Sunday, February 21, 2010

Figure skating controversy

Watching Elvis Stojko today on TV makes me laugh. If he was competing in today's system he would have never won because he can only jump and can't skate in between. He doesn't understand that pushing the envelope can include more difficult footwork and spins and doing your jumps in the second half because it's mentally more tiring and you risk falling on non-jump elements. One jump doesn't make a sport. It's just like any other sport - a perfect 960 can beat a scrappy 1140 that loses you all your speed.

Overall Plushenko's jumps weren't great, he wasn't in a good position in the air, his toes basically came through his skates to save a few. He stood around and posed on the ice in the last minute of the program and didn't do any jumps at the end of the program. His choreography sucked and he hardly moved on the ice at all during his footwork. The quad alone doesn't win the olympics.

2 comments:

K said...

Although I agree that Plushenko's performance could be better, I would have to disagree that a quad doesn't make an Olympian. If you look at statistics from all the previous Olympians since 1992, Lysachek is the ONLY gold medalist without a quad. Period. It's a fact. An embarrassing one at that. Thus, I would have to agree with Plushenko that what Lysachek did was ice dancing, not men's figure skating. But clean ice dancing deserves a medal, too... I guess.

Milk and Two Sugars said...

Whoosh! (That's the sound of everything you said going right over my head. But the entire winter olympics is like that! Still enjoying it so much!)