Jumping, age, music, and grades: how figure skating has changed in 25 years. Details

Figure skating competitions at the Winter Olympic Games will begin in Milan on February 6. Over the past 25 years, this sport has undergone changes that have not been seen in any other discipline. The judging system has changed dramatically, various trends have come and gone, and the fashion for music has changed. What figure skating has become by the second quarter of the 21st century — in the material of Izvestia.

Evaluations

• A quarter of a century ago, it was impossible to imagine that figure skating could exist without 6.0 grades and an evaluation system built around them. The principles on which this format of allocation of places at competitions was based have been in effect in one form or another for decades. The essence of such a system was that there was a maximum score of 6.0 points, and athletes could only repeat it or approach it. The judges did not rate the skaters for their personal results, but immediately compared them with each other in terms of which of them was closest to perfection.

• The six-point system, although it allowed relatively fair allocation of participants to their places, had several significant flaws. Under her rule, the winner of any tournament was determined by a majority vote of the judges, who were not required to justify their opinion. For example, in the athletics decathlon, any athlete can understand by the sum of his points for certain types of programs what he performed better or worse than usual in order to keep this in mind in the future. In figure skating, there was no such feedback, which made the judges almost unaccountable to athletes and fans. Athletes who were limited by a score of 6.0 could not compare their own and others' performances at different tournaments, set records and look for ways to improve their performances that would really affect the chance of winning a medal.

• The judges were required to compare the skaters' performances with each other, but it was necessary to give marks immediately after the end of the program. This led to an unfair advantage for those who performed at the end over those who took to the ice at the beginning. The judges constantly had to take into account that if they rated the first participants too highly, they would not have enough space to evaluate the strongest last group. If the favorite who performed at the end suddenly skated badly, then it was difficult for him to get too low a score, which the judges had already awarded to the previous participants.

• The judging scandal at the 2002 Olympic Games ended the era of 6.0 ratings. Two years later, the new system came into force. In this case, the athletes' performance is divided into several elements and components, for each of which the judges give an assessment. The maximum possible scores still exist in this system, but now the final result has become more diverse and similar to what athletes from objective sports show.

• The new judicial system has continued to improve and seek a balance for several years. It constantly reviews the cost of individual elements so that it fairly reflects the complexity of their execution. At first, jumps performed at the end of programs also received bonuses. But after Russian Alina Zagitova began receiving this coefficient for all jumps in 2018 and thereby bypassing her rivals, this rule was abolished. Also, over time, the number of grades for the presentation was reduced from five to three, which were more subjective than grades for technical elements.

Jumping

• The new judging system has announced a chase for every hundredth of a point. This led to the beginning of the era of quadruple jumps, without which neither men nor women would be able to win any major tournament. At the end of the 20th century, men managed to master four turns only from the sheepskin coat and salchow, but when the most complex elements began to give a tangible advantage, the quadruple lutz, flip, Rittberger and the most difficult of all jumps, the axel, were studied one after another.

• The girls staged the same chase, and for them the impetus for the quadruple jumps was the very "Zagitova amendment", which abolished the allowances for late jumps. Before that, only Japanese Miki Ando was able to perform a pure quadruple salchow once, and then Russian Alexandra Trusova showed how to perform quadruple toe loop, flip and lutz. After her, only a few skaters managed to repeat one of these elements.

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• But if men's quadruple jumps have become commonplace and an obligatory element, then for girls the struggle between those who are ready to perform them and those who rely on a pure demonstration of triple jumps is still ongoing. Practice has shown that skaters can consistently make four turns only at a very young age, and they can score the points needed to win by performing less traumatic elements. In pair skating, where it is theoretically possible to perform quadruple jumps, and there have even been such attempts, such a struggle has not even begun — this type has remained technically conservative.

Age

In its early days, figure skating was a sport for all ages. Both underage participants and those who had changed their fourth decade could successfully perform, and this applied to singles, pair skating and ice dancing specialists. But by the 1990s, it became more difficult for experienced athletes to keep up with the more technical skating of young skaters, although stable and beautiful performance could still bring victories.

• The pursuit of quadruple jumps in the 2010s turned figure skating into a young sport in which those over 30 no longer have major roles. This was especially true for women's single skating, where there was no longer anything sensational about winning the national championship before obtaining a passport, winning the Olympic Games before graduating from high school, and ending your career before coming of age.

• Figure skating is immersed in discussions about how right it is that the sport has reached such an extreme. As a result, the rapid rejuvenation of figure skating was stopped. The age limit, which allowed performing in adult competitions at the age of 15, was raised by two years and became fully operational this season. Although this threatens to reduce the average difficulty and entertainment of performances, more actors who can claim medals will be involved in figure skating. The Winter Olympic Games in Milan, where both young and experienced figure skaters will be favorites, will have to confirm this.

Music

• In a quarter of a century, another important aspect of figure skating has changed, which adds to its fans, and that is music. Now athletes, coaches and choreographers can choose any composition, as long as it does not violate copyrights and has the desired duration. But back in the early 21st century, the rules were stricter. Only dancers could perform to songs with words, and singles and couples were waiting for the 2014/15 season to expand their accompaniment.

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• The removal of all restrictions has led to a huge variety of music in figure skating. It became possible to perform to a song of any genre, not even associated with figure skating. Athletes began to choose not only those compositions that the public likes, but also something personal. The choice of music has also increased due to film soundtracks, which add context to the images created on ice. Many people try to remind of their nationality through music and include folk motifs.

• However, despite the complete carte blanche in the choice of musical accompaniment, the tradition of honoring the classics has not disappeared from figure skating. Melodies from "Swan Lake", "Carmen", "The Nutcracker" and "Bolero" are still the standard to which each skater performed at different periods of his career. The judges still like classical music the most, and therefore many figure skaters, aiming at victory, leave experiments aside.