Xen

He's got too much class for it...or he's planning a takeover of the ISU sometime....

Probably equally...I want to plan a trip to Japan and pray for the future of Asian skating at both shrines, since some governing body is being an idiot about stuff.

@xeyra hope you don't mind, cause let's just call out bias for what it is, bias! It's cause someone's idea of an ideal skater is getting continuously trounced by a bunch of asian skaters, never mind said ideal skater is a lot more humble and probably do not want the ISU moving mountains and causing controversy to help him win. No skater wants to be rumored to have won due to rules manipulation and not their skill, least of all the ideal skater mentioned by a certain B******** The root of the issue is how skating is funded in Western Europe and even the US, but the rules changes may create more problems in getting resources there, thereby killing the sport in Western Europe, rather than aid it. https://planethanyu.com/topic/3-general-yuzuru-chat/?do=findComment&comment=75381 @Valkyria I wonder if this would even get passed. I'm not sure how Japan fed would feel since ladie's and men's, their best ones, will be affected. On the ladies side, the BV would already hit Russian and Japanese ladies the most, since they are the ones training the quads and 3As. From the ladies, this would definitely help the US gals, but I don't see that many rising stars in western europe ladies scene. But it would not "save" the US gals since the Japanese and Russian ladies aren't exactly slouches on the triple jumps either. For the men, I don't see anyone benefiting in the immediate 4 years after this Oly. I would also be a bit amused by Canadian Fed or Chinese fed getting behind this, since Canada has Gogolev in the wings. US has plenty of quadsters among the men. And China's always been good at Pairs technical components. Canada would also be slightly burnt by the pairs throws point reduction, as would France. I see more downsides to this than upsides, so I really would need to ask which Fed would support this proposal, when the most we can say is that everyone will get hurt, and in some parts some feds will be hurt more than others.

Well that bias is showing....news to Bianchetti, with the way skating is in western europe, I hate to say this but even the rules changes might not stop Russia and Japan in its tracks. Your real issue is to figure out how to fund your ideal skaters in western europe, not just clamp down harder on Russia and Japan. Also, I wonder if Javi is really comfortable about you using him to kill skating...

Would love for Plush and Yagudin to unify for once and tell ISU to stop being stupid. Heck, possibly even Evan could get involved.... I'm also looking at the point system and wondering how the hell does this help US men's skaters...it doesn't especially on the 3A and the 4Lz especially since quite a number of US men's (nate and Vincent) do them.

...well then Chinese fed, I think it's time we got Alibaba of Taobao fame to get interested in figure skating, right? I wonder what would happen if Taobao decides to start a figure skating fund. Also, wouldn't South Korea get hit too?

Well, what would happen if Boyang jumps that 4F before the rule change? I guess that 4F value will just go down a bit? Sorry guys, my saltiness is real today....

The GOEs and PCS scores would be ripe for political manipulation, which would then decrease the profile of the sport etc etc. If anything you would think that ISU's idea of their ideal skater is actually Yuzuru...but they do seem quite okay with ditching him.

So their ideal skater is Mitsuki Sumoto, who recently won a JPG event without a quad, against a couple guys with quads? But ISU darlings, he's not North American....and mind you that's without a change to the system, just the judges applying rules for once.

The article mentions the change in BV possibly coming by Beijing. I think that one he can break decently. The changes to the program- to technical and artistic, is where I take the most issue with, since ISU does not define things well. The system if not done well, will be broken, but not in a good way a la Hanyu, but a bad way-ie we might as well see compulsory figures with flamboyent arm movements done to Carmina Burana win over a more elaborate but subtle program (like Ave Maria, Hope and Legacy etc). Technical might be less prone to politiking, but artistic, oh boy is the politiking thick.... I would find those 3 being an interesting combo, maybe throw in Medvedeva, and Jin later on. Then the opinions could be very balanced. Pairs, well Tong Jian (of Pang/Tong) has decent english, so I think it's okay. Yuna and Mao both could work wonders as ambassadors for the sport if they get involved. The real issue though, is even if skaters are willing to get involved, would the vested interests that exist in the ISU allow them to get involved? That's why I joke that Yuzu could potentially march into the ISU with a giant piggy bank of UA, ANA, Lotte, Edea, Honda, Toyota etc all willing to help fund stuff and still get turned down by the ISU. I could send my post to the ISU and I imagine it would get ignored. Mainly because it would sound like a complaint and not an actual solution. Being a manager sort at work, its the solutions that are valued, not the complaints. So the real solution would be potentially if we could go through hypothetical scenarios and systems with ISU officials or judges or opinion leaders, and get hypothetical solutions to test stuff out that can then be sent to ISU. The real issue is the politiking and the potential corruption, which also affects funding. Because skating has a subjective component to it, it is always prone to politiking and corruption which makes sponsors more hesitant to throw money. The COP system has helped since now there is a clear system for judging jumps, and despite all the issues, I think it is possible for even PCS to be more balanced. Now if they follow along this path, it might be possible for a major corporate private sponsor to come in and give money to the ISU so skating is better funded, higher profile, and skating is a bit more independent of these large TV sponsors. And actually having a large private corporate sponsor might actually help increase some transparency. But so far, with things as they are, none are willing to step in.

