Shut UP, Scott Hamilton!

Hamilton is the great jinxer of all skaters. I don't think I've ever seen him say something like, "Now, $Skater is known for being really effortless on these jumps, just beautiful height blah blah blah...His first combination tonight is a quad-triple..." and then have the guy not fuck it up. It's impossible. I think the Russian coaches are paying off Scott Hamilton to say good things about the other skaters' abilities RIGHT BEFORE they jump.

Kee-rist.

(Style of this post somehow stolen from wurmwyd. Sorry, dear, I've known you a long time, and I've liked figure skating for at least that long. There must be a relationship there.)

Just a little more skating commentary before sleep

I went to YouTube and watched some Robin Cousins, some Torvill and Dean (go watch their Bolero, I mean, right now), and some Scott Hamilton. Man, the sport has come leaps and bounds, athletically speaking, in less than 30 years. In 1978, when Cousins and Hamilton were head to head at the Worlds, the men were doing single axels, and the triple lutz was the big-deal difficult jump to land. In a '94 performance of Hamilton's I just watched, where he was 36, there was commentary to the effect that he hadn't quite gotten the triple axel yet, but was hoping to become the oldest man ever to land one. By the early 90's, a few women were trying triple axels in competition, and near the turn of the century, men started landing quadruple toe loops. Watching the 2006 mens' competition, the top skaters all have quads in their programs - in combination with triples! It's completely insane. No wonder I've been feeling like there are far more falls in skating these days than there used to be - I've no doubt there are, with all of those crazy jumps. And now, with the new scoring system, scores are cumulative, so everybody's going for as many tricks as they can get. What this means is that most programs look a lot alike, and that a lot of artistry has been lost, except by the truly top people.

Overall, I have to say that in the 2006 competition, there wasn't a lot that excited me. None of the gold medalists really blew me away, and they all won because they were athletic, had decent artistry, and could skate a clean program. People like Sasha Cohen and Matt Savoie did stunning things, but these days the artistic elements count for almost nothing, and missing or falling on technical elements carries such severe penalties that there's almost no room for beauty anymore.

It's a damn shame. For a remedy, check out this.