Talk:Death spiral (figure skating)

Two Botched Discussions

   It truly is nobody's fault, but a series of innocent mistakes have brought about something of a Wiki-discussion perfect-storm of confusion. I intend a two-track remedy, reflected in two "outermost" boxes:

   The contents of the pink box that encloses several levels of other boxes is a version where all the text is kept in the same order it had originally been placed in, but a small amount of objectively false info is pointed out and put into its proper (and innocent) context.
   The contents of the green box make the same factual correction, but also correct for an instance of raising an off-topic point within a discussion, and for an instance of responding to that off-topic point, still within the same discussion. (I let that stand in the pink box, for the benefit of anyone who wishes to confirm the accuracy of my "refactoring" -- inside the green box -- of the two logically separate but intermingled discussions, including integrating part of one discussion with a contribution, on the same topic, made by a separate editor in a separate section.

   (Thanks for the patience of those who have read this far!)
^{--Jerzy•t 01:01, 13 July 2013 (UTC)}

   This pink outer box serves to identify a version, as close as possible to what the previous contributors to this talk page left as their input, in light of the need to correct for a colleague's honest but misleading attempt to "clean up after" their own innocent omission -- namely, a time-&-date stamp that reflected when they did the cleaning up, rather than when we, their colleagues, could begin to see and act on the contrib.

Edge Confusion

Some thing that this article confuses me is this sentance:

“ Death spirals can be performed in all four variants of inside/outside and forward/backward edges. ”

Is this the man's edge or the ladies edge?
Gary van der Merwe 15:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that not only is this article missing a description of the "four variants" as mentioned above, but also an explanation of why this move is called the Death Spiral would be nice. Such as, has someone ever died while preforming it?
--Lab Dragon 18:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

A SineBot edit correctly identified 22:23, 7 November 2007‎ as the time of VH's contrib (part of which is below, in the inner, yellow box), but VH "fixed" it by expunging the SineBot contrib,(re-)signing, and including a timestamp reflecting, instead, the time of re-signing. I have struck thru the misleading timestamp, & via {{undated}} correctly timestamped the contrib to reflect the time when the content was contributed.
^{--Jerzy•t 01:01, 13 July 2013 (UTC)}

(No content specified)

Explanation of name

It should be noted that the IP asking this question probably was unaware of the previous off-topic discussion of the name, under the heading "Edge Confusion".

Perhaps there should be an explanation of the name "death spiral"

Did someone die doing it? Is it an exceptionally hard trick? Is it not that hard, but just looks hard? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.100.8.206 (talk) 16:37, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

   This green outer box serves to identify the version of the preceding two subsections that has been refactored to approximate (where feasible) how the previous contributors to this talk page would otherwise have discussed the two separate questions (about choice of mode of the woman contacting the ice, and about why the "death spiral" was so named). (Like the copy in the pink box above, this version also corrects for an honest but misleading attempt -- see the top of the pink box -- of a colleague to clean up after their own innocent omission.)

Edge Confusion redux

Some thing that this article confuses me is this sentance:

“ Death spirals can be performed in all four variants of inside/outside and forward/backward edges. ”

Is this the man's edge or the ladies edge?
Gary van der Merwe 15:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that not only is ... [T]his article [is] missing a description of the "four variants" as mentioned above [....]
--Lab Dragon 18:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

A SineBot edit correctly identified and noted 22:23, 7 November 2007‎ as the appropriate time/date-stamp of VH's contrib (part of which is below, in the inner, yellow box), but VH "fixed" it by (re-)signing and including a timestamp reflecting, instead, the time of that re-signing. I have struck thru the misleading timestamp, & via {{undated}} correctly timestamped the contrib to reflect the time when the text was contributed.
--Jerzy•t 01:01, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

(No content specified)

Explanation of name redux

[T]his article [...] also [lacks] an explanation of why this move is called the Death Spiral [, which] would be nice. Such as, has someone ever died while preforming it?
--Lab Dragon 18:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

... As for the name, the Protopopovs invented three other spirals, though the names did not stick and I couldn't find the origin of "death" spiral:
http://kitsapsun.com/news/2006/Dec/24/ludmila-and-oleg-protopopov-keep-skating-on-and/

"Completely self-taught — Oleg choreographs their routines and Ludmila makes the costumes — the Protopopovs were the first skaters to perform side-by-side jumps and invented three spiral moves: the life spiral on the forward inside edge of their skate blades; the love spiral on the forward outside edge; and the cosmic spiral on the backward inside edge."

Vesperholly 06:18, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
— Preceding undated comment added 22:23, 7 November 2007‎

It should be noted that the IP asking the following question may have been fooled by the heading "Edge Confusion" on the first section, and not have realized that discussion of this topic was already under way.

Perhaps there should be an explanation of the name "death spiral"
Did someone die doing it? Is it an exceptionally hard trick? Is it not that hard, but just looks hard?
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.100.8.206 (talk) 16:37, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

   I tried some Google research, but without success.
   My opinion is that any skating "move" where you turn in place gets called a spiral, and the lighter partner in any death spiral evokes the image that she is dead or helpless, and the heavier partner is attempt to rescue her or at least retrieve her body for a decent burial, against the force of a whirlpool or whirlwind (both forms of three-dimensional_spiral, by the way) or figurative (e.g. spiritual) vortex that threatens to pull her irretrievably away. I dunno how skaters exit from the various death spirals (a really good WP article on this topic would tell us the options), but isn't it easy to imagine the performance ending with her inert on the ice?
   That said, it would be worthwhile to know what the OED has to say about death spiral. Just guessing (tho i continue to insist that no further explanation is needed), with 1928 rather than ~1904 as the presumed year of naming, aircraft death spiral is eminently plausible as the original, and all the other senses being metaphors evoking it -- especially with the finish normally being a dramatic, if figurative, "resurrection".
Jerzy•t 05:23, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Cool potential source

Stumbled upon this webage, about the physics of figure skating: [1] It includes details about death spirals, as well as jumps. It should be incorporated into both articles, but I'm not working on them currently, so I wanted to record it here. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 18:43, 18 November 2018 (UTC)