I am surprised that Japan has not said anything....which country has kept skating afloat these past couple of years? The changes aren't going to really benefit the US- the resources issue will still persist, if not get exacerbated further, by the change to a 2 programs system with multiple medals.

No no, see what Angry Yuzu might do is take over and become the ISU president....and the problem is that what the ISU is doing is saying none of the current skaters are what they want. Not Yuzu, not Javi, not Patrick, not Boyang, not Nathan and probably not even Shoma. Heck possibly not even Jason Brown. What would be amusing to see is if some of the guys, like PChan, Javi and Yuzu get pissed off enough that they actually try to enter the ISU as a vice pres or as a consultant or as a president even. That would seriously raise the profile of the ISU, possibly considering the sponsorships they have privately, could there even be more commercial sponsorships for figure skating as a whole? More grants for skaters? Regardless of what ISU feels, these skaters are loved by their feds, so what the ISU is doing seems to be in isolation of the feds. But given that the ISU's recent move seems more like a reactive power grab, I doubt they'd even accept any of those 3 skaters as possible candidates. That is the sad part.

Well today Mt Irene exploded courtesy of the ISU. You know, we always joke that after Yuzu leaves, there will be no other skater like him...I feel like after Yuzu leaves and these rules really do go into effect, there will be no more figure skating left. Like the 2022 Beijing generation will be the last real generation.... Not surprised- Boyang is the biggest threat in the next quad cycle against Nate (should he stay) and Vincent Zhou. Start throwing shade early....

Well actually there was a mess up. The pinnacle of artistic is suppose to be compulsory figures done to music to be somewhat equivalent to footwork. Sex bomb got Disqualified because following Plush's instructions, you actually have to jump, and that caused another breakage in the new rules since artistic wasn't suppose to consider technical elements and all that.....

Oh sweety, the pinnacle of artistic is suppose to be Sex Bomb. Did you miss that memo?

I recall somewhere someone said that ISU seriously considered condensing men's and ladies' programs to just 1 program (1 single long program). Is this the reason behind this separation? To see if one of the programs (long or short) can be killed? Edit: if we assume most rules changes are due to politics, someone needs to explain to me the politics behind this recent change. The BV decrease hurts everyone equally, let's be honest here. But the technical and artistic program separation is...well does anyone really benefit from it? By the time this is in place, Beijing 2022 is over, and who exactly can the US and Europe field on the technical side. Artistically, well if this change happens Russia and Japan will also move to have more "artistic" skaters in place to dominate. Politically this doesn't change the landscape much. The issue, as mentioned over in the Spanish Skaters thread in Igloo world, is funding funding funding. It all comes down to resources, which ISU is not doing a thing about. The change to 2 programs and multiple medals may even hurt resources more, because now federations need to decide if they will gun for one category, or both, and maybe costs will double if they gun for both. No ISU, just...please spend more time and energy in doing judges trianing, coaching training and figuring out how to help smaller feds help their skaters. Not this....

...does that mean in China if we publish similar news we can staple an image of Nathan to the front? Low is low.... And gotta love Brian's snark. "Yes ISU, I get where you are going with this, thank you for making sure after my complete package skaters we won't get another couple of them in a long time..."

Well I didn't expect the BV changes to really make sense...the COP system actually consulted skaters, but I wonder if the recent BV changes did. If not, we can tell ISU, we can tell.....

They either could not reduce it any further without going to 0...or they decided not enough people are doing it so yeah, leave it as is and once people do it enough times, we can reduce it to nil....

