The future of figure skating - your vision

[TT_Fin]

I think that amount of quads will be will be strictly limited and - this is not only what I think but what I also wish - quints will never be allowed in competition. I also think there will be only one singles discipline maybe in ten years and there will be some tests where men and women skate at the same competition quite soon. This is what I think.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

@lariko - I'll reply to your other ideas when I have more time, because I do like a lot of them. But, since it was picked up on last night, I want to focus on your Olympics suggestion in this post.

Pull out of Olympics and focus on popularizing competitive season as a whole that culminates in Worlds

Hallelujah! Finally, somebody else who feels the same way as I do! That the Olympics are an unnecessary entertainment sideshow that messes up the whole season every 4 years.

But, knowing how the Olympics brings new eyes to the sport, I would instead have the Olympics restructured as being a collection of winter sports World Championships being held together every 4 years. Kinda like the summer sports European Championships event (Wikipedia).

That way, there would still be a multi-sport event bringing in badly needed new viewers, but there would not be an extra event on the calendar causing disruption to the whole season.

Oh, and have these Olympic World Championships run to their normal rules, rather than the stupid rules that the IOC have (in figure skating anyway).

CaroLiza_fan

 

[4everchan]

Oh, and have these Olympic World Championships run to their normal rules, rather than the stupid rules that the IOC have (in figure skating anyway).

What stupid rules? The team event??? The lower tech minimums??? The "quotas" which are slightly different than at worlds (which is a brand new thing, so I doubt that's what you are referring to.) I really fail to see how the IOC has imposed rules on figure skating that are not really part of the sport already... except than expanding the sport to weaker nations with the lower tech minimums and creating another medal opportunity for skaters with the fabulous team event.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

What stupid rules? The team event??? The lower tech minimums??? The "quotas" which are slightly different than at worlds (which is a brand new thing, so I doubt that's what you are referring to.) I really fail to see how the IOC has imposed rules on figure skating that are not really part of the sport already... except than expanding the sport to weaker nations with the lower tech minimums and creating another medal opportunity for skaters with the fabulous team event.

I wasn't actually thinking of the Team Event when I wrote that. But, now that you mention it...

It was primarily referring to the quotas. And they are not brand new. For decades the Olympics have been limiting the number of partipants to a set number, which is usually lower than what the TES requirements alone would let in. And I suspect that it has been done to keep the TV broadcasters happy, as they don't want long segments.

There is no need to have a competition earlier in the season doubling up as a qualifying event, whose sole purpose is to whittle down the number of entries. If a skater / partnership meets the minimum requirements and their country has a slot that is available to them, they should be allowed to compete without having to jump through additional hoops.

It is often the smaller Fed skaters that lose out because of this stupid rule. And that is not good when we are trying to get more people interested in the sport.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[4everchan]

I wasn't actually thinking of the Team Event when I wrote that. But, now that you mention it...

It was primarily referring to the quotas. And they are not brand new. For decades the Olympics have been limiting the number of partipants to a set number, which is usually lower than what the TES requirements alone would let in. And I suspect that it has been done to keep the TV broadcasters happy, as they don't want long segments.

There is no need to have a competition earlier in the season doubling up as a qualifying event, whose sole purpose is to whittle down the number of entries. If a skater / partnership meets the minimum requirements and their country has a slot that is available to them, they should be allowed to compete without having to jump through additional hoops.

It is often the smaller Fed skaters that lose out because of this stupid rule. And that is not good when we are trying to get more people interested in the sport.

CaroLiza_fan

This is like this in ALL Olympic sports... It's the olympic... not a recreational adult competition. It's the cream of the cream. Fine, it sucks for the small fed, but it's like this in all sports.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

This is like this in ALL Olympic sports... It's the olympic... not a recreational adult competition. It's the cream of the cream. Fine, it sucks for the small fed, but it's like this in all sports.

Except it's not. In Alpine Skiing, for example, there are no limits on the number of countries that can enter each race. If you have a skier that meets the minimum requirements, you have a slot. And it is great seeing so many different countries competing. It really makes the Olympics feel like a big deal, on a similar level to their World Championships.

