Soooo men's figure skating

[petronia]

FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUU---

Comments

[acchikocchi.livejournal.com]

I was just about to make this EXACT POST.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

INORITE

[naanima.livejournal.com]

I have only seen Takahashi's performance on youtube (because my network broad caster are dicks).

I'm kind of 2 minds in regards to Evan. Where you rooting for Chan?

[chibaraki.livejournal.com]

Takahashi skates like a ROCK STAR. I don't know anything about skating from a technical perspective but watching the short program (no cable so I have to wait until someone uploads video because NBC are dicks and won't let you watch online unless you're a cable subscriber -- why would I be watching online if I had cable, assholes?) he had this stage presence like I expected him to be in music videos or something.

[naanima.livejournal.com]

Gods YES! The man can skate. I just love watching him. Very few skaters gets me truly excited, and Takahashi seems to feel the music in his bones, and he is just so very amazing on the ice.

Also, because I understand your pain.

SP - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzpSaHpajaQ
LP - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFhj0-ZbASQ

He did this program a few years ago where he nailed 2 quads in the first minute or so.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

While I rooted for Chan, unlike seemingly the rest of Canada I didn't really rate his chances - his career has a way to go before it peaks.

We're not allowed to root for Plushenko in this household due to hangover from sororial unit's Yagudin fandom. XD I've always enjoyed watching him, mind you, but that wasn't his A-game last night. Or maybe his A-game is wobbly now; it comes to everyone in the end.

My real problem is violent and quasi-unreasoning dislike for Lysacek. XD; It's distressing: figure skating is my favorite sport, or at least the one I have the most history with, and as with most of my fandoms I'm pretty easy - I usually like everyone! I've never hated any skater this badly before! And to have the one dude I hate go from US team second-stringer to Olympic gold medalist in four years!

I also feel really bad about Oda's skate. Fair does to Takahashi and Johnny Weir's moral victory, though.

[acchikocchi.livejournal.com]

violent and quasi-unreasoning dislike for Lysacek

Yes, exactly, it's so bad I was actually rooting for Plushenko and I was a Yagudin fan for quite some time. Just. WHY.

And the NBC commentary team, as usual, did nothing to help.

[arboretum]

hahaha omg i really want to know, why do you guys hate lysacek so much? i find him boring & uninteresting but somehow do not hate him. what did he do? why is he so hatable? :D :D

[meril.livejournal.com]

I'm curious too. Other than finding him robotic and boring, I'm not getting it, but I'm not immersed in the fandom (as you can tell by the Ninja Mike Mussina comparison joke) and I know I'm missing stuff. It's like trying to explain to people why certain Cardinals drive Brewers fans up the wall.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

In the collective you guys have answered your own question: the best male figure skater in the sport should not be a guy that everyone from casual to dedicated fan finds boring/robotic/uninteresting/uncharismatic. And by the way the sport has historically been measured, he's not the best: he's just the best at playing the current scoring system.

(I - and probably many others - have slightly more personal reasons for not being a fan as well, mostly to do with homophobia, but I try not to let that biase me too much because 1) nothing is proven, and 2) the system is much more of a problem than any individual skater.)

[naanima.livejournal.com]

We're not allowed to root for Plushenko in this household due to hangover from sororial unit's Yagudin fandom. HAHAHAHA! Oh, you will have to expand on this.

Ah! That makes more sense now, and I understand the way you feel completely. I want to be objective towards Lysacek but at the same time I can't get over the fact that he skated a 'safe' program; attempted no quads, did NOT push himself to be amazing. It galls me that a 'safe' program won the Olympic gold when Takahashi who attempted the quad and Plushenko who went for it didn't get gold. I mean, isn't the Olympic all about pushing the human limit? Yes, I understand that artistry and foot work and transition is required as well, but dammit, there were skaters out there who PUSHED and wanted to be better and I turn around and Lysacek perform one of the most boringest of programs, and I just want to hit things

So, um, yes I understand your pain (oh gods, you have no idea how diplomatic I had to be with several people in the past 24 hours or so). However, I HOLD onto the belief that Takahashi will be kicking his ass in the World Championship.

Also, OMFG! Weir did AMAZINGLY! And you are right, the moral victory is worth it!

[naanima.livejournal.com]

Also, having read your other comments - your feelings toward the "new" scoring system is understandable. And you are right in saying that it does place way more attention on choreography and stamina. In effect it takes out many of the interesting skaters off the contention for gold. However, I want to believe that at this level of the competition the skaters can make their programs interesting even under the new scoring system. Though I admit the little ticks to how many jumps, spins and step sequences equals a win can make it very boring.

I understand that quads is not required to win the Olympics or any other World Championships, however, I also believe it should be attempted to push the sport. I don't think having figure skating be about a series of ticks on checklist is the way to go, but at the same time I think stamina and better jumps should be part of component for marking.

