News from the short track technical committee

Photos by Tony Chung @SHORTTRACKHD

Yesterday, Hungarian skater Viktor Knoch, elected athlete member of the ISU short track technical committee, shared some interesting informations related to the new season and beyond.

Dear skaters and friends!

This is my first post as elected athletes Comission member so first of all thank you for your confidence! Here are a couple infos ahead of the season that I would like to share with you.

First and foremost about the padding systems on competitions. The way the ISU works means that any new idea for new rules or rule modification that anyone proposes at this time can only be made official at the next ISU congress that will be held next summer. Therefore there can't be in the rules right now that the competitions have to have the movable padding system. It is planned to have that included in the rules after next congress. That being said, ISU made all kind of efforts to make sure most Events would be on such systems. Some unofficial infos about this years competitions: Budapest will be with the movable system and so will Dordrecht. Shanghai is always with movable pads. The only competition that will be with fixed boards seems to be Seoul as there is no way in that rink to install movable pads. Dresden (European championships) is looking into installing a hybrid system. That means the crash zones would be movable and the straights with fixed board. Keep in mind these are unofficial infos.

Some words about the referees. The Short Track Technical Committee had a hard time so far recognizing what decision came from which official as there was no paper trail from it. They implemented a system with the iPads where the referees have to mark their decision and the ISU can later see which decisions were unanimous and which ones cause some troubles. This means that they can identify the problematic situations and guide the referees into the same direction. The referees will also be getting a compensation starting this season. This is really important as we want professional referees and we want the best ones we can get.

My third topic here will be about a new discipline the ISU is working on and why they chose this type to try. The basic idea is a mix gender team event that would include individual racing, team time trial and mix gender relay. If you watched other various sports at the olympics or just world championships you can see that there are mix gender events in a lot of them. That's a general idea of the IOC (international Olympic committee) and they are the ones who will have to agree on the new event. The IOC deadline for ideas of new events is too close at this point to start exploring completely new ideas, so there are two options now. We try out this event this year and if people like it and it works then there's a chance that it could be included in the next olympics in China. If it doesn't work for some reason then there will be no new event there. Also why this mix gender team event is good for the IOC is that it doesn't need additional skaters at the games or any addition days for short track, and it only means one new medals. IOC is very strict generally about the number of medals and number of athletes in different sports so there's a good chance that they will like this mix gender team event and have it included at the games. An official test Event will happen in Montreal on the Tuesday before the worlds and the Short track technical Committee hopes that many teams will participate with their relay and substitute skaters.

Thank you for reading and please like and share so it can reach as many skaters as possible. Also if you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask in the comments or as a private message.

Viktor Knoch
athlete member
Short track technical committee