Интервью, Статьи о ФК || Interviews, Articles about skating

Другие фигуристы, различные фигурнокатательные мероприятия || Other skaters and events without Evgeni

Re: Статьи о катании || Articles about skating

Postby cekoni » 15 Dec 2011, 08:43

Интервью
Александр Жулин: танцы не должны быть спортивной гимнастикой на льду:

http://sport.ria.ru/interview_sport/201 ... 09379.html
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Re: Статьи о катании || Articles about skating

Postby cekoni » 25 Dec 2011, 01:36

:plush34:

6 hours ago:
http://www.facebook.com/solovieff.ru/po ... 8710698370

Василий Соловьев:

Кстати, по поводу Президентов и борьбы за власть. Иллюстрация из жизни творческих людей.

Есть такой вид спорта - фигурное катание. Уникальный вид. Добились мы в нем потрясающих успехов. Олимпийские игры и чемпионаты мира столько раз ни одна страна не выигрывала, сколько СССР и Россия (хотя они нарочно, для удобной статистики, не считают Россию правопреемницей советских наград).

Руководит в нашей стране этим видом Валентин Николаевич Писеев. Сорок лет уже почти руководит. Можете себе представить, какой застой, какое занудство! Руководит не то чтобы очень современно или исключительно умело. Советский он человек, очень похож на партийного работника.

Но сборы как-то проходят, деньги почти на всё находятся (а это пуд говна съесть, поверьте!), победы, было пропавшие, вернулись вновь, наставники не перестают ковать уникальные кадры. И это несмотря на то, что тренеры наши теперь работают по всему миру - в США, Канаде, Японии, Франции, Германии, Великобритании, даже в Австралии и ЮАР. Вообще, везде. То есть там, где раньше как-то пытались нам составить конкуренцию.

Сколько раз Валентина Писеева пытались свергнуть! Как его критиковали и попрекали. Нет-нет, да и вмажет ему настоящую мега-критику какой-нибудь студент, случайно узнавший "всю правду" об этом спорте. Даже Чайковская однажды пыталась занять его место. И Сихарулидзе (их я, кстати, обоих искренне люблю и уважаю, если кто тут будет язвить).

Чем же это закончилось? А ничем. Как работал Валентин Николаевич, так и работает, потому что заниматься высококлассной подкверной борьбой (да-да), тянуть на себе ворох неприятностей и глупостей подобной должности никто из острословых творческих людей не хочет, а главное - не может. И после очередной критической волны они все снова приходят к Валентину Николаевичу - кто попросит чего, кто договорится о чем, кто (внимание!) извинения попросит за свою довольно дерзкую, почти хамскую критику, а это тоже общеизвестные факты.

Да, он несовременный, он в чем-то скучный и предсказуемый, он не рискует, не делает фигурное катание модным, у него нет странички на facebook (поэтому и пишу))), он даже пиаром занимается по-советски. Уж как это меня, журналиста, раздражало! Но в борьбе за кресло он обставил Сиху (депутата Госдумы и главу комитета), как мальчишку. Он посадил на место Президента Федерации олимпийского чемпиона Александра Горшкова (которого я тоже безмерно уважаю, если что!), а сам занял новую должность Генерального Секретаря, более влиятельную по новому уставу, им же и написанному.

И живет Валентин Николаевич, понятно, не на зарплату чиновника. И жена у него судья международного уровня и один из крупнейших игроков на рынке олимпийских оценок фигурного катания. И съел он, наверняка, не одного соперника. Или подчинил. Или отодвинул. И бунты усмирял легко. Ему даже делать ничего не нужно, потому что перекроет он финансовый кран и до сорвнований не допустит, и до свидания карьера.

И в отличие от всех творческих и талантливых ребят, которыми насыщена Федерация, он делает свое дело: со скоростью света договаривается не только с местной властью, но и с Международным Олимпийским Комитетом, обеспечивает весь процесс, держит под контролем регионы и всех ключевых фигуристов и тренеров (которые те еще штучки!) и мы продолжаем выигрывать, хотя критика в его адрес не ослабевает.

И всё остальное - болтовня. И у Авербуха (тоже люблю!), которого прочили в пахаря на благо отечественного спорта. Он выбрал шоу-бизнес. И у любого другого соперника на выборах Президента Федерации фигурного катания на коньках России. Потому что трендеть - это одно, а каждый день разгребать завалы - это совсем другое.

Помните об этом, когда трендите. Займитесь делом. Просто попробуйте. Это намного сложнее.
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Re: Статьи о катании || Articles about skating

Postby cekoni » 13 Feb 2012, 06:29

An interview of Alexander Lakernik, chairman of the ISU technical committee, about IJS (International Judging System) :plush34:

- original Russian article: http://ffkm.ru/images/mf/Figurist_2011_04_24.pdf (page 30)
- translation from Figure Skating Universe by ‘quiqie’ http://www.fsuniverse.net/forum/showpos ... ostcount=1

-----------------

Alexander Lakernik on the IJS: "Going into details, we have gone too far"

A new judging system was created eight years ago with the idea of more objective assessment of skating. Even estimation of the same features in elements execution changed from positive to negative over the time, and as for the artistic part of figure skating, it never can be assessed unambiguously: one likes, another doesn't. Of course, everybody noticed the subjectivity of judging, but the first one who tried to do something about it was Stanislav Zhuk, who understood that technical aspects of figure skating can be measured, at least the criteria can be found: is it difficult or easy, executed well or poorly. Stanislav Alekseevich was the first one to create the criteria that could be used to evaluate programs more objectively. What was the objectivity? The fact that each element had its own difficulty, and hence its own value, which, depending on the quality of performance could be increased or decreased. His idea was like this: let's say, the element costs 20 points, and if it's done well, then its value increases by 30%, and if not, then the value can be reduced accordingly. When Stanislav Zhuk was still alive, we even held a competition (I think it was the "Olympic Hopes"), where in addition to the main judging panel was another one, which evaluated the skaters according to his system. Then the first marks were compared (the second mark wasn't touched at all), and in some cases they were similar, in some cases different. But maybe because Stanislav Alekseevich had passed away, or because those were difficult times, we never tried to repeat that experiment.
Now the more and more I realize how truly great Stanislav Zhuk really was, because he had a systematic view of figure skating, because he had a very clear idea of what he wanted and how he would do it. He was probably a unique coach not only in the world, but in history.
I remember how we discussed this idea and I told him that his system was good, but figure skating would never work like that. However, it happened so that it became possible, almost identical system was born and I became one of its developers.
Today the idea of a new judging system is ascribed to the ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta. He introduced that idea almost immediately after the 2002 Olympic Games, where results of the pairs-skating event left opinions split. But Cinquanta knew about Zhuk's ideas, he had his schemes before his eyes, because at one time they were translated into English and sent to him. Therefore, we can assume that, one way or another, the Zhuk's system had shifted the thoughts of the ISU President in that direction. However, if it wasn't for the Salt Lake City with its scandals, maybe nothing would happen at all.
The fact that Ottavio Cinquanta, who comes not from the figure skating world, but from speed skating, where the outcome is measured by a stopwatch, beat his rival Lawrence Demmy, an ice dancing expert, at the ISU president elections in1994, has also played certain role. If Demmy became a president, the new system would never be accepted. I'm sure of that.

