So – whaddya think? Will Michelle become the first American to win six world championships? Apparently she didn’t skate well in her qualifying round – OTOH, she does have a way of putting out the performance she needs when she needs it.
And Johnny Weir – was the national championship a fluke, or is he really capable of skating with the big boys? Michael Weiss – does anyone else hate him as much as I do? How’s Plushenko doing – is he physically going to be able to defend his title?
To be honest, Michelle Kwan annoys the hell out of me, so I’m pulling for Sasha Cohen or one of the Japanese girls, and hoping for our Canadians to do respectably.
I was really impressed with Johnny Weir - he needs a quad, but he looks like he’s got a great future. Michael Weiss needs to go away! He somehow manages to be boring and obnoxious at the same time. It was also great to see all the other young skaters who did well this year - Joubert, Lindemann (I think that’s how you spell it, the German guy) and the Swiss guy were all amazing. Plushenko didn’t even look like he was injured the way he skated, though I was shocked when he fell on the setup for a jump. Emmanuel Sandhu was frustrating as ever - tied for first after qualifying, fell to 11th after the short, managed to pull himself up to 8th. He’s shown earlier this season that he can beat Plushenko, he just needs to be able to put it all together at some point.
The pairs was good too. It’s too bad Shen and Zhao weren’t able to make up the ground to get the gold, and I thought Langlois and Archetto (Canadian pair) should have been a couple of places higher, but that could just be my national bias showing.
All in all, a good World’s so far, though I think that the judges are going a bit overboard handing out all those 6.0s while they’ve still got the chance.
Not in Canada it doesn’t - we’ve had two hours a night since Monday.
Lobelia - remarkably, no Lord of the Rings or Carmen so far, at least among the skaters good enough to get on tv, though there has been some Swan Lake.
I watched a bit of this last night, but only saw a couple of performances. I particularly like the final Chinese couple, I think it was Shen and Zhao (spelling could be way off).
I was at the Four Continents competition here in Hamilton in January. Of the men, no fewer than 4 had a Matrix theme. It made me laugh last night when I turned on the TV and saw the French guy (who wasn’t at the 4 Continents) skating to music from the Matrix.
Apparently the Matrix soundtrack must have been on sale
Yeah, Shen and Zhao were amazing, as always – their throw jumps are just phenomenal, and now that they’ve added some artistry to what they’re doing, they really are that good. I was okay with the Russkies winning though – another excellent long program.
I like Joubert’s “Matrix” program – I thought he deserved to win, esp. after Plushenko’s fall. Dick Button saying “good fall, if you’ve gotta fall” – but shit, he fell on the setup of a fairly simple jump.
There’s no way he’s gonna stay in peak form for two more years for the next Olympics – Joubert, Lindemann, and Weir are all on track to make Milan extremely interesting, though. Ms Macphisto – Weiss is “boring and obnoxious at the same time” – bingo! you put your finger on what’s been irritating me about him for the last six to eight years. WTF on that Civil War program – it’s not exactly the kind of thing to endear him to international judges, ne c’est pas? It’s that kind of bone-headed thinking on his part that bothers me.
Damn – I wish I lived in Canada – or at least had cable, apparently they’ve been running a fair amount of this on ESPN. Alas, the beau with cable has zero interest in watching skating, so I guess I’ll have to satisfy myself with the three hours ABC is giving us tomorrow night. (None tomorrow afternoon? since when?)
And, to second Shibb0leth – why don’t you like Michelle Kwan, Ms Macphisto? I originally thought her plan to stick around for Milan was stupid and annoying – but her free skate at Nationals reminded me of why she’s so dominant – damn, she’s a beautiful skater. Sasha Cohen, OTOH, scares the hell out of me – I can see her turning into a Tonya Harding, but doing the dirty work herself. A wee bit too high-strung for my taste. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of influence Robin Wagner has on her, if any.
I can’t really put my finger on what it is about Michelle Kwan that bugs me, but somehow she just rubs me the wrong way. It’s just one of those irrational things.
I’ve only managed to see the finale of the Ice Dance so far (bloody satellite TV only letting you view one channel at a time) to me, that competition has become more about who can do the most death-defying lifts/severest splits/wear the silliest costume, than the actual skating/dancing …
Will do my darndest to watch the Ladies final tomorrow (I’ll hide the remote control so’s D’Mother can’t flick the thing over to Sky News).
The top three long programs were all just wonderful. I was in awe of both Chinese couples and the Russian gold medalists. It was a complete pleasure to watch and I look foward to Milan with great relish. Pairs competition – with its emphasis on daring and unison IMO just brings out the best in skaters.
The men’s competition was fantastic also. What a bravura display of technique among the top men! I agree about Weiss. He should retire already. Frankly Plushenko annoys me almost as much. Maybe it’s the blonde helmet on his head or the bizarro costumes but there’s just something about watching him skate that’s a little freaky.
I thought Weir has potential. If he can pull off a quad he should be in the running. He has excellent lines.
