Twenty Great Skaters Who Never Won Olympic Medals (part one)
Over the past week, several people have alerted me to The 10 Greatest Figure Skaters Who Never Won an Olympic Medal, probably knowing that it would raise my hackles. I love the passion and detail that the writers went into - I won't go nearly as deep, myself - but the list has some problems. Nine out of the ten on the list represented the USA, and all of them skated in the '80s and '90s. None are ice dancers. I agree with several of the list entries, particularly Jill Trenary, Surya Bonaly, Meno & Sand, and (with the big, obvious asterisk) Tonya Harding.
So this isn't a rebuttal. It's more of a sequel, with a broader international focus and a lot more ice dance. There are skaters who competed as far back as the 1940s and as recently as last season (but who, in my estimation, are either retired for good or far enough past their prime to never see an Olympic podium). I'm not including anyone who has a fighting chance at a medal in 2014, nor any ice dancers who competed before the discipline became an Olympic sport (honorable mention shout outs to Towler/Ford and Romanova/Roman, though). I also intentionally left out the 1961 US world team, even though many of them might have continued to Olympic success had their careers not been tragically cut short.
annaalamode beta read this in exchange for getting to watch all the embeds a day early.
Since this has turned out exceptionally long, I'm dividing it into two posts.
20 Great Skaters and Teams Who Never Won Olympic Medals
Part One
20. Margarita Drobiazko & Povilas Vanagas (Lithuania), ice dance; 16th in 1992, 12th in 1994, 8th in 1998, 5th in 2002, 7th in 2006
Drobiazko and Vanagas are the only ice dance team ever to appear in five Olympic Games and the only Lithuanian skaters ever to win a World medal. The former reflects the benefits of skating for a small country, the latter the benefits of persistence and a genuine love for the sport. There were always at least a few teams better than them, and they won far more bronze than gold; their only major international win was at 1999 Skate Canada. But their longevity and enthusiasm made them a highlight of any competition they entered, and their love for each other shone in their eyes every time they completed a program. Both skaters had extraordinary flexibility and core strength that allowed them to develop unique lifts and changes of hold while looking graceful and maintaining speed. They came out of retirement to compete at the 2006 Olympics, only to fall victim to the notorious "splatfest" in the original dance, in which they, along with several other teams, tripped and fell. It was an ironically fitting end to a long career of almosts.
19. Tim Brown (USA), men's singles; 5th in 1960
Tim Brown's narrative is full of strange coincidences and tragedies. This video, the only one of him I could find on YouTube, is clearly not his best performance: he struggles with his most difficult (double!) jumps, and he split-jumps off the rink at the end, apparently to seek medical assistance. This performance would have earned him a trip to Worlds, but illness kept him at home - ironically, saving him from the plane crash that killed the entire 1961 US world team. He retired after that season, ending an impressive career that included two World silver medals (1957 and 1958) and a World bronze in 1959. He was a frequent bridesmaid at US Nationals as well, coming in second to David Jenkins four times. After his retirement, he fell into obscurity before dying of AIDS in the 1980s. But this video shows him to be an early innovator in a long line of boundary-pushing male divas on ice, an aesthetic ancestor of skaters like Toller Cranston and Daisuke Takahashi. Camel spins were a ladies' skill back then! His spread eagles are gorgeous, and that combination of four loop jumps, ending in a tough double, is awfully cool. Brown deserves far more recognition than he's received over the years.
18. JoJo Starbuck & Kenneth Shelley (USA), pairs; 13th in 1968, 4th in 1972; Shelley placed 4th in men's singles in 1972
Ken Shelley holds a distinction that makes him an overachiever even for this list: he competed at the 1972 Olympics in both pairs and men's singles, and he placed fourth in both disciplines. Shelley was also US national champion that year, but he enjoyed greater international success as a pairs skater. He was lucky to skate with Starbuck, a classic blonde ice princess so charismatic she pursued an acting career after retirement. Together, they won two World bronze medals, and they enjoyed more success as professionals than as amateurs. Unlike many of the other skaters on this list, Starbuck and Shelley weren't terribly innovative, just solid, consistent skaters with cute smiles and an admirable work ethic. But at the time, with pairs otherwise dominated by Eastern European teams, they were just the right kind of clean-cut kids to represent the USA.
17. Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon (Canada), ice dance; 12th in 2002, withdrew in 2006
Of the victims of Splatfest '06, aka the 2006 Olympics original dance, Dubreuil and Lauzon suffered the most: Dubreuil fell from a lift and was injured so severely that Lauzon had to carry her from the ice. This leaves the team with an Olympic record completely out of step with their terrific career. They never placed higher than twelfth at the Olympics, but they earned back-to-back silver medals at Worlds in 2006 and 2007, won the 2007 Four Continents Championships against a tough field, and racked up five Canadian national titles. Dubreuil and Lauzon always focused more on artistry than athleticism, which resulted in beautiful performances that often failed to bring them the scores they'd hoped for. Lauzon's fantastic extension through his legs and back, and Dubreuil's ability to convey emotion through her whole body, brought a unique elegance to their skating. They retired in 2007 after the most successful season of their career, and their "At Last" free dance was their swan song. It's one of the most romantic things ever performed on ice skates.
16. Johnny Weir (USA), men's singles; 5th in 2006, 6th in 2010
I'm going to take off my fangirl hat for the time being and evaluate Weir with the same criteria I'm using for the other skaters here: the quality of his skating and his legacy to the sport. The trouble is, in Weir's case, it's impossible to separate his off-ice persona from his impact on figure skating, because his insistence on being a personality as well as an athlete is a big part of his contribution to the sport. He's not the first to do it, certainly, but when he came onto the scene in the mid-aughts, it was pretty daring: the prior generation of men's skaters had downplayed musicality and individuality and turned their event into a chest-thumping jump-off. What Weir lacked in technical dazzle - he never landed a clean quad in competition - he made up for by executing his elements impeccably, with soft landings and great speed. He also reintroduced a balletic elegance to men's skating that is now widespread. Weir has announced a return to competitive skating for next season, but his best shot at an Olympic podium was probably in 2006. But he's in great company on this list, as a man who opened doors so other athletes could skate through them - in his case, with a fey swish of his hips and an off-color sound bite.
15. Minoru Sano (Japan), men's singles; 9th in 1976
If you didn't realize until right this second that the first Japanese skater to win a World medal did so in 1977, you'd be forgiven. At the time, Japan's figure skating program was in its infancy, and Sano can take a lot of the credit for getting it going. His top-ten finish at the Olympics and his bronze medal at Worlds the following year made him a national celebrity, a status which he used to start the first national touring ice show in Japan. While Sano was less of a trailblazer artistically or technically than many other skaters of his generation, he still reads as a more modern skater than most of his competitors, perhaps because the way he carries his upper body is now practically a trademark of Japanese figure skating. Or perhaps because skills like his series of spread eagles into a double axel and high-flying entrances into low sit spins earn more points today than they did back then. Best of all, Sano always looks like he's having a blast out there.
14. Judy Blumberg & Michael Seibert (USA), ice dance; 7th in 1980, 4th in 1984
When ice dance nerds complain about pro-Russian and anti-North American bias in the 6.0 system, Blumberg and Seibert are usually Exhibit B. (Exhibit A comes tomorrow.) For twenty years, they reigned in the court of public opinion as the greatest American ice dance team ever, ceding the distinction only when Belbin & Agosto won Olympic silver. Ice dance of their era was a different sport, much more tied to ballroom dance than it is now. Blumberg and Seibert played up the cheese and the entertainment value of their discipline while also showing versatility and intricacy in all of their moves. Their energy and precision earned them three consecutive World bronze medals from 1983 to 1985. They also dominated US ice dance, winning five consecutive national titles from 1981 to 1985. Like many of the skaters on this list, especially those from the 1970s and early 1980s, Blumberg and Seibert seem ahead of their time when I watch them now, and I have no doubt that they would have been much more successful in a scoring system that placed less emphasis on compulsory pattern dances and more emphasis on artistry, innovation, and fluidity of movement.