Too far

So what have we got? We have got a new formal scheme, which in many aspects works better than the previous one. The principle of the judging panel (that determines the quality of performance) remained the same, it is based on the idea that there is a certain number of judges and each of them has their own opinion, and the sum of these opinions forms the opinion of the panel. If we take the work of technical panel (that determines the complexity of the program), it awards the mark based not on an opinion, but strictly following the rules. Teaching technical panels, we strive to make all three persons comprising the panel to have the same look at the elements, and only in borderline situations their opinions may differ, and then the decision is made by a simple majority vote. Therefore, for technical panel all the rules, and all the exceptions, and all the exceptions to the exceptions, are laws, detailing which, in my opinion, we have gone too far.
As a chairman of the ISU Technical Committee, I see some kind of the simplification of rules as one of my goals for the next season. And, frankly, this is the first time I set such goal. The ISU authorities support me in this matter and also believe that it is necessary to simplify our approach somehow, because when there are many small requirements, it is easy to miss something and come to completely different results. It is one thing when the technical panel argues if it is level two or level three. And now that we have sometimes arguments whether it's level four or no level, it has become critical. This season, there were already several disputes like that in pair skating events at the Junior and Senior Grand Prix series.

Single approach

Technical panels determine the levels of elements with sufficient accuracy, except for those borderline situations where there is discussion. Usually, problems with the technical panels arise when the people are quite knowledgeable, but think that their opinion is absolute. Such desire to translate their views into the panel decision no matter what becomes dangerous, especially if other members do not have the strength to withstand this onslaught, even though they should.
Another aspect of the technical panel work. For example, if you open the list of the ISU technical specialists in pair skating, there will be a total of 20 names. They are all high-level professionals who judge almost all major international competitions. Since there are so few of them, it means that they work several times internationally and at home. With such a small number of them it's fairly easy to develop common approaches. As for technical specialists in single skating, there are much more of them, therefore, they work less frequently. Thus, many technical specialists have only one international competition per year, and the rest of the work they do in their home country which is not in the ISU jurisdiction. Accordingly, there is much bigger variety of views and interpretations and they are not always correct. So when we increase the number of specialists, we have to give more clear instructions, or to expect different responses. All the coaches like to say: my competitor did the same thing two weeks ago, and the protocol was different. Well, first of all, he did not make the same thing a priori, because you cannot enter the same river twice, and it means that he did something a little differently - and this is one of the reasons. But the reason may be that he was judged by different people. Hence in pair skating the danger that this factor will change the results is a little smaller than in single skating.

Regulations

When we prepare the requirements for getting levels, we have to make sure that high levels can be achieved with skill. But if the requirements are too tough, no one will get there, and if they are too easy, then there will be everyone, and that is wrong again.
And to find the requirements that are right from both technical and aesthetic point of view is very difficult. Here's an example: several years ago, we added difficult variation for the lady as a death spiral feature, and all the ladies started to do the catchfoot. As a result, death spiral was no longer a death spiral, and the last Olympic Games have passed under the sign of that awful back out death spiral. Now this feature was removed since we realized that that was a road to nowhere.
For figure skating to continue to grow, there must be a variety of elements. Today, the coaches know that to do something out of the box is a big risk, but many have learned to invent something new even in these strict limits (for example, this season, Tatiana Volosozhar - Maxim Trankov and their coaches have come up with three new lifts).
But this is rather an exception, because the new system offers a coach to follow the rules, therefore, the rules specify which elements are performed by athletes at the event. At one time, the "illusion spin" cost nothing, and everyone stopped doing it. We made it a level feature, and it's back again. Now the Euler jump has become an element of certain value. It was done before as a connecting jump, and including it in the jump sequence was regarded as a sequence of jumps. The idea of giving it its own value was a sensible way to increase the variety of jump combinations. Now, if there is an Euler, without stepping on the other foot, and the second jump is a Salchow or flip, then it is not a jump sequence, it's jump combination, which costs a little bit more than sequence. Some people like this innovation, some are against it, but only practice will show whether it is good or bad. Until after a certain number of competitions, it is difficult to understand where any innovation leads. So it's trial and error.

The complexity and quality

Another sad fact is that there is no harmonious interaction judging and technical panels. For example, recently we made performing of half of the step sequence on one leg a level feature. And immediately coaches made the athletes perform one leg step sequence, even those who can barely stand on two legs. And so they are sweating, swinging from side to side, crawling completely out of the music and so on. Many people now ask me to remove this feature, because it is impossible to look at. This example clearly shows that, unfortunately, the interaction between the two panels is very limited.
What does technical panel evaluate? Complexity. What does judging panel evaluate? Quality. If the skater performs half of the step sequence on one leg, technical panel has to award this feature, and the step sequence level will be increased. But if it is performed poorly, GOE should drop. And the coach has to understand that everything they gain in levels, they will lose in quality. And then this feature will be included only by those who really can do it nicely and easily. And what we have in reality: technical panel awards the right level, because they have clearly defined rules, and judges, instead of negative GOE, give GOE 0 or even positive. And the coach comes to the conclusion that the element should be initially set to the highest level: technical panel will definitely take that into account, and the judges would probably just overlook it. And often they do, even though they should not. About 70-80% of the athletes perform half a step sequence on one leg!
The level pursuit is also due to the fact that the judges are still afraid to award the highest GOE, even when they are evident. And the coach understands that even a brilliant execution of a simple element is unlikely to be awarded by +2 +3 GOE, so it is better not to risk it and go for levels. So I think that for now the judges perform their tasks less effectively than technical panels.
In my opinion, it is important that the coach understands that if the technical skill of the young athlete does not allow to perform the level 4 element, then they shouldn't set such goal. Leave it at level 2-3, there is a reason why the international rules do not allow novice skaters to get for any element more that level 2 or 3, depending on the category. This restriction is also due to the fact that pursuing levels can lead to injury. Injuries can be explicit (bruises, fractures, sprains) and hidden (deformation of the joints, fatigue fractures, etc.). For example, the Biellmann was found dangerous precisely because of the negative impact on the spine. We had to limit the number of Biellmanns in the programs not only because we see a lot of them, but also because if everyone would try to do it, then what will happen to their backs? In this connection I would like to say that the coach should not mindlessly chase levels and then blame the system, but understand what is allowed and what is not, which direction it makes sense to go and which is not.

