How useful are ISU world rankings.

[kia]

It easy to recognise placings in the top 10 for ISU ranking but lower than that what does it mean and is it used for anything? Are the Chinese couple Zhang and Cao (ranked 20 by the ISU ) better skaters than the Russian couple Kulikova and Markov (ranked equal 34 with Klokcho and Sarkulov on the ISU scale) From the ISU ranking K&M on a world class scale are only marginally better competitors than the Australians Buck and Trent Nelson Bond.

What is the use of this Ranking sytem, what is is used for? does it determine who goes to worlds or Grand Prix events?.

[adrianchew]

If you go see the full list of ISU rankings it shows you four years of events - all the ISU rankings gives you is who has more points that others (ie. results) over a 4 year total period. Which means nothing of how they will actually perform for future events. ;)

[Artemis]

There has been some discussion about eventually using the ranking system instead of the qualifying round at Worlds. And/or to determine the skate order for the short program at all international competitions (instead of relying on a random draw).

I'd be very much in favour of anything that got rid of the qualifying round, and certainly a lot of skaters have suffered from a bad random draw ... but I'm not 100% certain the ISU ranking system is the way to go.

[kia]

So is the ranking system used for anything at the moment?

[Dustin]

I don't think it would be fair if they used it for qualifying at worlds. How a skater skated last year, or 2 years ago for that matter is not necessarily an indication of how they will perform now.

For example:
Yoshie Onda - ranked 7 - 5th at Worlds last year
Sasha Cohen - ranked 9 - 4th at Worlds last year
Ina & Zimmerman - ranked 6 - 3rd at Worlds last year
Lobacheva & Averbukh - ranked 6 - World Champions

For skate order, I think random draw is still the best, not who is ranked the highest in a useless ranking system.

[adrianchew]

Actually - if we scrap the Worlds qualifying and use the rankings - some skaters will never qualify because they're ranked too low. They'd have to wait until the higher rank skaters leave the eligible ranks to qualify at Worlds (since they can't qualify for Worlds they can't better their rankings either). :roll: