Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 16:09:47 -0500 (EST) From: Sandra Loosemore To: skatefans-l@udel.edu, rec.sport.skating.ice.figure-news@BABYBLUE.CS.YALE.EDU Subject: more Skate America observations (spoilers) Here are a few more observations from Skate America.... The men's short programs were generally a mess. Besides everyone (well, except Todd) stumbling and tripping through their jumps, several of the men were giving away deductions on their spins. E.g. Alexander Abt only did 7 rotations on each foot in the change camel even though there's absolutely nothing wrong with his camels -- great position, great center, strong rotation, etc. I think Scott Davis got hit with a deduction for not holding the camel in his spin combination long enough for it to count as a "position", and Jayson Denommee got hit for landing his death drop on two feet. And although Plushenko has that Biellmann spin, his camel is droopy and he does a catch-leg spin with such an unattractive position and exit that overall he seems like a pretty unremarkable spinner. Perhaps the lesson is that spinning is as hard as jumping. For the men's long programs, well, for me the highlight was definitely seeing Michael Chack skate clean, as I've written about elsewhere. Poor Takeshi Honda had a rough competition. Japanese TV is giving him the Midori Ito treatment, taping all his practices and sticking a camera 2 inches from his nose when he comes off the ice. Ugghh. Plus, it was actively painful to have to watch his long program -- the music is awful, like stuff Elvis Stojko would skate to. I am not sure quite what to make of Pliuta, the second Ukrainian at the event. He was trying some awfully ambitious stuff, both in terms of his jumping and choreography, but it just wasn't working. (He was trying quad lutzes in practice, BTW, but I never saw one that was cleanly landed.) Jayson Denommee may have a triple axel but he still skates like a junior -- very slow and tentative throughout. Both Abt and Plushenko skated fast and landed a lot of jumps, but seemed incredibly sloppy throughout their programs and looked like they were getting tired at the end. Abt, in particular, thrashes his arms around even more than Ilia Kulik, and he seemed to be putting all of his energy into melodramatic upper-body movements instead of into his actual skating. He did the harem-boy thing for both his long program and exhibition. It *was* entertaining, at least. And poor Zaggy. He was actually having pretty good practices where he landed several clean quad toes, but he was so totally awful in the long program it hurt to watch. Getting 7th place there was a total gift from the judges because he only landed 2 triples in the whole program and didn't even attempt the quad. BTW, several of us netters noticed that Zag has somehow become remarkably good-looking in the past year. Theories were put forward that he's changed how he does his makeup and/or that he's put on a little weight that has caused his face to fill out a bit. Todd's new/old Gettysburg program seemed like more of the same boring old stuff to me, but it was kind of hard to tell. He was obviously being very restrained in the presentation due to his injury during the competition, and he had had such crappy practices that he hadn't done full runthroughs then either. So I'm reserving judgement until I can see a performance of the program as it was meant to be, but I have to say I'm pessimistic about it. OTOH, I must say that I am very pleased with the direction that Scott Davis has taken with his new long program. I had thought for a long time that he could be a good skater if he only had more serious programs and cut out all that goofy posing and mugging in front of the judges. In the program Alexander Zhulin is listed among his choreographers so I was right in guessing that Galina & Nina were not responsible for this. Another encouraging sign was that, although Scott made a few mistakes (he wasn't able to land a clean triple axel, etc) he was able to recover from them instead of going on to make one mistake after another. Plus, he probably had his mental preparations thrown completely out of whack because he was directly after Todd in the skating order and Scott didn't know Todd was going to skate until he was about to step onto the ice himself. Amongst the ladies, the Michelle vs. Tara battle turned out to be a total blow-out. Even if Tara had not made mistakes in both the short program (she slipped on her spin combination entrance) and long (falling on a horribly flutzed lutz and missing the timing on her final jump combination so that she got way behind her music at the end), it would have been a blow-out. Michelle has a real presence on the ice and projects a genuine, mature understanding of her music, while it seems like Tara is deliberately trying for a cutesy, childish look in her choice of music, choreography, and costumes. Last year her programs were *appropriate* for a young person, but they didn't deliberately *emphasize* her youth, and this year they do. Her short program costume really is as awful as word would have it -- it's not that the design is so tacky in itself, but it looks bad on her because it really emphasizes how totally flat her chest is. She ought to stick with something that is all one color as she has done in the past. I do see that Tara has improved her extension, and her double axel certainly looks different than last year (she's using the Doug Leigh entrance now instead of whipping it), but she still lacks power. About Michelle's long program music. The Alwyn harp concerto is one of my favorite pieces of music, too, and I was shocked when I heard Michelle was using it because I thought I'd mentioned it in one of my "nice music that nobody skates to" posts to the net last year. But I'm told that Lori Nichol originally gave her a recording of it about 3 years ago and that Michelle eventually came to feel a kind of spiritual identity with the piece. So this has only added to my esteem for both Lori and Michelle. Anyway, both of Michelle's programs are packed with terrific footwork, and in her long program she's doing a reverse-direction camel as her new trick, so there's some real meat there. Now, if she'd only fix her layback position.... Among the other ladies, Angela Nikodinov had a real shot at the bronze but she just made too many mistakes in the long. Yulia Lavrenchuk was awesome in the short -- several of us thought she should have placed ahead of Tara because of her speed and big jumps -- but also botched her free skate. And skating to "Malaguena" in a black and white dress? Please, we've already seen that.... Elena Sokolova is a very pleasant skater in a girlish kind of way but I see no real depth there yet. I believe this was the same program she skated last year. Julia Lautowa was not a factor in this competition at all as she couldn't land a clean triple lutz in either program. In the pairs event, I thought it was pretty clear that Eltsova & Bushkov were way superior to anyone else here. It was mostly a matter of their overall speed and confidence. But I thought both their music and costumes were utterly dreadful. The long was especially bizarre; someone told me their music was from "Lord of the Dance" but their costumes looked like they were made by the same person who makes Anissina & Peizerat's outfits. OTOH, although Shishkova & Naumov were having technical troubles and their Don Quixote program is getting awfully old, they were a total joy to watch in the practices. I love the extension they both have and the way they related to each other on the ice. As for the US pairs, it has to be a major embarassment for Lyons & Wells to lose to the Hartsells. They still seem to be stuck at the same level they were at 2 or 3 years ago. A few comments about dance, and then I'm done. I can't say I was particularly impressed with Punsalan & Swallow's new programs. Their long is "Elvis goes to South America" and is no different than any of the other latin-style programs they've been doing for the last N years. Perhaps they were not as technically strong, but I felt that Fusar-Poli & Margaglio actually had better presentation in the jive and a much more entertaining free dance. The rest of the dance field was very weak. This Russian couple who placed third were absolutely dreadful. They won my "bletcherous costume of the event" award for their jive outfits (bright red and lime green?!?) and everything about them seemed overdone and phoney. -Sandra