Second mark

As for the second mark, to be quite honest, we're almost at the same place: it is still subjective. It was decided that since the new principle of judging is splitting the entire program to the elements, then second mark should also be fractured into components. However, this is not new. In times of 6.0 system, at the training seminars for judges the second mark was divided not into five, but into seven parts, but in the end, it was combined into one. It was different for each judge due to the fact judges had different preferences. One paid more attention to the interpretation of the music, another to the choreography, etc. Now, in general, little has changed. Of course, we're trying to teach judges to be more versatile, encourage them not to make all five marks the same, really punish the bad and reward the good, but the judges are still not very good at that.
Being an optimist in this matter, I still cannot say 100% that goals are attainable because the solution of such problems requires from judges the knowledge and skills greater than they have so far. All the more so that judges have completely different points of view. And when you listen to what people say about ice dancing, it makes your head spin. You can hear judges saying about the same team that they are perfect and they are awful. For me as a skater, the main thing is the quality of basic skating. If it's poor, then everything else is of little importance. By the way, the Shpilband and Zueva's school's main advantage is that their athletes have a very good basic skating skills, and there is nothing to say. There aren't many people now who can teach to skate like that, so the impression is that some fly on the ice, while others crawl on it.

Few words about dance

As for the ice dancing, since I'm not an expert here, I can only express my amateur point of view. First of all, dance is an art that is a priori subjective. But since we have the ice dancing competitions, that means that there must be elements that can be compared. Such elements appeared in dancing before any new system of judging. Then the new rules listed the required elements for each dance, so it can be evaluated. The obvious advantage is that the skill of dancers can be measured, obvious disadvantage is that the requirements make all the programs look alike.

Judging what we see

In general, I believe that the working under the new rules for a good coach cannot be a problem because eight years is enough time to get into it. We already have a generation of children who know the system very well. In the U.S., as far as I know, novice competitions are judged under 6.0 system, and we, although we started later, already switched to the new system at all levels.
Early in the season we have test skates (which is a very good idea), so that coaches and athletes can listen to the judges and fix all the problems. But often, even after all the disputes, an athlete goes to the next event and repeats the same mistakes, that is, falls into the same trap again.
Or some new points come out. According to the rules, athletes must provide the content of their program before the competition. Content - it is just a plan, sometimes we even call it a "dream list", because often there are dreams written down, not reality. But it is a mandatory requirement, which is not always fulfilled, especially at domestic competitions, and I personally think that in these cases, athletes should not be allowed to skate at the event.
In competitions an athlete can change the written elements and to do others, it is not punishable. Of course, for the technical panel it is more convenient, when there is this list and they know what will happen next, so that nothing is missed. But none of the decisions can be made based on that sheet, because we judge what we see. Pair skaters and ice dancers rarely change the content of their program, but single skaters do that often, and not always do it thoughtfully.
At the World Championships in Moscow in 2011 two skaters - Nobunari Oda and Ksenia Makarova - dropped down one place, and Nobunari even lost the medal, because in the free program he did the fourth jump combination (which in this case has zero value). It would seem that one should learn on such mistakes, but just now, at Rostelecom Cup, Konstantin Menshov again did four combos. At the Junior Grand Prix event, Artur Dmitriev had an opening combination of triple flip - triple loop in the short program, and the landing on triple flip was not very clean, but he still landed it! And instead of doing at least a double loop, he just went on. And when it came to the required element Lutz from the steps, instead he made a combination triple Lutz - triple toe. The result was: combination without a jump, that is, the value of triple flip with GOE -3, and Lutz from the steps was not counted at all. In sum, Artur lost about ten points, as it turned out, that was the price of the Grand Prix final for him.
I once asked Ilya Klimkin why he did an extra triple toe loop when he had to to do a Salchow, and he said: I was going into this element and could not remember what I did before. To avoid such mistakes, coaches need to carefully prepare the athletes, because the steress makes it difficult to think clearly.

Striving for balance

The new system has been active for eight years. Now it's clear that there are problems, which I once thought myself would be the reason why to introduce this system won't be easy, because human factor cannot be assessed objectively.
What does any formal scheme do? It leaves out some details, chops off the ends, because they don't fit in. But it's figure skating, it is not a mathematical problem. And at some point it becomes clear that the discarded elements are important, and then we begin to build another scheme, which includes these "ends", but leaves out something else. And then again this need occurs, etc. As I already mentioned, we have gone too far now, because there are so many fine details, especially in the technical panels work, that people are starting to get lost.
We have now one text in the rules that no one can understand, something just became unreadable. And if the coach and the judge do not understand the rules, it means you should change something.
As a chairman of the Technical Committee, I set the next goal (and we are currently preparing proposals for regulations to be discussed at the Congress in June 2012) to try to simplify the whole scheme a little bit, try to make more uniform, more clear, without unnecessary detail.
And if we go back to the beginning of the conversation, then we can say that the system has had positive results, but now we come to some philosophical problems, the realization of which will make it clear where we go from here.
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Re: Статьи о катании || Articles about skating

Postby clairdelalune » 13 Feb 2012, 11:47

cekoni wrote:For me as a skater, the main thing is the quality of basic skating. If it's poor, then everything else is of little importance. By the way, the Shpilband and Zueva's school's main advantage is that their athletes have a very good basic skating skills, and there is nothing to say. There aren't many people now who can teach to skate like that, so the impression is that some fly on the ice, while others crawl on it.


