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

[Brookie]

Yepper - isn't Sasha made of rubber or something? Girl can stretch it.

[dwanollah]

Oh, man, I always hated Dick Button. My mom and I loved to scream for him to shut up when he was commentatoring. "Neat, neat, neat!" "SHUT UP, DICK!" If you ever want to be totally annoyed, find the footage of him on Dorothy Hamill's (I think) Olympic skate where she'd been startled by the crowd booing the previous scores, and thought she was being booed. Dick's all, "She's over it! She's back on top of the world again!" when it's clear that she's struggling to make it through the first minute of her program and just hold it together. SHUT UP, DICK! Or when John Curry is skating one of the most superlative and artistic programs, landing a jump like he's effortlessly floating, and you're completely caught up until Dick has to interject "GOOD BOY!" SHUT UP, DICK! Seriously, shut up and let us watch!

Yet Scotty Hamilton, to me, is just totally cute and endearing when he's a commentator. I'm a total skating hypocrite. ;D

The butt-sticky-outy thing is what bugs me about the Beilman spin. Plus almost everyone who uses it, especially DB herself, seems to use it as the "big finish!!1!" move, and it kinda loses its impact as such after, you know, 25 years....

I need to start researching skating DVDs. I used to have boxes of stuff I'd taped (including my favorite ones EVAH, 1) Chris Bowman doing "I'm Just a Bad Boy!" and 2) Torville & Dean doing "Missing") but haven't stayed caught up in the last, oh, ten years.... Time to update my collection!

I've never seen Brian skating to "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" and am itching to. I caught the ending of the routine when it aired, and have never seen it since.

p.s. Ilia Kulik is HOT. Thank you.

[Deleted]

I am not Swanflke obviously, but in case he doesn't post it in time, there is a figure skating program on tomorrow[/color]. I'm not too keen on the live music/skating format, but these days skating fans don't have much to choose from so I guess I should just be happy skating is on TV.

Word, to DeaconBlue. I hate the cop. It has made so many of the routines look the same and creativity and artistry are often after thoughts. I know it was supposedly instituted to address the, um, favoritism in judging, but I don't think that has worked either. IMO, the only thing that will address that is to have the judges work for the international skating union rather than the respective federations.

[lyrasilver]

Yet Scotty Hamilton, to me, is just totally cute and endearing when he's a commentator. I'm a total skating hypocrite. ;D

Oh, I looove Scott Hamilton. He's such a sweetheart. Love his skating, love his commentating (is that a word?), love him period.

sezme, thank you for posting that link. I just set my DVR.

[lpatrice]

I think Figure Skating much like my other favorite Olympic sport, Gymnastics has gone downhill lately. It is almost making me nostalgic for the USSR.

I love Michelle Kwan, although I didn't really appreciate her until recently. I love Ilia Kulik and Alexi Yagudin. Love, love, love Ekaterina Gordeeva, and Kristi Yamaguchi.

Hate: Sasha Cohen - I'm sorry but being flexible and having a sort of great spiral (wobbly edges) does not make one a great or even an artistic skater. I see it with Michelle and Krista - heck even crazy old Oksana Bauil, but I don't see it with Sasha Cohen

Miss: The great Russian Pairs and Ice Dancers of yester year

[kostgard]

Has anyone outside of Canada heard of Josee Chouinard?

I think I remember her - blonde hair, right?

I think she's the one who had to go on earlier than planned (and was pissed about it) because Tonya Harding was bellyaching about her broken lace?

Unfortunately, Tonya is the hometown girl here, so we get to hear about her meth-fueled wackiness all the time.

[Deleted]

Sasha Cohen may be the most naturally talented skater I have ever seen. That does not make her the best. I think I've seen her skate a clean program maybe twice. Nicks is a good coach, but the only coach who got her to jump correctly was Tersaova. Unfortunately Sasha's mother had a huge fight with her and that was the end of that. To go from Terasova to Robin Wagner was a joke and it didn't last long.



The skater/coach fit is so important. Zmievskaya made Oksana Bauil a magnificent, balletic skater. Once she came to the USA, got ideas and dropped her as a coach, she never skated well again.

Sash'a spiral isn't sort of excellent, it is excellent. There is a lot more than flexibility involved in that move. It is extremely difficult. You still see highly ranked skaters doing it with their arm holding their leg up.

[Margo]

kostgard said:

I am also sad that it seems to be becoming a jumping competition. Katarina Witt was always one of my favorite skaters because of her artistry, and it was just sad to see in her last Olympic appearance ('94?) she scored so low because she just didn't have the jumps, even though she looked gorgeous out there.

