A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

THE ONLY THING THAT'LL STOP JOHNNY WEIR FROM SHOPPING: Women's figure skating long program. Gretchen, break it down:

As a result of herculean effort (okay, and because I spent most of the afternoon sitting in traffic on the Tappan Zee), I am totally unspoiled for this competition. Hurray! I’m so excited. I just got here and went straight to the TV.

Silvia Fontana looks great, as usual. I think her dress is really classy and beautiful, and she’s one of the few women who can carry off the gold color. I love the expression on her face before she goes into her jumps; that is one determined woman. Her spins aren’t very fast and her extension isn’t great. This music is absolutely lovely; Puccini makes for amazing skating performances. Oh, her final sequence—a jump into a triple and a spin, culminating in footwork, was just perfect! You can see the joy and emotion on her face (Fiance: you can actually feel her emotion.) How triumphant for Silvia. She has tears in her eyes and that performance, though technically inadequate, was so moving.

Commentator: It’s been an emotional week for Silvia; during her practices, the arena would fill up and her countrymen just love to watch her.

Fiance: I bet her countrymen love to watch her. I love to watch her and I’m not even Italian!

Miki Ando: The Japanese press has been stalking her; I’ve seen articles where her classmates at school bitch about how she’s allowed to dye her hair even when it’s against the rules because she’s a skater. But that’s mild compared to the insults she’s gotten for gaining some weight; in Japan, the press calls her Lard Lady. Which is, obviously, ridiculous.

Tugba Karademir: Pretty costume; it’s a black halter dress with minimal sequining and a cream-colored underskirt that creates some visual interest (I mean, aside from the visual interest of all those leg lifts). She doubled her first two triple attempts. I think her music could have been better-selected; it would be nice to see her skate to something with more drama and intensity. But she is a lovely skater and it was so gratifying to see her happiness with a personal best. Figure skating is such a US-dominated sport that her story—moving from Turkey to Canada to pursue her dream—is really exceptional. Some of the great figure skaters—Michelle Kwan, Sasha Cohen, Kristi Yamaguchi—have been first-or-second generation immigrants. I wonder if that’s significant?

Visa is still running commercials featuring Michelle Kwan, which is intriguing. I wonder how much longer she’ll be the face of US figure skating?

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Blonde Finnish Skater: Love her hair, not so crazy about the blue bows in a diagonal pattern across the dress. She really telegraphs her jumps, which means that she takes forever to set up her jumps and you can see them coming in her program. Her music is sort of sprightly, but really, really boring. She did a pretty sultry spiral, with one hand running over her body. Finland is hot. Her footwork, though, is totally uninspiring. She looks thrilled with her program, even though I wasn’t equally thrilled.

Elena Sokolova (Russia). I love her outfit; it’s totally scandalous. The whole back of the costume is totally open. Like Johnny Weir, she’s wearing a single glove. Unlike Johnny Weir, the glove does not have a name. I thought her spirals were wobbly. I really like this program; it’s fast and there is a great footwork sequence. But she’s not in shape and the performance looked sloppy.

Dick Button: “I’m sorry to be so negative.”
Gretchen: “You’re not sorry! You live for this! Embrace the snark, Uncle Dick!”

Liu Yan (China): Really pretty spins with an innovative catchfoot position. Dick Button wants her to do a better job tying her shoelaces. What a ridiculous critique! I mean, I’m allowed to make those sorts of comments, but I’m typing from my living room couch, not broadcasting to millions. Oh no, now Sandra Bezic is piling on. This wasn’t a bad program. It was just boring. Thank God for Silvia Fontana; she’s been the only really fabulous skate of the evening.

Sasha Cohen looks like an elf; she’s got huge features, a tiny face, and her ears stick out. I never figured it out until now.

Susanna Poykio: She’s using the same music as Sasha Cohen will, but with less oomph. You know, I like her skating, but she strikes some incredibly unattractive, undoubtedly high point-value positions, including my all time least favorite, the spiral with the leg in front, which I think looks like preparation for an uncomfortable gynocological procedure. She missed the end of the music by at least 10 seconds.