:bra_vo: Yes, finally someone explains why skaters with a high quality of basic skating receive high PCS. Because basic skating it´s the most important, as it should be. Back to the basics, dear skaters!!!! :plush37: :plush4: :plush6:

Very, very interesting article, thank you very much!!!! :plush31:
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Re: Статьи о катании || Articles about skating

Postby whitebamboo » 13 Feb 2012, 23:26

Thanks for the Lakernik interview, Cekoni! I found a lot of the things he said interesting. I am curious as to what will happen with the rules at this summer's ISU congress.

I agree that one can say that good skating skills are the basics upon which everything else is built, so that it's hard to do other things well without it. However, although I am not an expert, I also think that skating skills should not equal everything--it is the "basic" skill, as Lakernik said. After all, skating skill is numerically just one category among the five PCS scores under the current system, though other components certainly need good skating skills as well. But just having good skating skills--and playing to that strength by showing it off, which is perfectly fine--should not mean automatic high scores in the other PCS components as well, for instance in IN and PE. (Also, there are different styles of "good" skating skills.)

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Re: Статьи о катании || Articles about skating

Postby let`s talk » 16 Feb 2012, 18:54

A great article:


10 YEAR AFTER SALT LAKE, SKATING A SHADOW OF SELF

With colorful characters, beautiful clothes, juicy rivalries and whispers of behind-the-scenes shadiness, figure skating was the original reality show, commanding attention well after the Olympic flame was extinguished, and turning skaters into millionaires.
Then came the French judge, swathed in fur and instructed to vote "in a certain way."
Ten years after the pairs judging scandal rocked the Salt Lake City Olympics, some say figure skating has yet to recover. Interest in skating in the United States has faded, and critics say a judging system adopted to prevent cheating has not only failed but has stripped the beauty from the sport.
(Opinion piece reflecting on skating has changed in the US, mainly focusing on the COP. Surprisingly honest thoughts from an ISU elected official. Maybe they're not all as clueless as we might think.)
"I really don't think it was that worth it, all the hubbub after Salt Lake City," Johnny Weir said.
Judging shenanigans have always been skating's dirty little secret. But it was one thing to look at scores and try to guess what countries were conniving and which judges were swapping marks, quite another to have it confirmed as it was in Salt Lake.
Russia's Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze initially won the pairs gold over Canada's Jamie Sale and David Pelletier by the slightest of margins, despite Sikharulidze stepping out of a double axel. But judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne tearfully told her fellow judges afterward that she had been pressured by French federation president Didier Gailhaguet to put the Russians first.
"It's surreal that it happened to us. I never thought anything like that — big stories happen to others, I've never been involved in such a thing," Pelletier said. "We were just puppets in a show. I never took it personal (hmmm...rly??). We just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. Or the right place at the wrong time, I don't know."
Le Gougne later recanted, but the damage was done. Scott Hamilton's howl of protest on the NBC broadcast could be heard clear across the country, Canadian Olympic officials demanded an investigation and everyone from politicians to previously wronged athletes weighed in on what should be done. As the scandal threatened to overshadow the rest of the games, new IOC president Jacques Rogge told the International Skating Union something had to be done.
(Scoot howling in protest. Or watching someone land a quad. It's hard to tell.)
On Feb. 15, four days after the pairs final, the Canadians were awarded duplicate gold medals. Three days after that, ISU president Ottavio Cinquanta unveiled a proposal to replace the century-old 6.0 mark with a system that would assign a point value to every technical element.
Figure skating will always be a subjective sport because there is no clock to race, no finish line to cross ahead of an opponent. But skating had to find a way to bring more objectivity — more transparency — to its judging, Cinquanta said.
"The question was, is this a sport or is that a show? If it's just a show or exhibition, you do not need judges. You do not need to measure the performance," he said. "But sport is another story. You need rules and you cannot leave it to judges to say, 'This is the best.'"
The ISU adopted its new judging system in June 2002, and began using it at Grand Prix events a year later. Skaters still receive two scores, one for technical elements and another for components, but everything is now quantified. Jumps, spins, lifts, skating skills, choreography — there are now specific criteria for judging every part of a program, and a point value to go along with it.
"You cannot keep this subjective decision of the judges," Cinquanta said (argument against this made in a few paragraphs...).
Skaters say they like being able to look at the judges' marks and see where, exactly, they need to improve. And the judging system has revolutionized ice dancing, once so corrupt medals may as well have been handed out before the event started. North American ice dancers, who once had little hope of doing more than cracking the top 10, now dominate the sport. Canada's Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are the reigning Olympic champions, while Meryl Davis and Charlie White last year became the first Americans to win a world dance title.
"Tessa and Scott, they were superb (in Vancouver) and I thought this was exactly what this system does: It rewards people who are able to be the most seamless and most technically proficient," said Sarah Hughes, the 2002 Olympic champion. "And I think that's the goal of any kind of scoring system."
But critics say the current system has flaws, as well.
There is room to manipulate marks or prop skaters up through the component scores, largely still a matter of personal opinion even with established criteria to judge the individual components. A judge with a music background, for example, may view a skater's interpretation of "Tosca" very differently than someone without, and it's hard to challenge their interpretations.
Another criticism is that the points system doesn't penalize mistakes enough. Reigning world champion Patrick Chan had to put both hands down on a quadruple toe loop in the short program at Four Continents last Thursday, but it wasn't counted as a fall so he didn't receive a one-point deduction off his total score. He did get the maximum negative execution scores for the element, but the 7.30 points he received for the quad were still a point higher than Ross Miner got for a clean triple flip.
"To get more points, the skaters execute elements beyond their capabilities. As a consequence, the programs are filled with errors and falls which, of course, damage the general presentation," Sonia Bianchetti, a former Olympic-level judge and the first woman elected to an ISU office, said in an email. "Is it better to see a beautiful program, with a good choreography, skated to the music with good speed and flow and maybe an easier jump or jump combination, less-intricate footwork or more simple spins? Or rather programs with two or three falls on quads or triple-triple combinations, with travelled, slow and ugly spins or step sequences?
"To make the sport too difficult and demanding means that in a field of 30 skaters, let's say, maybe only a couple can do a decent program. The rest of the event is a falling contest," she added. "Is this good for our sport?" (Sonia might be my new hero.)
Fans also have struggled to grasp what are good scores and what are not. Under the old system, even the most casual of fans knew that the closer a skater was to 6.0, the better the program was. Now, even the die-hards don't always know what to make of a 200 — a near-record for the women or pairs, not even good enough for a man to crack the top 10.
That complexity, in a sport once known for its simple beauty, coupled with the lack of a female American star, has been blamed by many for the drop in interest in skating in the U.S.
Ten years after "Champions On Ice" alone had a schedule of 90-plus shows, "Stars on Ice" is the only U.S. tour left and has just 10 dates, beginning Saturday in Salt Lake City. Stars also will do 12 shows in Canada. (~sob)
At last month's U.S. championships, there were empty seats for most of the sessions, even with portions of the arena curtained off. NBC's prime-time coverage of the women's final Saturday drew a 2.4 rating and 3.7 million viewers. The men's final on Sunday afternoon had a 1.8 rating and 2.8 million viewers. (It's a little hard to know how good or bad this is since they don't give any basis for comparison.)
"The perception of skating, it changed a lot," Pelletier said. "It had such a bad rap and I think it was well-deserved, the bad rap. I think it could have been avoided.
"But at the same time, skating was never as bad as what people made it seem. Every sport has its problems," Pelletier added, pointing to concussions in hockey and football and an entire era of baseball tainted by performance-enhancing drugs." The ISU did the best they could to clean whatever they thought the mess did. It's not my place to say if they did it the right way."

