Quad

choi

Juliet Macur, Weiyi Cai, Yuliya Parshina-Kottas, Joe Ward and Guilbert Gates, How Four Rotations Whipped Up a Skating Revolution; Quads have changed the women's event, and the Russians are the gold standard. New York Times, Feb 17, 2022, at page B8 (section B that day was front with Business and backed with Sports).

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/16/sports/olympics/quad-jumps-figure-skating.html

Quote:

(a) Kamila "Valieva, trusty stuffed rabbit not far from her side, * * * is one of just 12 women who have landed the quad cleanly in competition, and she is expected to land several in Thursday's [Feb 17, Beijing Time] free skate.

" 'Now you pretty much need a quad to medal at the Olympics,' said Mirai Nagasu, who in 2018 became the first American woman and third overall to land a triple axel at the Olympics. * * *

"In 2018, Nagasu's triple axel was  the coveted skill at the Olympics. Since then, the bar to succeed has soared into another stratosphere. The quadruple consists of four full revolutions in the air before the skater, less than a second later, lands on one foot. It's a Russian specialty in the women's free skate.

"Valieva and her Russian teammates -- Anna Shcherbakova, 17, and Alexandra Trusova, 17 -- are capable of landing more than just one quad in their free skate, the only program in which women are allowed to perform quads. They land several of them.

"They are so good at those quads that even the top male skater, the Olympic gold medalist Nathan Chen, said he did not want to compete against them.

" 'They are so awesome that I think they'd beat all of us,' he said with a laugh.

"Men have been landing quadruple jumps for years, beginning in 1998 wen Kurt Browning of Canada first performed one. But one the women's side, the advent of the jump, and its necessity for success, is relatively new and has shaken up the sport.

"In 2002, Miki Ando of Japan became the first woman to land a quad in international competition [2002–03 Junior Grand Prix Final in The Hague, Netherlands]. For years, no one else landed the jump in an international event, But since 2018 [winter] Olympics [in Korea], 12 women, including nine Russians, have done so.

"What sparked this quad era in women's skating -- now called the Quad Revolution -- was a monumental jump Trusova took one month after the 2018 Olympics, when she was 13.

"At the junior world championships, Trusova, now known as the Quad Queen, landed two quads -- a toe loop and a salchow. Last fall, she landed five quads in one free skate, serving notice to competitors worldwide: The points race are on.

" * * * quads, even landed poorly, can be worth more points than either jumps. A skater who performed a clean quad could score more than twice the number of points she would earn with a triple.

" * * * more points are added for how well she executed the jump, if it was done in combination with another jump and if it was landed in the second half of her program.

(b) "The landscape of women's figure skating changed when Russian teenagers began taking over the sports eight years ago [see next].

"Adelina sotnilova was 17 when she won the Olympic gold medal at the 2014 Sochi [Olympic] Games. It was Russia's first Olympic gold in that event and fourth Olympic medal in women's skating, including when it won bronze in 1984 [Kira Ivanova in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia], as Soviet Union. Four years later, at the 2018 Pyeongchang 平昌郡 Games, Alina Zagitova, at age 15, won the gold and Evgenia Medvedeva [compare Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev], at 17, wpmn the silver.

" * * * Even the fifth-place skier at Russian 2022 championships performed quad jumps – three of them [them – quads, not persons].

"And all three Russia's Olympic [female] skaters [in Beijing: Valieva, Trusova and Shcherbakova] are coached by Eteri Tutberidze at the Sambo-70 club in Moscow. Tutberidze coached Zagitova and Medvedeva, too, and gets the credit for coaching seven of the 12 women who has landed quads in international competition.  

(c) "Their [Russians'] Olympic sports on an elite level are government-funded, so athletes don't have to pay for coaches or time on the ice or off-ice training -- or anything.

"Drew Meekins -- who coaches Alysa Liu, the only American woman in Beijing to land a quad and one of only two American women to ever land one -- said that Russians' access to intensive training benefits the hardest skills.

"If an athlete news nine hours of training in one day to perfect a quad, Meekins said, she can easily get that time [in Russia]. In the United States, top coaching costs about $100 an hour, so many athletes, even on the elite level, pay for only a fraction of an hour a day and practice on their own otherwise, he said.

"There is another important factor behind Russian dominance lately, said Jim Richards, a former biomechanics and movement science professor at the University of Delaware who studied jumping in figure skating., He said Russian women have the perfect body type for quads.

" ' They're skinny, and the skinnier they are, the faster they can spin,c he said. ' * * *  But I'm not sure if it's a healthy thing to push these skaters towards quads if they have to look that way.'