The additional limits in figure skating, meanwhile, makes the Olympics feel a lot less prestigious than their World Championships.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[4everchan]

Except it's not. In Alpine Skiing, for example, there are no limits on the number of countries that can enter each race. If you have a skier that meets the minimum requirements, you have a slot. And it is great seeing so many different countries competing. It really makes the Olympics feel like a big deal, on a similar level to their World Championships.

The additional limits in figure skating, meanwhile, makes the Olympics feel a lot less prestigious than their World Championships.

CaroLiza_fan

sure but in alpine skiing the top 30 gets preferential treatment. If you are ranked outside of the top 30, your slope conditions are pretty bad and most likely, TV is gone. Most sports have strict quotas.

 

[surimi]

Some good ideas here.
Personally, I don't see a brighter future for FS unless it becomes easier for everyone to watch, and to become fans (which is AFAIK generally done by stumbling upon a performance that draws one in). Only people who are already fans will pay for coverages, the general public won't. TV channels are often not interested in FS, but I don't think a special ISU website with a video archive would work as the general public won't even know of its existence. FS and its contents are getting harder and harder to watch, or even read articles about (Japanese skating being the absolute worst here, with most articles and videos geoblocked, subscriber-only or paid, and YT fan content often deleted). Updating fanfest OPs is a dismal task these days as you find so many videos missing in only a year's span. If the ISU wants any improvement, that needs to change first and foremost, otherwise FS is going to become more and more niche.

In my ideal world:
- the ISU sets up a Youtube channel free of geoblocks, music copyright strikes, or paid-only and subscriber-only access. It would contain all ISU competitions, big and small - WC, JWC, EC/4CC, Challengers, GP and JGP. Plus OG, YOG, B events for those organizers who would be interested in getting some small revenue by allowing ISU to publish their archived streams after the livestreams are over. Same for various countries' Nationals (Japan letting anyone use their footage is sheer utopy, sadly).

- Competition locations would change every year instead of being in the same cities/towns and the same countries over and over again, so that those who cannot come to those locations would have a chance to come watch, say, GP or WC somewhere closer or more affordable.

- AI judging the technical aspect sounds like a good idea. It would take a shorter time to get TES, and it would be more precise and without bias.

- spins and steps would get the same GOE as jumps. No more successful 4F getting +4, while a flawless, fast spin gets +2. Same for negative GOE unless there's a fall. If the spin and step base value needs to be raised for that to work, so be it.

- ISU would add the 'no commentary' option to all their content. After JWC, I'm really disillusioned with Ted, but have no choice but listen to him if I want to watch this year's JGP. Keep the score boxes, but enable those who don't want to hear commentators to listen to nothing but music and rink announcers.

- keep it up with the brief fun skater videos/interviews on social media, like what GS does. It brings skating much closer to fans than ISU's rigid announcements and awards. Keep fans engaged through social media; popularize skating there; invite folk to competitions trough attractive photos of skaters and locations they'd see. IMO that's the way to go.

 

[el henry]

Option to eliminate the the scoring/tech/whatever it is box on broadcasts.

I know, everyone else loves it, that's why I said "option". I can watch without it and everyone else can make Wordle jokes. Win/win

 

[Jontor]

For me, figure skating has always been the technical combined with the artistic. So if you can't do a Lutz, then I kind of lose my interest, or, if you are a jumping bean with no artistic style, then I lose my interest as well.

Like in every sport, athletes will push the limits on the technical side. That's the very nature of sports.

So, I think the ISU need to sit down and decide how they want the sport to develop. If they think pushing the technical limits is the way to go, then fine. That is the way we're heading. But if the ISU wants to keep the importance of the artistic side of the sport, then they need to do something. You can't fix the problem by factoring up the artistic side all the time. If you want the artistic side of the sport to remain important, you might need to limit the tech.

 

[Diana Delafield]

Absolutely nothing to do with what anyone else has written, that I've seen anyway, but I'd like to see figure skating added to the Paralympics. It would be a huge benefit to the athletes, who are more important than the fans any day. Watching the Paralympics ski racers the first Games or two and then comparing them to the superior technical ability of today's skiers blows your mind. It works in other parasports, too. I hung around the rink one day watching a drop-in hockey session where the only goalie was in a sledge but the other players were "able-bodied". They started out being nice to the goalie, who'd come along with a friend who was a regular player. The others should have noticed the grin on the face of that friend as they started to play. By the end, concessions for the sledge player had flown out the Zamboni door. The players were frustrated, sweating and swearing, trying to get something, anything past that goalie. And then afterwards they were all laughing and shaking their heads and begging the goalie to drop in again and give them another real workout.

