New Weir Interivew "Johnny Be Good"

[Tonichelle]

Every interview I read of Johnny's confirms my impression that he still has some maturing to do. He has a "crush" on Russia right now which may ripen into a adult level of interest. In contrast, Plushenko and his countrymen seem to be very grown-up; I wonder what they think of Johnny. I am sure they think he is talented as most of us do, but I don't think they feel he is "one of them."

I am very interested in Russian culture and history myself . I think it is commendable that Johnny looks outside his own culture; it's just something about his current gushing that seems adolescent (well, that and missing the bus! I just have to say that I could catch a bus when I was 21 and I wasn't the most mature person on the planet at that point! )

I enjoy hearing from him, but I do think he would be wiser to ration his words and put his focus on the skating after the distractions he had this season.

I couldn't agree more, I'm 21 and was as sheltered as they come, but I do pretty well on my own I mean, yes missing the bus can happen, but when is Johnny going to just say "I screwed up" instead of blaming the bus, the media, the USFSA, etc...

that being said, he's just repeating himself more and more...

when he's talking about the last olympics in teh quote about why people are bored with the sport is he talking 02 or 06? because the popularity went down well before this past season... someone isn't paying attention! LOL

[antmanb]

I couldn't agree more, I'm 21 and was as sheltered as they come, but I do pretty well on my own I mean, yes missing the bus can happen, but when is Johnny going to just say "I screwed up" instead of blaming the bus, the media, the USFSA, etc...

To give him his dues though, he listed the bus as one of the things that went wrong that day, everyone jumped all over it saying that he was blaming the bus for his poor skate and in his next interview he pretty much said he screwed up, his bad skate was just that and not to be blamed on the bus. I think he's a heart on his sleeve kind of guy - someone asks him a question and he tells you what's on his mind without thinking - i'm pretty much the same so i tend to forgive it in others!

Ant

[Jaana]

The incident of missing the bus threw Weir off from his mental balance. I can understand that very well. The same would happen to me if on an important day something would go wrong and I would get scared about not arriving early enough. Personally though, I would take care of checking matters beforehand and more than once to ensure that there would be no unpleasant surprises.

[slutskayafan21]

I couldn't agree more, I'm 21 and was as sheltered as they come, but I do pretty well on my own I mean, yes missing the bus can happen, but when is Johnny going to just say "I screwed up" instead of blaming the bus, the media, the USFSA, etc...

that being said, he's just repeating himself more and more...

when he's talking about the last olympics in teh quote about why people are bored with the sport is he talking 02 or 06? because the popularity went down well before this past season... someone isn't paying attention! LOL

The popularity of skating has seemingly gone down since around 2001 big time, or did it start even around 99? Sometime between 99-2001 it really started. I have two main ideas for that if I had to guess:

1)Not enough marquee rivalries. The public was transfixed by the Kwan-Lipinski, Kwan-Slutskaya, Stojko-Eldredge, Stojko-Kulik, Stojko-Urmanov, Kwan-Chen, Kerrigan-Biaul, Biaul-Bonaly type of rivalries, marquee matchups that happened more then once in a year it seemed. In the pros there were even better rivalries like Ito-Yamaguchi, Yamaguchi-Sato, Brasseur/Eisler vs Gordeeva/Grinkov, Boitano-Browning, Boitano-Hamilton, Klimova/Ponamarenko vs Usova/Zhulin, Klimova/Ponamarenko vs Torvil/Dean. There are not as many of those anymore.

2)The boom from the Harding-Kerrigan fallout was so high, and the excitement around skating almost too enormously high in the enusing years, that everything after the boom of that began to fade, especialy in the years after the 98 Olympics which had built up to with more grandour then normal due to this boom period, that everything seemed like a letdown, and things seemed less interesting and appealing to people then they would have even been before this boom.

[Joesitz]

That's true, SF. Those were the days. The Kwan/Cohen rivalry didn't start until 2002 Nats and never really got interesting until 2004 Worlds with Cohen's Swan Lake. However, Kwan was skating at that time with an injured hip but made one last gasp at the 2003 Worlds which Cohen didn't place in either. That rivalry never really materialized and while Cohen/Slutskaya rivalry began, it didn't do much for interest, imo. Shizuka was the amazing one.

Oh yeah. Back to Johnny. He's ok by me.

Joe