TES minimum shows the flaws in the system
This weekend, Valtter Virtanen missed the TES minimum for Worlds by 0.83 points. He had no falls, no negative GOEs and Level 4 in all spins and in the step sequence.
Josefin Taljegard, who won the Tallink Hotels Cup this weekend, still doesn't have her Worlds minimum, either. She also regularly gets Level 4s.
Both skaters are loved in the skating fandom because of their entertaining performances and solid skating skills among others. Both skaters regularly win the national championship in their respective home countries. The reason that they have such a hard time to get their Worlds ticket is as simple as it is unfair: They don't have the big jumps. (Valtter is currently working on the 4T, but can't land it consistently.)
Josefin and Valtter are not the only ones. Every season, skaters chase their Worlds minimum by traveling to competition after competition, risking injury and exhaustion to compete at the most illustrious event of the season. It begs the question of whether a technical minimum score is a reasonable requirement to be eligible for Worlds and if there should be other ways for skaters to qualify because it disadvantages skaters whose PCS are higher than their TES, artistic skaters, natural entertainers - skaters who have other qualities than jumps.
The discussion of whether spins and steps should have higher base values (or likewise: the base values of jumps should be lowered) and if a stronger decoupling of PCS from the technical content of a programme is needed, arises every season because the current judging system rewards jumps and thus puts skaters who achieve quality in other aspects of this multi-faceted sprort at a disadvantage. The TES minimum is only a symptom of this flaw in the system, at the cost of skaters with low technical content no matter their other qualities.
In a discussion on Bluesky @skateguardblog suggested that every skating federation should be allowed to send one skater per discipline to a competition that is called "World Championship", regardless of their technical content. In the literal sense, a world championship is a championship of championships. The best of each skating nation should deserve their big moment. Let them skate in a big arena once a year. In addition to that, one could give two spots to nations whose skaters finished in the top 10 of their category the season before. Entry lists would explode, but sitting through a day-long short programme to see all those small-fed skaters would be so worth it.
Whatever a solution to better criteria to send skaters to Worlds might look like, a TES minimum is just not it. As with the overall scoring system, something needs to change. A better balance in the evaluation of the different aspects of a sport is past due.