Nancy Armour

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... d3df72b0fa
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Re: Статьи о катании || Articles about skating

Postby whitebamboo » 16 Feb 2012, 23:22

let`s talk wrote:

10 YEAR AFTER SALT LAKE, SKATING A SHADOW OF SELF
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... d3df72b0fa


Thanks so much for this article! :plush39: :plush39: I am not an expert, but I still want to say that I agree very much with some parts of it, and maybe not other parts so much.

Judging shenanigans have always been skating's dirty little secret. But it was one thing to look at scores and try to guess what countries were conniving and which judges were swapping marks, quite another to have it confirmed as it was in Salt Lake.
Russia's Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze initially won the pairs gold over Canada's Jamie Sale and David Pelletier by the slightest of margins, despite Sikharulidze stepping out of a double axel. But judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne tearfully told her fellow judges afterward that she had been pressured by French federation president Didier Gailhaguet to put the Russians first.
....


I have to confess that when people talk about the causes of the COP system in Salt Lake City, something always bothers me a little, because to my eyes, what happened at Salt Lake City had nothing whatsoever to do with the scoring system, and nothing to do with subjectivity. It had to do with ethics and politics, which no change of scoring is ever going to fix. I do agree that the new system may be (at least in some ways) less subjective, but I don't think it is more fair. There are plenty of controversial judging decisions under the COP system, and plenty of ways in which the COP system can be manipulated to get the "desired" results. One difference, though, is that it's now harder for general fans to question the results and easier for "experts" to intimidate others by saying "but you don't understand this and that component of the scoring", especially when it comes to the PCS.

"It's surreal that it happened to us. I never thought anything like that — big stories happen to others, I've never been involved in such a thing," Pelletier said. "We were just puppets in a show. I never took it personal (hmmm...rly??). We just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time. Or the right place at the wrong time, I don't know."


And why do we have to again hear S/P's point of view again, as if they were the only human beings whose lives were affected....If they claim to be "objective", they could have gotten what Elena and Anton had to say, too.

Le Gougne later recanted, but the damage was done. Scott Hamilton's howl of protest on the NBC broadcast could be heard clear across the country


I am glad the article mentioned the recant, that's a lot more than what you can say about most North American articles on the matter. And I like the fact that on some level it pointed out an important factor--the power of the NA media. (Yes, I know I harp on the NA media a lot, but I believe it.)

Figure skating will always be a subjective sport because there is no clock to race, no finish line to cross ahead of an opponent. But skating had to find a way to bring more objectivity — more transparency — to its judging, Cinquanta said.


And more transparency is why the names and countries of the judges are now secret. LOL

And the judging system has revolutionized ice dancing, once so corrupt medals may as well have been handed out before the event started. North American ice dancers, who once had little hope of doing more than cracking the top 10, now dominate the sport. Canada's Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are the reigning Olympic champions, while Meryl Davis and Charlie White last year became the first Americans to win a world dance title.


Um, what on earth does this mean? That the non-North American ice dancers who won before the COP system did so due to corruption? :plush43: I like V/M and love D/W, but if North American ice dancers are now winning, I sure would hope it is because they actually got better.

But critics say the current system has flaws, as well.
There is room to manipulate marks or prop skaters up through the component scores, largely still a matter of personal opinion even with established criteria to judge the individual components. A judge with a music background, for example, may view a skater's interpretation of "Tosca" very differently than someone without, and it's hard to challenge their interpretations.


Frankly, I don't have much confidence about how well judges can appreciate artistic depth, musical background or no. And most of the things I have heard from judges and other arbiters of what constitute "interpretation" and "good choreography" add nothing to that confidence.

Another criticism is that the points system doesn't penalize mistakes enough. Reigning world champion Patrick Chan had to put both hands down on a quadruple toe loop in the short program at Four Continents last Thursday, but it wasn't counted as a fall so he didn't receive a one-point deduction off his total score. He did get the maximum negative execution scores for the element, but the 7.30 points he received for the quad were still a point higher than Ross Miner got for a clean triple flip.


I agree with this. But the argument about how Chan didn't receive the 1-point deduction is logically flawed, given that others skaters who made the same or similar mistakes would get the deduction, as examples showed. (The technical expert who made the call was Canadian, by the way.) This particular example, in my humble opinion, is more about Chan than about the system--to be convincing, one should also look at how other skaters who fell one, two or three times fared. But I do agree that maybe one should reconsider how much deduction is appropriate for falls, And actually, I think by keeping the point values for fallen quads high, the ISU is in fact penalizing the skaters who actually can jump--and land--quads.

