Skating Slowly Tries Regaining Its Edge

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/sports/skating-slowly-tries-regaining-its-edge.html

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BOSTON — Figure skating is not nearly what it used to be — not globally, not in the United States.

The sport’s popularity, outside Japan, has eroded. Television contracts and exhibition tours have dried up in North America and in much of Europe. For a sport whose defining element is the cutting edge of a blade, figure skating has been too slow to remain up-to-date, to make changes in formats and approach that would have allowed it a puncher’s chance against all the diversions, buzz and marketing muscle other sports can muster.

But don’t blame the skaters. Their craft is still one of the most difficult to master in any sport.

At their best, figure skaters remain true artists as well as true athletes, and there were some extraordinary performances under pressure last week at the world championships in Boston, even if Americans at large were much more in tune with the Final Four.

The crowds at TD Garden were big, enthusiastic and remarkably fair-minded, even responding with a standing ovation on Saturday night for the Russian prodigy Evgenia Medvedeva, whose technically brilliant performance in the free program effectively put an end to American chances for gold.

Ashley Wagner of the United States still won the silver, however, putting an end to a 10-year American women’s medal drought at the world championships and showing that there was still room for a 24-year-old to improve in a discipline dominated by youth.

“This arena helped me,” Medvedeva, 16, light of frame and full of personality, said after her gold medal. “It was the first time I skated in front of such a huge crowd.”

It is easy to look back nostalgically to the more brightly lit days of Michelle Kwan (all the easier with Kwan in attendance in Boston), but the quality of skating has not regressed; only its profile has.

“They are better now, definitely better,” said Rafael Arutyunyan, who once coached Kwan and now coaches Wagner. “And the scary part is that they will get even better.”

In general, the championships, which ended with the traditional exhibition gala on Sunday, were about continuity, yet still represented progress.

Three of the four reigning world champions defended their titles: Javier Fernández of Spain in men’s singles, Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford of Canada in pairs, and Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France in ice dancing. Medvedeva’s victory was also the second straight for a Russian teenager, coming after Elizaveta Tuktamysheva’s world title last year.

But all four victories in Boston required and produced something special, in part because three of the eventual champions had been trailing after their short programs.

Medvedeva’s free program on Saturday earned her a world-record score of 150.10, breaking the mark set by the South Korean star Kim Yu-na in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Duhamel and Radford needed a personal-best score of 153.81 points in their free program, a gutsy performance that had the effervescent Duhamel exulting midroutine and sharing her positive energy with Radford even during lifts.

Papadakis, 20, and Cizeron, 21 — still young to be so polished — have a profound connection and a fluid style that make their performances seem like alchemy.

“I was up high in the arena the night of their free dance, and for at least two minutes of their four-minute program, it was so quiet you could hear the wings of a fly beating,” said Didier Gailhaguet, president of the French Ice Sports Federation. “Even up where I was, I could hear the sound of their skates on the ice. That means what? That means something was happening with the audience, something we can’t quantify but something that we have to give value to in our sport.”

But it was Fernández who gave the performance of the championships, trumping his Japanese training partner Yuzuru Hanyu, the reigning Olympic champion who had dominated the season and the short program in Boston, opening up a 12-point lead.

But Hanyu was far from flawless in the free program, and Fernández seized the opportunity, even if transcendence was necessary to make up the gap.

He delivered with three clean quadruple jumps, two clean triple axels and perfectly pitched choreography to a soundtrack of Frank Sinatra singing from “Guys and Dolls” — a soundtrack that would not have been allowed until last season, when the International Skating Union finally permitted the use of vocal music by singles and pairs skaters.

That was a nod by the I.S.U. to modernity and the need to reach out to a younger demographic. More such thinking will be required, and with the I.S.U. set to elect a new president in June to replace the ailing Ottavio Cinquanta, there is incentive.

Gailhaguet, suspended from the sport for three years because of his role in the 2002 Olympic judging scandal, is among the candidates, and although he clearly carries plenty of baggage, he is also brimming with ideas.

He wants to double the sport’s development budget, reach out to nontraditional skating nations and urban youths by using temporary rinks, eliminate anonymity for judges during competitions and introduce new competition formats.

“Our formats are to me a little old fashioned,” he said. “Who wants today to see a girl with a chignon and a little skirt skating to Rachmaninoff? Not many. We need to find a way to connect more with the world the way it is now.”

It is quite likely the right commercial strategy, but there is also no denying that the champions’ performances in Boston — with the crowd providing daily and nightly inspiration — left little to be desired.