13. Isabelle Delobel & Olivier Schoenfelder (France), ice dance; 16th in 2002, 4th in 2006, 6th in 2010
This team is so damn cool. That's what comes across in their skating, regardless of rhythm or theme. It's not just that nobody else skated like them or chose programs or themes like they did - it's that they're like that girl you admired in high school for pulling off outfits you'd never be brave enough to wear. I picked this video, and not the FD that won them their World title in 2008, because I feel like it expresses the unique character of their skating more than any other. It's like a cross between Bonnie & Clyde and The Matrix, with twizzles. During their long career - they skated together for twenty years and were not romantically involved at any point - they succeeded in adjusting to tremendous changes in ice dance, and their innovative style was actually better suited to the code of points than to the 6.0 system they started out in. Even so, they just missed the podium in 2006 - not with a fall in the original dance, like so many other teams, but with a weak compulsory dance that set them too far behind. In 2010, they returned from a long hiatus after Delobel gave birth to a son; their performance at that Olympics was a lovely farewell to fans who had followed them for two decades.
12. Alexander Fadeyev (Soviet Union), men's singles; 7th in 1984, 4th in 1988
Before Plushenko, Yagudin, or Petrenko, there was Fadeyev. Now, he falls somewhere between underrated and forgotten, and it's a shame, because he had a tremendously successful skating career in the 1980s. He was Soviet national champion six times and European champion four times; he won Worlds in 1985. He enjoyed this success despite terrible inconsistency in his free skating and sometimes because of his pristine compulsory figures. Fadeyev was never a particularly musical skater, but his focus on figures made his edges and speed sublime. He had a great camel position and a beautiful triple flip. It's too bad the Olympic nerves always seemed to get the best of him. This video is of his near-flawless free skate from 1989 Europeans, his last major international title.
11. Maria Butyrskaya (Russia), ladies' singles; 4th in 1998, 6th in 2002
When Butyrskaya won her World title in 1999, it was a huge surprise: not because she beat Michelle Kwan, nor because she skated clean, but because she was the oldest skater ever to win a ladies' gold. She was 27, and her record still stands. More amazingly, she continued to compete for three more years, earning her third European title in 2002, a few months before her thirtieth birthday. Her amateur career spanned over a decade - an eternity among the mayflies of ladies' singles - and included six Russian national titles, five of them consecutive. Her fast, centered spins were exquisite, and she had a powerful arsenal of jumps. But what stands out for me, watching her programs for the first time in ages in order to make this list, is her uniquely aggressive presence on the ice. It's almost unladylike, except that she'll pull it back for a moment and look like a ballerina. In other words, she had a sense of her persona that can only come with experience: Butyrskaya was the ultimate late bloomer.
Tune in tomorrow for the top ten!
So this isn't a rebuttal. It's more of a sequel, with a broader international focus and a lot more ice dance. There are skaters who competed as far back as the 1940s and as recently as last season (but who, in my estimation, are either retired for good or far enough past their prime to never see an Olympic podium). I'm not including anyone who has a fighting chance at a medal in 2014, nor any ice dancers who competed before the discipline became an Olympic sport (honorable mention shout outs to Towler/Ford and Romanova/Roman, though). I also intentionally left out the 1961 US world team, even though many of them might have continued to Olympic success had their careers not been tragically cut short.
annaalamode beta read this in exchange for getting to watch all the embeds a day early.
Since this has turned out exceptionally long, I'm dividing it into two posts.
20 Great Skaters and Teams Who Never Won Olympic Medals
Part One
20. Margarita Drobiazko & Povilas Vanagas (Lithuania), ice dance; 16th in 1992, 12th in 1994, 8th in 1998, 5th in 2002, 7th in 2006
Click to viewDrobiazko and Vanagas are the only ice dance team ever to appear in five Olympic Games and the only Lithuanian skaters ever to win a World medal. The former reflects the benefits of skating for a small country, the latter the benefits of persistence and a genuine love for the sport. There were always at least a few teams better than them, and they won far more bronze than gold; their only major international win was at 1999 Skate Canada. But their longevity and enthusiasm made them a highlight of any competition they entered, and their love for each other shone in their eyes every time they completed a program. Both skaters had extraordinary flexibility and core strength that allowed them to develop unique lifts and changes of hold while looking graceful and maintaining speed. They came out of retirement to compete at the 2006 Olympics, only to fall victim to the notorious "splatfest" in the original dance, in which they, along with several other teams, tripped and fell. It was an ironically fitting end to a long career of almosts.
