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Five things to know after the latest ISU decisions


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Team Estreija from Finland (Credits: Ville Vairinen - 2020)

After the cancellation of the 2020 Congress, the International Skating Union organized lately an online vote for some motions. Here are the decisions that could affect synchronized skating.

Better planning
The ISU Council wants to introduce "a better medium-term planning which will help the organizing ISU Members in their planning and preparations and with the marketing and promotion of the ISU Events". The provisional allocation of the championships should be done up to four years in advance. 

Music formats
Good news for competitors! Skaters or teams shall furnish competition music "in a format and means declared in the announcement of the competition, which may now be in formats other than CD".

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More opportunities to officiate
The ISU announced additional opportunities to officiate in Ice Dance and Synchronized Skating. The goal is "to increase the number of Judges, Technical Controllers and Technical Specialists, particularly in countries where there are limited number of Officials", explained the ISU. 

New adjustments have also be done to include online learning modules, in the already existing seminar and webinar options for ISU Officials.

"Ladies" becomes "Women"
In accord with the recommendation of the IOC Gender Equality Review Project, the ISU decided a change in terminology from ‘Ladies’ to ‘Women’ of all ISU sports and in all forms of communications, rules and official documents. This does not directly relate to synchronized skating but represents a major change for all skating disciplines.

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Technical changes and definitions
A few technical decisions, especially for synchronized skating, have been accepted by the ISU Members.

They mainly concern technical definitions (linking steps, artistic element, jumps, spins, free skating moves, point of intersection and step sequence, etc). These changes were requested to get a better organization and get the addition of new definitions.

See the changes in detail (ISU website)
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