www.edmontonjournal.com/sports/curl...0348/story.html
By Lyndon Little, Canwest Olympic Team; Canwest News ServiceFebruary 20, 2010
Judging system works: official
Fans want to see jumpers, not dancers, Stojko says
Ted Barton had extra reason to smile Thursday as he joined the crowd filing out of the Pacific Coliseum following Evan Lysacek's free skate victory for the gold medal over Russian short-program leader Evgeni Plushenko.
"See, the system works," Barton said.
Barton doesn't have anything particular against Plushenko, a great champion in his own right. But the West Vancouver, B.C., resident was obviously delighted to see a well-rounded skater like Lysacek win the most-coveted prize in men's skating without necessarily needing to land a quad.
(it says to us: "with what is smart ashamed, with the that is foolish pride" )
The executive director of the B.C./Yukon Section of Skate Canada was one of the key people to whom International Skating Union president Octavio Cinquanta turned in the wake of the 2002 Salt Lake City vote-trading scandal to devise a new scoring system to replace the old 6.0 one. And, like any proud father, he is upset with the rough ride his Code of Points baby has been taking this past week from a variety of sources.
Barton is particularly angered by comments from former Canadian and world champion Elvis Stojko in both print and the electronic media about his dislike of the new system.
Stojko told a radio audience Friday the new scoring system is hurting the sport by alienating audiences.
"If you had two skating competitions going on," he said. "One over here for jumping and another over there for footwork, people would go to the jumping contest."
The first skater to land a quad jump in combination, Stojko contends the new COP encourages skaters to go for the points by maximizing the less dramatic parts of skating, such as spins and transitional footwork at the expense of the crowd-pleasing big jumps.
Barton believes Stojko's comments are ill-informed and suggests the former world champion, who now lives in Mexico, is out of touch with the sport.
"The men's long program lasts four and a half minutes," Barton responded. "It has been shown the maximum time a skater can spend in the air for any one jump is 0.7 seconds. If skating is all about doing the quad, what would the skater do the rest of the time? To me, that would be boring."
"Skaters now work their programs to maximize their points. That's where strategy comes in.
"A good quad-triple combination is about worth 16 points. In the short program that one jump could add up to more than 30 per cent of the total technical mark of the average score. Is that not incentive enough to get people trying the quad?"
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... and more articels about math, artistry and athleticism.....
More texts of same author (from previous post) - GEOFFREY A FOWLER:
16.02 - Men's Figure Skating: Landing the Quad:
http://blogs.wsj.com/dailyfix/2010/02/16/m...h-for-the-quad/
17.02 - Athleticism vs. Artistry in Men's Figure Skating:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...0583636252.html
18.02 - Lysacek Wins Figure Skating Gold:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...2669525364.html
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13.02 - DiManno: Nothing simple about how figure skating scored
http://olympics.thestar.com/2010/article/7...-skating-scored
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... and interesting facts and pic about Quad:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405...0625935952.html
Figure Skaters Tee Up the Quad:
.....
Mr. Goff's data, assembled for The Wall Street Journal, show that the average quad requires more time in the air than Mr. Jordan needed for his legendary dunk, which took about 0.84 second.....
Former American figure skater Timothy Goebel helped popularize the quad by performing it prolifically during his 14-year career, including the 2002 Games, when he won the bronze medal. During that event, he says his rotations per minute were clocked as high as 946 ; the average rotations per minute for an NBA player performing a 360-degree dunk is 100....
http://online.wsj.com/media/wsj_QUAD100217.jpg