Eating Muffins in an Agitated Manner

Quad or not to Quad

Posted by Sari

Josef Sabovcik almost got it in 1986. Kurt Browning performed the first ratified one in 1988. Elvis Stojko made it routine, and for the generation after it was the element that marked the difference between first and second tier competitors. Then came Salt Lake City, and the new judging system which was is good at evaluating separate elements and had different criteria for the whole. Suddenly instead of doing one of each triple and two combos, people were experimenting with all sort of jump content to maximise their  points, and also developing more and more difficult spins, steps and spirals to pick up techincal points from non-jumping elements.

So should it be about the jumps, more specifically about the quad? That is what this olympic cycle in men's figure skating came down to. There are a number more or less influential people who feel that Evan Lysaseck was not the worthiest champion because he did not even try a quad, and - more importantly - that the risk/reward ratio for trying a quad is stunting the sport.

At the moment there do not seem to be skaters who can combine a solid quad with complex choreography and difficult transitions. If you spend time perfecting the other elements and if you make jumping more difficult for yourself by having difficult transitions, the quad will suffer to the extent that it is tactically wise to leave it out. Fully rotated but fallen quad will still garner good points but if it is deemed underrotated or if the skater “triples it” the loss of points is significant. So we have skaters – most famously Plushenko and Joubert - who have front-loaded programs with easy transitions and quadruple jump(s), and skaters who pick up points from complex programs. 

So I am just hoping Daisuke Takahashi who was the only one to skate all out and project to audience, and Takahiko Kozuka who is just a beautiful all-around skater with gorgeous edging and jump technique will get it togeether and offer us the whole package.

Olympics!

Posted by Sari

Sorry for the long silence, I have had a nasty carpal tunnel syndrome on both hands, and thus have not wanted to strain them with tapping away at the computer other than work-things.

 

I’m so glad the next Olympics will be nearer my time zone. This getting up at three or four a.m. is really not my thing. That said, compared to Torino the broadcasters have gotten more internet savvy and bandwidth has grown so that at least for me, these are the first winter olympcis where I am not dependent on broadcasters for what to watch and when. There are number of feeds from TV-stations to choose from, not to mention EBU’s marvellous streaming service. Now, if only the rights to replay could be settled so that I could rewatch my favourites I would be a happy camper.  Because this is also first skating season when I do not have means to record the performances myself.

 

But to business, i.e Olympic Pair Scating. I have only one real gripe with judging, though I do not agree with the end results. The gripe is the points awarded –especially in the short program – to the homer team Dube/Davidson. I find they have very good posture and great edges, but they made so many mistakes that their total after SP was about 10 points more than it should have been. Most erroniously they had positive grade of execution scores for their step sequence where Davidson visibly stumbled. There need not to be anything more sinister than the fact that judges tend to be more generous to home skaters and that audience excitement will inevitably influence the panel.

 

The rest of the results were completely defendable and I am a minority opinion. I don’t think the chinese have nearly as good skating skills, transitions or choreography as the germans. I also think that in the throws and the twist, which garner such accolades for chinese teams, judges should pay more attention to the form of the man at the trows and at the landing of the twist. Based on that I would have had germans at least closer despite their mistakes. My last point is wholly subjective and thus should not be a factor, but of course it is: I have never gotten Shen/Zhao. I acknowledge that they progressed leaps and bounds from 1999 when I saw them live but they never sent shivers down my spine, not even with their “masterpiece”, 2003 Turandot which I found technically rock solid but quite boring. I prefer Pang/Tong, but they don’t really do it for me either. Savchenko/Solkowy on the other hand really rock my socks. So bummer for Aliona and Robin, also for the Russians Kavaguti/Smirnov with Yuko's constantly dislocating shoulder.