I enjoy the Olympics despite the scores

[jducoeur]

One observation from last night: it reminded me, once again, that I find the judging and scoring to be my one real beef with the figure skating.

This time, there was a skater (didn't catch where from) whose routine was based on Gene Kelly's classic number from An American in Paris. For my money, it was brilliant: not just good skating, but good nods to the original routine peppered throughout. He actually managed to get a bunch of little nuances of Kelly's movement idiom in there -- not easy when you're moving on teeny little blades at high speed.

Of course, the commentators were full of, "Oh, it's not very hard; it won't score well; blah blah blah". And that proved true -- from a scoring POV, it was mediocre. Which is a damned shame, because from a purely artistic POV (as opposed to an athletic one), I thought it completely stole the show.

This seems to happen about once in each Winter Olympics for me. Sometimes it's a solo, sometimes a pair, but there's always *somebody* who just clearly gets the idea of Skating As Dance, and as Art, far better than the rest of the field. And they *never*, ever, win...

Comments

[redsquirrel.livejournal.com]

I recall that skater (he was from the Czech Republic) and I'm afraid I must disagree with you on the fairness of his scores re: artistic merit. The new scoring system does take artistry into account, at least to some extent. He did not score higher because the brilliance in the Gene Kelly number lay more in the choreography than the execution and you don't get graded on the choreography. It was a great routine but the execution was uneven. The extension through the arms, the completion of movements and smooth flow from one move to the next was just not there. And his spins were quite dreadful (for that level of competition), slow and sloppy. I watched with my sister who has studied figure skating; she agreed with me so this is not a completely uneducated opinion.

We absolutely LOVED the choreography and would really like to see it done by a skater who can fully execute it. The commentator's opinion was that he "ran out of gas" and it did look that way - he just didn't have the stamina for that program. He probably needs to work much harder on his off-ice conditioning. He's talented and jumps well but is missing a lot of the little things that set the really top level skaters apart from the rest.

That artistry does count can be seen by the relatively high scores of Stephan Lambial, the Swiss skater who skated to "La Traviata". Can't jump worth beans but oh, can he skate - line, extension, footwork, musicality...I'm very, very sad that he was not "on his best game" last night. He came within a whisker of taking the bronze medal. Had he been as "on" as he was for the short program - done to "William Tell" - he could have done it. It is unfortunate, I much preferred him to the Japanese skater who did win; he was flashy and technically proficient but without as much heart. :-(

[ulfhirtha.livejournal.com]

>Can't jump worth beans but oh, can he skate

Exactly the feeling I had during some of the skating shows a few years back that would have Hamilton & Boitano doing their jumps and such...and then Dorothy Hamil would come show them was skating & elegance really was.