ARGH! See, it is hard to articulate how I feel about the new scoring system. All I know is that I did not want Lysacek to win because he is boring, because he doesn't push the sport, because he pretty much go through the checklist and TICK everyone for his program, which is frigging boring.

[arboretum]

why ffuuuuuu----
?

just curious :D

i wasn't really a fan of either lysacek or plushenko so mostly just wanted to see some people skate well.... which i guess they didn't so much lol. but feel ambivalent about the medals.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

See my response to naanima above. In addition, I'm more than ambivalent about the "new" scoring system, the implications of which have pretty much worked their way through the system at this point - said implications being that my preferred competitors can have a clean skate and it would be meaningless, because everything now hinges on choreography (not how balletically the person waves their arms to the music but the actual routine construction) and stamina. Lori Nichols just said on TV that she works off a checklist now, and it's made the sport more boring to watch, because it turns out high-marking choreography isn't interesting choreography.

Ironically the Plushenko-Lysacek skates (let alone Lambiel's etc.) have proven conclusively that it isn't about the quad.

[bell]

Like arboretum, I don't know why people on my flist are angry-- and I have even less of a clue because I didn't watch men's figure skating. What happened :<?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Do you normally watch figure skating? My comments back at naanima and arboretum pretty much say it all. XD;

In short, I hate the guy who won, have long-term fan enmity for the second-place guy but would have preferred him even so, and basically thought anyone else in the running deserved to place higher than they actually did. Except now what I think is deserving is simply not taken into account in the marking.

[arboretum]

again, just curious, what do you think is deserving?

i mostly watch figure skating to be entertained so have been / remain pretty clueless about the actual judging system, but i feel like i recall people complaining, some years back, that it was all about the quad, which meant good jumpers like plushenko automatically had a leg up on the competition, whether or not they did good choreography, & everyone else who wanted a chance at a medal was trying to land quads even if they were terrible at them, b/c there was just no way else to score high enough. :-?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I thought Plushenko should have been first, Takahashi maybe second, and Weir fourth at least: Plushenko probably lost it on hubris, thinking he had more leeway with other program elements because he had the quad (not to mention trying to prove it as a test case), but Weir was criminally underscored, and no one bothers to remark on it anymore because he's always criminally underscored. (I can't find the article breaking it down anymore - it was on the Christian Science Monitor - but Weir actually scored higher on components than Takahashi. The judges docked him for all they were worth on artistry, which is as big a joke as any from the Bad Old Days of judging panel collusion. If Weir had been born ten years earlier in Moscow he would have been world champion three times over, and why not draw the comparison since the athletic edge has regressed to that point anyway?)

I actually agree heartily with the principle behind implementing the new points system, but the difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice - you know?

In practice:

* Pushing the athletic envelope re: jumps is not rewarded (see Plushenko)
* Pushing the artistic envelope re: style is not rewarded (see Weir)
* Innovation in footwork and spins, ironically, is not rewarded (they "count" now, so gotta nail that clean form exactly as the criteria has it defined! see ski moguls earlier in the week for another example of this, literally 97% of the women did the exact same two jumps in the exact same order)
* Judges can still punish skaters if they don't like the cut of their sequins, only no individual score breakdown now so when the French lady gives a 5.3 when everyone else gave a 5.9 it's not transparent to viewers
* Actually, the TV audience doesn't really understand how the score's totted up at all, unless they're hardcore enough to have memorized all the routines in advance and are actually sitting at home with a checklist

IDK, man, obviously the goal is possible or gymnastics would be over as a sport, but this is not the way.

[meril.livejournal.com]

old meril is old, and still remembers the epic ~scandal~ about Kurt Browning's attempts to land the quad in the Olympics. Unfortunately Browning had this habit of falling on his ass in them, as opposed to what he did in every other international competition. (I was such a fangirl about him.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Methuselah Sabina remembers the Battle of the Brians in '88!

well in this case, IT WOULD'VE, huh :s

[analyse.livejournal.com]

see also: this (http://kotaku.com/5473867/demon-king-descendant-and-strategy-game-namesake-figure-skates-in-the-olympics). old, i'm sure, but

"Skating without a quad... I'm sorry is not men's figure skating"

vs

"A quad does not make you a man!"

[marej.livejournal.com]

what he said (http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/figure_skating/news?slug=es-thoughts021810&prov=yhoo&type=lgns).

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

So L was telling me that all the US Men's Olympic figure skaters room together in the Olympic village, and Johnny Weir had to be in the Olympic village (and not in a hotel room) because he was getting death threats from PETA for his fashion choices. So faced with the wolves-and-chickens problem of who to room with whom so no one with kill each other, Johnny Weir ended up with Evan Lycecek's ex-girlfriend.

I hate the way the new scoring system is applied to pairs skating. You can see them asking themselves, okay, I have five seconds here, is there any way I can touch my toes in a semi-artistic way? Aw screw artistry, is there any way I can touch my toes period?

[supacat.livejournal.com]

I think if your program is so boring that I can't even remember it when it's finished, you shouldn't get any points.