YO, THIS OLYMPICS IS NOT MY BREJ!
A week or two ago, I told foodsthatcan that my gut feelings were telling me that this Olympics was going to be bad and that FATE was going to MAKE REVENGE in the worst possible ways. I had some instinctive guesses about some of the bad things that were going to go down, and two of them have already happened. This isn't cool, yo. This isn't cool at all.
Obviously, the first thing I'm talking about is Michelle Kwan's withdrawal. Now, ladiezzzzzz skating is my least favourite discipline, and the only reason I've bothered to keep watching it at all over the past four years is for GRATE KWAN. This whole season, as she struggled with injuries, I kept hoping that she'd be able to pull a miracle out of somewhere, but my gut kept telling me that it was not gonna happen and that it was more likely she wouldn't end up skating at all. I even said something pre-U.S. Nationals about how I wouldn't be surprised if Emily Hughes ended up being the second Olympian in her family (her sister, of course, is 2002 gold medallist Sarah Hughes), and whadya know, it came true. I think maybe Esta really is psykik about this BLACK MARK OF TARASSOVA business.
The point of all this is that now there's really no one I'd like to see on top of the ladiezzzz podium, but my gut has been telling me for the past few months the Sasha Cohen, who I despise more than any other skater in the competition, is going to win the gold medal. If that happens, I am going to scream so loudly in pain that all of you will hear me, no matter where you are. The other options aren't all that much better. Irina Slutskaya is, IMHO, pretty overrated as a skater, and her skating has never done a thing for me. The Japanese ladiezzz are all kind of meh in my books, and Carolina Kostner of Italy is way too inconsistent to win the whole shebang. Ugh. This sucks muchly.
The other badness that has already happened is that Xue Shen & Hongbo Zhao of China, who have been my favourite pairs team for the last several years and are the other skaters (along with GRATE KWAN) that I really, really, REALLY wanted to see win Olys, have also been suffering from injuries this entire season and were virtually out of the gold medal hunt before they even started skating. Now they're fifth after the SP and aren't even in the final group to skate, and Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin of Russia, the most boring excellent team to ever grace the ice, have the top spot on the podium virtually locked up. Ugh. UGH! This is supremely not cool. I don't like it at all.
While everyone skated pretty well in the Pairs' SP, I was pretty bored overall. Seriously, I'd take 20 minutes of Shen & Zhao skating at less than their best over scads of going-through-the-elements technically perfect programs from everyone else. The only other programs that kept me fully awake were Dubé and Davison's (good for them!) and Petrova & Tikhonov's (they should be in second place right now, IMO). Totmianina & Marinin were technically perfect, but BLAH, they're just so damned cold and boring! I watch them and marvel a little at how precisely perfect they are, but I feel nothing. To me, they aren't an Olympic champion team and never will be. Berezhnya and Sikharulidze, with all their inconsistencies and faults, had more champion calibre, in my eyes, and I was definitely never the biggest B&S fan around. T&M are DEAD ON THE INSIDE, I think. Or at least Tatiana is, when she skates. Maxim seems mildly alive, occasionally.
The other things my GUT are telling me are as follows. I don't actually believe any of these things in my braynz, but my GUT refuses to stop believing them:
Obviously, the first thing I'm talking about is Michelle Kwan's withdrawal. Now, ladiezzzzzz skating is my least favourite discipline, and the only reason I've bothered to keep watching it at all over the past four years is for GRATE KWAN. This whole season, as she struggled with injuries, I kept hoping that she'd be able to pull a miracle out of somewhere, but my gut kept telling me that it was not gonna happen and that it was more likely she wouldn't end up skating at all. I even said something pre-U.S. Nationals about how I wouldn't be surprised if Emily Hughes ended up being the second Olympian in her family (her sister, of course, is 2002 gold medallist Sarah Hughes), and whadya know, it came true. I think maybe Esta really is psykik about this BLACK MARK OF TARASSOVA business.
The point of all this is that now there's really no one I'd like to see on top of the ladiezzzz podium, but my gut has been telling me for the past few months the Sasha Cohen, who I despise more than any other skater in the competition, is going to win the gold medal. If that happens, I am going to scream so loudly in pain that all of you will hear me, no matter where you are. The other options aren't all that much better. Irina Slutskaya is, IMHO, pretty overrated as a skater, and her skating has never done a thing for me. The Japanese ladiezzz are all kind of meh in my books, and Carolina Kostner of Italy is way too inconsistent to win the whole shebang. Ugh. This sucks muchly.
The other badness that has already happened is that Xue Shen & Hongbo Zhao of China, who have been my favourite pairs team for the last several years and are the other skaters (along with GRATE KWAN) that I really, really, REALLY wanted to see win Olys, have also been suffering from injuries this entire season and were virtually out of the gold medal hunt before they even started skating. Now they're fifth after the SP and aren't even in the final group to skate, and Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin of Russia, the most boring excellent team to ever grace the ice, have the top spot on the podium virtually locked up. Ugh. UGH! This is supremely not cool. I don't like it at all.
While everyone skated pretty well in the Pairs' SP, I was pretty bored overall. Seriously, I'd take 20 minutes of Shen & Zhao skating at less than their best over scads of going-through-the-elements technically perfect programs from everyone else. The only other programs that kept me fully awake were Dubé and Davison's (good for them!) and Petrova & Tikhonov's (they should be in second place right now, IMO). Totmianina & Marinin were technically perfect, but BLAH, they're just so damned cold and boring! I watch them and marvel a little at how precisely perfect they are, but I feel nothing. To me, they aren't an Olympic champion team and never will be. Berezhnya and Sikharulidze, with all their inconsistencies and faults, had more champion calibre, in my eyes, and I was definitely never the biggest B&S fan around. T&M are DEAD ON THE INSIDE, I think. Or at least Tatiana is, when she skates. Maxim seems mildly alive, occasionally.
The other things my GUT are telling me are as follows. I don't actually believe any of these things in my braynz, but my GUT refuses to stop believing them:
- Eman will skate well. I'm not sure if that means he'll actually skate well, or he'll blow the SP into smithereens of badness and then come back big in the LP.
- Jeffy will not win a medal. He'll be FORTH or maybe FIVTH.
- The ladiezzz podium has two options - either identical to last year's Worlds, or Sasha-Irina-Caro. My GUT thinks Caro is going to fly with the home ice advantage despite sucking it up muchly in early season.
- Dance will infuriate me in many ways. I cannot watch NBC because they are 500% likely to do gross Tanith fluff and re-ignite my hateration.