Random Figure Skating Thoughts & Questions

[sillylionlove]

I would think that the quad axel would be very diffucult to complete. Wouldn't it require 4 1/2 revolutions? Most are still having trouble getting the 4 revolutions for the quad. I don't think that we will ever see a quad axel!!!

[jcoates]

Some people have tried, the last one I heard of broke his leg in something like 3 places. I'm not sure if a quad axel is physically possible or not. I think it is but not with any consistency and a very, very high risk involved.

I believe the skater in question was Alexei Urmanov. If I recall he did this around 1991 or so in practice after he became the second skater to officially land the quad toe in competition. I remember reading an interview with his coach Alexei Mishin and he mentioned that the injury left Urmanov less free in his skating and a bit more tentative. Of course, he still had a pretty good, if up and down, career compared to most skaters.

[antmanb]

I heard that Viacheslav Zagarodiuk was attempting quad axels in practice and while he never landed one was getting close. Yagudin apparently worked quad axels in a harness - but obviously the help you get from a harness isn't that representative of what you can do without. Saying that Yagudins triple axel was always huge and he wasn't pulled all the way in so i expect is someone could have landed a quad it would have been him.

Ant

[ImaginaryPogue]

Thanks heyang, for your response.

Another one for the crowd

According to wikipedia, the German team of Bewersdorf and Mager won one Olympic bronze in 1980.

According to the isu pdf file, they won three consecutive bronze medals.

Which one is right?

[Olympia]

The three bronzes didn't sound right to me, so I went back and checked that second site.It seems that it was a different Uwe and Manuela who won in the earlier years, Manuela Gross and Uwe Kagelman, not Manuela Mager and Uwe Bewersdorf. Easy to see how at a quick read--and in that tiny type, and you can't really scroll on that site without everything leaping around--that could be confusing. I had to read it about three times before the names stopped scrambling before my eyes. Not a user-friendly chart at all!

[Mathman]

Is there such a jump as a half Axel? You take off forward, do half a rotation and land backward. Would this jump have a CoP value?

[i love to skate]

Is there such a jump as a half Axel? You take off forward, do half a rotation and land backward. Would this jump have a CoP value?

That's a waltz jump....it's the first jump you learn when you start skating.

[vlaurend]

Is there such a jump as a half Axel? You take off forward, do half a rotation and land backward. Would this jump have a CoP value?

The "half axel" is actually a 1-revolution jump that takes off forward on the left foot (assuming CCW rotation) and lands forward on the right toepick with a push off onto the LFO edge. If you take off forward, do half a rotation and land backward, it's a waltz jump. Neither the half axel nor the waltz jump is a "listed jump" so neither is marked as a jump or has any assigned value under IJS. They can be used as connecting moves, though. You sometimes see the half axel as part of a step sequence.

[ImaginaryPogue]

The three bronzes didn't sound right to me, so I went back and checked that second site.It seems that it was a different Uwe and Manuela who won in the earlier years, Manuela Gross and Uwe Kagelman, not Manuela Mager and Uwe Bewersdorf. Easy to see how at a quick read--and in that tiny type, and you can't really scroll on that site without everything leaping around--that could be confusing. I had to read it about three times before the names stopped scrambling before my eyes. Not a user-friendly chart at all!

Heh. Thanks - I totally missed that.

[Wicked]

Yes. Klimova and Ponomarenko won bronze in 1984, silver in 1988 and gold in 1992.

I knew you guys would know. Are they the only ones?