(By the way, once on LJ I mentioned this point to the NA expert Tony Wheeler (in connection with Chan), and asked his opinion about it. I am afraid that his reply (it wasn't an answer) did not impress me in its logic or lack thereof. He was agreeing with many that Chan shouldn't have won when he fell three times in one program, but if I recall correctly, he also refused to acknowledge there was anything arguable about Chan's PCS or GOEs, but rather pinned most of the problem on the quad being somehow overvalued, and even to some extent (as I read it) blamed Plushenko and his supporters for causing Chan's victories! :ps_ih: )

"To get more points, the skaters execute elements beyond their capabilities. As a consequence, the programs are filled with errors and falls which, of course, damage the general presentation," Sonia Bianchetti, a former Olympic-level judge and the first woman elected to an ISU office, said in an email. "Is it better to see a beautiful program, with a good choreography, skated to the music with good speed and flow and maybe an easier jump or jump combination, less-intricate footwork or more simple spins? Or rather programs with two or three falls on quads or triple-triple combinations, with travelled, slow and ugly spins or step sequences?
"To make the sport too difficult and demanding means that in a field of 30 skaters, let's say, maybe only a couple can do a decent program. The rest of the event is a falling contest," she added. "Is this good for our sport?"


I agree with this...well, only to some extent. Maybe it is true that right now, the current technical demands are making it too difficult to skate a clean program--so it's a matter of finding the right level. But personally, I don't want to ever see the "direction" of figure skating to go back to what it was before Vancouver, when the quad was so devalued in favor of other things like transitions. Evgeni fought so hard against that, at such a cost to himself. As Evgeni and Mishin have always said, figure skating is both sport and art, and it needs to go forward. It needs people willing to take risks. And the word "risk" is exactly what it means--rewarded above the safe route when it succeeds, and accept the losses when it doesn't.

I was told that Sonia Bianchetti was a big proponent of Lysacek over Plushenko at Vancouver, so maybe I'm also a bit influenced by that. But what she's saying here is somewhat consistent with that, for which I give her credit. What bothers me the most--I probably have gone on about this before--are the people who argue "but Lysacek skated clean" when it comes to Vancouver, as if they could point to a fall or step-out or hand-down on Evgeni's part, but then when it comes to Chan falling, they turn right around and say "but his program is more difficult". I find this kind of double standards to be deeply hypocritical.

Still, I say "somewhat", because although I understand what anyone considers "beautiful" is very subjective, I don't believe that the things she mentioned here are really enough to make a "beautiful" program. She talks about "good choreography", which is actually a phrase I personally don't like, as a total non-expert of course, because it is far too vague, and mixes together technical and aesthetic issues, which are unrelated and sometimes contradictory toward each other. (And from the way skaters are scored on CH, as far as I can tell the most nearly consistent criterion seems to be about how close the choreography follows the received wisdom as proclaimed by Lori Nichol, and also maybe about who the choreographer is. But even that is not an absolute.) She talks about "skate to the music", which...well, shouldn't that be a basic requirement? And then right after, "good speed and flow", which in some ways already contradicted the previous phrase about "to the music", since not all music are about speed. If you want to fit the music, then yes, maybe sometimes you have to slow a bit. It seems to me to be a rather narrow idea of what "beautiful" means, and no idea at all of what "art" means. Because I'll go out on a limb here: to me personally, I don't even think that even "beautiful", in what sense I think she means here, is always quite enough for "art". To me, what is truly beautiful and artistic also has to express something, something connected to one's self and also worth expressing, instead of being merely eye-pleasing. I am a Plushenko fan so I am obviously and utterly subjective, but I believe this is something Evgeni has, to a far, far greater extent than any other skater I can think of, and this is why, as another poster have said, there is something "supernatual" about his beauty on ice. Maybe this is a far too unrealistic standard in skating, because (again, in my own non-expert and subjective opinion) I don't think many current skaters are capable of this, but it is something special and should be rewarded. I also hope that how well the program actually serves this gets considered, and that there is a broader view of what constitutes a "good" program. (I know it can be argued that this is again too subjective for scoring, but then what are the PE and IN scores for, anyway?)

(I also noticed that she mentioned simplifying jumps, step sequences, spins--but I honestly want to ask her, why not transitions?)

....
That complexity, in a sport once known for its simple beauty, coupled with the lack of a female American star, has been blamed by many for the drop in interest in skating in the U.S.



Although I live here, I have to say that sorry, the U. S. isn't the world. People have said that mainstream Americans really can only truly accept nice middle-class girls as figure skaters, but those cultural stereotypes are, in the end, America's problem and its loss. Although the market for figure skating has shrunk in North America, I believe it is growing in other parts of the world, such as Asia.

And if we want to talk about appealing to the general audience--from the way many, many people reacted to the results of Vancouver--I think the general audience doesn't particularly accept the whole "perfect triple+transitions are better than quad" argument either (with caveats about how "perfect" Lysacek's triples actually were, of course). As audiences for an Olympic sport, I think people generally want to see the pushing of boundaries. They want to see heroes. Evgeni, despite how the NA media portrayed him, is a hero. This is one of his--many, many--appeals, on and off the ice.

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Re: Статьи о катании || Articles about skating

Postby clairdelalune » 17 Feb 2012, 15:02

whitebamboo wrote:(By the way, once on LJ I mentioned this point to the NA expert Tony Wheeler (in connection with Chan), and asked his opinion about it. I am afraid that his reply (it wasn't an answer) did not impress me in its logic or lack thereof. He was agreeing with many that Chan shouldn't have won when he fell three times in one program, but if I recall correctly, he also refused to acknowledge there was anything arguable about Chan's PCS or GOEs, but rather pinned most of the problem on the quad being somehow overvalued, and even to some extent (as I read it) blamed Plushenko and his supporters for causing Chan's victories! :ps_ih: )


Wheeler is not the only one to blame Plushenko and his fans, I´ve seen other "experts" on forums and I want to quote here a poster on Golden Skate.

Do you believe a lot of smart, passionate and life-long volunteers to this sport haven't thought of what you just said? There are also people like Joubert, Asada, Plushenko and their supporters who protested when Triple Axel/Quads were greatly penalized at the tune of of up to -5.2 for a fall as recent as 2010 for lower base value than today.


So, Pluhenko, Joubert, Asada & their fans are stupid , ok? And they know nothing about FS, ok? And people has to blame them for the failures, ok?! :plush34:
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Re: Статьи о катании || Articles about skating

Postby cekoni » 10 May 2012, 05:01

http://www2.isu.org/vsite/vnavsite/page ... ml?id=1060
Single & Pair Skating
03 May 2012

Scale of Values, Levels of Difficulty and Guidelines for marking Grade of Execution 2012-2013
ISU Communication 1724 (PDF): http://isu.sportcentric.net/db//files/serve.php?id=3486

Одиночное и парное катание - опубликован перевод на русский язык Коммюнике 1724 ИСУ.
Документ включает в себя официальные изменения в правилах на будущий сезон 2012-2013 гг.