I took a look at the article and the posts in that other forum, where apparently people aren't too thrilled either despite their harking back to the good ole days of compulsory figures all the time. This is probably a long post, so avoid reading it if you don't want to fall asleep. Or bring coffee. Sorry guys, I trained as a lawyer, so lengthy is easy for me. I'm extremely baffled by this change proposal. The BV not as much (somewhere I'm sure ISU always liked the 6.0 better), but the separation is just a mess waiting to happen. If there is an ulterior motive for this (aka Hanyu and Jin broke the system get it back under control), then this is pretty discrimminatory, and not the direction that the ISU should go. The current crop of men and ladies are selling the sport, and frankly, let's just face this- which sells more tickets, ladies and men or ice dance? I haven't paid much attention to ice dance since Anassina and Peizerat honestly. If ISU does not have a decent idea of what an ideal skate or ideal skater is, aka the complete package, then they should allow the skaters to push the sport and define it-if it is ideal, they will be rewarded for it by the audience-as has always been the case. The idea of trying to control the ideal is counter-intuitive. You can't really engineer ideals, just like you can't engineer passion. So let's assume that there is no ulterior motive against Hanyu and Jin etc for this (heck the biggest loser in this is probably Shoma!) separation of technical and artistic program, my concern is how they actually want to bring this about. The article gives no mention, and maybe it's not going to be as drastic a change, but the logistics of this could be a nightmare, and create more problems than solutions. In the end, all that work might result in something not too different from the format it is today, while everyone has to go through the painful progress. 1) What is a technical program? Good question. The truth of the matter is, there is no way to really separate out the artistic and the technical. Are GOE's technical or artistic? If GOEs are technical, indicating the polish of your technical elements, then why are there artistic points such as footwork and incorporation with the music and choreography? So, you may ask, why not just remove the GOEs? But if you remove the GOE's from the consideration, then a well polished jump technique, which even casual watchers understand that equates to better technical ability, would get the same score as a sloppy one, meaning BV alone doesn't do the job. So based on the above point, it would be hard to create a technical program on just BV alone-GOE's will have to get involved. So then the question becomes, how far do we take into consideration choreography and artistic elements? If we have a program where it's nothing but jump, spin, step sequence, maybe they could go the route of compulsory figures. AKA every skater has to perform a certain set of elements and get graded for it. This does serve to create a bar for entering the long. But then we all know what happened with compulsory figures (aka it went away due to not enough audience draw). Lastly, there is nothing indicating that completion of a minimum point in the technical is required to enter the artistic. It simply says that those are 2 different programs. Well, does that mean that now the technical can take longer time, aka 4 mins? If we go the way of compulsory testing of jumps, spins and moves in the fields, doesn't that just hyper-extend out the time needed to test through everyone? Never mind how boring it could be in the ladies or men's field, has anyone considered how this would look for pairs if anything similar occurs? In the end, the technical might just become today's short program.... 2) What is the artistic program? Again, if the technical program is completely divorced from artistic, does that mean anyone and everyone can enter the artistic? What is the bar you have to pass to enter? What's the point of differentiating seniors/juniors/novice skaters if jumps are not brought into consideration? Will we get programs where no jumps are done and it's just step sequences and spins? There's nothing indicating that should be avoided-in which case, what will be the difference between men's/ladies' artistic program and solo ice dance? If artistic is completely divorced from technical, where there is less a barrier to entry, it would probably take longer to go through all the programs, which leads again to broadcasting times and money. So what if ISU then introduces technical minimums components to the artistic program-well skaters can always report they can do a technical minimum, but then do less no? And to go back into the issue of jumps in a program. Much as I also bemoan the issue of PCS inflation for technically harder elements, I'm not sure if a reverse to the point where a skater A with lovely spins and step sequences, but only double jumps or single jumps or easier jumps in general, can potentially over take a skater B with harder jumps, decently hard spins and step sequences (just not as good as skater A) so long as they look choreographically better, is a good end point. If anything it'll cause more revolt than the Lysacheck/Plushenko incident. When all technical is equal, then yes the PCS inflation is an issue. But we should also acknowledge that being able to pull off tehcnically difficult, harder elements off to a music is harder than pulling a technically easier element off to the music. If this is not properly rewarded, then what's stopping us from having all single jumps programs? At which point, why not have novice, juniors and seniors just compete together in the artistic portion? What Brian mentions as a concern is a huge issue waiting to happen. There are plenty of skaters who can be flamboyent, with lots of arm movements. But footwork is about your feet, not your arms, and it's too easy to award a dramatic arms-flailing program too much versus a more subtle but footwork heavy program. People and judges alike too easily equate dramatic with good choreography, and there's a real possible danger that an actual dramatic but less technically competant skater will win in the artistic program against a more technically competant but more expressively subtle skater. 3) The logisitics of it all If ISU wants to have these 2 separate programs all go 4 mins so they feel like individual programs and competitions, then the hit to skater's stamina is huge. Yes, skaters can choose to just win the artistic title or just the technical title, but who the heck will? Have you ever heard of a skater saying yeah, let me just win the small medals. Most skaters will gun for the combined title honestly. For the men, okay maybe a miracle man can do it, but the ladies side, that girl has to be superhuman. Next longevity. If they are 2 separate programs all going the full 4 mins, the hit to skaters stamina can also mean a potential hit to skater longevity. I honestly cannot imagine a single skater being comfortable winning the artistic portion if they feel that technically they have not done as difficult a program as others. I also cannot imagine skaters holding back on quads once they have it-look at Mao and her 3A despite the UR always being hit. So potentially you have 2 4 minute programs that all have quads. If ISU worried that the current men's fields is reducing skater longevity and safety, well I hope they are ready to lose more hair. Next up, the BV issue and the GOEs....I'm also in the camp of "not sure if this really helps resolve the issue." I also found it ironic that the article has this little tidbit: "In 2017, each of the top four men had significantly higher TES than PCS, with none getting more than 44 percent of his total from PCS. By percentage, in order of finish, the PCS were: Hanyu, 43.5 percent; Shoma Uno, 44; Boyang Jin, 42; and Nathan Chen, 43.8." This is interesting that guys who had clean skates did not get as high a percentile of PCS, but guys with more problematic technicals (Chen here) had PCS take up a higher portion of their final skate. Well, it could mean that the PCS and TES tie is a bit less, but not necessarily in a positive way since an unclean skate seemed to have garnered higher pcs in one case. So what if we actually have multipliers in the pcs components for clean vs unclea skates? Would that balance it out? The pairs BV changes also baffle me-if it's about safety in general, just take out quads anything. Really, quad twists are as dangerous as quad throw jumps, if not more dangerous since the lady can't actually save herself as easily. Lastly, does the ISU not have enough stuff to do? They could really just spend more time promoting skating in smaller federations (joint training or coaching seminars), figure out how to train judges, or maybe figure out some way to compensate judges to try to reduce bribery or corruption etc. The change in BV or this new technical/artistic c**p isn't the key.