* * *

Miki Ando, on the ice, not looking particularly lardy. Apparently, the Japanese press also calls her Mikitty as a nickname, so when she gained the weight, they began referring to her as Fat Cat. They said that she was eating too much American food, too. I can’t believe I’m repeating all of this stuff. But you know, her costuming choices are not doing her any favors; she chooses fabrics that are too heavy and that add too much volume to her hips and thighs. Miki keeps brushing just by the boards; I get the feeling that she doesn’t have a strong sense of her position on the rink. She fell on her quad attempt, but you know, good for her for making the attempt. She didn’t have a medal shot and it would have made history to have landed it.

This is an unbelievably bad performance. Also, she has a wedgie. I don’t think Miki was well-trained going into this performance; she looks out of shape, her elements are terrible, and there’s virtually no artistry. That was terrible. Oh, the Japanese press is going to massacre her. And I cannot believe that she pulled down a score of 85, when she’s clearly been the worst skater we’ve seen on TV thus far. I’ll have to go back and look at the detailed scoring breakdowns, but intuitively, this doesn’t make sense to me.

Emily Hughes (USA!): Hughes The Younger was so spunky on Tuesday night that she earned a ton of good will, at least from me. But I still predict she falls. She clearly loves blue, since this costume is basically her short program costume but without sleeves. Wow, she nailed her first three jumping passes, including a three-jump combination. Oh, so disappointing for her to fall on that easy jump, not even in combination. Emily has a really nice spread eagle position; her Ina Bauer is not so good. I do like her (THREE) Biellman positions and nice, low sit spin. She is so feisty. This wasn’t the skate of her life, but it was an amazing performance for her first senior international ladies’ competition. Well done, Emily. I predict that she is the next Irina Slutskaya—the energy, the attack remind me of Irina.These scores are huge compared to the rest of the field thus far. Of course the good skaters are yet to compete, but she should be proud of her scores.

Apple should pay the skaters for all of the shots of them warming up with their iPods planted firmly in their ears. Those white cords dangle from every skater’s head. Anybody want to guess what Sasha was listening to?

NBC Promo for tomorrow night’s Exhibition: “No rules: just elegance, style, passion.” I think NBC is clearly acknowledging that the new COP has driven some of that out of the competitive performances.

Sarah Meier (Switzerland) wins the award for sexiest wearing of a bodysuit. Her spins look much better tonight than they did during her short program. Fiance thinks that her costume look like she’s wearing a Russian eagle across her chest. She landed a great combination.

* * *

One quick observation: skaters are judged on what they do, not what they planned to do. So if a skater hits a double instead of a triple, she gets the lower point value, but is not penalized for “missing” a planned element.

Elene Gedevanishvili (Georgia): Her starting jumps are high and lovely. Her costume, however, is hideous. She’s entirely in black, which is very conservative and makes her look old. And I think she just falters; maybe she’s nervous, or maybe she just is young, but she can’t keep the focus through the entire program. I think her footwork is really indicative of her inexperience; I’m not an expert (obviously) but I’d be surprised if her footwork was more than a level 2. Scott Hamilton keeps calling her a star on the rise—but while I like Elene, I don’t see what makes her so much better than, for example, Joannie Rochette or even Emily Hughes.

Sasha Cohen (USA!): There’s a HUGE amount of crowd support. She doesn’t look good on the ice—in fact, she looks terrified. She’s going to choke. I can feel it. It’s so nervewracking to watch her skate. And she falls on her first triple lutz. That’s it. God, this is so tragic. Poor Sasha. And oh my God, she falls on her triple flip. Finally, she lands a triple loop. This music is still so lovely and her choreography is beautiful; I love the way she uses her hands. There’s a great smile as she moves into the B-theme of her music. Sasha’s doing a beautiful job of communicating the joy in this circular footwork sequence. She is the only one in the world who can do a spiral the way it’s meant to be done, even though her edges were shaky tonight. But who cares about shaky edges when her extension is so exquisite. Her jumps are improving dramatically as the program goes on—it’s almost like she just needed the first minute to shake off the nerves. It’s such a tragedy, because the last three minutes were incredibly beautiful. Dick Button is suggesting that it was the injury, but I think that it was pretty clearly the nerves. She just couldn’t focus until Minute 2. The minute that she sees her scores, she knows that it’s virtually over.

