Mediocre Men

Note: I wrote the following post around January 2018, but never published it for various reasons.  Thankfully, my dim prognosis of the men's event at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics turned out to be incorrect: contrary to my gloomy expectations, the men for the most part skated well, and the most well-rounded and complete men's performances even made it to the podium (!).

For entertainment purposes, I've decided to dust this post off and publish it now . . .

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With the uppermost echelons of the men's discipline firmly engaged in the high-risk, high-rewards quads arms race, the judges improperly lumping together the skaters' Program Components Scores with insufficient differentiation between the skaters, and a storied history of major implosions and/or nerves among the top competitors, there is a good chance that the men's event at the Pyeongchang Olympics will be a splatfest of major proportions.

This is disappointing, not only because it is painful to watch skaters' lifelong, Olympic-themed dreams crumble amidst bitter tears and the gnashing of teeth in front of literal millions, but also because the men's event at the past three Olympic games have also been absolutely dismal, featuring not only poor performances in terms of completed content but also mediocre programs and choreography.*  Let's take an unpleasant, but mercifully brief, stroll down memory lane . . .

Moulin Rouge Fest

Is the music of Moulin Rouge this season's Carmen? With big names such as Virtue/Moir, Karen Chen, Vincent Zhou, and supposedly Ashley Wagner all slated to skate to the music of Baz Luhrmann's maximalist melodrama, it certainly looks like it.

One of the upsides of skating to Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge is that one has a lot of music selections to potentially choose from--in addition to the background music, the film features a good deal of musical numbers, most--if not all--of them opulent covers of well-known songs done at a manic pitch. Despite the dizzying variety of songs to choose from, however, the majority of skaters skating to the music of Moulin Rouge somehow all end up skating to El Tango de Roxanne, Moulin Rouge's cover of The Police's Roxanne with generous dollops of melodrama, sex, and operatic excess added in.  Coincidence? Or creative bankruptcy? Take your pick.

Anyway, in honor of Moulin Rouge seemingly being the musical flavor of the season, let's take a stroll down memory lane and re-watch some Moulin Rouge programs of years past . . .

Smooth Moves

One aspect of skating that has particularly received a great deal of attention (disproportionate attention, some would say!) in the IJS era is transitions--particularly transitions before jump elements.  With pre-jump transitions being doubly rewarded in both the Program Components Scores as well as in the grade of execution scores, it behooves skaters to cram in something before a jump so that the judges can accordingly reach for the upper registers on their scoresheets. Unfortunately, this tendency towards rewarding transitions before jumping passes has often resulted in careless, split-second moves in the field elements or sloppy steps wedged in before jumps that fail to reflect the music or overall choreography . . . but that is a subject for another day.  Instead, today we will reflect on the pre-jump transitions that thrill and excite, and/or memorably serve some higher interpretative purpose.  In that vein, the following list includes some of my favorite pre-jump transitions from both the 6.0 and IJS eras:

Super Steps

**This post is dedicated to Hakkai**

Given how fashionable it is to blame IJS for a wide assortment of figure skating maladies (including but not limited to ruining spins in the ever-contorted quest for levels, fan spirals, and the sorry state of pairs skating), I am aware of the fact that having the opinion that IJS step sequences are generally an improvement on their 6.0 counterparts is a controversial one likely to draw scorn, something akin to believing in the tooth fairy as an adult or thinking that tartan pairs very well with paisley. But that is indeed an opinion I hold, and I will now defend it the only way I know how: verbiage with bits of video footage liberally interspersed in between.

The Skin You're In

Some people hate over-the-boot covers, others shudder at the thought of sequins. For me, the #1 figure skating sartorial sin is mismatched illusion mesh.

Ah, illusion mesh, that gallant protector of many a skater's modesty. For those uninitiated to the ways of skating's sartorial mores, illusion mesh is the flesh-colored fabric meant to provide an approximation of bare skin without actually baring such skin. Despite the official ISU rules stating that on-ice costumes "must not give the effect of excessive nudity for athletic sport," illusion mesh is a popular means to provide that very effect. Indeed, illusion mesh is often necessary to hold a skimpy costume together (yes, Elena Grushina is wearing more illusion mesh than actual non-illusion mesh fabric):

Tamam Shud

Daisuke Takahashi announced his official retirement from competitive figure skating today. This is no surprise to any sentient being who has been keeping tabs on the skating world (except, perhaps, for some mild surprise upon hearing that a skater is actually explicitly announcing his retirement instead of taking an indefinite "break" from competitive figure skating), but inevitability is no panacea for the attendant peculiarities of loss. Instead of moping, however, let's look back at some of Mr. Takahashi's best performances, and drink a toast--to Daisuke Takahashi, for the exceptional skater he has become, and for all the pleasure and joy he has given his fans and the skating world.

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.

Top Ten of 2012-2013

My personal favorite performances from this season, and the ones I'll return to when I'm old and doddery with more teeth than braincells. The list, in no particular order:

2013 Worlds: Of Vice and Men

Patrick Chan controversially wins yet another World Championships with an extremely sub-par long program.

