Figure Skating: He's Here, He's Weir, Get Over It

[proper stranger]

Did anyone else watch NHK yesterday?

Even though that wasn't the best I've seen him skate it, I LOVE Daisuke's short program. I can take or leave Verner, but was it was nice to see Carriere (the young American) do so well. The ladies' event was a disappointing splatfest. Carolina was really held up in the program component scores, IMO. She is so boring. Alissa Czisny breaks my heart--such gorgeous spins and presence, but cannot get her jumps together.

In dance, I liked Delobel/Schoenfelder's free dance much better on this second viewing. The Canadians were good, too, but I'm not annointing them the Second Coming of Torvill and Dean yet (as the announcers said that some have done).

Skating won't be the same without Katarina Witt. Even though I was a Debi Thomas fan back during that rivalry (I really feel old), Katarina was a fierce competitor and wonderful performer. Her artistry just seemed to get better and better with time. One of my favorite performances of hers was at the '94 Olympics. Even though she didn't have a shot at the podium, her long program was so beautiful.

[oceansun]

The Virtue and Moir are the Next T&D hype is crazy. They are so young, and T&D were huge innovators and Tessa and Scott, while beautiful skaters, are, I feel, quite generic in their musical interpretation. Their program this year is quite similar to last years. And they deserve a better choreographer than Igor. I actually preferred Delobel and Schoenfelder's dance, but my favorite was Khoklova and Novitski.

Watching Miki was painful. What a splatfest. OTOH, I loved Nana Takeda. She seemed to be having so much fun. The only bright spot in the ladies event, imo.

Daisuke and Verner are two of my favorite male skaters and it's nice to see them do well. Carriere has nice jumps (loved the three jump sequence with the arms above his head), but something about his arms bothered me.

[carrier76]

I'm more excited about the men's competition than I am the ladies'. I'm looking forward to seeing those 6 go head to head in the final.

Carolina Kostner gets on my NERVES and I don't know why. Her costumes? How gangly she looks when she splats out of her jumps? Hmm.

[Xerox]

Phil Hersh: Champions on Ice is dead

Champions on Ice, the top figure skating tour in the United States for more than a quarter-century, is dead.

An announcement is expected in about a week, according to Tribune sources familiar with the situation.

The handful of Champions dates tentatively scheduled for 2008 will be cancelled, and the tour will be subsumed by its rival, Stars on Ice, the sources said.

[swanflake]

Xerox, thanks for posting that link. I've been really curious to hear news about ISU negotiations.

Cinquanta, in Lausanne to attend a meeting of the International Olympic Committee's executive board, has been trying, so far in vain, to get a new U.S. television deal for the ISU's properties, which include both figure skating and speedskating events.

"The United States and U.S. television have been very good to us, and we are not going to turn our back on them," Cinquanta said. "I will let them have [the 2009 worlds] free if there is no other solution."

The ISU's four-year deal with ESPN expires after the 2008 worlds in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Cinquanta has had discussions with ESPN, NBC and Fox, but none is willing to pay anything near the $5 million per year the current deal provides the ISU.

"The Americans are telling me they have no money," Cinquanta said Tuesday.

The ISU likely will wind up agreeing to some sort of profit-sharing contract with a minimal rights fee at best.

It certainly will be a far cry from the $22 million a year it received from ABC for the five-year deal that ended in 2004.

I've read before that the ABC deal was worth $24 million. Maybe the extra two million came from ESPN and Lifetime.

If the ISU's next American contract isn't going to be "anything near" $5 million, then I wonder if they'll even be able to maintain the Grand Prix Series in the future. It does sound like the ISU will get something, though. Cinquanta knows that if skating disappears from American media, then Americans will forget about it immediately and that ball will never get rolling again. I'm pleasantly surprised to read that FOX even gave the ISU the time of day. They have a lot of high profile sporting events already--much more than NBC.

I'm glad to see that Ottavio Cinquanta has come to his senses and isn't making outrageous demands of the American networks like he did in the last negotiations, but I don't think he should've said that he'd give away 2009 Worlds for free. I think that's giving away a little too much power in the negotiation process...

I'm hoping that NBC will take the contract and offer a schedule for 2009 Worlds similar to the one they've planned for US Nationals this year.

[Deleted]

I'm about a month late, but it really saddens me to see Katarina Witt hanging it up for good. She was always my favorite and so beautiful to watch in person.

