What has changed for the better in figure skating?

[frompolandwithlove]

Hi, I have a question for long-term fans of the sport. I know many of US here have been following the sport for decades. We often talk about what skating was like back then. We wonder what's missing from modern skating. We reminisce about our favorite skaters and favorite shows and programu from the past.
But here's the thing - as a relatively new fan, I can't objectively compare skating from different eras. I don't yet feel nostalgic for the "old days" (Ok, this is kind of a lie, I am nostalgic for old competition format), but those who have been watching skating since childhood certainly have comparisons. I know complaining is fun, but... well, I've lost my enthusiasm, I'm worried about how the next season will turn out and what the future will bring for my favorite sport, and I desperately need some optimism.

So, what has changed for the better in figure skating for the past 10-20-30 years? What positive changes do you see in recent years? What's better now than it was "back then"?

 

[yfan1]

If you want to talk about the past 30 years, I'd say that the CoP was a positive change to the judging, because

1. It meant that judge voting in order to get the 'right' result - which often resulted in weird switching of rankings - vanished, and all the judges needed to do now was go element by element. Also, another thing this fixed was that now theoretically someone in 10th place could go and win, which was nigh on impossible in 6.0

2. The early CoP encouraged better programs, because transitions were incentivized. This sounds odd, but there were many many empty programs. The footwork being forced to plain have more content was good too. Spin positions people complain about, but frankly I think it's a good thing that flexibility was encouraged.

Another good thing in the last 30 years is the technical innovation. Michelle Kwan's COE spiral, women going for 6-7 triple programs, men going for huge quads - all were good things.

I would also say some of the very best programs and performances happened in the 90s and 2000s-early 2010s. I definitely wasn't a fan of the pre-1990s skating all that much. One thing I *will* say, is that even if we take into account the less than ideal skating posture nowadays, the skaters seem to pay attention to dance training more and the best are very good performers, better than the average performer of the 90s or 00s.

Some of the best ever artists (Yuna Kim, Sui/Han, Mao Asada, Lambiel, Takahashi, Hanyu) are relatively recent skaters, not of the olden days. People can say 6.0 had freer performances, sure, but I think these skaters lay on the very best intersection of 6.0 and CoP, and ended up doing great tech content in addition to excellent artistry.

Even up until recently, we had skaters with huge flowing jumps, like Kolyada, Boyang, Han Yan, among others. Women like Karen Chen and Alena Kostornaia were beautiful skaters in a dying women's field.

It's not all bad. It's more that the judging lets things get away that it shouldn't (and yes, some rules and guidelines can be better too). And one can argue judging has always been bad...

 

[Arigato]

Music with vocals. (Copyright crap entered the picture but I still see it as a huge positive.)

 

[noskates]

Getting rid of the 6.0 judging.

 

[bartlebooth]

Music with vocals. (Copyright crap entered the picture but I still see it as a huge positive.)

Even though I complain A LOT about crossover songs (ugh), bad covers or grating vocals in general, I agree that broadening the choice was a good thing. Instrumental versions of pop/rock songs felt generally lame.

 

[Mathman]

I agree with @yfan1 that CoP was largely successful in its main goal of heading off criticisms and negative perceptions of ordinal judging.

 

[4everchan]

a lot of things are better but it often also means that there are counterparts to them

1) judging is better. The Code of Points rewards elements and their respective difficulty and execution. Downside : PCS manipulation
2) better programs, better balanced programs : unfortunately, most of the programs now look the same
3) making ice dance a sport rather than theatre on ice : counterpart ... it became very technical and now the ISU is backing down (unfortunately and dumbing it down with "themes" and no real patterns
4) Loss of figures and more over, loss of figures being the most important part of the mark... the sport was boring to watch and often things were decided before a skater even had a chance to do a spin of a jump... counterpart : skaters no longer train figures and no longer have beautiful blade control.
5) The system and that's my opinion only, developed skaters like Patrick Chan, Stéphane Lambiel, Jeff Buttle, Daisuke Takahashi and Takahiko Kozuka : these skaters were the ones who brought the most beautiful programs with great skating skills and competent jumping. Chan has been referred to as the "first" who did combine beautiful skating and a stable quad. Counterpart : skaters realized quickly that once you added exotic quads, you had a very big advantage so it brought us to the new generation of skaters, Hanyu, Chen, Uno, Malinin, Shaidorow, Grassl, Gumenik, etc who do have 3-4 different quads and more. Some are/were still very good skaters but their programs suffered from the long set-up for these quads, making them telegraphed, something we hadn't seen in about two decades.
6) Vocals were mentioned, it has pros and cons. To me, more cons than pros but then, there have been very good programs with lyrics.
7) Online streaming : there is so much skating we can watch for free now and we can see all of it, not just the top flight
8) JGP put forward : same as 7. Thank you Ted Barton.
9) Code of point and judging protocols easily available : to a passionate fan like me, my understanding of the sport and its scoring is so much deeper and this makes me enjoy everything better.. . counterpart : I sometimes get taken by the wuzrob fever
10) Online forums like this one : brings us all together . Counterpart ... people do not agree with my opinions LOL

