Yesterday, the men’s finals…quite a battle. When you have 5 serious contenders it’s a battle; and both Jane and I favor the men’s events because the athletics are spectacular, and, well, the scenery is always good. The standing ovation of the night went to Ryan Bradley, whose dandified comedy routine brought down the house. Ryan had trouble in his short program the day before; if he’d nailed that, he’d have been going to Vancouver as a contender: as was, he’s an alternate, watching from Colorado Springs. And it didn’t turn out the way we we hoped; but it was a good result. We stayed late to watch the novice men (read: kids); and juniors. And we can definitely report there are some jewels on the way, one to three of whom may hit the senior ranks next year, and make a run for the top. If all three move up at once, that would be an interesting number of years—but I’m not sure what the cut-off age is. And they’re nice kids, good sportsmen and really, really outstanding.
The Men’s Finals…Figure Skating Nationals…
by CJ | Jan 18, 2010 | Journal | 8 comments
8 Comments
Submit a Comment Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I missed Ryan Bradley’s free skate, but saw Jeremy Abbott, Evan Lysevic and Johnny Weir’s free skates. Because two of my favorite male skaters are Philippe Candeloro and Rudy Galindo, I lean toward Johnny Weir (these three guys should have “No Fear” stamped on their backs!). Abbott had an excellent skate, reminds me of Todd Eldridge. Lysevic recalls Boitano and Petrenko, for me. He’s got excellent coaches (Yuka Sato and husband), but changing his program right before Nationals as a “test” is more than odd. Been done before, but…I dunno.
I looked at the list of names for the women’s singles for Nationals, and all I could think was, “God, I miss Michelle Kwan!”
I like Sasha Cohen, me; but I think events and time are against her. The sport is evolving; and I think our women’s training is lagging behind the rest of the world in some respects. More athletic training; more strength; and I think the USFSA should emphasize perspective—younger skaters male and female should be aware of who’s gone before, how they competed, what they did that worked. And right now, most disastrously, there’s not enough understanding about the judging system among people teaching the basics. A young skater that gets by with a flutz or a wrap is going to have to unlearn that, painfully, and with loss of momentum. A skater that doesn’t learn that a spin has mandatory revolutions is going to have to adjust their mental time-clock later—again, with a problem. I think the first outreach the USFSA needs to make is to people instructing, and develop a program that will teach healthy, safe technique that will be scored well.
Carolyn, resources I suspect you aren’t aware of but will find reassuring:
USFSA coaches continuing ed requirements:
http://www.usfsa.org/content.asp?menu=coaches&id=378
USFSA Sports Science & Medicine:
http://www.usfsa.org/Athletes.asp?id=226
Professional Skaters Association — continuing education:
http://www.skatepsa.com/Educational-Events-Programs-PSA.htm
USFSA Sports Science & Medicine:
http://www.usfsa.org/Athletes.asp?id=226
USFSA Permanent Committees:
http://www.usfsa.org/content.asp?menu=leadership&id=202
All coaches who wish to be credentialed (i.e. allowed to coach or put a skater on the ice) at Nationals (whether “Big”, Adult, or Collegiate), Sectionals, Regionals, & local (“Non-qualifying”) competitions MUST be a PSA member & MUST complete specified ongoing continuing ed. “NO EXCEPTIONS” <— USFSA caps, not mine.
What happened to my post???
I suspect it never posted because of the links listing numerous USFSA & Professionals Skaters Association (PSA) resources.
The post also included USFSA’s no-exceptions requirement of PSA membership & ongoing continuing education for ALL competition coaches — from Nationals (Standard-track, Adult, & Collegiate) all the way down to local competitions.
If this is the first time you have posted something with a link, then CJ needs to review it to be sure you are not some nasty spammer. 🙂
Yep, you got caught in our miraculous spam filter—it never catches spammers, ONLY gets our own members, and I ask myself why I maintain it operative. 😉 It gets triggered when you post 3 or more links at once. Thanks for those links, OSG. I knew you were a fount of information.
US Swimming has done the same with its coaches. In fact, if a coach even misses their recert for CPR, then they have to leave the pool deck and another coach has to take over, even if it’s a coach from a competing team.
One thing I do miss in skating scoring is “ordinals”. I feel like they were much maligned by commentators who failed basic maths and statistics at university. My field of research and study is estimation, and in the case of judging ice skating, that resembles a multi-sensor estimation problem. The issue is that absent a rigorous grading scale, the scores of each judge can be biased and skewed in a way that a straight average or sum of the scores. So even if two judges agree that skater A is better than skater B, one could have marked skater B down far enough down, that a third judge’s score on skater C could land skater C in second place.
With ordinals, two of our judges agreed on the ordering of skaters A, B, and then C, and so the results make a little more sense.
OK, that said, I do see that the variation in judging should be much less under the new system, however, these errors of bias and scale still exist and may actually be worse now that one skater’s score may be based on different judges than another skater’s
OK, any further and I will be completely showing my ignorance of figure skating itself, as opposed the mathematics of it.
– S