Time to shake up figure skating's schedule
By Sandra Loosemore
SportsLine Sports Writer
What if they held a skating competition and no skaters showed up? That's almost what happened last week at the ISU's inaugural Four Continents Championship in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
 |
| Despite a groin injury -- and this stumble -- Elvis Stojko won bronze at the Four Continents event.(AP) |
To complicate matters further, many of the same skaters who competed at Four Continents are now expected to travel through seven more time zones to St. Petersburg and immediately be ready for another competition. Takeshi Honda (who won the men's gold), Elvis Stojko (who won the bronze) and the Canadian champion dance team of Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz (who also won gold) competed in Halifax but will not compete in the Grand Prix Final, even though they have qualified. Stojko's withdrawal was expected; he has not yet fully recovered from the groin injury he suffered last season and had petitioned for a medical release some time ago. Honda's status had also been doubtful because he has an ankle injury that already forced him to withdraw from his own national championship competition in mid-January. And in Halifax, Bourne revealed that she, too, has been skating injured -- she has torn cartilage in her left knee. THE TIMING AND LOCATION OF THIS YEAR'S Grand Prix Final has also been the cause of considerable grumbling for reasons that have nothing to do with the Four Continents event. Non-European skaters who qualified for the final are faced with the choice of either remaining in Europe for the 10 days or so until the World Championships, or having to go through all the travel and jet lag twice in quick succession in order to train at home for a week. Add to that the fact that training facilities in Europe -- and travel and medical facilities in Russia in particular -- are well below North American standards, and it's not surprising that so many skaters have opted out. Things aren't going to be any better next year, either: although the dates or location for the Grand Prix final haven't been announced yet, the ISU has scheduled the Four Continents event in Japan for the first week in February, sandwiched in the week between the Canadian and U.S. national championships. It's a good bet that neither North American federation will be sending a team at all next season. In addition to the poor timing of the Four Continents event, the travel distances involved make it inherently more difficult for the skaters than the European Championships. Europe is comparatively compact, but for Four Continents, skaters from places like Japan, China, Australia, and South Africa had to travel vast distances to Halifax, with all the attendant problems of jet lag as well as the loss of two or more days of training while en route. If the Four Continents championship is going to be turned into a viable event, it's clear that both the ISU and the various national federations are going to have to rethink the competition calendar for the whole season instead of trying to cram so many events into February and early March, when skaters ought to be concentrating on preparing for the World Championships instead of dealing with jet lag and nursing injuries through one competition after another. ONE OBVIOUS ADJUSTMENT THAT NEEDS to be made is to hold the Four Continents and European Championships within a week or so of each other, so that the non-European skaters are not at such a disadvantage with so many events crowding close to the World Championships. Combined with this, the various national federations -- and in particular the USFSA -- need to make more of an effort to schedule their national championships to coincide with the ISU's international calendar. The U.S. championships have typically been scheduled for the first or second week of February in non-Olympic years, but ought to be moved into January on a regular basis. Most European countries already schedule their national championships in late December or early January, so that they're out of the way before the European Championships. The U.S. and Canadian federations will need to do the same to accommodate the Four Continents Championship. Along these lines, the junior and senior Grand Prix Finals should be moved from March back to December. The Finals are logically connected with the Grand Prix events, which take place throughout the fall season, and ought to be held closer to them -- not when skaters are preoccupied with preparing for the World Championships. If it's necessary in order to allow a sufficient break between the last regular Grand Prix event and the final, the entire series should be started a week or two earlier in the fall. ANOTHER ISSUE IS THE ISU's DECISION to sanction as many pro-am events as they did this season. Was this such a good idea? This year it was apparent that the commercially-driven pro-ams were sucking away skaters and TV contracts from the more legitimate Grand Prix competitions. This year, for example, only one of the six Grand Prix events received any coverage on U.S. television. Given the large number of events skaters are expected to participate in each season, it's becoming more and more important for the ISU to start making some sense out of the international calendar. It's not only important for the skaters' health and sanity, but also for the ISU to protect the value of the World Championships as the most prestigious event of the year. Right now, there are so many other events on the calendar that most of them can be nothing but a distraction to the skaters. In spite of the allure of prize money and other incentives, it seems many skaters already realize the bottom line: Five or 10 years from now, nobody is going to remember who the Four Continents or Grand Prix Final champions were, much less who won some meaningless made-for-TV pro-am event. It's the World Championships that count in the long run. The ISU ought to remember that, too.
|