Most Flexible Female Skater I have Seen...

I have been a skater and have watched many a skater in my time, but I have to say Sasha Cohen is the most flexible female skater I have ever seen. Those positions she hits are amazing. It's a treat to see her skate. I think if Sasha remains focused she will be hard to beat this season.

Lucinda gets the honour of greatest spinner. There just is no one who can spin like her. She is unbelievable.

Rory Flack Burghart is another with amazing flexibility.


Piel

Another vote for Lucinda...nobody even comes close to her flexibility! I always firmly believed that if she could have mastered the jumps, she'd be a World and Olympic champion many times over!

And Natalia Mishketunok, whose name I can't spell, was the most flexible pairs skater that I recall.
dpp

DORISPULASKI said:

And Natalia Mishketunok, whose name I can't spell, was the most flexible pairs skater that I recall.
dpp

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How do you think that Utaki Wakamatsu, from the new Canadian pairs team Wakamatsu/Fecteau, compares to Natalia? They ended teir SA short program with the same combo spin that she did with Artur Dmitriev, and also did an eye-popping lift that I had only ever seen performed by Leonova/Kvalko. It seemed to me that Wakamatsu's split was even more extravagent than Leonova's. I swear, her hip bones must be able to rotate some ungodly number of degrees in her hip socket!

Well for some reason I can't seem to edit the above post but I wanted to correct:

It's Utako, not Utaki -- sorry!!!

From Mathman to Geseledepkat: If you edit you post right away, you can do that and it won't even say "edited by..." But if you try to edit something twice, too soon, you can't because you can only make one post a minute, ot something like that. This is to prevent spamming. Just wait a couple of minutes and you should be able to edit your post, if you haven't posted anything else for a minute or so.

Mathman

Let's add Nicole Bobek to the list of beny-stretchy skaters. The whole emphasis on hyper extended spirals began with her in the modern era and also her hydroblading moves are exceptional.

sk8m8 said:

Let's add Nicole Bobek to the list of beny-stretchy skaters. The whole emphasis on hyper extended spirals began with her in the modern era and also her hydroblading moves are exceptional.

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Yup, she gets my vote.

Don't leave out Denise Biellmann, the spin that is such an incredible display of flexibility was named after her! She also had other challenging spin positions and was able to do these well into her 30s. Extremely impressive!

All of them absolutely astound me. I do like Utako Wakamatsu, but I didn't think her Mishketunok spin is as yet as extreme and Natalia's when Natalia was at her fighting weight, so to speak. (But I really like this new pair, and really liked their SP at Skate America) dpp

As for hydroblading, I have to add Shae-Lynn Bourne as the expert, afterall Victor and Shae introduced hydroblading to the skating world - thanks to Ushi Kesler (the inventor) - here in Canada the move is known as the "Shae crunch."

Shae-Lynn is also a very flexible skater.

Of course, Denise Biellman is at the top of the list as well for flexibility. Her spin has been emulated by many skaters, but she does it the best.

I think the most all-round flexible female skater is Sasha Cohen. Other really flexible sjaters maybe have nice laybacks, or Biellman spins or spirals,etc. But Sasha has the whole flexy package.

Yukina Ota has a reeeeeeeeely flexible back though.

Questions: Anyone seen Natalie Krieg? Do you think her Biellman spin is better than Biellman's ( just a question don't kill me!)

I know it's off topic but who are the most flexible among the men?

Men: Evgeni Plushenko, Rohene Ward,
for some reason I think Emanuel Sadhu is flexible?

Most flexible female skaters

I nominate Naomi Nari Nam in this exclusive list! Also, based on internet pictures I saw, Yukina Ota seems to be super flexible as well.

Yukina, oh Yukina, my latest 'special'. I hope she podiums on the Japanese Nats. That nationals is as tight as the USAs.

Joe

Nathalie Krieg, hands down!

I have always loved to watch spinners with great flexibility, going back to Denise Biellmann's amateur career, and some of the most outstandingly flexible spinners I've seen include Denise, Lucinda Ruh, Kay Thomson of Canada (who had amazing back flexibility after she'd had a vertebrae surgically removed due to an injury, from what I've read--great centering & speed on her spins and some original flexible variations), Naomi Nari Nam, Sasha Cohen, Katherine Healy, Nicole Bobek, and Nathalia Mishkutenuk, but for better full Biellmanns than Denise and more amazing spin variations of her own invention than anyone I've ever seen, IMHO no one is in quite the same league as Nathalie Krieg. The Swiss truly have an amazing tradition of great, flexible spinners (Claudia Villiger in the 1980s was quite a good spinner, too).

For those who have never had the pleasure of seeing Nathalie Krieg, I have some photos and a video (taken late in her career and not really demonstrating anything approaching her full spinning ability) up at http://members.aol.com/sk8spincentral/nathalie.htm

Nathalie also holds the Guinness world record for the longest spin, at something like 3:40, nearly the length of a long program! I would love to see video of that record. I found it interesting that when Lucinda Ruh did her Guinness record setting she didn't try to break Nathalie's record, but went for other, sometimes new records instead. My gut feeling is that, as great as Lucinda is at spinning, Nathalie would have been able to beat her in a head to head Guinness record spin competition.

Lois

Yukina Ota

Her ina bauer is just great!! I really really hope she podiums on NHK Trophy and Japanese Nationals.

Joe,
Yukina is my latest 'special' too.

Just a technical note: Flexibility, like everything else about the body, tends to be specific. As people have already mentioned, some skaters have very flexible backs, some hips, some are extremely flexible is several areas. Also don't forget, we usually only see what the skater does well. For example, people have asked why Irina gets so little amplitude on her arabesque spiral when obviously she has great hip and back flexibility as demonstrated on her Biellmann spins? For one thing, to do a 180-degree arabesque spiral a la Sasha or Nicole Bobek not only takes flexibility but also strength in the hip and back to hold the leg up. With Irina, by combining the great flexibilty in her back with good hamstring stretch in the hip, she gets a good Biellmann position. But she just wasn't built with the hip structure and perhaps just never worked on getting the strength to get more amplitude on the free leg in her arabesque spiral. Even Lucinda Ruh, who has great flexibility in a number of positions, has an arabesque spiral that only gets to about 130-140 degrees (it's still a beauty though--great speed, long legs, great extension). It's probable that even superflexible skaters such as Natalia Mishkutenok, Utako Wakamatsu, and (Don't Know Her First Name) Leonova can't do a 180-degree arabesque spiral the way Nicole Bobek or Sasha can. But then there are probably things Mishkutenok, Wakamatsu, and Leonova can do that Sasha and Nicole can't. Same goes for other skaters mentioned, such as Ruh, Krieg, Ota, Nam, etc.

The only people about whom you could say they have overall extreme flexibility are contortionists and even they have to work on a lot of things and sometimes cannot do certain moves that require both great strength and flexibility. It's not that they're lazy, it's the way their muscles are constructed, ie, very long muscle fibers that make it difficult to gain and retain strength. To see a very flexible skater who also exhibits good strength moves is especially impressive to me.

Most flexible skater I've ever seen: Without a doubt, Piel. She could lay back so far on her layback she'd end up looking at the audience from the level of her belly button. Her spiral had so much amplitude, they stopped measuring in degrees and just talked about how many times she "wound the clock." In her Russian split jumps, her legs went all the way up the sides of her body and crossed in back of her head. In fact, one of Piel's moves was banned for being too Kama Sutraesque. You just don't see that kind of flexibility on the ice anymore
Rgirl