 

[4everchan]

I agree with @yfan1 that CoP was largely successful in its main goal of heading off criticisms and negative perceptions of ordinal judging.

this is huge coming from you. I appreciate it very much. I know you often refer to the good 6.0

 

[meem]

When Olympic pairs champion Artur Dmetriev died recently, there were videos posted of his 1992 & '94 short & long programs (with Natalia Mishkutenov). Each of the programs were highly technical and yet they were so beautiful you'd think they were exhibition programs. Today's pairs programs are even more demanding but IMO the beauty of pairs is gone-the "two skating as one" has turned into strictly competitive technical only skating. For me, now the beautiful programs seem to be in ice dance (that back in the day were not all that interesting until Torvill & Dean and Klimova & Ponomorenko came on the scene). G/P's Wuthering Heights and S/D's Dune are highly technical but so beautiful that you forget how demanding they are technically. So this is how I view the big changes in skating.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

a lot of things are better but it often also means that there are counterparts to them

1) judging is better. The Code of Points rewards elements and their respective difficulty and execution. Downside : PCS manipulation
2) better programs, better balanced programs : unfortunately, most of the programs now look the same
3) making ice dance a sport rather than theatre on ice : counterpart ... it became very technical and now the ISU is backing down (unfortunately and dumbing it down with "themes" and no real patterns
4) Loss of figures and more over, loss of figures being the most important part of the mark... the sport was boring to watch and often things were decided before a skater even had a chance to do a spin of a jump... counterpart : skaters no longer train figures and no longer have beautiful blade control.
5) The system and that's my opinion only, developed skaters like Patrick Chan, Stéphane Lambiel, Jeff Buttle, Daisuke Takahashi and Takahiko Kozuka : these skaters were the ones who brought the most beautiful programs with great skating skills and competent jumping. Chan has been referred to as the "first" who did combine beautiful skating and a stable quad. Counterpart : skaters realized quickly that once you added exotic quads, you had a very big advantage so it brought us to the new generation of skaters, Hanyu, Chen, Uno, Malinin, Shaidorow, Grassl, Gumenik, etc who do have 3-4 different quads and more. Some are/were still very good skaters but their programs suffered from the long set-up for these quads, making them telegraphed, something we hadn't seen in about two decades.
6) Vocals were mentioned, it has pros and cons. To me, more cons than pros but then, there have been very good programs with lyrics.
7) Online streaming : there is so much skating we can watch for free now and we can see all of it, not just the top flight
8) JGP put forward : same as 7. Thank you Ted Barton.
9) Code of point and judging protocols easily available : to a passionate fan like me, my understanding of the sport and its scoring is so much deeper and this makes me enjoy everything better.. . counterpart : I sometimes get taken by the wuzrob fever
10) Online forums like this one : brings us all together . Counterpart ... people do not agree with my opinions LOL

Counterpart ... people do not agree with my opinions LOL

Believe it or not, I agree with everything you said in this post.

Hey, it's not often that we are singing from the same hymnsheet!

I was surprised that you didn't have a point about the loss of the Compulsory Dance, though. But, I guess the main point would have been similar to what you said about the loss of Compulsory Figures. With the counterpart being that we can no longer do direct comparisons between partnerships.

Also, you missed adding the counterpart for point 8:

• A lot of the streaming that was previously free is now going behind a paywall, and the prices being set are making it inaccessible to a lot of fans.

As I have said before, I don't begrudge the organising clubs for trying to recoup some of their costs of holding the event. But it is not right that SolidSport takes half of the money that is charged for the streams. A small percentage, perhaps. But not half.

All in all, that was a very well thought out and balanced post, @4everchan.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[lariko]

You can actually follow competitions and see the whole thing all season long vesus how in the 80s you only got an occasional TV broadcast on like 1 channel you had for some major event. Plus, the amount of coverage on athelets is much more sincere/immediate from their own feeds versus some interview or article where they tell you they gave 110% and strive to only compete with oneself or other same old socially acceptable waffle.

 

[TontoK]

The best thing as a fan: The relative ease in which we can watch the sport. I've shared the story before - knowing a major event was in progress, scanning the page of the newspaper that had the baseball box scores on it - hoping they put the results in there, and "spoiling" the results for myself when I knew I'd have to wait two weeks for it to show up on Wide World of Sports.

