An interesting list. I would say that of these,"creative" and perhaps "original" are difficult to measure. but"fast, high and long" are, at least in principle, fairly objective and straight-forward .
Yes, "fast, high and long" could be objectively measured.
What about them
should be measured is up for discussion. For jumps alone, height and length would be easier to measure. Possibly speed for jumps, taking into account speed across the ice at the entry and exit edges (and first landing edge in a combination).
If we're talking about speed across a 4-minute program, then there's the question about whether to take average speed or maximum speed for the whole program, or to use discrete speed measurements for each part of the program separately. (E.g., during each step/choreo sequence, into and out of each jump, during each lift that is intended to cover ice, getting from one end of the ice to another between elements.
For spins (and "stationary lifts" in ice dance, and death spirals as well as side-by-side and pair spins in pairs), we would want to measure rotational speed, not speed across the ice, which ideally should be zero if the spin remains perfectly centered, and which would bring down the average for the program as a whole for skaters who are able to sustain a long fast spin vs. those who keep their spins brief and start moving across the ice sooner.
For step sequences/choreo sequences, for set patterns in pattern or rhythm dances, for transitional stroking between elements, would we want to measure just how quickly a skater moves from point A to point B along the straight line between A and B, even though a skater who skates on deeper curves will cover more actual ice
Do we have instruments that can easily measure the actual feet/meters of ice covered on deep curves and calculate velocity based on that actual pathway, including accelerations and decelerations during the pattern? Wouldn't a radar gun measuring from a fixed point tell us only how quickly the skater is moving when it crosses the point being measured?
So what technology exists to take continuous curving paths that continually change direction?
How fine-grained would we want the speed measurements to be, and how would we balance these measurements with 1) deep edges, which do represent greater speed/power if we consider the full length of the curving path covered in a given unit of time, not just the straight-line distance between the start and end points; and 2) complexity of the movements while traveling from point to point -- should there be a reward for a skater getting from A to B doing multiple difficult turns and changes of curve with fewer pushes/changes of foot in the same amount of time as another skater doing only crossovers and maybe one mohawk?
This is a rare case where I am going to say that Tarasova might have had a point. Speed, she said recently, is really important. In speed skating. This here, is figure skating, and what counts is skating with power, not skating fast or selecting faster tune. One can skate powerfully to slow music.
When we're talking about "speed" in skating we're usually talking about power in the sense of amount of ice covered per second, or per stroke if you prefer. Completely unrelated to quickness of the rhythm, which would be the number of movements per second.
"Difficult" and even "good" can be approached by lists of positive and negative features that are separately fairly precise.and not just up to judges' whimsy. A quad filp is more difficult than a double Salchow. A level 4 step sequence filled with intricate steps and turns is more difficult than a laid-back and boring one.
Of course, "boring" is in the eye of the beholder. Pre-IJS, step sequences tended to be choreographed to demonstrate ability to stick to a clear straight-line/diagonal, circular, or clear serpentine pattern, to express the music, and often to demonstrate quickness of footwork using novelty steps and hops that added interest and sometimes athletic difficulty but didn't showcase basic skating vocabulary in terms of edges and turns. The best such sequences could be very exciting to watch, not "boring" at all, but including less complexity of basic skating content.
In IJS, the rules for step sequence levels are specifically designed to reward variety of difficult turns with clear edges/clean turns, measuring skills that had been less emphasized in the years between school figures and IJS. Some skaters are able to showcase these skills very well in interesting ways, while expressing the music well and maybe varying the tempo and including non-edge based skills for variety. Personally, these good examples are my favorite things about IJS-era programs. But some viewers are more interested in the jumps and spins, or in quick foot movements during step sequences, and have no interest in watching edge work. And the step sequences now take up more time in the program. So viewers who are less interested in the skills being showcased find them to be more boring than the quicker 6.0-era sequences (quicker both in terms of rhythm of the movements and also in the amount of time they took up in the program).
Turning in both directions was rewarded in the scoring both under 6.0 and in IJS, but many 6.0-era straight-line step sequences could be fun to watch without including many turns or any deep edges at all, and circular step sequences often included few turns rotating against the curve of the circle.
Upper body movement was less common in 6.0 step sequences but when it was present it could also add to the interest of the sequence, especially if more keyed to expressing the music and not apparently present just to earn a level.
After certain input of work, measurable standards for quality aspects of figure skating can indeed be set. However, we need to consider the effects. In this sport, skaters tend to include in their programs whatever they are awarded with points and drop everything not rewarded with points.
This is true. But there are more types of skills that are explicitly rewarded in IJS moves that were never specifically mentioned under 6.0, so they were rare (and often appeared creative) in those days but now are just expected.
It's like a double-edged dagger. Programs are becoming simpler season-by-season,
I'm not sure that individual programs are becoming simpler season by season. Definitely if you compared a representative program from the 1990s with one from the 2020s, there will be more going on in the latter. (With exceptions in both directions -- the most complex 6.0 programs will have more content than the simplest IJS programs, but on average, IJS programs are more complex.)
What is true is that IJS has standardized what gets rewarded such that everyone tries to do the things it rewards that are most straightforward to achieve, and to leave out skills that are no longer rewarded and even penalized by IJS rules. So what has happened is that IJS programs become more
similar to each other in any given year, making the range of creativity across a whole field more uniform than under 6.0.
which is caused by the situation when technical development possibilities and physical capabilities of a human in this sport are reaching limits. More standards would mean repetition in even more ways; however, not applying quality standards in a timely manner may cause the loss of said quality.
In theory, I think it would be possible to add more standards for different kinds of elements or combinations of skills such that skaters would have a wider variety of choices of ways to showcase skills. That would allow different skaters to construct their programs (or their individual elements) in very different ways, while still being rewarded according to clearer standards.
But the IJS does not seem interested in increasing the options in this way, perhaps because it would put a much larger burden on the tech panel to apply that many more rules to more different kinds of elements.
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