Steve Milton
The Hamilton Spectator
(Jun 19, 2010)
You could hear the cheers in training rinks all across North America.
As expected, the International Skating Union has eliminated compulsory dances from its major senior competitions, including the world championships and the Olympics.
Ice dancing's top athletes, including Canadian Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, favour the move and have said this will give them more time to work on artistry and the intricate demands of the two surviving portions of the discipline.
The original dance, the segment in which Virtue and Moir arguably won the Games, has been altered to include one required tour of the rink in a prescribed pattern, taken from the old compulsory dances. It will now be called the short dance, in line with the short program of pairs and singles.
The freedance remains unchanged.
"We had to get down to two segments in dance," William Thompson, CEO of Skate Canada said from the ISU Congress in Barcelona, where the decision was made this week.
"Canada was very hard on the (dance) technical committee two years ago when they first made the suggestion. We felt the idea hadn't been developed enough or tested. They listened, and made changes."
Compulsory figures - single skating's equivalent of compulsory dances - were eliminated 19 years ago, leaving dance as the only discipline with three segments.
The other major change was the re-institution of a qualifying skate-off for the world championships. It will be held on the Monday in the same venue as the championships - to whittle the field down - but will not count in the eventual results. The previous qualifying round, eliminated four years ago, counted 10 per cent of the final score.
Many skaters, based on their world ranking, will be exempt from qualifying and will be seeded into the short program. |
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