"Based on Richards's studies skaters ideally must be in the air for a minimum of 63-hundredths to 64-hundredths of a second and achieve a jump height of about 20 inches to land a quad.

"The height of a quad can be as much as 5 percent to 8 percent higher than a triple jump, said Deborah King, a biomechanist at Ithaca College who studies figure skating. She estimates that Trusova amd Shcherbakova are humping about three to four inches higher in their quads than in their triples.

"If they cannot jump 20 inches, Richards said, skaters must spin faster to compensate. One obstacle is always in the way, though -- and that's the fear of injury.

(d) "Liu, 16, a two-time [US] national champion, was the first American woman to land a quad, when she was 14. * * *

It's even scarier to do when you grow several inches, as Liu has in the past two years. Spinning got harder as your center of gravity shifted [and you likely put on some weight also]. She was also rebounding from her hip injury smf in the process of relearning triple jumps, so the quad quickly fell out of her grasp. She hasn't attempted one since March 2020.

" 'I did have one and did do it for a little bit,' she said of the quadruple jump. 'But now I don;t, and I'm OK with that.'

"Even though Liu plan to perform a triple axel at the Olympics * * * the base value of the components in her programs will not make her competitive with the Russians under normal circumstances.

(e) "At the 2018 Olympics, the Russians relied on triple-triple-jump combinations in the second half of their programs (for the 10 percent jump bonus given in the second half [the article did not explain why]) to win gold medal.

Note:

(a)

(i) The report is locked behind paywall.

(ii) The above quotation represents about 90% of the entire text.

(iii) This NYT article was on press after short program of women's singles, but before freestyle on Feb 17, Beijing time.

(b)

(i) Mirai NAGASU  長洲 未来

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirai_Nagasu  

(1993- ; a 2018 Olympic Games team event bronze medalist)

Kanji 洲 or 州 (as in 九州) has two Chinese pronunciations: shū and su. So Nagasu can also be 長州 as a Japanese surname.)

(ii) Miki ANDŌ  安藤 美姫

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miki_Ando  

(1987- ; retired)

did not win an Olympic medal.

(iii) Alysa Liu  刘美贤

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alysa_Liu

(2005- ; father from a small mountain village in Sichuan; In the women's event at the 2022 Winter Olympics, she was "underrotating her triple Axel attempt")

(c) "Valieva and her Russian teammates -- Anna Shcherbakova, 17, and Alexandra Trusova, 17 -- are capable of landing more than just one quad in their free skate, the only program in which women are allowed to perform quads."

Nick McCarvewl, The Quad Revolution in Women's Figure Skating: Big Jumps Are Set to Earn Hardware in Beijing. Olympics.com, Feb 5, 2022.

https://olympics.com/en/news/quadruple-jump-revolution-women-figure-skating-olympics-beijing-2022

Quote:

(i) "In Beijing, a quadruple jump has been completed by a female skater on the Olympic stage for the first time: Fifteen-year-old Kamila Valieva of the ROC hit not one but two of them in the women single free skate portion of the figure skating team event, helping the ROC earn gold on Monday (7 February).

"She tried a third but fell on it.

(ii) "The trio [Valieva, Shcherbakova and Trusova] of skaters are favoured to land on the podium during the women single event [here is 'single event' and (A) is 'team event'], set for 15 and 17 February.

(iii) "The quadruple jump is only allowed in the free skate (currently) [unexplained], while the triple Axel is allowed in both the short and the free.

(d) Quotation (d) ABOVE had: "the base value of the components in her programs will not make her competitive"

Figure Skating 101: Glossary. NBC Olympics, Oct 5, 2021
https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/figure-skating-101-glossary
("Base Value: Every element has a certain base value according to its level of difficulty. These values are listed in a table called the Scale of Values (SOV). Base values for jumps are straightforward and pre-determined based on the difficulty of the jump and number of revolutions. For example, a triple Axel (8.5 points) is worth more than the less difficult double Axel (3.3 points). Non-jump elements, such as spins and step sequences are assigned a level – between one and four – based on their difficulty. Level one elements receive a lower base value than level four elements")

(e) four illustrations in this NYT article:

(i) Scan0020 indicated twisting the shoulders at the beginning of the quad jump, then hinted the twisting of the hip (or body). With red arcs in different parts of the body.

(ii) Scan0022 contains two illustrations, the right one containing find print (at the bottom) whose last sentence said "scores are from the most recent national championship" of respective nations.