Agree. Very nice video, with lots of good, clear examples.
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She looks like she’s on fire when she jumps with her arms above her head. And I love her extension too. Her free leg is so straight & high on her landings.
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Yeah, I notice that he picks up ~5 points on his step sequences & spins, whereas other skaters get 3.5-4 points on these. Plus his advantage in component scores & his consistency. And he has other difficult content: triple axel combo, triple-triple, triple-euler-triple. I also really like how well he recovered after a fall on his quad attempt at the top of his free program. Several of the other skaters seemed to fall apart after making a mistake.
That said, I think that Ilia Malinin deserves to go to the Olympics after what he did at nationals.
Seems much more difficult to pull off a great free program compared to short; it’s 1:30min longer, but there are so many more elements, more jumping passes, etc. The only one I saw who had a perfect free was Ilia Malinin.
Nathan Chen fell twice, once during his dance sequence(!), but since he went for more & successfully pulled off more than anyone else, he still won. I remember Yuzuru Hanyu falling in his first olympics & still winning gold.
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That makes sense.
The US men are some of the best in the world, but none of the US women come close to what the Russian women are doing. Wouldn’t be surprised at all by a sweep of all the medals at the olympics by the Russian ladies. And they are ALL coached by Eteri Tutberitdze.
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Hawayek and Baker just do nothing for me! I feel like they make it look really hard but I’d sort of love to see him paired with someone else because I feel like he’s so much more natural than she is. I think he could really fly if given the opportunity but she’s so clunky in her movements.
Did anyone else think the choreography on Chock/Bates was like, almost hilariously cheesy? LOL. It was like a bad fosse impression with some of the arms and head positions, I still liked them better than Hawayek and Baker.
I liked Hubbell and Donohue the most of the top three, like by far! So easy and breezy and they’re perfectly matched IMO.
Definitely free skate is harder especially because of the fatigue.
One thing to know about the differences: it’s much harder to make up for mistakes in the short (also called “compulsory”, though that is out of favor now). The short program has MUCH more strict rules on what you MUST do and what you CAN’T do. If you screw up, you can’t recover the points later on in a different jump like you can in the free program. There’s a set group of elements you have do.
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I really hoped that Plushenko’s crew would be ready for prime time. Alas.
Still a chance - given how injured everyone in Russia has been and how bad covid has been. Absolutely do not wish covid or injury on a single one of the skater, I want them ALL to go to the olympics but I guess it would be boring if it was just a repeat of russian nationals.
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Oh, I get that. I LOVE their foot work though which is what it’s all about for me. Their chocktaws are like cutting through butter. And I love their serpentine and slide sequences. But I get the “they make it look hard” bit lol
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Haha, I’m glad you know what I mean. That’s fair re: footwork obviously I’m coming at it more from a performance/dance perspective and he’s so much more of a performer than she is! And much looser. Has he ever been paired with someone else?
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Yea, he went to nationals at the lower level several times with with Joylyn Yang. Obviously this is technically at a lower level but here’s what I could find before he teamed up. Both are to kinda atrotriously overdone songs (mary poppins and titanic)
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Yeah I can see it’s technically less impressive but I do think he looks better with her! Like I could see him paired with someone who has her style of articulation (but at his current level obv.) Interesting! I’d love to know how they (current couple) chose each other!
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I think they were hooked up by their coaches. It’s so much easier now - when I was a skater, you literally placed a classifieds ad in Skating magazine and then mailed DVDs in the actual mail, and then flew out for a trial.
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Also, not to make myself seem old but to really emphasize how BEHIND the sport is.
- it was against the rules for me to wear pants/leggings/bodysuits or even colored tights in competition or for tests
- we still used cassette tapes for our programs. not CDs, cassettes.
- i was only allowed to have white skating boots because “black is for boys”
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I always felt Surya Bonaly was treated terribly. She was so fucking awesome. I don’t get why they don’t want the sport to progress and evolve? I mean ballet is hardly a bastion of progress but every time you mention the costume regulations and racism and homophobia I’m confused anew. Like, why the intense rigidity? And so nonsensical, even down to shoe color? It’s not like that has any technical bearing on anything and it seems like it could even add artistry. It’s like they can’t decide if it’s an artistic sport or just a sport sport.
Also worth a watch if anyone is interested, video is potato quality but she is absolutely stunning.