The best thing for the sport itself: The transparency that comes from the protocol. Regrettably, I still think there are some awful shady dealings going on, but at least you can see exactly how it's occurring, and by whom.

 

[TallyT]

The best thing as a fan: The relative ease in which we can watch the sport.

I may not be a long term fan but I have to mention the fact that watching is even possible in countries like ours. When I was growing up, we got a few snippets of the Olys as a minor part of the TV news... and nothing else. All the pro competitions and shows NA fans mourn... my part of the world had no idea were happening and most of the names from the 80s-00s were not even a clip[ed pic on the last page of the newspaper.

 

[Mathman]

this [praise of IJS scoring over ordinal judging] ] is huge coming from you. I appreciate it very much. I know you often refer to the good 6.0

For many years I taught a course in "Social Choice Theory" -- How do societies (example: the "society" comprising a figure skating judging panel) make decisions when the individual members have divergent opinions? This relatively new mathematical discipline originating in Paris in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when scholars addressed the question of how to form a just republic to replace the deposed monarchy. The course was offered by the mathematics department largely for politic science majors and economics majors who needed a few math credits to satisfy core university or departmental requirements.

I learned a lot (not sure about the students ), but anyway, regarding 6.0, one thing to point out is that "flip-flops" -- violations of the principal of independence of irrelevant outcomes -- is not at all a "mathematical" flaw. It just means, don't call the election until all of the votes for all of the candidates have been counted.

However, in terms of sports PR, flip-flops are terrible. Sports fans like to invest themselves in a competition in real time, to keep score during the game, to cheer things like "slay counts," to make guesses and predictions about who is beating whom. This is where the fun of watching the contest comes in. This is where the IJS was largely successful, in my opinion.

Edit: Likewise the other kind of flip-flops, the factored placement flip-flop. This is really nothing more than one team is ahead after the first half, then the other team puts on a flurry and catches up. The problem with 6.0 was not that this happened, but the opposite -- it hardly ever happened. As @ladyjane emphasizes in post 17, under IJS it happens a lot which adds to fan excitement for live and TV viewers.

 

[TontoK]

I may not be a long term fan but I have to mention the fact that watching is even possible in countries like ours. When I was growing up, we got a few snippets of the Olys as a minor part of the TV news... and nothing else. All the pro competitions and shows NA fans mourn... my part of the world had no idea were happening and most of the names from the 80s-00s were not even a clip[ed pic on the last page of the newspaper.

Also, I should have mentioned, getting to watch the WHOLE competition. Even when we did get big events on TV, they typically limited coverage to the final group. If the final group didn't include any Americans, they might show the top ranked American from an earlier group. Sometimes, we didn't even get all the final group, just the medalists.

The great Minions saga from the past Olympics wouldn't have been a thing back in the day. Nobody would have known about it, because nobody would have ever seen or heard of the program before. And, even if it had been included, it wouldn't have been shown on television anyway.

Nowadays, sometimes I watch the earlier groups, and sometimes I don't. It depends on other priorities. But when I have watched, sometimes I've discovered some real jewels. Of course, sometimes I've thought it wasn't worth the time I invested.

 

[Starlite]

Hi, I have a question for long-term fans of the sport. I know many of US here have been following the sport for decades. We often talk about what skating was like back then. We wonder what's missing from modern skating. We reminisce about our favorite skaters and favorite shows and programu from the past.
But here's the thing - as a relatively new fan, I can't objectively compare skating from different eras. I don't yet feel nostalgic for the "old days" (Ok, this is kind of a lie, I am nostalgic for old competition format), but those who have been watching skating since childhood certainly have comparisons. I know complaining is fun, but... well, I've lost my enthusiasm, I'm worried about how the next season will turn out and what the future will bring for my favorite sport, and I desperately need some optimism.

So, what has changed for the better in figure skating for the past 10-20-30 years? What positive changes do you see in recent years? What's better now than it was "back then"?

You probably do not remember the "figure" part of figure skater. They would actually show it as part of the competition. So boring, but I learned that it perfected the edges that are used in skating and are supposed to be judged on as well. I remember a female skater who was perfection in the "figures" part of the testing and because of that, her scores were higher than anyone else's. But to me, she was boring and a lumbering kind of skater. But she would win, not because of the beauty of her skating but she was so far ahead in points because of the figures. But that is jmho and I am sure others feel differently. But that's what these forums are about.

 

[ladyjane]

I've been watching Figure skating for many years, and I especially like it that I can watch quite a few competitions when I like and even re-watch. In the past the only thing I could watch were the last few skaters at the OG and that often took place at times when I was either sleeping or working. Nowadays I can watch when I want, and the whole of a competition too. True, not from every country or always at little cost or for free, but still. And I can rewatch programmes I enjoy (like Piper Gilles and Paul Pauriers OG Vincent Free Dance or Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron's WC 2026 The Whale Free Dance). In the past I often bought video tapes, and those aren't very good (let alone that my video player doesn't work anymore). That's definitely better now.

