Skaters and Skating...Now and Then....

[mamselle]

Just watched the Nathan Chen and M. Liu programs.

At 16 I was just figuring out sitz spins and single waltz jumps!

But they're lovely.

Any others who follow skating?

Post your thoughts and favorites here!

M.

[ergative]

I used to be a fanatic skater. I was never very good (never landed an axel, for example, although I did start working on it), but I used to love watching it on tv (Michelle Kwan forever!) I've completely lost track now.

[mamselle]

I had to go back and pick up from Virtue and Moir, and some of their cohort.

I was still back in 1984 with the Sarajevo "Bolero" before that.

Our skating club at Ohio State was directed by a survivor of the 1961 team who was not on the main team's flight to Belgium when it crashed.

Her son, who also skated with us, had been at a competition in which he skated briefly with Janet Lynn...when they were both 9 years old.

M.

[mythbuster]

Long time skating fan here. Really, I'm just an Olympics sports nut. Luckily, so is Mr. Buster. We were happily watching wold cup Biathlon over the weekend!
   But back to the skating. Skating is in the midst of a giant evolutionary step. In the past few years the coaches somehow figured out how to train the ladies to do 3 axles and quad jumps. This had been a huge hurdle for at least a decade prior. I do really wonder what the change was that allowed this great leap forward?
      I'm suspicious of the head Russian's coaches methods- she seems to burn through her students at quite a fast rate! The fact that the current defending Olympic gold medalist is pondering retirement because she feel she "can't keep up" should be a big warning.
   For the men, while Nathan Chen is nice I'm team Yuzuru Hanyu all the way. He has exquisite lyricism and soul when he skates. His Prince routine was my favorite.
   Ice Dancing is and always will be the crazy soap opera of judging intrigue and inappropriate costumes, I miss the Shibutani siblings, as I appreciated dances with themes other than undying passion.
   I actively remember skating all the way back to 1988 and the battle of the Brians. I cried when Debbie Thomas lost to the then painted as evil Katarina Witt.
  Oh I never skated myself, but had enough years of dance training to appreciate it.

[mamselle]

Yes, the emphasis on athleticism (more rotations, etc. in jumps) vs. expressivity can be troubling...OK, it is a sport, but the potential for human speech through lyrical (or staccato, or emphatic) motion always needs to stay in the mix.

Something like that was at issue when the emphasis in scoring shifted on school figures, as I recall. I think it was Dick Button who worked to get them de-emphasized (scoring shifted to 40-60% from 50-50%?, maybe)?

But I find it encouraging that skaters have managed to innovate in expressive as well as impressive performance modalities, too. Boitano's experimental approach opened up the efforts in that regard in particular, I agree.

I think the sport/artistry balance is better preserved than that in, say, gymnastics. It bugs me when gymnasts just seem to totally ignore the music for their floor routines and end gestures out of synch with the phrasing of a passage, just to "get along" to the next sequence.

M.