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Oh, she was! And the racism is rampant in the sport (finally recognizing and working on it…), it’s much worse because it’s a judged sport and you can pack a lot bias into those judging scores. But a lot of why Surya Bonaly experienced scoring issues was because her technique was really lacking - she literally skates on her flats nearly all the time and never uses her edges, including take off and landing for jumps where it’s required. She’d completely fail under the IJS scoring system. She only really started to be able to compete at the high level once they eliminated compulsory figures, because her figures were…not at the high level.
Once she went pro and started touring and doing pro-am, I feel like her skills were better appreciated in the show circuit. I LOVED seeing her and scott hamilton together.
(Also Surya Bonaly is SO TINY. I got to meet her at a show and was like, omg you’re the same height as me. She’s such a powerhouse she does not look so petite.)
The boot color was not technically in the rules - but just one of those things you could get marked down for if a judge didn’t like it on your presentation score, so your coaches wouldn’t let you push an envelope and lose points for that. And the judges are very traditional. They get more and more traditional at the higher levels because you have to be a judge for a long time to be a “gold” judge. Once I reached the nationally competitive levels, my average judge was in their 70’s or 80’s.
Absolutely. I think the switch to IJS scoring and the loosening up of the 1980’s costuming rules that came with it (after the weird sh*t of the 80s, they passed a lot of rules on costumes where they couldn’t be “theatrical in nature” and you could lose points in presentation score for it) pushed if much more to “sport sport” but…as mentioned, I think now sometimes it leads to choreo point-jamming where we miss some of the artistry.
I miss the professional competitions of the last 90’s. Like Rudy Galindo KILLED at those.
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Like the amount of time I spent POLISHING MY WHITE BOOTS for competitions, can I please get that back? Because if you didn’t have shiny boots, you could lose points. Skating boots (back then) are made entirely of leather, even the sole. There is so much polishing to do. We had special tape we wear ON the boots, then we peel it off before the competition so there’s less polishing to do. Why is this a good system? Do other sports require you to spend hours fixing cosmetic scratches in your equipment before each competition?
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Ahhh I get that about not wanting to get marked down by judges rather than it being an actual rule. That exists in the competition circuit for the dance world too, in both directions actually. Some competitions value traditional choreography and costuming and some hate that and want everything modern.
That’s interesting about the switch in scoring! And I didn’t realize that about Bonaly’s technical issues, which of course are difficult to discern if you’re not a skater. I just heard a lot about how they were pissed about her wearing pants and then not wanting to wear stockings with some of her costumes or something? And her being “not artistic” which…IDK who they were watching because there are some pretty high ranking skaters who are like totally robotic compared to her.
The show circuit is so cool! And I can totally picture them together, they’re both like little dynamos. But like, why the ban on her flip? Like if she can do it…why ban it? Looking up Rudy Galindo now…oh I remember this guy!!!
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It’s too dangerous for competion. It was banned way before she did it, since the 1970s or so? Anyone is allowed to do it in shows and exhibitions. Lots of skaters do them in shows, but the sport didn’t want people to push it in competitions because you can’t practice them safely, and we don’t wear ANY safety equipment. We also banned other moves that are too dangerous and we don’t want to push the sport towards like the headbanger in pairs. People do the headbanger in shows all the time but they want fewer concussions, not more. Essentially anything where your head is intentionally towards the ice.
When gymnasts learn flips, they do it on mats. We do it on hard ice, and we’re traveling at about 10-15 MPH on ice. We really should wear helmets with the amount of concussions we get…but, alas.
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This program makes me cry every time. Rudy Galindo nearly quit the sport after Kristi Yamaguchi (his former partner) went to singles, lost his brother and two coaches to AIDS within a year and his dad to a heart attack in the same year. He trained for a year with his sister as his coach to come back to the sport to compete in nationals when it was in his hometown.
This was his program at that nationals, where he became the oldest man to win the title in 70 years, the first openly gay skater to win the title (he came out RIGHT before nationals), and the first Latino man to win the title:
He went pro during the HEIGHT of professional competitions on TV and did some great programs like this one where he turned himself into a violin:
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I’m so sad- I went to look up old ice show pictures to prove I skated in a show with an athlete who is going to the Olympics (Tim LeDuc)- but the photo is dark, and his costume is black and he’s under a jellyfish umbrella so you can’t see him.
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