[swanflake]

Katarina Witt[/b]
She was doing an interview on German television recently and said that she watches videos of herself on YouTube all of the time and reads every comment. I uploaded a video of her skating to "Schindler's List" onto YouTube, and I know she watched it because it comes up on the first page if you search for "Katarina Witt". But my gosh, so many of the comments on there are NOTHING I would ever want for her to read. I don't delete them because of free speech and all that, but there have been little discussions about German history during WWII, debates of the merit of her "Playboy" pictorial, and one time there was someone who just posted (*) (*) (*) (*) (*) (*) over and over. I felt so embarrassed just thinking about her reading all of that stuff, but there are lots of comments from people sharing their love for Katarina the Great, so I guess it's nothing too terrible.

Mao Asada and Yu-Na Kim -- Grand Prix Final[/b]
So check out Mao Asada's free skate from the Grand Prix Final. In this performance she accomplished more jumping content than I believe any woman ever has before--Triple Axel, Triple Flip + Triple Toe Loop, and a Triple Flip + Triple Loop in the second half of the program. Up until this competition, Mao wasn't even trying Triple Toe Loops or Triple Salchows because she has issues with the entrances to both jumps. That was leaving her with six triples in her free skate, and the Axel and her Triple/Triple are both somewhat inconsistant for her. If she were to have so much as one mistake, a clean performance by a skater with superior presentation could beat her (*cough* Michelle Kwan in 2010 *cough*), but at the GPF she managed to get that Triple Toe Loop off fine out of the Triple Flip, so she is making progress.

The judges aren't leaving it all to jumps, though, because even though she fell once in her free skate and had less difficulty, Yu-Na Kim's free skate got higher Program Component marks, putting her free skate total only 0.34 behind Mao Asada's, and it's still Yu-Na Kim who has the world record free skate total from her performance at Cup of Russia.

Yu-Na Kim won the competition over Mao Asada because she had a big lead after the short program, where Mao made almost fell and then made an enormous mistake[/color] of completely omitting her Triple Lutz because she got off in one of the steps into the jump. She didn't even have the presence of mind to just do a Double Toe Loop or something and take whatever few tenths of a point that'd give her.

Oksana Domnina is a MEANIE!!![/u]
Watch the dance if you want (ehh), but fast forward to 6:30 when they get to the kiss & cry and see what she says to the flower girls. I cannot believe she had the nerve to treat those children that way! They're just trying to do their job barely even able to hold up those big ass buckets hung on their backs, and there's Ms. Domnina dumping a diva act on them. "MOVE! MOVE!" Even if they were blocking her view of the scoreboard, the scores are read aloud. And it took another several minutes for their scores to come up anyway because they screwed up the dance spin so badly that the callers had to sort it all out how to list their technical elements, so it's not like those poor children were really in any hurry.

You know who would never ever have done that? Michelle Kwan. When I first watched that video the first thing I thought of was Kwan at '99 Nationals when she left the kiss & cry, went up to all of the flower girls to say "Hugs for everybody!!!"

[proper stranger]

swanflake said:

Oksana Domnina is a MEANIE!!!

[/u]
Watch the dance if you want (ehh), but fast forward to 6:30 when they get to the kiss & cry and see what she says to the flower girls. [/quote]
Ugh. I hated their overblown, overwrought, overscored (at GPF, not Cup of China) dance and now I have another reason for my dislike. Those poor girls. I've never seen plastic trash cans put on the backs of the flower girls.

You know who else would never do that? Sweetie-pie Ben Agosto, who (with Tanith) I hope places higher than Domnina/Shabalin at Worlds.

[swanflake]

Yeah, I think most figure skaters would never act like that. Only tacky ass wannabe-divas would treat flower girls like that.

I have a tape of 1987 Worlds where they let some poor toddler boy onto the ice to collect flowers, and bless his heart, but he couldn't even stand upright in skates. Even that future crackhead Christopher Bowman had enough graciousness to go over and help the poor boy onto his feet, make sure he was okay, and offer him some sweet encouragement. If that's how Oksana Domnina is going to treat people, then I hope she doesn't even make the podium at Worlds no matter how sexy her partner is.

Here's to Tanith and Ben winning the 2008 World title!!! And Isabelle and Olivier in second!

[lpatrice]

Did I miss something?? I didn't see or hear her do anything particularly bad, she just kind of ushered or shooed them out of her way. Maybe I was just expecting worse, I don't know. The big garbage cans on the back where way annoying, and I think I probably would have done the same thing. I'm still not sold on D/S anywho, so whatever I guess.

But I tell you what, I can't stand Tanith and Ben, moreso Tanith than Ben but they annoy to no end.