I've seen a weird but similar process in ballroom dancing (aka Dancesport) when it was trying to gain recognition and become included in the Olympics. The International Dancesport Federation instituted strict costume policies (limiting how much skin you could reveal and what styles of costumes could be worn), but at least they didn't dictate what our choreography had to be. And then they failed to become recognized, and the rules were lifted.

Ice skating is another one of the sports that is also somewhat of an art (only more so than ballroom dancing, of course), and the goal of all the changes is to regulate any subjectivity on the part of the judges by assigning points to moves, with jumps being the most valuable. Sadly, this kills the artistry.

Have we had any Olympic Games with the new rules yet?

[swanflake]

dwanollah said:

Oh, man, I always hated Dick Button. My mom and I loved to scream for him to shut up when he was commentatoring. "Neat, neat, neat!" "SHUT UP, DICK!" If you ever want to be totally annoyed, find the footage of him on Dorothy Hamill's (I think) Olympic skate where she'd been startled by the crowd booing the previous scores, and thought she was being booed. Dick's all, "She's over it! She's back on top of the world again!" when it's clear that she's struggling to make it through the first minute of her program and just hold it together.

I've never seen it in full, but that was 1974 Worlds, not the Olympics.

I love Dick Button. No one has done more for figure skating than he has, and there is no one who will ever know more about the sport than he does. And I know that he can be annoying, but if I were to compare his commentary to Scott Hamilton, it wouldn't about who's more endearing/less annoying, but rather all about the perspective they bring. Dick Button knows so much about dance, music, ballet, theatre, opera, and all the other arts that have offered so much inspiration for figure skating. When Evgeny Plushenko debuted his "Tribute to Vaclav Nijinsky" free skate in 2003, Dick ripped it apart, but he was only able to be so confident in doing so because he was well aware of Nijinsky's history, whereas Scott Hamilton probably doesn't even know who Vaclav Nijinsky is. Scott rarely says anything that I find the least bit enriching--just a lot of "Wow! That's extremely difficult!" and such.

And in his contributions to professional figure skating, Scott Hamilton always wanted to put on a show of wholesome, family-friendly mainstream entertainment. He's never had any desire to encourage any broad artistic visions. I've always appreciated him as a skater, but most of what he seems to reinforce with his commentary and his behind-the-scenes work rarely seems to be what I believe should be reinforced in figure skating. Dick has brought far more to the sport in his lifetime. He is responsible for the creation of professional figure skating competitions, which unfortunately seem to be on a hiatus for now. And even now when he could finally go settle down after a lifetime of brilliant work, he still works to be a force within the skating world, working to ensure that all of the magic of the ice will stay with the sport so that generations will continue to fall in love with it even long after he's no longer here to see it for himself. He doesn't have to stay with us, but regardless of how much Dick Button still needs figure skating, it's not as much as figure skating needs Dick Button.

Damn it... Why don't I keep tissues in this room?

I'm not a fan of the new scoring system either. For every one advantage of it, there are at least three things I dislike immensely. It's abundantly clear that it's giving more reward to the accumulation of high base values than it is for masterful execution. I like the Biellmann spin when it's done properly, but the last time I checked, to recieve credit for a Biellmann position you only need to have the skate above your head, but a Biellmann with the skate just a centimeter above the head looks horrible. And I totally agree with Dwan that the compulsory figures need to return, but it's not necessarily that important for them to actually compete them as it is for them to just have trained them and gained that fundamental background. Maria Butryskaya trained under the Soviet system where figures were very important, and with all of her shortcomings there was still qualities to her skating that likely came from that background with figures that stayed with her long after she quit having to do them, like her ability to use the proper take-off edges on both the Lutz and the Flip jumps. For that reason I actually think they should do away with the short program for novice and junior level skaters and replace them with figures, and then at the senior level they shouldn't make figures a part of the Grand Prix because the ISU couldn't afford it, but they should at least have them at Worlds and the Olympics. The ISU did away with the Qualifying Round at Worlds, so it wouldn't be a huge stretch to fit them in.

But last season I didn't pay too much attention to figure skating. I was mourning the end of the Kwan era and wasn't quite up for this new generation, but it's time for me to cut that out and get back in the game. So I'm glad this thread is here so all of you fine people can help me get right back into the thick of things where I left off.

I'll find the TV schedules and post them tomorrow, I promise!

[Deleted]

What you say about the compulsory figures is true Swan. The good old time coaches still try to install some of the in their young skaters. But the fact is that ice rinks don't even offer patch or moves in the field time anymore, its all freestyle. Soon you will have coaches who never did figures and have no idea how to teach them. Thats how you get skaters like the Hughes girls and Meissner. No matter what medals these girls win, they will never be complete skaters in my eyes.