Category: Analysis

Ice Dance and the Off-Season: A Summer Fling?

The earliest ice dance events of summer — Lake Placid and its championship and international competitions, Minto Summer Skate and the Championnats québécois d’été, or Quebec Summer Championships — are, by near definition, starting points for the long September-March international stretch to come. And by this nature, scores are traditionally mixed at best: star competitors…

PCS: Connecting the Dots #7. Forecasting Pairs

There will be no extended analysis of deeper PCS meaning this go-round, but a quick overview of just how tight the race in U.S. and Canadian pairs — for those 3-4-5 spots at home, for international opportunities or top 10 Worlds finishes — looks after the work of last season. Two-time world champions Meagan Duhamel…

2016-17 Grand Prix Draft: The Aftermath

With the dance field expanded to 10 couples apiece for the first time since the 2010-11 season, competitors saw additional opportunity — though some absences for those guaranteed at least one spot are also worth noting. Pairs, which remains at eight teams apiece due to additional regulations (only four teams allowed per warm-up session), was…

Previewing the 2016-17 Grand Prix Draft

The ISU figure skating powers-that-be meet this Wednesday and Thursday to set out the coming season’s Grand Prix assignments across six events — this year, in a minor shake-up of schedule, Skate America, Skate Canada International, Rostelecom Cup, the renamed Trophée de France, Cup of China and NHK Trophy. With only eight slots per event…

The Pairings’ Progress: Sophomore Development

As the partnered disciplines go, pairs lends itself most readily to analysis by technical improvement — a fall or aborted element are explicit, easily marked errors and likewise, GOE typically does fairly well in grading an element’s obvious level of execution. TES is also democratic; Olympic champions can fall short if the technique fails them…

PCS: Connecting the Dots #6. GOEing Somewhere

In this PCS series as in all analytical articles, it has generally been TFTI’s aim to provide some deeper insight into the numbers presented — related or not to on-ice performance. But in the matter of Grades of Execution in this first half of the 2015-16 season, our mission may have failed. It should first,…

What Price Skating Glory, Part 1: Prize Money

by Jacquelyn Thayer While this project has been in the works for a period, the topic of funding in figure skating has recently come to popular attention, with PJ Kwong and pair Hayleigh Bell and Rudi Swiegers highlighting specific costs of training; others relying on crowdfunding have also taken care to note the financial effort…