19. Tim Brown (USA), men's singles; 5th in 1960
Tim Brown's narrative is full of strange coincidences and tragedies. This video, the only one of him I could find on YouTube, is clearly not his best performance: he struggles with his most difficult (double!) jumps, and he split-jumps off the rink at the end, apparently to seek medical assistance. This performance would have earned him a trip to Worlds, but illness kept him at home - ironically, saving him from the plane crash that killed the entire 1961 US world team. He retired after that season, ending an impressive career that included two World silver medals (1957 and 1958) and a World bronze in 1959. He was a frequent bridesmaid at US Nationals as well, coming in second to David Jenkins four times. After his retirement, he fell into obscurity before dying of AIDS in the 1980s. But this video shows him to be an early innovator in a long line of boundary-pushing male divas on ice, an aesthetic ancestor of skaters like Toller Cranston and Daisuke Takahashi. Camel spins were a ladies' skill back then! His spread eagles are gorgeous, and that combination of four loop jumps, ending in a tough double, is awfully cool. Brown deserves far more recognition than he's received over the years.
18. JoJo Starbuck & Kenneth Shelley (USA), pairs; 13th in 1968, 4th in 1972; Shelley placed 4th in men's singles in 1972
Ken Shelley holds a distinction that makes him an overachiever even for this list: he competed at the 1972 Olympics in both pairs and men's singles, and he placed fourth in both disciplines. Shelley was also US national champion that year, but he enjoyed greater international success as a pairs skater. He was lucky to skate with Starbuck, a classic blonde ice princess so charismatic she pursued an acting career after retirement. Together, they won two World bronze medals, and they enjoyed more success as professionals than as amateurs. Unlike many of the other skaters on this list, Starbuck and Shelley weren't terribly innovative, just solid, consistent skaters with cute smiles and an admirable work ethic. But at the time, with pairs otherwise dominated by Eastern European teams, they were just the right kind of clean-cut kids to represent the USA.
17. Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon (Canada), ice dance; 12th in 2002, withdrew in 2006
Of the victims of Splatfest '06, aka the 2006 Olympics original dance, Dubreuil and Lauzon suffered the most: Dubreuil fell from a lift and was injured so severely that Lauzon had to carry her from the ice. This leaves the team with an Olympic record completely out of step with their terrific career. They never placed higher than twelfth at the Olympics, but they earned back-to-back silver medals at Worlds in 2006 and 2007, won the 2007 Four Continents Championships against a tough field, and racked up five Canadian national titles. Dubreuil and Lauzon always focused more on artistry than athleticism, which resulted in beautiful performances that often failed to bring them the scores they'd hoped for. Lauzon's fantastic extension through his legs and back, and Dubreuil's ability to convey emotion through her whole body, brought a unique elegance to their skating. They retired in 2007 after the most successful season of their career, and their "At Last" free dance was their swan song. It's one of the most romantic things ever performed on ice skates.
16. Johnny Weir (USA), men's singles; 5th in 2006, 6th in 2010
I'm going to take off my fangirl hat for the time being and evaluate Weir with the same criteria I'm using for the other skaters here: the quality of his skating and his legacy to the sport. The trouble is, in Weir's case, it's impossible to separate his off-ice persona from his impact on figure skating, because his insistence on being a personality as well as an athlete is a big part of his contribution to the sport. He's not the first to do it, certainly, but when he came onto the scene in the mid-aughts, it was pretty daring: the prior generation of men's skaters had downplayed musicality and individuality and turned their event into a chest-thumping jump-off. What Weir lacked in technical dazzle - he never landed a clean quad in competition - he made up for by executing his elements impeccably, with soft landings and great speed. He also reintroduced a balletic elegance to men's skating that is now widespread. Weir has announced a return to competitive skating for next season, but his best shot at an Olympic podium was probably in 2006. But he's in great company on this list, as a man who opened doors so other athletes could skate through them - in his case, with a fey swish of his hips and an off-color sound bite.
