Season-finale Debbi Wilkes column -- 'Dump Cinquanta'

[Lee]

http://www.tsn.ca/debbiwilkes/archive.asp?date=040102

[Dustin]

Wow, great article. I really hope something does happen - it needs to. If Cinquanta's new scoring system is passed I may start losing interest in skating. The new system just leaves more corruption and secret deals.

[sulin]

Lee, thanks for the link! Debbie doesn't beat around the bush with this one, does she? How do you think they'd instigate this action though?

[HSF]

During the NBC coverage of the Olympics, Scott Hamilton and several other skaters spoke out loudly for the separation of speed skating and figure skating. I'm in total agreement but think that will happen only over the dead body of Cinquanto. LOL

Cinquanto has used the leverage he has because of the popularity of figure skating to negotiate ABC TV coverage of speed skating. He also doles out dollars mainly brought in by figure skating to speed skating. He will fight to the death to keep figure skating and speed skating under one organization.

HSF

[Lee]

The biggest obstacle to separating the figure and speed skating aspects of the federations is that of 56 member nations, only 16 have 'separate' figure skating home federations.

Any move to form a separate figure skating federation is likely to be overturned, especially when one of the federations that does NOT have separate entities is France -- although with the current controversy, Didier G. may not wield as much influence as previously. It's obviously possible for one home federations to have representation in multiple international federations. as the French federation is responsible for ALL ice sports in that country, including hockey (hmm, does Didier represent France at the IHF meetings?).

Canada, the US and Russia are all countries with separate federations, and the money coming from Canada and the US 'may' do some talking, but I'm not sure if that's enough. There's a significant amount of revenue to the ISU from TV rights in figure skating, which has been said to help 'subsidize' the speed skating side. I wonder how many of those 'joint' federations would be willing to give up that revenue influx in letting go of figure skating? You can bet it's not something Cinquanta is going to champion, and he's going to be around for at least two more years (he's running unopposed in the next ISU Congress in June).

Separation is going to be a tough thing to get through, I think...sadly...

[Dustin]

We all thought the second gold medal for the pairs was impossible. That showed us what we can do. ;) I have a feeling the skaters/fans/media has more power than Cinquanta - at least I hope so because we are the ones paying!

[Schmeck]

Lee, thank you for the link!

I'd love to see what Debbi has proposed come true, except for one part - judges having to be national level skaters. I think some of the best judges would be coaches, and the best coaches are not necessarily the ones with the most successful competitive skating career.

Of course we'd have to get over the hurdle that Lee described, which might cripple some of the smaller nations at first. But I think it would be worth it.

Schmeck

[sk8crazy]

Hello all! This is my first post here. I think I'm really going to like this board. I have been looking for a new skating "home" this might be it.

Now, I just loved that article. It is blunt and to the point just like it needs to be. Hopefully, Mr.Cinquanta is listening. She is right that it isn't the scoring system but the corruption around it that is the problem.

[Eighteen]

:D

Wouldn't it be great if some of these ideas actually happened!!
Great article!