Коммюнике 1724 (перевод на русский): http://fsrussia.ru/upl/docs/1724rus.pdf

http://www.examiner.com/article/opining ... n-overview

Opining on the ISU Judging System: An overview

There is just over a month away from the International Skating Union’s annual congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in June, where many proposals regarding figure skating and speedskating will be heard. For figure skating observers, chief amongst these proposals, and possible amendments should these proposals be accepted, will be those regarding the rules and regulations of the ISU Judging System (IJS).

Since the inception of the IJS, there have been a number of revisions to the scoring system, many of which have been for the better (Biellmann-mania anyone?). But there are still aspects of the IJS that are glaringly inadequate at providing a truer reflection of a skater’s program.

During the next week, Examiner Figure Skating will take a look at the current state of the IJS and how it can/should be changed in order to better suit skating and improve the fairness of scoring. What about the point values? How do you prevent difficulty from trumping error? Can we bring back technically-balanced programs? And did you know that most don’t understand how grades of execution (GOEs) are actually distributed?

And then, of course, there’s the question of some antiquated nomenclature that probably doesn’t hold up anymore as figure skating has evolved since the 6.0 era.

It will be technical, but it will be informative. So whether you are frustrated with competition results or just want to understand better about how the IJS works, stay tuned for my analysis of the ISU Judging System in the next few days.

Note: Though the agenda for the ISU Congress, which includes all the proposals that will be discussed, has been released, this analysis will be uninfluenced by proposals brought up by the ISU and its member countries so as to provide a fair analysis of the system as-is. Also, my technical expertise is best served in singles skating, though there is overlap, and so this analysis will lean more heavily toward rules for the singles disciplines.

-----------

http://www.examiner.com/article/opining ... and-reward

Opining on the ISU Judging System (1): Balancing risk and reward

With the ISU Congress coming up in a month and the International Skating Union just releasing the latest changes in the base values, grades of execution, and levels, it’s a good time to take a good analytical look at the ISU Judging System. The first look at the system explores the inherent struggle with risk and reward.

Base values during IJS history
A quick history of the risk-and-reward struggle in the post-6.0 era. Prior to the change in judging system, the quantifying of difficulty in a program was done at the judges’ discretion. An axel is more difficult than a lutz which is more difficult than a flip, and so on. How much more difficult? Well, that was a matter of what they thought, but the idea s that the judges should have a common consensus about that.

With the institution of the IJS and point values, jumps, spins, lifts, and steps all got quantified. But the question became whether or not the relative values were correct. It doesn’t matter whether a triple axel was worth 8.5 or 850, everything was about relativity.

As skaters and their teams became more familiar with the system, it was obvious that the system was risk-averse. It paid to be clean rather than difficult, and you saw more and more, particularly in the men’s event, that the overall technical difficulty of the programs was decreasing. Whereas the 2002 Olympics saw 15 quads attempted amongst the top ten guys in the free skate (11 were clean), the 2010 Olympics saw six quads attempted by the top ten in the free skate (two clean).

The result was a fairly drastic amendment to the system following Vancouver, with the institution of the distinction between “underrotated” and “downgraded” and the redistribution of base values to change the relative values of the jumps, with more difficult jumps now worth more points relatively than they did prior to the 2009-2010 season.

What happened next? Since Vancouver, the rule changes, which made the system much less risk-averse, and the return of the quad was imminent. During this past season, the overall difficulty of the programs in the men’s event went way up. At the World Championships in March, the top ten men tried 11 quads in the free skate, landing nine of them cleanly.

For ease of reference, I will refer to IJS during and before the 2009-2010 season as “pre-Vancouver” and everything thereafter “post-Vancouver,” even though the Vancouver Olympics were not the final competition of that season.

Risk and reward
But the overall distribution of risk and reward goes beyond just base value. One of the issues pre-Vancouver was that if you fell on an “underrotated” quad, the quad itself was valued at the triple equivalent, the grades of execution were automatically at -3, and you got a mandatory one-point deduction on top of it for the fall. That effectively negated the entire value of the quad.

Now, a fall on an “underrotated” quad would give you more points, as the underrotated quad is worth 70% of the original value of the quad (only a “downgraded” quad would bring it down to the value of the triple), and the original value of the quad was higher. Plus, a -3 GOE for a quad pre-Vancouver was equivalent to a loss of 4.80 points, where as a -3 GOE for a quad now is equivalent to a loss of 3.00 points.

So whereas the pre-Vancouver version of the IJS was too harsh on mistakes, the post-Vancouver version is too lenient. The reward now is weighed toward simply taking the risk, but a fairer system should weigh the reward heavily toward the successful execution of that risk. Clean programs, therefore, don’t quite get the credit they deserve, particularly on the men’s side.

More numerically, let’s take the quad toe, which is worth 10.30 currently, if it were to be executed decently. One can imagine that a superbly-done quad toe would get something like a 14, a quad with a slight touchdown of the hand would be scored 8, a quad with a flipout would be scored 6, a quad with a fall would be scored a 3. But as it is in the IJS now, a superbly-done quad is around 12-13, a slight hand down is around 9, a flipout is around 8, and a fall is a 6.30 (one-point deduction inclusive).

My point is that there should be a larger distribution between an element that is well done and an element that is poorly done, which brings me to the issue of GOEs.

Grades of execution too limited
What most skating observers (many pundits included) don’t realize is that a -3 GOE does not always mean a -3.00 from the element. The -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3 distinction of GOEs might as well just be ---, --, -, 0, +++, ++, +, because the actual deduction from the GOE is based on the base value of the element.

It’s understandable why that is the case. If the GOE were a literal translation, a fall on an element worth 1.00 would equate a final marking of that element as -3.00 (-3 GOE and the -1.00 fall deduction). Now, some might find it fair to give a skater a negative mark for a fall on, say, a single jump, but for me, that would be going too far.

My issue with the -3 to +3 range is that it’s not enough to distinguish the differences between mistakes, and it gives a bit too much leeway on the positive GOE values. Let’s take a look at the two sides of the story.

Negative GOEs
It’s tough to understand how mistakes are differentiated in the system. How exactly does a slightly two-footed landing on a jump garner the exact same GOE as a flipout of a jump? One of the issues is that -3/-2/-1 is just not enough to distinguish between the egregiousness of mistakes.

