Re: Wednesday, February 17, 2021 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)
Posted: Thu Feb 18, 2021 2:14 pm
This comparison makes little sense. All of figure skating is a skills competition. This is like if the NBA 3 point contest had a separate free throw shooting contest. But free throws are boring so they do this part Saturday afternoon to preliminarily rank the shooters and show you brief highlights before the "real" show.mahatma wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 1:21 pmCan you imagine if an NBA championship/World Series/Stanley Cup game was decided in part by a pre-game skills competition?This Is Kirk! wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:00 amI remember that, too, but I imagine Volante was saying figures was not broadcast live as the short and long programs typically are.alietr wrote: ↑Thu Feb 18, 2021 6:49 amI don't think that's right. I distinctly remember them showing snippets of the skaters doing their figures when they were discussing what their current scores were since those points went toward their total. We're not talking long clips, just them skating in those figure 8s and staying as close as possible to the line. It was an exacting process for the skaters, and some were definitely better than others.Volante wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:37 pm Was not aware figure was such a literal descriptor prior to the 90s for figure skating. Closest I managed to get was trying to add/remove a word from 'ice dancing.' I can safely say I have never seen skating of figures.
Edit: and apparently skating of figures wasn't televised anyway because it was boring and took upwards of eight hours (if Wiki is to be believed)
I think a lot of old school skaters and judges probably bemoan the loss of figures somewhat. Most of them probably found them tedious to do and judge, but they also emphasized skating fundamentals such as edging and turns.