From: loosemore-sandra
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 04:32:19 -0500 (EST)
Subject: US Nationals trip report

I'm sure that by now most of you have seen or read about what happened
at the competition, so I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow account,
just some general impressions.  I did, however, take fairly detailed
notes on all of the junior and senior events so feel free to bug me if
you want to know what happened to some skater who didn't make the TV
broadcast.  (But alas, once again I missed all of the novice events
due to the scheduling.  I didn't arrive until Tuesday afternoon.)

First of all, I have to say that the men's event was *the* best
skating competition I've ever attended, and not just because of Rudy
Galindo's performance.  I've been a follower of his for years so of
course I was just thrilled to death to see him finally skate up to his
potential after all he's been through, and the emotion and excitement
of the moment were incredible to witness in person.  But beyond that,
the depth of this men's field was astonishing.  I felt badly for
skaters like Aren Nielsen, Shepherd Clark, and Trifun Zivanovic, who
all skated fine programs that were each very impressive in their own
way, but who still ended up way down in the middle of the pack.

And it wasn't just the senior men's field that was strong -- *all* of
the events, both junior and senior, were really competitive, with a
lot of fine skating.  I am *so* impressed by all of the young skaters
who are just coming up into the senior level.  It seems like in the
past year there's just been an explosion in talent, with a lot of
these kids making huge improvements in their technical content and
presentation, and all of them being incredibly ambitious in their
programs.  And it's good to see that the judges are giving them the
credit they deserve instead of making them "wait their turn".  This
was particularly obvious in the dance event -- besides Chalom and
Gates, the top junior teams are really moving up fast, and I feel like
the US has a future in ice dance again.  It's great to see that.  The
number of senior men with triple axels, and the number of ladies with
lutzes, is way up from last year, too, and I thought the top 6 or 7
pairs were all very strong.

As I was watching the competition, I kept thinking how this was such a
welcome change from all those hokey pro events we were seeing on TV
this past fall -- a far higher standard of skating, and far less hype.
I really think it would be nice if the USFSA would stop trying to come
up with their own hokey pro-am events featuring the same bunch of
already-overexposed skaters in competitions with nonsensical rules,
and instead come up with some way to exploit the depth we're now
seeing and give more of these deserving eligible skaters an
opportunity for TV exposure and maybe prize money.  It seems like
there's a real need for this, especially because of the end of the
Olympic Festival competitions that used to serve this purpose.  I keep
thinking that the USFSA ought to try to turn sectionals into more
prestigious events with TV coverage, which would also encourage the
elite skaters to appear there instead of all trying to wimp out with
byes.

Anyway, back to nationals....

One more comment about Rudy Galindo.  I've looked quickly at the TV
broadcast, and as I suspected one thing did not come across clearly at
all, and that's Rudy's glaring lack of speed compared to the other
guys in the top group.  I think that's the excuse the judges used for
putting him behind Todd and Scott in the short, it probably would have
cost him in the long too if any of the other guys had managed to skate
cleanly, and it's probably going to hurt him at worlds, too.  At this
event, the winner for pure speed and power was surely Shepherd Clark.

Yes, Kevin Anderson was sitting with me for a good part of the
competition, and I'll return the compliment by saying he's very good
company.  But here's an incident that was a little embarassing.
During the pairs final, I was making some catty remarks to Kevin about
Meno & Sand's unflattering pink and burgundy costumes from last year,
that didn't really go together and that clashed with her hair and
complexion.  At the end of the evening, I realized that the women
sitting directly behind me were Todd Sand's mother and the woman who
buys their costumes for them.  Ooops.  Well, my remarks were actually
pretty mild compared to some other smarmy comments I've made on the
net about them, and this *is* an even more public forum.....  And to
give them credit, the blue and green ones they wore this year were
much nicer, and they didn't butcher Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu the
way they did the Blue Danube.

My big laugh of this year's competition came from Jessica Mills in the
short program.  She's now training with Galina Zmievskaya, who seems
determined to turn her into a clone of Oksana Baiul.  She was not only
wearing Oksana's black beaded dress for the short, but she was
jiggling her hips, hopping around on her toes, grabbing her foot --
and missing all her jumps.  Jessica used to have a nice, normal style
before she switched coaches, and I'm sorry, I just cannot see this
Oksana imitation as an improvement.  It's pretty curious because one
of Galina's other pupils that I saw at Easterns, Alicia Cavanaugh, is
also very imitative of that style.

BTW, it was really nice to see Alice Sue Claeys again.  She was
struggling with her jumps -- somebody told me she was just getting
over an injury -- but she has a very interesting and different style.
And I was even more impressed by Alizah Allen than I had been at
Easterns, too.  She also had jump trouble, but she certainly had the
most interesting choreography of any of the ladies.

As far as Nicole's not getting a bye to worlds, I personally was very
surprised by the decision because I tend to be pretty cynical about
USFSA politics.  Interestingly enough, I overheard several coaches and
other skating folk talking about this at the airport while I was
waiting for my flight to board, and they all seemed to agree that the
USFSA did the right thing, and were all equally surprised that they'd
had the guts to do it.  Perhaps it's a manifestation that the USFSA
has enough confidence in the future of those young up-and-comers that
they don't have to put up with the antics of skaters who goof off and
expect to get by on past reputation alone.  But, being cynical again,
it's also likely that they think Michelle is a better bet for a medal
at worlds anyway, so that they can afford to make an example out of
Nicole.

On a slightly different topic, I thought that both the arena and the
practice rink complex were great facilities, but the local
arrangements were a little haphazard.  For instance, I was told at the
arena when I first arrived that passes for the shuttle bus to the
practice rink were not being sold any more at all, so I had to run
around and find out how to get there by public transportation, and
then I was told there that the arena people had lied and the bus
passes *were* still for sale.  By then I was in no mood to shell out
$40 for one instead of taking the city bus for a fraction of that
price.  Another thing they screwed up on was the trade show.  I heard
that they jacked up the prices on the booths so high that almost none
of the usual vendors of costumes, jewelry, books, videos, souvenirs,
etc. could afford it.  Instead, about all they had were booths selling
the "official" souvenirs with the event logo, a couple of the larger
training centers and equipment manufacturers, and booths with
literature from some of the corporate sponsors like State Farm and
Xerox, and a lot of empty booths.  I hope the organizers for next year
learn from this mistake.

It was really nice to meet all of the other netters who were at the
dinner Saturday or who found their way to my seat during the week.
I'm getting to enjoy going to these events as much for the socializing
as for watching the skating.  I'm sorry if I missed some of you who
were looking for me -- next year I will have to arrive earlier in the
week so I'll have more time to do everything.

-Sandra