Ladies - LP | Page 72 | Golden Skate

Ladies - LP

brianjyw

Rinkside
Joined
Mar 16, 2010
Now I understand why you disagree with me so much~~~:rolleye:

LOL... my secret identity is exposed finally! :biggrin:

Well ... I shouldn't have said a skater is better than the other because I know each and every skater deserves to be called the best in its own right. I couldn't imagine how many hours they have practiced and how many times they have fallen before they came out to competitions. I just feel sad that we have to rank them.

I would just like to thank all skaters for trying their best and giving me a joy and pleasure and excitement to watch their performances during this season.

Lastly, I would like to thank all of you who have born with my self-indulgent babbles. It has been pleasure discussing with you.

Now that the season is over, it is time for me to hibernate. I will probably come back to this forum next season though ... until then Sayonara.:cry:
 

bethissoawesome

On the Ice
Joined
Dec 12, 2005
No one will ever be able to replace Michelle Kwan. Everyone knows about her achievements and, mostly, that magical side to her skating in presentation. But even in terms of technical ability, she has something that no ladies skater this year competing at Worlds has been able to demonstrate consistently... showing a full arsenal of the triple jumps (not including 3A) and consistently demonstrating the solidity of each one. The only recent ladies skater who has been able to do the same is Joannie Rochette (someone whose skating, imho, deserved a lot more attention than it garnered).

As for all the bickering, if Mao and Yu-Na, two teenagers, are able (and have been for years) to be cordial to one another in person, the least their fans can do is act the same way... and this is even across the internet, not face to face. Even if you don't like the other skater in any way, at least appreciate the fact that their rivalry with your favorite has motivated them to continually raise the bar in ladies figure skating. Who knows, without the other, they may not have amounted to as much as they have. And at the very least, respect their dedication to the sport and the sacrifices they have had to and continually make for it.
 

yunaddiction

Rinkside
Joined
Nov 7, 2008
Mathman, thank you so much for this wonderful comparison. I always enjoy your posts because you are always logical, of course because youare MATH man. What a differences in those two programs. It is a great example. Even Michelle's very rare "blah" program is totally different from Yuna's "blah" program at the Worlds. No matter how much she make mistakes, She never gives up until she finishes. I am sure she was always trained to compete even though her motivation was very low. I can not imagine she whould say "i did not want to comete at this competition and I did not practice for a while and so on." It shows her respect to skating, her fans and her competitiors. I really get offended when someone trys to compare Yuna with Michelle. Michelle is in a totally different fields in terms of her achievement, her respect to the sports , fans and fellow skaters. I do not think she ever made any excuses for her mistakes. She certainly never blamed someone obstructing her practice during her loooong skating carrier. When I look at these programs, I miss her more than ever. I used to look forward to Michelle's new programs, music costumes every season and Sasha's. Nowadays, there is not any skaters that exctite me to look forward to. (Well, Daisuke and Mirai is getting on my list noawadys) Sorry, I went off the topic.

One good example of bashing Yuna by using Michelle.
Not so elaborate...

Unfortunately(?)...Yuna respects Michelle most as a legendary skater & her own role model.
And Michelle introduced Yuna as 'My Friend!' to the audience in a ice show in Seoul.
Michelle's comments on Yuna on Worlds2009 by NBC will help you too.:biggrin:
 
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Blades of Passion

Skating is Art, if you let it be
Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 14, 2008
Country
France
Lori Nichol was a genius at finding off-the-beaten track gems like this. Here is an artical describing everything that went into Michelle's 1996-97 program, "Taj Mahal," featuring music by little-known Azerbajian composer Fikrat Amirov.

http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/44_folder/44_articles/44_michellekwan.html

Well, since it has been brought up, I think her 1997 program was the weakest one she had between 1996 to 2004. It was really just a far less exciting version of Salome from the year before.
 

Wrlmy

Medalist
Joined
Jun 17, 2007
Fair enough - but all of these girls still try to skate like Janet Lynn. They study her tapes and try to express themselves the way she did. Well, maybe not Irina ;)
So before they have this "ultimate skating championship" I will already pick Janet. :love:
Besides - why settle for an imitation when you can have the original :)

:rofl:
 

seniorita

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 3, 2008
Well, you are still here, so I guess it wasn't for you. :rofl:

To you I write: According to the Golden Skate guidelines, any and all gushing over favorite skaters is very much encouraged!
:)
I thought it was a general warning, not that you executed so fast:laugh:
I ll try my best for the guideline:p
Thanx for not laughing for Johny one note thing, i feel completely idiot that I thought it was some wordgame for Weir :eek:
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
Well, since it has been brought up, I think her 1997 program was the weakest one she had between 1996 to 2004. It was really just a far less exciting version of Salome from the year before.


