US Olympic Team Announced

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

this is 100000% true across EVERY discipline. literally no other skater can do what jason does. when he retires there will be a giant, giant hole left that nobody else can fill.

100%. The only problem is that there are literally several other skaters who can do what Jason can't do, reliable, rotated quads. He's done exceptionally well with his lack of technical content and that's chalked up to his pure talent -- he is the poster child for skating not being all about the jumps, and still being able to be competitive without a quad. There certainly won't be another Jason Brown, nor would we really want there to be. In the 80s or 90s he would have never lost a competition.

But if there were a Jason Brown type with the artistry/lines/flexibility/etc. who could actually reel off quads, that skater would literally be the best ever, and it's frustrating that in a decade long career, Jason (not for lack of trying) hasn't even developed one reliable quad.

 

[moonvine]

He can do shows. As wonderful as his skating is, it's not as if he's winning these competitions that are more focused on athletics.

But he is. He’s been on fire this season. 3 competitions (senior level). Won one. Finished 2nd to Nathan once. And won bronze the 3rd. Ilia has had one senior International comp. He finished 3rd.

 

[moonvine]

Also a federation that prioritizes winning over holding up favorites. The Russian federation gets their young ladies out their quickly and fast.

They have a conveyor belt.

They have to. Their bodies don’t hold out long.

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

Nationals is not meaningless, but it is not the Olympic trials. The skates of your life at Nats are not going to get you on the Olympic team.

It's one thing to diverge from the Nationals result to put a medal contender like Nathan on the team. What we have now is basically if a short-list of hopefuls like Nathan, Vincent, and Jason finish anywhere in the top 5 they make the team, even if they finish well behind non-contenders' score. So when I say Nationals is meaningless, it's because it is meaningless for the other athletes since their performance does not improve their odds of selection one iota.

 

[iceskater10]

For all his prodigious gifts, Ilia wouldn’t win Jack Squat at the individual event at these Olympics, so if “winning” were the reason, there’d be no reason to send him.

Jason’s expertise in skating skills, blade mastery, spins require superior athleticism. He routinely makes the international podium ahead of quadsters by maximizing those athletic gifts,

So yes, he should do shows. And comps.

wrong

 

[Mista Ekko]

It's one thing to diverge from the Nationals result to put a medal contender like Nathan on the team. What we have now is basically if a short-list of hopefuls like Nathan, Vincent, and Jason finish anywhere in the top 5 they make the team, even if they finish well behind non-contenders' score. So when I say Nationals is meaningless, it's because it is meaningless for the other athletes since their performance does not improve their odds of selection one iota.

I wonder if we should call that - Favouritism
I was thinking about that the other day, With the Jason over Ilia decision,
Ilia has a future and is more competitive right now, And also came in 2nd at Nationals,
So we're one "body of work" argument away from that naughty word,
But It's not like Jason has Nathan's body of work, And ilia didn't have a lot of opportunities to rise during Covid.

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

It's one thing to diverge from the Nationals result to put a medal contender like Nathan on the team. What we have now is basically if a short-list of hopefuls like Nathan, Vincent, and Jason finish anywhere in the top 5 they make the team, even if they finish well behind non-contenders' score. So when I say Nationals is meaningless, it's because it is meaningless for the other athletes since their performance does not improve their odds of selection one iota.

Nationals was absolutely meaningless for the men this year in terms of Olympic selection. Based on the Grand Prix/BOW, it was always going to be Chen/Zhou/Brown.

I mean, tbh it's totally fine - all 3 of those guys did well enough to qualify for the GPF so it's not like any of them are subpar. Yes, Brown's scoring potential is capped by his lack of quads but he can still turn out a good performance. Yeah, Malinin might have lit it up, but it would have been a huge risk based on one lights-out competition from Ilya.

 

[susanf]

And you are wrong.