Probably Paralympic skating would do next to nothing to lure the average viewer into watching skating in general, but personally I wouldn't care. Not my campaign, I'm afraid. I spent too many years as an occasional rhythmic gymnast myself and as the mother of a competitive one, and that sport draws virtually no fans at all, something I never really understood. I was on my high school and university "artistic" gymnastics teams as well (rhythmics is far more artistic and music-dependent, frankly, but that's another soap box), and we got crowds of students out to competitions -- would anyone like to guess that a girl pairs skater's favourite equipment as a gymnast was the uneven bars ? -- but not for rhythmics. Some sports just don't catch on with fans, but that doesn't stop the athletes, nor should it.

 

[macy]

easily accessible live streams and replays for everyone, it should not be that hard to watch this sport.
i'd also be interested to see what AI could do for the technical side, namely things like URs, and take out bias.
more coverage, streaming and overall more attention on other parts of the sport that currently don't get it such as adult skating and showcase. singles/pairs/dance should not be the only parts given all the love.
would love to see an addition in international competition to short and long programs such as jump and spin competitions. it's a little less pressure and more fun, and those who do either one well can compete.

 

[RobinA]

A return to school figures in some capacity. I don't want them to decide competitions necessarily, but I what skaters to have to learn the blade control

A scoring system that as practiced puts a Jason Brown on the same footing as a Nathan Chen. I want a great Nathan program to achieve the same level score as a great Jason Brown program.

Fewer rules about what is in a program so that we don't get these boilerplate programs where you have a half a second to do an Ina Bauer before moving on frantically to the next move.

Greater weight on doing moves well as opposed to doing harder moves half-assed. If I never see another eeked out side by side triple in Pairs it will be too soon.

Maybe every year bring a move or two out of mothballs to be included in the programs. Even if it's a choice from two or three moves. Hello, delayed axel!

 

[RobinA]

easily accessible live streams and replays for everyone, it should not be that hard to watch this sport.
i'd also be interested to see what AI could do for the technical side, namely things like URs, and take out bias.
more coverage, streaming and overall more attention on other parts of the sport that currently don't get it such as adult skating and showcase. singles/pairs/dance should not be the only parts given all the love.
would love to see an addition in international competition to short and long programs such as jump and spin competitions. it's a little less pressure and more fun, and those who do either one well can compete.

I completely agree about the hard to watch factor. However, I'm learning that other sports (not football, of course) have this problem too. My mother is 93, cannot figure out how to find what she wants on TV, and is trying to watch the US Open in tennis. I have spent the last week chasing tennis around the TV so she can watch during the day when I am at work and in the evening. I keep telling myself it should not be this hard to watch your sport on TV. Then I remembered what I go through to track down skating, especially last year with no replays.

 

[icewhite]

I completely agree about the hard to watch factor. However, I'm learning that other sports (not football, of course) have this problem too. My mother is 93, cannot figure out how to find what she wants on TV, and is trying to watch the US Open in tennis. I have spent the last week chasing tennis around the TV so she can watch during the day when I am at work and in the evening. I keep telling myself it should not be this hard to watch your sport on TV. Then I remembered what I go through to track down skating, especially last year with no replays.

This differs a lot from country to country I think though. The US seems to have this system where you can watch a lot, but it's all on different streams from different providers. We have Eurosport, which is overall pretty good: two channels all the time for sport, and a lot more on streams in the internet for something like 10 Euro a month, replays for some weeks and months included. Male soccer is not on, but almost everything else is rather well covered, even if sometimes just with a stream without commentary. Negative: Pool, darts and motorsport take up a lot of the broadcasting time and I'm even having difficulties regarding them as sports... Tennis is usually also rather high on the priority list, though. Figure skating on the other hand is almost entirely stream only, which is fine for me, but doesn't do much to gain a new audience, and old people often don't use streams.

 

[4everchan]

This is just a small detail... but perhaps it isn't.

Nowadays, especially in men, it happens more and more that a type of jump gets dumped altogether.

