chosen for the initial cuts historically is to give skaters an opportunity to show what they're best at. Sometimes their best skills don't fit into the short program requirements. Sometimes their biggest weakness (e.g., axels or laybacks) is something that the short puts a disproportionate amount of weight on. And even one error can be a lot more costly in the short. Again, these reasons might change somewhat under Code of Points, where the long program has more restrictions and the "deductions" are taken the same way for both, but they won't be eliminated entirely.
Balancing large numbers of entrants, MOST of whom ARE of a calibre to skate in a world championship IMO, against the limits of practicality in comparing them to each other is not easy. Any solution will have problems, possibly worse than what exists now.
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