Fans howl in protest on the forums, Twitter explodes with indignation, bloggers write jeremiads dedicated to excoriating CoP and the judges, lots of sound and fury all around, etc. The ISU does nothing.

In other words, yet another day in figure skating.

Quasi una fantasia

Some skating choreographers are known to possess only a single compact disc's worth of music, and Nikolai Morozov is prominent among this dubious bunch. Such was immediately clear upon hearing that Mr. Morozov had chosen Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as the music for Daisuke Takahashi's new short program this past weekend, as Moonlight Sonata has been familiar territory for other Nikolai Morozov clients. Thus the question inevitably presents itself: who had the best Morozov'd Moonlight Sonata?

2013 Four Continents: Recap

I'm actually sort of inclined to find this photograph funny at this point

The skategods giveth, and the skategods taketh away.

Post about 2013 4CC Men's Event

....what the fuck did I just watch.

A Last Post...of 2012

It's that time of the year again, that time when we look back at the year that is rapidly on its way to passing us by and ponder those time-worn questions: what was good? What was bad? How much alcohol is needed to forget it all?

When it comes to looking back at the 'good' in figure skating, I find that it isn't necessarily the programs in their entirety that endure the longest in my memories, but certain indelible moments within those programs. That glorious, wind-beneath-the-wings feeling evoked when Akiko Suzuki flew down the ice during her choreographic sequence after nailing all her jumps at the NHK Trophy, for instance, or the memory of seeing Virtue/Moir's brilliant, furious closing lifts in their Carmen free dance at Skate Canada for the very first time. Another great moment that imprinted itself into my mind was watching Takahiko Kozuka skate his beautiful spread eagles set perfectly to the beating of the drums in his short program at Skate America, and who can forget Carolina Kostner's sinuous, sensual step and choreographic sequences and her final, very late 3S right to the music of her Bolero long program.

Melancholia

Sometimes, there are days in which life feels like just another facet of shitty. In lieu of hurling myself off the nearest tall building or sticking my head into the closest aptly-sized kitchen appliance, I turn to my most convenient non-self destructive outlet for catharsis: figure skating.

Sad Clown

Alas, what many of us had most feared upon first hearing of Daisuke Takahashi's return to the clutches (in more ways than one!) of Nikolai Morozov has most unfortunately come to pass.

Let's not delude ourselves here: Mr. Takahashi's Pagliacci is a relatively mundane program that is clearly calibrated to score points, points, and more points above all. Two quads, two triple axels, busywork transitions in and out out of a bunch of his jumping passes, etc., etc. Of course, all competitive programs in figure skating on some level or another are choreographed to be point-maximisation machines by design, but what I've felt distinguished Mr. Takahashi from most skaters was that many of his programs since the 2009-2010 season seemed to treat scoring points as somehow merely incidental to their true purpose of being coherent, dazzling artistic statements. Whether this is indeed true or not, it is undeniable that La Strada, In the Garden of Souls, Eye, and Blues for Klook were special programs. Even in the hands of a lesser performer, their quality still would have shone through. In Mr. Takahashi's capable hands, however, watching them was an Experience.

The State of the Union: 2012 Grand Prix

Some observations from the Grand Prix series this season....

Déjà vu: A Pictorial Post

I like to think that skating is an activity in which imitation--as Charles Colton once put it--is the sincerest form of flattery. It's certainly a rosier view than the alternative (that is, a lack of new ideas).

A Smorgasbord of New Programs (so far)

Is it just me, or is there a ridiculous amount of competitions going on this week? Japan Open, Finlandia Trophy, Ondrej Nepala....the mind boggles at how many programs are debuting this week. Rather than write separate posts on each competition, I'm going to amalgamate them into two or three large posts as videos of all the competitions slowly seep out.

Favorite Fluff

As their name implies, figure skating fluff pieces are not exactly among the most intellectually demanding things aired on television. In the rush to seek out the lowest common denominator to broaden the appeal of figure skating to the unconverted masses, many fluff pieces tend to be high on melodrama and cheese but low on actual information (particularly of the technical variety needed to fully understand CoP) about the sport itself. Though some of the die-hard skating faithful bemoan the lost opportunity for educating the masses, there is nonetheless a special place in my heart for the typical cheesy fluff piece. Here are some of my favorites that have survived the copyright purges on Youtube:

Look at your life, look at your choices

Happier Morozov-less times

UPDATE: Praise be to God, Allah, Xenu, Flying Spaghetti Monster, whatever! It looks like Daisuke Takahashi has not completely lost his mind and is only taking on Nikolai Morozov as an advisor/assistant coach. And best of all, Mr. Takahashi says Mr. Morozov is "probably not" going to be his choreographer this season though it's still undecided. Maybe this won't be such a disaster after all.....though hopefully Mr. Morozov won't strip away all the choreography by the end of next season. We all know how Mr. Morozov likes his empty programs....

Daisuke Takahashi is apparently returning to Nikolai Morozov. See also here.

Only a gif can adequately sum up my facial expression upon hearing this horrible soul crushing disaster of meltdown proportions news: