After watching some of the pairs skating, I couldn’t help but notice that some of the skaters seemed to be doing a lot of “extra” movements in their routines. In particular, they grabbed their skates quite a lot. Maybe it’s the new cool thing?
Well according to Dick Button, this all stems from the new scoring system. In the past, skaters used to get a mark ranging from 0.0 to 6.0 depending on how well the judges perceived their routine was performed, and another set of marks (0-6) for how artistically pleasing the routine was. Pretty subjective, and the cause of a lot of controversy. Well enter new system. Everything is on a points system. The more moves you do, and the higher the difficulty of the moves, the more points you earn. Obviously skaters want to make the most points, so they’re going to throw in the most difficult moves.
Apparently grabbing the blade of your skate while doing something else at the same time is difficult. Like doing a spin while grabbing your skate, or grabbing your skate while your partner is lifting you. OK cool, grab a skate. Rack up the points.
Except that it’s SO. UGLY.
Like, in my opinion at least, it highlights the lack of flexibility of the skaters. Don’t grab your skate if you can’t fully extend your leg. It looks weird. And don’t grab your skate every 2 seconds. It’s annoying to watch. It’s not fluid. It’s not really….skating.
I get that the skaters need to accumulate the most amount of points if they want to win. And obviously you compete to win. But this whole skate grabbing thing really just makes it about the points. It’s not fun to watch. In fact, I almost turned off the pairs skating because it bothered me so much. Let’s be honest. Going back to the old scoring system they wouldn’t have scored more than a 4.0 on artistic impression.
Maybe if the skaters filled their routines with more jumps and spins and things, they would higher scores and not need to add fluff like skate grabbing to inflate their scores. And maybe I would enjoy pairs skating once again.