Shizuka (Japan) looks beautiful. She’s skating to Turandot, proving my theory that Puccini makes Gorgeous Programs. She has the only beautiful Ina Bauer in the competition. Shizuka has remarkably gorgeous lines; she’s lovely and graceful, and this is a magical performance for her; artistic and with extraordinary athleticism. That was the program I’ve been waiting all night to see. And I love watching the delight in her face.

Fumie Suguri (Japan): Fumie’s jumps just fly. Fumie doesn’t have as much to her programs in terms of transitions, which makes it look a little old-fashioned. In some ways, though, I like it; there’s more flow, and she has wonderful expression to her skating that reminds me of Michelle Kwan. I think I’ve said this ad nauseum, but I’m a total sucker for big footwork sequences at the end of a program. When they’re well-timed with music, they can inspire the crowd and spark a huge finale. Fumie had more of that quality than any of the other skaters I’ve seen, and her final spin was just fast and gorgeous.

Kimmie Meissner was one of the few skaters to make it to her practice sessions on Wednesday, and apparently, her effort paid off; the crowd was very enthusiastic and she got a ton of applause. I hope it improved her mood; when the camera caught Kimmie watching the rest of the short programs on Tuesday night, she looked really irked. (Did she think that she should have had higher scores? Probably.)

How ironic was it that Scott Hamilton was blathering about her complete ability to carry out the jumps just as Kimmie was tumbling on her first jumping pass? Good thing her subsequent jump was absolutely perfect. I think that this is a better program than Fumie’s, even though Fumie stayed more upright. The choreography is better and the positions are better. It would have been great for her to add a second jump to any of these late jumps; she could have turned one into a combination and added extra points. I just don’t think she’s a sufficiently mature skater to do that kind of improvisation. One other note about maturity; this choreography seems a little sexier and a little more adult than Kimmie actually is. Kimmie had a good performance, but I’m quite sure that it wasn’t the performance she wanted.

Irina Slutskaya: Irina is shaking her head, as if to ward off the negative energy in the rink. If she wins, it will be a Russian sweep—first time in history, I think. But holy cow, Irina just took a huge tumble. I don’t know how that happened—it hardly ever does. And Irina looks confused, more than anything. You know, I really, really tried to focus on Irina’s program to see if it could move me the way that Shizuka did. But regardless of how impressive her technical elements are (and tonight, they weren’t even that great), her programs do not sing.

It’s very clear to me that Shizuka deserved that gold medal; her performance was just beautiful. I’m more surprised that Sasha took silver; that’s clearly a victory for flexibility and artistry. Earlier today, I posted an article from si.com quoting skaters on what it feels like to fall. Sasha said that when you fall, it throws off your entire program; you lose not just the jump, but the components and transitions that help build up your score. Tonight, she didn’t let the falls limit her program at all. That’s impressive.

Both Irina and Sasha will be devastated; Irina reportedly thought that this medal was hers, and Sasha has so many silver medals that I’m sure that anything other than gold is disappointing. But this is a wonderful triumph for the beautiful skaters coming out of Japan, and I’m glad that Japan managed to pull one medal out of these Olympics. (If you can only get one, this is clearly the one to win.)

So here’s the question: was tonight a vindication for the COP or not? I think that artistically, it was a low point in ladies’ figure skating. But at the end of the day, the right skaters were on the podium in the right order, and that counts for a great deal. Shizuka was ninth in the world this year while Irina was first; those are hard odds to overcome if you’re skating on reputation as well as on performance. It’s impossible to say, but I think the COP may have really helped Shizuka to get the marks she deserved.

And thanks so much to all of you for letting me throw figure skating commentary at the internet. It’s been a joy. I’ll post tomorrow if there’s anything interesting in the gala, but for now, I’m signing out. As they say in Torino, ciao!