For instance, a skater could do
4s
4t-3t
4t
3a
3a eu 3s
3flip
3lutz -2a

No loop. I am not suggesting that anyone should be penalized by not including all types of jumps because some skaters have medical conditions that prevent them to do so... However, I am wondering if there should be a rule to encourage skaters to land all the different types of jumps in the LP. It is not necessarily a big issue right now... but it could really mean that one day, loops are rarer and rarer in men skating, because of the lower base value and the difficulty to do the quad or the +loop combo.

What if we started to have these kinds of programs :

4lz+3t
4lz
4t
4s
3ltz
3ltz-eu-3s
3a+2a

no flip, no loop. and lots of lutzes

So my vision of skating, coming from history (I am also thinking that figures need to be taught longer and better even if shouldn't be part of the competition as it used to be) is to make sure that elements ( jump types and /or spin types and or throw types (we rarely see a throw toe loop nowadays) or twist types (when was the last time we saw an axel twist??) do not vanish because of the code of points. Another more recent example is how the BV changes in pairs for quads has made quads vanish. I think there was only one since 2018 and it was the quad twist by sui and cong at the Olympics. One quad in pairs since 2018... thanks to the rule changes.

 

[elektra blue]

This is just a small detail... but perhaps it isn't.

Nowadays, especially in men, it happens more and more that a type of jump gets dumped altogether.

For instance, a skater could do
4s
4t-3t
4t
3a
3a eu 3s
3flip
3lutz -2a

No loop. I am not suggesting that anyone should be penalized by not including all types of jumps because some skaters have medical conditions that prevent them to do so... However, I am wondering if there should be a rule to encourage skaters to land all the different types of jumps in the LP. It is not necessarily a big issue right now... but it could really mean that one day, loops are rarer and rarer in men skating, because of the lower base value and the difficulty to do the quad or the +loop combo.

What if we started to have these kinds of programs :

4lz+3t
4lz
4t
4s
3ltz
3ltz-eu-3s
3a+2a

no flip, no loop. and lots of lutzes

So my vision of skating, coming from history (I am also thinking that figures need to be taught longer and better even if shouldn't be part of the competition as it used to be) is to make sure that elements ( jump types and /or spin types and or throw types (we rarely see a throw toe loop nowadays) or twist types (when was the last time we saw an axel twist??) do not vanish because of the code of points. Another more recent example is how the BV changes in pairs for quads has made quads vanish. I think there was only one since 2018 and it was the quad twist by sui and cong at the Olympics. One quad in pairs since 2018... thanks to the rule changes.

wasn't there a bonus for who landed all types of jumps or i just dreamed about it? (it could be...knowing me )

 

[4everchan]

wasn't there a bonus for who landed all types of jumps or i just dreamed about it? (it could be...knowing me )

Dream ..,

 

[gkelly]

We've discussed it, but I don't know that the ISU has ever done so.

 

[streams4dreams]

Maybe every year bring a move or two out of mothballs to be included in the programs. Even if it's a choice from two or three moves. Hello, delayed axel!

So my vision of skating, coming from history (I am also thinking that figures need to be taught longer and better even if shouldn't be part of the competition as it used to be) is to make sure that elements ( jump types and /or spin types and or throw types (we rarely see a throw toe loop nowadays) or twist types (when was the last time we saw an axel twist??) do not vanish because of the code of points.

These ideas, as well as what's been discussed in the art / sport thread, got me thinking whether it would be possible to actively balance the code of points. As an extreme example, some esports change champion capabilities every month, and as a result, the games look quite different because different champions get played all the time.

The equivalent in figure skating could be to slightly modify the base values of different elements every season, so perhaps this season a 3F has a lower value than 3Lz, but the next season 3Lz could be slightly devalued, and 3F would be the preferred jump. Similarly, one year spins and jumps could be closer in base value, and the next a bit farther away. It could even be possible to switch one jump pass for a step/choreo sequence one year, and then return the next.

I feel like this would introduce more variety in programs across the seasons, which would be good from a viewer perspective. At the same time, I was worried this would be too much for the skaters to keep up with. Although, to counter-argue myself, I've been fascinated by Aliona Kostornaya in pairs -- she makes it seem like they can do it all!