I was all in agreement that Michelle Kwan should retire but after watching her skate at Nationals I don’t think so anymore. No one has her musicality, grace and technique right now even if she doesn’t have a triple-triple combination. The Hungarian woman who won the Europeans was good but the rest of field was mediocre at best. Sasha Cohen has great lines and musicality but no consistency at all. She has yet to give two good back to back performances at worlds or nationals. So far she’s all promise and no delivery. The two Japanese skaters have a lot of potential. I look foward to seeing them skate.
The dance competition is the only genre I don’t like. I generally find it boring and corrupt.
Oh my. The ladies’ long was on early here in Canada, and there was a bit of an incident before Kwan’s skate. Some guy managed to get on the ice wearing skates, stripped down to leggings and a tutu, and skated around for a couple of minutes before security caught him! No one knows how he got there, but he claims that he just got bored - unlikely, since he not only had skates and a tutu, he had advertising for some website painted on his chest. Michelle Kwan seemed to take it in stride though. She was laughing while the guy skated around, and had a good performance after.
I read in the paper today that Kwan can’t win since she was penalized for running two seconds long in the short skate. That’s one of the reason that I’ll only casually watch skating: the judging and officiating is just mind-numbing. I’ll miss the show later, so I’ll check in here to get your comments on how things turned out.
I read in the paper that Kwan skated to The Feeling Begins (I think). Is that the Peter Gabriel song for Last Temptation of Christ? I’m so not a skating fan, but that’s an awesome song to skate to.
Yeah, Michelle skated to Peter Gabriel – I don’t know the name of the song, though, or where it’s from, so can’t answer the rest of your question, Yookeroo. It’s a program I’ve seen her skate before, and it’s truly beautiful.
On the one hand, the thing about two seconds for Michelle Kwan is kind of bogus – OTOH, she’s been doing this a lot of years, she can’t have been unaware of this rule, and there’s no reason she should be exempt just because she’s Michelle Kwan.
I was okay with the finishes. Michelle’s long program was better than Sasha’s, but since she was so far behind, I think third was the right placement. The Japanese woman who won, Arakawa, won fair and square, I thought – lovely long program. (Hm, here are all the results – Japanese women took three of the top five spots!) The woman who came in fourth, Miki Ando, is going to be dominant in the sport in a few years – she should peak, umm, right around Milan.
I was disappointed they didn’t show more of the guy with the tutu – what a weird incident!
Had a friend over, so though I had the ice-dancing on, it was muted most of the time while I heard about his romantic misadventures … anything of interest happen?
Oh the judging, well we could go on about that forever!
But I must say there was another tasty example:
The Italian skater in the last group (Carolina ???) starts with a great combination but it’s all downhill from there… She falls badly on one jump, puts her hand down on another, and steps out of a couple more. By the end, I was wondering if she was going to finish - she seemed exhausted.
I was surprised at how much the marks for many of the skaters varied–from a 5.2 to a 5.9 seems ridiculous to me.
Having said that, I have to agree with twickster that Arakawa won fair and square. Her long skate was wonderful. As much as I like Michelle, I liked Arakawa’s program better. I was surprised that Michelle was critical of them penalizing her. She is usually very non-defensive and fair in her comments. I expected her to say something along the lines of “my bad. I screwed up and went over time.”
I’m still baffled by some of the judging. Even if you add in the one-tenth of a point Michelle lost for going over her time on the short program, that puts her lowest technical merit mark at 5.2. That seems really low to me, especially when Carolina Kostner (the Italian skater) fell two or three times during her long program and got 5.9s for technical merit. And can someone please explain how Evgeny Plushenko got 6.0s for presentation after he fell? Doesn’t 6.0 mean perfect, as in not falling on your butt?
That said, Shizuka Arakawa did a fantastic job. She really did deserve to win the gold.
I have to say I was excited to see Irina Slutskaya skating again. She might not have done as well as some of the other skaters, but considering the serious health problems she’s had over the past year she did a pretty good job.
I hate this interim judging system they’re using. The old system may have been corrupt, but at least we could see which judge was giving out wonky or biased marks and the referees could deal with judges who gave marks that were way out of line, like the 5.9 for Kostner. Now there’s no accountability. Not even ISU officials can see which judge gave out which mark until a season-end meeting, giving the judges carte blanche to be as corrupt as they want all year without facing any penalties whatsoever. The new code of points system looks much better, though it’s still anonymous.
As for the penalty to Michelle Kwan in the short, is does seem a bit nit-picky, but as twickster said, she’s been doing this a long time and she knows the rules. They do need to set firm time limits for the programs and they need to be enforced, whether a skater’s two seconds over or ten, and it’s just unfortunate she made such a silly mistake.
Ice dance - I just can’t bring myself to care anymore. The order of finish is pretty much pre-ordained, and the programs aren’t even that entertaining. Just, as Lobelia Overhill said, a bunch of skaters trying to do “the most death-defying lifts/severest splits/wear the silliest costume”, with some heavy-handed symbolism thrown in.
Ladybug - your post snuck in while I was composing. In Plushenko’s case, it’s a combination of his skate was really good aside from the fall, and the judges seemed to be handing out as many 6.0s as possible while they still can. There were way more 6.0s given out than usual this year in all the disciplines, and it’s almost certainly because the 6.0 system will probably be gone for good after this season.
