ice ice baby
So if you were wondering what the hell my last post was about: no, I still haven't gotten into anime. The 2010 World Figure Skating Championships were held in Turin last week and Japan's Daisuke Takahashi won the men's singles gold. I'm a fan, in case you couldn't tell.
Originally I wasn't really looking forward to the competition because practically none of my favourites were going. Plushenko was sitting out due to his old knee injury, Stéphane retired after the Olympics, Johnny wasn't going for whatever reason... Basically it was looking out to be a pretty boring few days, and I was tuning in just for Brian Joubert and Daisuke.
I'm glad I watched, though, because there are a lot of new really promising skaters out there, and some of them are even doing quads! Twice! To give my thoroughly unsolicited and uneducated opinion (I couldn't tell a salchow from an axel if my life depended on it), not everyone has to do a quad to be able to medal but I definitely agree with Plushenko on that the sport cannot develop if people aren't willing to push themselves. Playing it safe might win you assured points but it stagnates the whole pool.
American Adam Rippon was a total nobody to me before this event, I drew a total blank at his name and face but I'll definitely remember both from now on! I loved the, um, *checks Wikipedia* (I honestly can't tell the jumps apart) triple lutz he performed with his hands above his head, and the overall energy of both his performances was amazing. Another new favourite of mine is the Czech Michal Březina. I was so there with the crowd that started whistling and booing at is scores. He totally deserved better.
Which brings me to an old flame, Joubert. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with him because I like his style and his definitely a good skater but not quite as incredible as he likes to think. Way to hold onto to the "arrogant Frenchman" stereotype. But he did completely blow me away with his short programme, I'll give you that! I generally find the short programmes pretty boring because everyone does the same things in the same order, but Joubert certainly brought his A game for that (the fist pumps in the middle of were a bit tacky in my opinion but his performance completely justified it). Shame it didn't last; I found his free skate rather lacking in comparison to the points he received for it. His transitions were totally empty! And don't even get me started on Patrick Chan who I swear got scored based on his past deeds instead of current ones!
Anyway, back to the awesome people. My brightest new flame is without a doubt one Denis Ten from Kazakhstan (yes, he was born in 1993. Don't judge me!) He has energy, fire, quads, a motherfucking Biellmann spin! And the kid's only sixteen; he will have an amazing career ahead of him.
And then the winner. I haven't seen much of Daisuke Takahashi because they only show European and World Championships in Finland (plus the Olympics, obviously) and for some unfathomable reason it never occurred to me before Vancouver to check out the, you know, Internet for porn figure skating things. There are live streams, YouTube videos and whatnot all over the place but somehow this never even crossed my mind.
So I wasn't really all the familiar with Daisuke before the 2010 Olympics but he made a big impression with his third place and I was really looking forward to seeing him again on the Worlds. And he didn't disappoint. Both his short programme and free skate were utterly mind-blowing, and no one was more deserving of the win than him. He's actually the first ever Japanese man to win a gold medal at Worlds, which I imagine will be a big deal back home.
Finnish skater Ari-Pekka Nurmenkari achieved a personal record and made it into the free skate for the first time ever in an ISU competition... Considering this guy is a seven-time national champion and two-time Nordic champion, the state of Finnish men's singles skating is pretty sad. But! Our women are fairing much better; Laura Lepistö got bronze in women's singles.
I've come to realise that, for me, most men's singles figure skaters can be divided roughly into four groups. In the first group are showmen like Plushenko and Joubert who strut around the ice like they own it. In the second group are what I call "soulful" skaters, people like Johnny and Stéphane who can make you forget that they're on ice, pushing their body to its limits and not, in fact, weightlessly flying above it. The third group consists of technically excellent skaters, such as Evan Lysacek and Patrick Chan, who simply do nothing for me. I can appreciate their technique but the performances themselves leave cold. In the final, "soft" group are men like Jeremy Abbot who, again, are good skaters but leave me with a four-and-a-half-minute blank space in my memory because they're just - that - dull.
Of course there are plenty of people who don't fit into one group and even those in the primary groups sometimes have programmes that fall somewhere else entirely but on the whole this mindset works for me. I can't wait for the new season to begin, especially now that I've found ontd_skating.
Bonus:OMG, I love Wikipedia! Did you know that kiss and cry was coined by Finnish Jane Erkko in 1983, when the World Figure Skating Championships were held in Helsinki and some TV technicians wanted to know what the area was called? And I certainly didn't know that the term is officially used in the International Skating Union regulations.
