Favorite Performances of 2014

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a figure blog on the cusp of a new year, must write a retrospective listing favorite performances from the year past. And so here are mine for 2014.

Note that I said "favorite," which may or may not necessarily correspond with "best." Insert usual caveats such as de gustibus non est disputandum, etc., here.

Grand Prix Final 2014, Day 3: One Sentence Reviews (Part I)

The Grand Prix Final, though not a competition with quite the prestige factor or importance of the World Championships, features the top skaters going head-to-head for the first time in the season and thus can provide viewers with a rough idea of the present pecking order so far.

Having an idea of the current pecking order had been especially important in ice dance, given that the retirements of Davis/White and Virtue/Moir as well as the dissolution of Ilinykh/Katsalapov created a conspicuous vacuum at the discipline's apex which quite a few teams have scrambled to fill during the Grand Prix season. Similarly, even though the men have not be roiled by retirements to the same extent as their counterparts in ice dance, injuries and implosions have created a sense of turmoil among the rank and file.

Grand Prix Final 2014, Day 2 - One Sentence Reviews

Brevity is the soul of wit, Shakespeare says.

For this post at least, I agree.

Skate America 2014: Men's LP

Keeping with the general theme of the men's discipline over the past few seasons, the men's competition at Skate America 2014 veered into splatfast territory, particularly during the long program. Luckily for the (mostly) hapless men of Skate America, they have the excuse of skating early in the season. Better luck next outing!

2014 Olympics: Men's Event Recap

In many ways, the men's event at the 2013 World Figure Skating Championships in Canada turned out to be an extremely prescient harbinger of what would eventually transpire at the men's event in the 2014 Sochi Olympics. A down-and-out skater from Kazakhstan overcomes his dismal season to unexpectedly win a medal. The vast majority of the top men skate stumble all over the ice and deliver extremely underwhelming performances.

In other words, typical stuff.

Ok, perhaps not the skater-from-Kazakhstan part, but the fact that most of the men turned in rather dismal performances was fairly predictable as part of a major seismic shift taking place in the men's discipline since 2010. At the 2008 World Championships, Jeffrey Buttle showed how it was possible to win by skating cleanly without a single quadruple jump, starting a trend that eventually cumulated in Evan Lysacek's quad-less victory at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Mr. Lysacek's win in Vancouver was a watershed moment for the men, not only because it was the first time in which a man won the Olympics without a quadruple jump in over a decade, but because of the ridiculous (and extremely partisan) "quad controversy" which ruffled quite a few feathers soon after. Whatever the merits of the quad controversy, its effects were nonetheless very real: the ISU, ever keen to avoid controversy under the harsh glare of the Olympic spotlight, raised the base value of quadruple jumps to over 10 points in a bid to encourage the men to take the risk and attempt more quad jumps.

The first man to take advantage of the newly increased value of quad jumps was Patrick Chan, who later became the poster boy of all the problems and controversies caused by the increased emphasis on quad jumps. Mr. Chan went from attempting zero quads in the 2009-2010 season to attempting three (one in the short program, two in the long program) in the 2010-2011 season. Mr. Chan's high base value afforded to him by his quad jumps, coupled together with his complex programs (helped by some of the residual emphasis on transitions from the previous Olympic cycle) allowed him to completely reverse the trend started by Jeffrey Buttle--that is to say, Mr. Chan showed how it was possible to win by skating messily with lots of quadruple jumps. Mr. Chan was able to capitalize on the fact that many of his competitors initially still seemed to be stuck in the skate-clean-without-a-quad zeitgeist, but by 2012, most of the top men had caught up to Mr. Chan and were attempting as many quads (if not more) as Mr. Chan while skating complex programs stuffed with transitions, level 4 spins and level 4 steps.