This!
in ice skating. I remember when it was still part of the show in the olympics.
Good riddance, in my opinion. Talk about boooriiing!. That’s when the kids in my family would find some excuse to go do something else. Anything else. And it went on forever.
Modern figure skating (ice dancing) is bad enough. Youngsters should be glad that the “compulsories” are pretty much gone.
Peace,
mangeorge
Ah yes, the compulsories. I remember when they were part of the Olympics, but I don’t remember them ever being televised. All I remember is that at the start of the short program, they would show about thirty seconds and explain, “Here’s what compulsories are all about, and here are the standings after the compulsories. Now on to the free skate.”
It was always a dichotomy. The compulsories were (a) objective; (b) mechanical; and © the least watched event in the Winter Olympics. Freestyle skating was (a) notoriously subjective; (b) artistic and creative; and © the most watched event in the Olympics.
And then one day, the compulsories were gone. In some weird way I miss them. They were sort of mysterious, often talked about but seldom seen.
Compulsories were a test of a skater’s precision and control. Now it’s all about showboating. I say bring 'em back.
For anyone who has no idea what we’re talking about, here’s ten minutes of demonstration and explanation.
I’ll go along with Freddy the Pig’s assessment.
Yeah, mysterious.
Showboating is (rightfully) what the olympics is all about. It’s entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with that.
I don’t know if it is good TV to watch the judges on their hands and knees trying to measure the distances off line. Boring.
That’s the origin of the sport, and it deserves *some *respect, at least. “Figure skating” used to mean skating in figures - whoever could “draw” the most elaborate, most accurate patterns on a clear piece of ice was the winner. Jumps, spins, and such didn’t come into it until later, and now that’s all there is.
Respect, sure. In the way much old stuff is respected.
But if you want popularity you have to give people something, and this simply doesn’t do that. I understand figures itself was never were all that popular. It’s kinda like watching a pitcher throwing a ball at that net thingy before a game. Or maybe a boxer working the heavy bag.
Compulsory figures has found it’s niche, and there it shall remain.
I’ve always been of the opinion that it was a good thing to eliminate the compulsories (well, it was at least OK), but that just because it is not a part of competition anymore doesn’t mean coaches have to ignore the benefits that learning how to do compulsories adds to a skater. It really helps control and correct-edge skating, and that is one of the main complaints against many current skaters now. The coach/parent combo might not decide that compulsories would be worth the time it takes a skater to learn when they can get more points for attempting quad jumps and such, but I predict that after the Olympics we’re in for another rule/points system change that would make edge skating more of a priority.
In other words, compulsories are never coming back to competition, but I think it would be important for all skaters to learn and practice them as if they were.
I do remember them being televised & watching them. I liked them. (Then again, I also love ice dancing - where they kept compulsories long after everyone else dumped them). Yeah, it could wreck someone’s olympic hopes if they couldn’t do the figure-8 (or whatever) - but it was a nice balance. And it was easily measureable whether skater-A did a better job than skater-B
It’s really no different than watching a baseball game, is it. Instead of televising all the practice and warmup and stuff that that lead up to a game, there are a bunch of talking heads sitting there yakking away about minutia. But fans (I’m not one) eat it up.
TV gives us exactly what we want. 
As a former competitive figure skater, I rejoiced when they got rid of the bloody things (even though I had already ‘retired’! Drat. I should have waited another two years). I really really hated getting up at 5am to skate around in tiny circles. (Getting up at 6 to actually skate my programme wasn’t always a picnic, but at least I broke a sweat!)
They were of course the origin of the sport, but we don’t see folks playing tennis with wooden rackets anymore, do we?