Compulsory figures Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Compulsory figures were a former aspect of the sport of figure skating, from which its name (in English) derives. The original focus of the sport was the carving of specific figures into the ice, and for many years after free skating was added to competitions, the marks for the compulsory figures still contributed half of the total score.Pressure to change this began when the Olympic Games began to be widely shown on television. Television coverage posed major problems to the compulsory figures (also called "school figures") for two reasons. The first and more obvious one is that they were not suitable to television coverage themselves. Even the most ardent skating fan found the completion of the figures, followed by seemingly microscopic analysis by the judges, to be tedious at best and unwatchable at worst, and the general public obviously found them to be of no interest. The other problem was that the skaters who excelled at compulsory figures often were not the most talented at free skating, but at times racked up such a large lead from the school figures that they won the competitions anyway, leaving television viewers and spectators alike stunned and appalled, since they had watched only the free skating and had little or no knowledge of or interest in the compulsory figures.
To address this, and to put more emphasis on the free skating, a reform was undertaken. A new element, the short program, was added to competitions. Seen as something intermediate between the full free skating program of four minutes and the compulsories, this two minute program incorporated certain required elements of the free program which were judged on their technical merits. At first, this new element counted for twenty percent of the overall score, leaving the compulsory figures to count for thirty percent and the long program free skate to count for fifty percent. The short program combined a sense of mandatory elements and a presentation that could be of interest to a television audience and paying live spectators. The short program added more "watchable" activity to a figure skating competition, and was considered by most to be hugely successful, so much so that the original proportions were later reversed so that the compulsory figures counted only twenty percent, and in the last decade compulsory figures were dropped entirely. Purists felt that an important instillation of discipline into the sport had been lost, but more casual followers were in fact relieved that they were gone.
This is an Article on Compulsory figures. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Compulsory figures