This is disgusting. When I have time, I will write a longer post, but ISU seems to have lost its own idea of the ideal skate or ideal skater. But now, if it sees a skater individually push for an ideal, then clamp down on it. Good job destroying your baby ISU....

You know, I was just at the official disney store in Shanghai this past saturday, and located plenty of Poohs...I fact I have a plush pooh toy dangling off my skating bag. =D

Other than just the introvert vs extrovert thing, we're also forgetting that for him, his friends even at TCC are part of his "work" life. Even if I'm really good friends with people at work, I don't really want to socialise with them on the weekends all the time, since it would remind me of work, and that might create stress. If the work colleague and I have few interests or hobbies in common, we might just talk about work a bit too much. Besides, suspect that Yuzu has friends from Japan whom he can chat with occassionally online or via games. While not the same thing as face to face conversations, it might be enough to give him some social life and help cope with the loniless of living overseas for your career.

I also didn't do skating alone for long- pretty much started lessons as soon as I could. You could look into group lessons (assuming you're in US), which also helps if you're scared of skating alone. As for the whizzing 12 year olds- is there a part of the rink that's a bit more closed off? Usually in the US at least, we had a center section that had cones marking its corners, usually used only by the skaters who were practicing on public sessions. As for control-are you able to stop yet? I'm not sure what skill level you are now. Are there sessions where there are less people? Such as weekend mornings?

Thank you again @gladi for the translation! I won't repeat anything anyone else said here, but reading it warms the cockles of my heart. And well, I guess Brian's adapted to this now-better let the Yuzu-train do crazy stuff in his sight than out of his sight. The hair's going to go anyways...