With 2020 worlds definitively gone, skaters like Jason Brown try to stay on peak while off ice in uncertain times

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With 2020 worlds definitively gone, skaters like Jason Brown try to stay on peak while off ice in uncertain times

Thursday’s unsurprising news that the 2020 World Figure Skating Championships were definitively cancelled had minimal impact on Rafael Arutunian.

The impact of having little else definitive about figure skating’s future schedule is what Arutunian struggles to deal with.

“We knew this is what would be done with worlds,” said Arutunian, coach of two-time reigning world champion Nathan Chen. “What happens now with next season?”

The International Skating Union’s governing council hopes to provide some clarity about that after it meets again by conference call April 28. Even then, though, most of its answers will have to be prefaced by a literal or understood “if,” since there remains little certainty about the further development of the coronavirus pandemic and its consequent effect on the world of sport.

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Update: ISU Congress postponed to 2021, decision upcoming on rescheduling 2020 figure skating worlds (very likely, "no”), plus my exclusive info on bigger future worlds

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Update: ISU Congress postponed to 2021, decision upcoming on rescheduling 2020 figure skating worlds (very likely, "no”), plus my exclusive info on bigger future worlds

This week, there will definitely be a decision on one major International Skating Union event cancelled by the coronavirus pandemic.

That will be followed soon after by a decision on another – even if the fate of the latter, the 2020 World Figure Skating Championships, seems pretty much a foregone conclusion already.

The ISU asked its members to vote on the future of the organization’s biennial policy-making Congress, which had been scheduled for this June 8-12 in Phuket, Thailand. The ballot offered three choices: 1) postponement until June 2021; 2) definite cancellation; 3) abstention.

Votes are due today. Once they are in, the ISU Council will meet by teleconference to discuss the result and matters related to the 2020 worlds, the 2020-21 season and seasons after that.

No 2020 worlds and more skaters at future worlds are involved.

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Time for IOC to drop Pollyanna act and tell everyone there may be no Olympics in 2020

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Time for IOC to drop Pollyanna act and tell everyone there may be no Olympics in 2020

There are some 11,000 athletes hoping to compete at the Summer Olympics scheduled to open July 24 in Tokyo.

At this point, all those athletes should be able to (choose a biblical or mythological metaphor):

*See the handwriting on the wall.

*Feel the sword of Damocles above their heads.

And yet the president of the International Olympic Committee and the Prime Minister of Japan refuse to acknowledge publicly the possibility the 2020 Summer Games won’t take place in 2020 – or ever.

In their hubristic refrain that the Games will go, these alleged leaders provide unjustifiable encouragement to athletes whose preparation and qualification processes already have been severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

These athletes, who get an Olympic opportunity once every four years, deserve honesty, not self-interested, Panglossian avoidance of reality.

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Solomonic figure skating schedule discussed for 2022 Olympics, with events starting in morning and evening

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Solomonic figure skating schedule discussed for 2022 Olympics, with events starting in morning and evening

After agreeing to a morning start for all figure skating events at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, a move that benefitted NBC by providing prime-time viewing in the United States, the International Skating Union is considering a compromise for the 2022 Winter Olympics in China.

Sources with knowledge of the situation have told Globetrotting that although discussions are continuing, they think the figure skating schedule for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing could include starting times in both the morning and evening.

That means European viewers would not need to be awake in the middle of the night to watch all the skating.

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In figure skating, a radical proposal to reshape the sport

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In figure skating, a radical proposal to reshape the sport

In an attempt to rebalance the athletic and artistic sides of figure skating, the sport’s technical committee for singles and pairs is submitting a proposal with sweeping changes for consideration by the International Skating Union at its biennial congress this June in Thailand.

The proposal comes at a moment when the jump revolutions in men’s and women’s singles skating have created a huge competitive imbalance in favor of skaters doing the most difficult jumps – quadruples for men, quads and triple Axels for women.

The proposal will not be made public until April, when the 2020 congress agenda is published. But Fabio Bianchetti of Italy, chair of the ISU singles and pairs technical committee, confirmed its essence and intent to NBCSports.com in emails.

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