NOTE ABOUT AUTHOR - Huntley trained as a novice figure skater. He and his skating partner competed at junior nationals several times, but Huntley choose to go to college instead of following a career on ice.
Figure skaters get two kinds of marks: technical and artistic. I feel like those are two great areas to judge the men’s short program.
Technically the whole point of skating is to make it look effortless, which takes a considerable amount of effort. However, even if a skater has their jumps consistent there’s always the unexpected and of course, the pressure.
When it comes to competition time I’d say 80% of it is mental. Nailing one of the difficult jumps in the program can completely set the skater with the right energy to pull off a flawless program. On the contrary if you’re going into a jump thinking you’re going to screw up, chances are you will.
One of the biggest problems facing male skaters in particularly is the Q-word. Not Queer, although its mostly true, but Quad. Most of the top-level skaters are either doing a quad or intimidating others by putting them in their programs. The rub is, if others want to keep up they have to attempt them, whether they’re confident in them or not. It’s more of a risk than doing a jump they have consistent, but if they were all evenly matched and weren’t taking any chances this wouldn’t be much of a sport now would it?
Yevgeny Plushenko, who like a Velociraptor is an astonishing jumper, I find to be quite a boring skater. His jumps are huge and beautiful but his music is a snooze and the footwork going with it just doesn’t match. To me his skating isn’t that elegant, it just comes off cold, but if you’re landing quad combinations it doesn’t matter all that much since the tech seems to trump the performance.
Artistically speaking, skating’s widely known for its flair, but that doesn’t just come from the skaters. Everyone’s familiar with the flamboyant rhinestoned outfits that are tighter than the Virgin Mary.
In the short program, Johnny Weir was just as unapologetically flaming as he always is, wearing a tight black and pink corset inspired top, complete with shear sections and a bright pink tassel. His style may be outlandish but at least he has the skating talent to back it up.
Evan Lysacek worse some sort of black poofy-shouldered shirt adorned with black-feathered cuffs. He looked like either he murdered a crow or was a back-up dancer at an Adam Lambert concert. Czech native Tomas Verner, though sporting a beautiful face, looked slightly off in his oddly sleeved sailor mish-mash.
Italy’s Samuel Contesti wore a nightmare of a plaid farm outfit. Overalls with patches?! Who thought this was a good idea? You’d think that with the gayness of the sport and the fact you’re skating at the Olympics in front of millions that somewhere, someone along the line would have told him to trim his unibrow and ditch the overalls.
Apparently gloves are in this skating season. A good deal of the skaters were donning them, including Lysacek, Weir, & Plushenko. Outfit wise, my personal favorites for the short were Kevin van der Perren from Belgium and Swiss Stephane Lambiel. Kevin’s skeleton outfit was bold and modern without being too over the top, while Stephane just looked stunningly handsome in his robin hood/renaissance garb.
The long program gives the skaters more leeway when it comes to artistry and what jumps they can put in. Given this, I’d really expected this to be the event with more surprising outfits, but it was quite tame in comparison to the short program.
Johnny’s costume was still outlandish but muted in color choice, sticking to black and white. Plushenko just completely gave up, much like he does with his ridiculous rag doll haircut. He decided to go bedazzle-crazy on his shirt except it looks like he ran out half way through. Kevin Van der Perren’s outfit was a surprise combination look of a sheer Leprechaun covered in radioactive cornhusk legions.
When the results came out I did feel Johnny was a bit robbed. His presentation, style and grace is just unmatched, but when it comes to power he can’t hold up against Lysacek and Plushenko which is why even though he skated a near flawless program he still sank to the lower ranks. The footwork was more complicated and the energy had a greater build in the 2nd half of the long for skaters like Lysacek and Daisuke Takahashi. However I completely feel Weir outperformed Stephane Lambiel, and Patrick Chan who couldn’t match his artistry or the cleanliness of his jumps.
Technically speaking Lysachek completely deserved the win over Plushenko. Yevgeny’s jumps were sloppier than an across-the-border sex change, where as Evan showed immense strength and control with each element. I just got the impression that Plushenko was trying too hard. If I were a judge I’d deduct points for that disgusting attempt of a sexy hip wiggle that looked more like he was trying to hold in a fart.
Luckily this story has a happy ending: America takes home the gold, and there were some really solid performances. All of the competitors have something to be proud about, even if it’s not necessarily their skating ;)