If, for whatever reason, Nathan does not skate the team event - which he may choose not to do given he is carrying an injury - it is a much, much safer choice for Team USA to have Jason skate the short program.

I realize that I have not been following skating very closely (other than watching Nationals) but Nathan is injured? Yikes!

 

[el henry]

I wonder if we should call that - Favouritism
I was thinking about that the other day, With the Jason over Ilia decision,
Ilia has a future and is more competitive right now, And also came in 2nd at Nationals,
So we're one "body of work" argument away from that naughty word,
But It's not like Jason has Nathan's body of work, And ilia didn't have a lot of opportunities to rise during Covid.

No, we should call it applying the criteria.

"Has a future" is not part of the criteria. "More competitive right now" is also subjective.

Senior placements, placements at Nationals, other scores, are all part of the criteria. If Ilia was serious about qualifying for the Olympics, he could have chosen to go senior this year to show that he could do it. He had the chance.

Posters may not agree with the selection, I understand that. But that is disagreement with the criteria, not favoritism.

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

If Ilia was serious about qualifying for the Olympics, he could have chosen to go senior this year to show that he could do it. He had the chance.

By saying this, we're discouraging younger skaters from competing in juniors and gaining whatever valuable experience they can from those events. If they do well, people will complain that the scores were achieved at Senior B's instead of more competitive GP fields, and they can't get GP assignments without a world standing or strong scores from senior or junior events. It's just very short-sighted on the part of the USFSA.

 

[Mista Ekko]

"Has a future" is not part of the criteria. "More competitive right now" is also subjective.

Ilia just beat him by 13 points under a very Jason friendly panel while Jason skated probably his best this season,
He did 6(?) clean Quads, Jason has issues rotating a 3A, Obviously Jason is at the top of the Component game,
He's quite amazing to watch, But I don't see as much subjectiveness as you do I guess,
Ilia looked confident and ready, He has more showmanship and moves better than a regular Penultimate group Quadster,
And his spins and steps are strong, I think at the most in international competition where they both perform well enough
Jason could outscore him for PCS by maybe 15 points per competition, That's one successful Quad lutz,
Maybe it shouldn't be like that, But right now it kinda is, So objectively I would say ilia is more competitive, As of Jan 2022.

Btw, I'm pretty sure this same body decided 4 years ago that "Has a future" is enough criteria for them when they picked
Vincent over Ross.

 

[moonvine]

It's one thing to diverge from the Nationals result to put a medal contender like Nathan on the team. What we have now is basically if a short-list of hopefuls like Nathan, Vincent, and Jason finish anywhere in the top 5 they make the team, even if they finish well behind non-contenders' score. So when I say Nationals is meaningless, it's because it is meaningless for the other athletes since their performance does not improve their odds of selection one iota.

It isn’t meaningless to be a medalist at the US National Championships. It isn’t meaningless to get envelope funding.

 

[el henry]

Ilia just beat him by 13 points under a very Jason friendly panel while Jason skated probably his best this season,
He did 6(?) clean Quads, Jason has issues rotating a 3A, Obviously Jason is at the top of the Component game,
He's quite amazing to watch, But I don't see as much subjectiveness as you do I guess,
Ilia looked confident and real, He has more showmanship and is moves nicer than a regular Penultimate group Quadster,
And his spins and steps are strong, I think at the most in international competition where they both perform well enough
Jason could outscore him for PCS by maybe 15 per competition, That's one successful Quad lutz,
Maybe it shouldn't be like that, But right now it kinda is, So objectively I would say ilia is more competitive, As of Jan 2022.

Btw, I'm pretty sure this same body decided 4 years ago that "Has a future" is enough criteria for them when they picked
Vincent over Ross.

I don't believe they picked Vincent over Ross, they selected Adam over Ross. "Has a future" was not part of that decision.

I am not arguing about who is better right now (although I do think Jason was the wise choice, even subjectively), just that USFS applied the criteria they had. In all disciplines.