The seriousness of an error has to do with how well the skater is able to control the element from start to finish. Skaters know how poorly they executed an element, and the judges know how to distinguish one mistake from another. Of course, that inherent knowledge is what the 6.0 system was based on. But because of the limited nature of -3/-2/-1, a mistake like a turnout between jumps in a combo is deducted just as much as putting both hands down on the landing of a jump.

Positive GOEs
How many times have we seen a pretty run-of-the-mill execution of a spin by a top skater get +2 or +3 whereas the same run-of-the-mill execution of a similar spin by a second-tier skater get 0? Yes, there are criteria that an element has to meet in order to warrant a +1 or +2 or +3 (known in IJS language as “bullets”), but it doesn’t work that quantifiably in real life. GOE inflation is around, whether you like it or not.

The question is, how do you truly distinguish a well-executed element that has that intangible specialness to it (like a Lambiel or Czisny spin) from just a well-executed element? When is a +3 not just a +3? That’s a tough call, and it certainly comes down to subjectivity. But that’s when accountability is necessarily a good thing.

Balancing risk and reward
So how would the points system work better? Rewarding both difficulty and clean execution should be the main priority. To that end, a larger distribution of GOEs would help, particularly on the negative side of the equation. And true to the relative equivalents of the GOE with respect to the difficulty of the element, a return to bigger GOE payoffs for very well-done AND difficult elements would make the marking of the elements fairer.

How do you not overly penalize mistakes and disincentivize difficulty like it was pre-Vancouver? Bring up the base values even more. More on base value in the next part of the analysis.

COMING UP: The plight of jump combinations
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Re: Статьи о катании || Articles about skating

Postby cekoni » 17 May 2012, 04:09

...........

http://www.examiner.com/article/opining ... mbinations

Opining on the ISU Judging System (2): The plight of jump combinations

After an analysis of how grades of execution could be better calibrated to reflect an element’s execution, the next part of this critical look at the ISU Judging System turns to a chronic issue that has plagued the IJS from the beginning – base values, particularly of jump combinations and sequences. Steps have been taken to make the quantifying of elements, particularly jumps, fairer. But for me, problems remain. We will explore those issues in this part of the IJS analysis.

All combinations are not created equal
Why, oh, why is the value of a combination simply the addition of the base values of the jumps that are included? The common argument is that there is a cap on jumping passes in both the short program and the free skate, so doing higher difficulty combinations will necessarily allow skaters to put more difficulty in their programs.

Well, yes and no.

It’s true that ladies who opt to do a combination with a backend triple jump in their free skates will be able to put more triple jumps in the program, therefore increasing their total base value. And it’s true that without a backend triple combination, the men would not be able to do a quad jump with eight triples in their free skates.

But there’s a reason why we’ve seen the proliferation of double axel-triple toe combinations in ladies’ free skates and triple toe-triple toes in the short program. And there’s a reason we see fewer quad-triple combinations even in men’s programs that include a quad. In a quantitative system, skaters will take the easiest route to the highest base value. As I wrote in the first part of the IJS analysis, base values are only as good as their relative values.

Ask any skater or coach, and they will tell you that a triple toe on the end of a triple lutz is exponentially more difficult than a triple toe on the end of a double axel. But as the IJS has it, they are valued exactly the same, and that’s because the value of all combinations are equal to the addition of the values of the jumps that are part of the combination. A triple lutz-triple toe, therefore, is worth 10.10 (the lutz is 6.00 and the toe is 4.10).

Why is this unfair? Take, for example, a ladies’ short program. Currently, a skater who does a triple lutz-triple toe, a solo triple toe, and a double axel would accrue the exact same base value as another skater who does a triple toe-triple toe, a solo triple lutz, and a double axel. This completely defies common sense. And it is precisely this discrepancy that has led to the proliferation of triple toe-triple toe combos in the short program for the ladies. Why risk a more difficult combo when you can do a much easier one and still get the same base value?

Still not convinced? Take an extreme. If you're a skating fan, you have no doubt witnessed two-time European bronze medalist Kevin Van Der Perren and his triple-triple-triple combinations. How exactly is doing that combination the same difficulty relative to doing those three jumps by themselves?

Relativity is always the key word. A system that better values the relative difficulty of combinations would increase the value of the combination based on the jumps that the combination includes. Much like the after-two-minute multiplier that jumps get in the free skate, a combination should have a multiplier that speaks to how tough the combo actually is.

What about sequences?

The same goes for jump sequences, a term that wasn’t used quite as often prior to the advent of the IJS. Jump sequences currently take on a value worth 80% of the sum of the jumps involved. Again, how is that remotely true when you talk about the relative difficulty. Anytime you put two jumps together, no matter if they are in combination or in sequence, it is more difficult than doing those two jumps individually.

And yes, two jumps done in combination is more difficult than two jumps done in sequence, as defined by the IJS. But two jumps done in sequence is more difficult than two jumps done individually. So once again, there has to be a differentiation in order to keep things fair. A multiplier, also taking into account the difficulty of the jumps attempted, would certainly be useful.

Things get trickier, though, with sequences, because there are different ways to accomplish sequences. For example, a sequence with two triple toes connected with a falling leaf and an inside three is more difficult than a sequence with two triple toes connected with a mazurka, outside three, and a step. The multiplier would have to adjust for these slight variations.

For non-skaters who wonder about these relative difficulties, it’s often about body stabilization and control. Solo jumps are the easiest because you allow yourself to do all the setup for the jump. Combinations are the most difficult because you have less control over the setup for the second jump as a result of the landing of the first jump. Sequences are therefore in between – the addition of extra easier elements after the first jump allows the skater to restabilize him/herself before taking off for the second jump. And the more things a skater does to restabilize, the easier that sequence becomes.

Doesn’t this just sound like more numbers?
Yes, it does. But that’s the way skating judging has evolved. If we are to continue along this path of quantification, it is necessary for the quantification to be as reflective as possible of what the judges would have in their heads if this were the 6.0 system.

A lot of people say that figure skating isn’t quantifiable. In some ways, that’s true. But in other ways, it can be. What the IJS is (or at least should be) striving to do is translate what a judge would be thinking in their heads into a quantity that is less abstract than a “5.2” or a “5.8.”

But of course, base values are not the only thing that can be improved.

COMING UP: Male vs. female
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