15. Minoru Sano (Japan), men's singles; 9th in 1976
If you didn't realize until right this second that the first Japanese skater to win a World medal did so in 1977, you'd be forgiven. At the time, Japan's figure skating program was in its infancy, and Sano can take a lot of the credit for getting it going. His top-ten finish at the Olympics and his bronze medal at Worlds the following year made him a national celebrity, a status which he used to start the first national touring ice show in Japan. While Sano was less of a trailblazer artistically or technically than many other skaters of his generation, he still reads as a more modern skater than most of his competitors, perhaps because the way he carries his upper body is now practically a trademark of Japanese figure skating. Or perhaps because skills like his series of spread eagles into a double axel and high-flying entrances into low sit spins earn more points today than they did back then. Best of all, Sano always looks like he's having a blast out there.
14. Judy Blumberg & Michael Seibert (USA), ice dance; 7th in 1980, 4th in 1984
When ice dance nerds complain about pro-Russian and anti-North American bias in the 6.0 system, Blumberg and Seibert are usually Exhibit B. (Exhibit A comes tomorrow.) For twenty years, they reigned in the court of public opinion as the greatest American ice dance team ever, ceding the distinction only when Belbin & Agosto won Olympic silver. Ice dance of their era was a different sport, much more tied to ballroom dance than it is now. Blumberg and Seibert played up the cheese and the entertainment value of their discipline while also showing versatility and intricacy in all of their moves. Their energy and precision earned them three consecutive World bronze medals from 1983 to 1985. They also dominated US ice dance, winning five consecutive national titles from 1981 to 1985. Like many of the skaters on this list, especially those from the 1970s and early 1980s, Blumberg and Seibert seem ahead of their time when I watch them now, and I have no doubt that they would have been much more successful in a scoring system that placed less emphasis on compulsory pattern dances and more emphasis on artistry, innovation, and fluidity of movement.
13. Isabelle Delobel & Olivier Schoenfelder (France), ice dance; 16th in 2002, 4th in 2006, 6th in 2010
This team is so damn cool. That's what comes across in their skating, regardless of rhythm or theme. It's not just that nobody else skated like them or chose programs or themes like they did - it's that they're like that girl you admired in high school for pulling off outfits you'd never be brave enough to wear. I picked this video, and not the FD that won them their World title in 2008, because I feel like it expresses the unique character of their skating more than any other. It's like a cross between Bonnie & Clyde and The Matrix, with twizzles. During their long career - they skated together for twenty years and were not romantically involved at any point - they succeeded in adjusting to tremendous changes in ice dance, and their innovative style was actually better suited to the code of points than to the 6.0 system they started out in. Even so, they just missed the podium in 2006 - not with a fall in the original dance, like so many other teams, but with a weak compulsory dance that set them too far behind. In 2010, they returned from a long hiatus after Delobel gave birth to a son; their performance at that Olympics was a lovely farewell to fans who had followed them for two decades.
12. Alexander Fadeyev (Soviet Union), men's singles; 7th in 1984, 4th in 1988
Before Plushenko, Yagudin, or Petrenko, there was Fadeyev. Now, he falls somewhere between underrated and forgotten, and it's a shame, because he had a tremendously successful skating career in the 1980s. He was Soviet national champion six times and European champion four times; he won Worlds in 1985. He enjoyed this success despite terrible inconsistency in his free skating and sometimes because of his pristine compulsory figures. Fadeyev was never a particularly musical skater, but his focus on figures made his edges and speed sublime. He had a great camel position and a beautiful triple flip. It's too bad the Olympic nerves always seemed to get the best of him. This video is of his near-flawless free skate from 1989 Europeans, his last major international title.
11. Maria Butyrskaya (Russia), ladies' singles; 4th in 1998, 6th in 2002
When Butyrskaya won her World title in 1999, it was a huge surprise: not because she beat Michelle Kwan, nor because she skated clean, but because she was the oldest skater ever to win a ladies' gold. She was 27, and her record still stands. More amazingly, she continued to compete for three more years, earning her third European title in 2002, a few months before her thirtieth birthday. Her amateur career spanned over a decade - an eternity among the mayflies of ladies' singles - and included six Russian national titles, five of them consecutive. Her fast, centered spins were exquisite, and she had a powerful arsenal of jumps. But what stands out for me, watching her programs for the first time in ages in order to make this list, is her uniquely aggressive presence on the ice. It's almost unladylike, except that she'll pull it back for a moment and look like a ballerina. In other words, she had a sense of her persona that can only come with experience: Butyrskaya was the ultimate late bloomer.
Tune in tomorrow for the top ten!