The International Skating Union has published the reform proposals of the national federations for the next congress, which will be held June 6-10, 2022. Some proposals are marked as urgent, which means that they can be considered online as early as this summer. MK-Sport will tell you what reforms are required from the ISU in Russia, the USA, China and other countries.

Figure skating wants to be reformed: anonymous judges and no ladies

Figure skating is inexorably gaining popularity – especially in Russia, where figure skating competitions have become almost a national sport. Every year the level of figure skating is growing, so it's time to reform some of the rules and foundations that have been in force since time immemorial. With this proposal, the International Skating Union (ISU) turned to the national federations, which have already sent letters with their ideas.

Some of them will be considered online this summer, but the ISU Congress itself is scheduled to be held in Phuket on June 6-10, 2022.

What does Russia offer?

Several proposals were received from the Russian Figure Skating Federation. The first of them concerns the rules for transferring to other teams. It is proposed to tighten the change of sports citizenship in figure skating: participants in the national championship who wish to move to another country will need to obtain permission from the federation. Previously, this was required only for participants in international competitions.

As an argument, Russia cites the fact that the athletes who have qualified for the national championship have a fairly high level and receive material support from their federations and clubs. Lack of control over the transitions of the skaters can create controversy.

The FFKKR also proposes to increase the number of advertising places on the national team kit: now there are four such places – Russia proposes to expand it to six. This is expected to enable skaters, team officials and coaches to attract more potential sponsors.

As stated in the ISU document, these two proposals from the FFKKR will be considered at the congress in 2022.

What do other countries want?

The Norwegian Figure Skating Federation has long advocated raising the age limit in single skating – from 15 to 16-17. But the ISU Congress will not consider this idea until 2022. And this means that the young figure skaters of the school Eteri Tutberidze (Kamila Valieva, Daria Usacheva, Maya Khromykh) will not be deprived of the right to participate in the Olympics-2022.

As for junior tournaments, the Hungarian Federation proposed increasing the number of competitions for this category. For example, hold the Junior European Championship and the Championship of four continents, and in case of difficulties with financing, organize tournaments once every two years. So far, there is only one world championship among juniors in the ISU calendar.

In Canada, they offered to raise the maximum junior age in pair skating and dancing on ice under 21 years, since, in their opinion, these species require skaters of additional development and security. The Canadian Federation also made the idea to increase the coefficients for components in the female arbitrary program to 2, as in men.

Canada, together with China and Italy, want the judges at the auspices of ISU to be anonymous, and the names of judges were published only after the end of the events.

The US Federation recalled the recommendations of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on gender equality and proposed to replace the word Ladies (ladies) with Women (women) in the name of female single skiing.

And what about isu?

The International Union of Skatens also made its proposals. In particular, the ISU Council is not against increasing the duration of the World Figure Skating Championship from 7 to 8 days, starting from the season-2022/23. Because at the World Cup, qualifying rounds can be introduced into the final part.

The committee on single and paired skiing proposed to equate combinations of jumping at the cost of cascades.