I settled in this afternoon to enjoy watching the European Figure Skating Championships on ABC. They started with an hour on the men’s finals – a fairly interesting competition, since the reigning (European and World) champion, Evgeny Plushenko, has had an inconsistent season, due largely to the fact that he’s got a bum knee that needs surgery.
He had a dreadful long program. His triple axel popped to a single – then he fell, hugely, sprawlingly, painfully when he tried to land that. There were two other big honkin’ falls and several other less glaring errors, wreaking havoc with the artistic impression of his program, which was choreographed as a tribute to Nijinsky.
After the third “splat,” Terry Gannon said of this Nijinsky homage “Well, guess it’s turned out to be an afternoon of a fall for him.”
My jaw dropped. Terry Gannon. Who’da thunk?