The agenda is now available on the ISU website as communication 1609. I skimmed to the best of my ability - it's long, repetitive in parts, and not very exciting. I'm including page numbers where I remembered to write them down, in case I got things wrong.

Some of the proposals that seem to be on the table:

1. Abolition of random draw of judge's marks
   
2. The new short dance (some countries propose keeping CDs through junior).
   
3. 3A allowed for the ladies in the SP
   
4. No spiral sq and only one SS for the men in the SPs, I think (p. 136, correct me if I'm wrong).
   
5. Solo quads allowed in SPs for men, so long as they are different than the quad done in combination? (p. 139) I can't see too many guys taking advantage of this!
   
6. Only two 2As in the FS, including ones done in combination - if I got that right, I'm totally in support of this!
   
7. Second step sequence in the FS to be evaluated using GOEs only, no levels (p. 141).
   
8. P. 62: No more back and forth between senior and junior, two senior events and your junior career is done (apparently a full GP season counts as one event). This should end the practice of using Junior Worlds as a consolation prize/opportunity to boost your confidence and/or get points.

I'm sure there's more in there, if anyone actually wants to read it.

So: let's discuss!

No spirals in the short? Step sequences only evaluated on GOEs? Am I the only one really weirded out by this?

I'm in favor of the 2 2As rule and the no switching for seniors to juniors rule. Though as I wrote on GS; limiting the number of 2As to 2 does increase the difficulty considerably.. Again adding to the concern that figure skating according to COP is very hard on the body and decreases longetivity, creates jumping beans etc. But generally; I like the proposition. Two 2As is more than enough; so many 2A combinations are seen in competition these days! It's a little boring.

Doing away with the endless 2As is an excellent idea, as is allowing the ladies to do 3As in the short and the men to do a second quad. Obviously skaters who can take advantage of either change are rather few at this point... Isn't Mao the only lady doing a 3A these days? And AFAIK, the only active skaters who have successfully landed two different quads in competition are Brian Joubert and Kevin Reynolds, and I'm not sure either of them can - or would want to - do a quad out of steps (not to mention that Brian does not have a consistent 4S). But Dai could try 4T and 4F... Yeah, probably not.
I understand that the value of combinations will also be increased and they will be factored by 1.1. If so, that's a good thing.

No more junior-senior-junior etc. is very good. Juniors should be competing against each other, not against senior skaters. I was happy to see true juniors win all the titles at Junior Worlds this season.

Step sequences and spirals: I like some but not all of the proposed changes. I'd rather see certain requirements removed for the FS rather than the SP, so that skaters can have more freedom to actually do a free skate. I don't like having some step sequences evaluated with levels and GOEs and some with GOEs only; it should be consistent. I wonder if this is a test run that will eventually lead to none of the step sequences being assigned levels; if so, I approve. The level requirements have caused step sequences to look slow and labored, or disjointed and erratic, and this might encourage more variety and creativity in sequence construction, as well as actual musical interpretation. so if that happens. Having only one step sequence in the men's SP would be strange, but maybe it'll lead to the guys to come up with better and more interesting sequences. So I'll reserve judgment for now...

One of the FSU posters bravely summarized the whole thing, but even reading the summary is exhausting!

I attempted to skim through this very long Communication too - its not easy!!

In the bit about SP spins - I think I read that the flying spin has to be different from the change of foot spin - if you do a flying sit spin, then you cannot do a change of foot sit spin too - I guess they want to cut back on the sit spins in the mens' event! If this is correct then I am in favour of encouraging variety.

As I understand it there are two different types of proposal - ISU recommendations (which are pretty well a done deal) & member suggestions (which are voted on & less likely to be accepted).

I'm not happy about how they have been playing around with the FS/FD numbers either, I feel that the "lower" skaters need to be encouraged - not left out. For many of them, getrting to do their FS at Worlds - or even Euros - is the highlight of their career, or for the young ones the start of something big.

Cost cutting is always the excuse, but why can there not be fewer ISU officials/VIP guests about instead of having the skaters loose out?

And as for having the first group skate an hour before the others......

It looks to me like the early group is no more, at least at Euros/4CC, because the way the numbers work out, it seems like there will be three warmup groups with the ice resurface before the last one.

I think decreasing the number of FS qualifiers combined with the proposed QR mechanism will have a very bad effect on skaters from smaller countries or from places where skating isn't as established and advanced. Which strikes me as incredibly stupid if the ISU wants the sport to succeed in more countries. Sacrificing the long-term benefits to the sport to save a few dollars/Euros/whatever is a huge mistake.

Less sitspins for the Men's events seems like such a good idea!! They are *so* boring even more boring than all the 2As in the Ladies.

I've been thinking about the new rule concerning combinations; it does seem like a great way to promote triple-triples again; in Ladies we've seen so little of them, and most of the Ladies doing 3-3s are doing 3T-3T which is a bit boring and so risky (if you double the second 3T.. aka Laura Lepisto's biggest problem). I'd love to see flip-toes, lutz-loops, toe-salchows... just more variety in triple-triple combinations. I do hope the rule won't increase the number of 3-2-2 combo's; they're nice, but a little boring. Addng a double toe to something isn't that difficult (I do feel a bit bad for saying this since I can't even do backward crossovers; but you know what I mean; it really doesn't look that impressive).

About the step sequences; they *do* look erratic and weird; and look at Plushy's Oly SP step sequence; just NOTHING to do with the music anymore. I was looking more into detail to Ashley's programs from the past season, she's pretty musical but when you're concerned about getting all the levels and doing all this million turns and required steps it's difficult to get some personality and musicality into those sequences.

^^Exactly what I've been thinking. Anything adressing the UR-issue seems blatantly missing in this communication. The endless discussion on whether or not a jump was UR bores me tremendously. Sometimes it's very very obvious; but a lot of the time it's not noticeable. It's frustrating the way the scores are disconnected with what the spectator sees.

Firstly congratulations for all of you that actually braved that ISU communication! I clicked on it started to read and found it all extremely repetitive and so i'll take your summaries over the actual text any day.

Seems like there are some interesting things proposed. The UR issue is a really tough one to try to address, every time a solution is proposed the proposal seems to cause at least as many problems as we currently now have and I can't think of a way that makes things fair. I think at the moment the biggest inequities are created by human falability (sp?) does a technical specialist really spot the difference between a jump that is 75 degrees short and one that is 100 degrees short? The human element will not go away regardless of the rules applied so there are always going to be calls we don't like.

Maybe there could be a special dispensation for the loop jump because it does have an element of pre-rotation on the take off, however, the landings of the loops that are regularly downgraded (e.g. Miki's 3Lz+3LP) are often pretty clearly UR on the landing.

Ant

Perhaps I am so used to seeing them that I cannot imagine programs without them. I always like thinking outside the box, but what a boxed thinker I am! That leaves a lot of time there.