With regard to IJS my feelings are mixed. I didn't like the unexpected flip flops in the standings in the old system, and I like it that skaters can go from 18th in the Short to 3rd in the end because of an exceptional Free. However, the focus on jumps only is something I don't like. I do like jumps, loops especially, but step sequences and choreo are the thing for me. In the old days the set ups for jumps could be even longer than today.

I couldn't even see the compulsory figures (when that part of the competition still existed), and although I have seen some modern versions of figures only competitions, I don't think I miss them - they were often the reason for seemingly strange outcomes.

 

[el henry]

You probably do not remember the "figure" part of figure skater. They would actually show it as part of the competition. So boring, but I learned that it perfected the edges that are used in skating and are supposed to be judged on as well. I remember a female skater who was perfection in the "figures" part of the testing and because of that, her scores were higher than anyone else's. But to me, she was boring and a lumbering kind of skater. But she would win, not because of the beauty of her skating but she was so far ahead in points because of the figures. But that is jmho and I am sure others feel differently. But that's what these forums are about.

I remember and you can say the name Trixi Schuba . I found figures as dull as dishwater, the few times that World Wide of Sports presented them, and looking back, I feel bad for how I felt about Trixi, even though I did not enjoy her skating. I still bear a grudge against figures for holding down my Toller, and he did too

I think of jumps today as figures were then. They are the technical, rather than the "tricks" as Dick Button would say. And technical still is not my favorite part of skating.....

 

[Diana Delafield]

I remember and you can say the name Trixi Schuba . I found figures as dull as dishwater, the few times that World Wide of Sports presented them, and looking back, I feel bad for how I felt about Trixi, even though I did not enjoy her skating. I still bear a grudge against figures for holding down my Toller, and he did too

I think of jumps today as figures were then. They are the technical, rather than the "tricks" as Dick Button would say. And technical still is not my favorite part of skating.....

I saw Trixi Schuba skate live on the World Tour of Champions in 1972. I wasn't into pairs yet and was still spending hours on patch, as were the friends I was with, a group organized by our coach. The other skaters on the tour did show programs and I don't remember any of them. But when it was her turn, they announced she had injured her back (probably not true) and would instead demonstrate a couple of figures for the audience. She came out in a plain bright red dress and did two of the most difficult figures in silence. The non-skaters in the audience may have been briefly bored, but those of us who struggled with figures were enthralled. It was like years later when I accompanied a non-skating friend to a Torvill and Dean tour and they opened the second half by demonstrating one of the set-pattern dances. I pointed out to my friend how there was only one set of tracings on the fresh ice because their subsequent circuits were laid down exactly the same each time.

Schuba rightly got huge applause and certainly our group of children went back to our rink and struggled even harder to emulate the smooth, even flow she'd demonstrated, and the silence with nary a scratch heard. Not telegenic (a lot of sports aren't) but so impressive if you'd tried to do it yourself. I agreed with lowering the percentage of marks to one-third with the short and long programs, but not dropping them altogether. I don't know about other clubs, but my own and Connaught here teach figures and have patch sessions still, emphasizing their importance in learning edge control as a basic essential skill.

 

[4everchan]

I saw Trixi Schuba skate live on the World Tour of Champions in 1972. I wasn't into pairs yet and was still spending hours on patch, as were the friends I was with, a group organized by our coach. The other skaters on the tour did show programs and I don't remember any of them. But when it was her turn, they announced she had injured her back (probably not true) and would instead demonstrate a couple of figures for the audience. She came out in a plain bright red dress and did two of the most difficult figures in silence. The non-skaters in the audience may have been briefly bored, but those of us who struggled with figures were enthralled. It was like years later when I accompanied a non-skating friend to a Torvill and Dean tour and they opened the second half by demonstrating one of the set-pattern dances. I pointed out to my friend how there was only one set of tracings on the fresh ice because their subsequent circuits were laid down exactly the same each time.

Schuba rightly got huge applause and certainly our group of children went back to our rink and struggled even harder to emulate the smooth, even flow she'd demonstrated, and the silence with nary a scratch heard. Not telegenic (a lot of sports aren't) but so impressive if you'd tried to do it yourself. I agreed with lowering the percentage of marks to one-third with the short and long programs, but not dropping them altogether. I don't know about other clubs, but my own and Connaught here teach figures and have patch sessions still, emphasizing their importance in learning edge control as a basic essential skill.

Well Connaught skaters have much better skating skills than some other clubs in BC, that's for sure