 

[moonvine]

By saying this, we're discouraging younger skaters from competing in juniors and gaining whatever valuable experience they can from those events. If they do well, people will complain that the scores were achieved at Senior B's instead of more competitive GP fields, and they can't get GP assignments without a world standing or strong scores from senior or junior events. It's just very short-sighted on the part of the USFSA.

If they want to be selected to the senior Olympic team then yes they need to have experience skating as a senior. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

 

[bekalc]

No, we should call it applying the criteria.

"Has a future" is not part of the criteria. "More competitive right now" is also subjective.

Senior placements, placements at Nationals, other scores, are all part of the criteria. If Ilia was serious about qualifying for the Olympics, he could have chosen to go senior this year to show that he could do it. He had the chance.

Posters may not agree with the selection, I understand that. But that is disagreement with the criteria, not favoritism.

Scoring trajectory IS part of the criteria. So a skater staring to land multiple quads clearly beautiful done ones and showing massive technical improvement versus another skater is part of the criteria.

I am not Saying body of the work doesn’t make sense I am saying to create a system which makes it very hard for young skaters to make make teams is very problematic.

They are the ones most likely to improve.

It you create a system that penalizes a new skater for not having the same resume as a skater who has been on the world stage for eight plus years? How is this fair or even objective?

Yes body of work should be looked at. But when considering body of work you do look at future potential.

To ignore a skater who has proven they can land six beautiful quads over a skater who has repeatedly shown There technical content is not competitive is insanity.

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

If they want to be selected to the senior Olympic team then yes they need to have experience skating as a senior. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

If that's the policy it should be clarified for the junior-aged skaters. I don't think any of us knew that it would be disqualifying, especially since it should be understood that junior scores might be lower because of limitations on what they can do in the SP.

 

[Mista Ekko]

Delete

 

[Mista Ekko]

I don't believe they picked Vincent over Ross, they selected Adam over Ross. "Has a future" was not part of that decision.

I am not arguing about who is better right now (although I do think Jason was the wise choice, even subjectively), just that USFS applied the criteria they had. In all disciplines.

They could've sent Adam AND Ross over Vincent, So obviously they chose Vincent,
There was not much "body of work" for Vincent back then, So that must've been the reason

And how about the newbie Polina Edmunds who went over Mirai?

I'm just trying to show that in the past they DID choose with that motivation, But here they didn't,
That's why I suspect favouritism, It's like every time they will abuse any form of the criteria that fits them at the moment,
But as long as there is "body of work" you can't argue favouritism, Though Jason also made the GPF before the Olympics
4 years ago, It wasn't enough then...

 

[moonvine]

If that's the policy it should be clarified for the junior-aged skaters. I don't think any of us knew that it would be disqualifying, especially since it should be understood that junior scores might be lower because of limitations on what they can do in the SP.

The criteria have been out for awhile and are pretty clear (as opposed to in the past). I’m assuming the skaters can read and see what they need to do.

USFS has gone by the criteria they set out. If people don’t like the results that’s one thing. They say “place in top 15 in the world, top 10 in the world,” etc. There is no way to fairly determine what a juniors skaters scores might have been if they skated as a senior.

If USFS had not gone by it’s stated selection criteria that would have been very unfair to all athletes.

https://twitter.com/rockerskating/status/1480284577012883459?s=21

 

[TontoK]

I know this is a bit of a topic drift... but it's related to comments made, and I honestly don't know the answers.

Question: How much autonomy does a skater have in deciding to move to senior rank? Does the federation have input or ultimate authority, or does the junior just say, "Hey, I'm a senior now" and that's the end of that?

Also: How does a skater earn assignments to senior events? Or junior events, for that matter. Could someone say, "Hey, I'm entering Cranberry" and they're in? Of course I know there are selection procedures for major events and rules for the GP series, but what about Challengers and Senior B events? Who decides the rosters for those, and who funds the expenses?