Originally I wasn't really looking forward to the competition because practically none of my favourites were going. Plushenko was sitting out due to his old knee injury, Stéphane retired after the Olympics, Johnny wasn't going for whatever reason... Basically it was looking out to be a pretty boring few days, and I was tuning in just for Brian Joubert and Daisuke.
I'm glad I watched, though, because there are a lot of new really promising skaters out there, and some of them are even doing quads! Twice! To give my thoroughly unsolicited and uneducated opinion (I couldn't tell a salchow from an axel if my life depended on it), not everyone has to do a quad to be able to medal but I definitely agree with Plushenko on that the sport cannot develop if people aren't willing to push themselves. Playing it safe might win you assured points but it stagnates the whole pool.
American Adam Rippon was a total nobody to me before this event, I drew a total blank at his name and face but I'll definitely remember both from now on! I loved the, um, *checks Wikipedia* (I honestly can't tell the jumps apart) triple lutz he performed with his hands above his head, and the overall energy of both his performances was amazing. Another new favourite of mine is the Czech Michal Březina. I was so there with the crowd that started whistling and booing at is scores. He totally deserved better.
Which brings me to an old flame, Joubert. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with him because I like his style and his definitely a good skater but not quite as incredible as he likes to think. Way to hold onto to the "arrogant Frenchman" stereotype. But he did completely blow me away with his short programme, I'll give you that! I generally find the short programmes pretty boring because everyone does the same things in the same order, but Joubert certainly brought his A game for that (the fist pumps in the middle of were a bit tacky in my opinion but his performance completely justified it). Shame it didn't last; I found his free skate rather lacking in comparison to the points he received for it. His transitions were totally empty! And don't even get me started on Patrick Chan who I swear got scored based on his past deeds instead of current ones!
Anyway, back to the awesome people. My brightest new flame is without a doubt one Denis Ten from Kazakhstan (yes, he was born in 1993. Don't judge me!) He has energy, fire, quads, a motherfucking Biellmann spin! And the kid's only sixteen; he will have an amazing career ahead of him.
And then the winner. I haven't seen much of Daisuke Takahashi because they only show European and World Championships in Finland (plus the Olympics, obviously) and for some unfathomable reason it never occurred to me before Vancouver to check out the, you know, Internet for porn figure skating things. There are live streams, YouTube videos and whatnot all over the place but somehow this never even crossed my mind.
So I wasn't really all the familiar with Daisuke before the 2010 Olympics but he made a big impression with his third place and I was really looking forward to seeing him again on the Worlds. And he didn't disappoint. Both his short programme and free skate were utterly mind-blowing, and no one was more deserving of the win than him. He's actually the first ever Japanese man to win a gold medal at Worlds, which I imagine will be a big deal back home.
Finnish skater Ari-Pekka Nurmenkari achieved a personal record and made it into the free skate for the first time ever in an ISU competition... Considering this guy is a seven-time national champion and two-time Nordic champion, the state of Finnish men's singles skating is pretty sad. But! Our women are fairing much better; Laura Lepistö got bronze in women's singles.
I've come to realise that, for me, most men's singles figure skaters can be divided roughly into four groups. In the first group are showmen like Plushenko and Joubert who strut around the ice like they own it. In the second group are what I call "soulful" skaters, people like Johnny and Stéphane who can make you forget that they're on ice, pushing their body to its limits and not, in fact, weightlessly flying above it. The third group consists of technically excellent skaters, such as Evan Lysacek and Patrick Chan, who simply do nothing for me. I can appreciate their technique but the performances themselves leave cold. In the final, "soft" group are men like Jeremy Abbot who, again, are good skaters but leave me with a four-and-a-half-minute blank space in my memory because they're just - that - dull.
Of course there are plenty of people who don't fit into one group and even those in the primary groups sometimes have programmes that fall somewhere else entirely but on the whole this mindset works for me. I can't wait for the new season to begin, especially now that I've found ontd_skating.
Bonus:OMG, I love Wikipedia! Did you know that kiss and cry was coined by Finnish Jane Erkko in 1983, when the World Figure Skating Championships were held in Helsinki and some TV technicians wanted to know what the area was called? And I certainly didn't know that the term is officially used in the International Skating Union regulations.