I had thought that, too, but I went back to watch the program, and it has some lovely features. There are arm movements and irregular turns that give this program such texture and originality. I think I've avoided watching this because it was a "bad" year for Michelle--she lost her world championship to Tara and had a few falls and bobbles. But in this competition she did her falling in the short program (ending up in fourth place there) and pulled herself up with this long program. It's a flowing program with great subtlety, and you can see Michelle's increased maturity. She moves with the command and completeness of a great dancer, and as if her motions were creating the music. For anyone who likes to see what skating is capable of, it's definitely worth another look.
 

Bennett

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 20, 2007
Regarding the object that was on ice during Mao's step sequences, I read that it was some decoration fallen from the ceiling. Wow, funny!
 

seniorita

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 3, 2008
what decoration they talk about?on the ceiling there was just the lights :confused:
Arena in general was empty with no banners or anything additional a very few in the upper walls, like 5, and if you compare with the pandemonium of banners in Tallin, almost nothing.
 

SerpentineSteps

On the Ice
Joined
Aug 18, 2009
According to the following article, the JSF says that it was some container of paper flowers that had been set on the lights on the ceiling and that Mao was aware of that object during the performance and avoided it.
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20100330-00000003-jct-ent

The article says nothing about paper flowers, nor that it was on the ceiling... It talks about a red plastic bag-like object appearing in the middle of the rink towards the end of her performance, later going on to mention how she picked it up right after her performance, waves to the audience, and threw it out immediately upon getting off of the rink.

I think the aforementioned object appears in this youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ur7dmxWPNs) at around 4:09, after which she picks it up at around 5:41. You'll notice that it's nothing like a paper flower (or a container of them), and that she doesn't have it in her hands when she's putting her blade covers on at 6:00.

I'm assuming it's a piece that fell off of a gift for a previous skater, that wasn't picked up by the little girls (is there an official name for them?).

Kudos to Mao for not making a big deal out of it, because I certainly didn't notice it until just now.
 

Bennett

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 20, 2007
Translation from the article that I cited.

The last section of this long article.

日本スケート連盟に問い合わせてみたところ、物体は「花吹雪」のようなものが入った入れ物だったという。

We inquired the JSF about this object. (According to the JSF,) the object was a container of something like "(paper) flower snow."

(Note: I do not know the exact translation of the word 花吹雪 in English, but it refers to pieces of paper often used in shows that fall from the ceiling. What is that called in English? The direct translation of the Japanese word would be "flower snow", which I put as "paper flower"; but "paper snow" may have been more precise. Sorry if this mistake made the story confusing.).

フィギュアスケートの試合が始まる前のイベントで使おうとしたものらしく、浅田選手の演技中に天井の照明部分から落ちてきたのだそうだ。
(JSF says) it seemed that the object was meant to be used at an event prior to the figure skating comp and that, during Mao's performance, it fell from the lights on the ceiling.

  「浅田は何かが落下してきたのを演技中に気付き、落ちてきたものを避けながら演技を続けました。そして終了後に拾い上げて捨てた、というのが真相です。誰かがリンクに投げ入れたということではありません」

"During her performance, Asada noticed something fell and continued to perform while avoiding that object. And she picked it up and threw it away after the performance. That was the story. It is not that someone threw it onto the rink."
 
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Daniel5555

On the Ice
Joined
Jan 27, 2009
PROKOFIEV
As now I have much more energy thatn before, I think, I can finally answer:

Mathman, thank you so much for this wonderful comparison. I always enjoy your posts because you are always logical, of course because youare MATH man. What a differences in those two programs. It is a great example. Even Michelle's very rare "blah" program is totally different from Yuna's "blah" program at the Worlds. No matter how much she make mistakes, She never gives up until she finishes. I am sure she was always trained to compete even though her motivation was very low. I can not imagine she whould say "i did not want to comete at this competition and I did not practice for a while and so on." It shows her respect to skating, her fans and her competitiors. I really get offended when someone trys to compare Yuna with Michelle. Michelle is in a totally different fields in terms of her achievement, her respect to the sports , fans and fellow skaters. I do not think she ever made any excuses for her mistakes. She certainly never blamed someone obstructing her practice during her loooong skating carrier.
Wow...
I love how you get offended each time someone compares Michelle and Yuna, because that's what are you doing - comparing Michelle and Yuna. You are offending yourself, man.
Then Yuna also never gave up, has a special respect to her fans, and never gave any excuse.

By the way, after reading posts like this, I actually got a desire to actually compare Michelle and Yuna in an extensive analysis, just in order to stop this madness. But to do this, I have to find enough courage, which I don't have right now.

Mathman
Moderator's note:

Trolling = Posting gratuitous and inflammatory taunts with no other purpose than to try to make other Golden Skate members mad.

Bashing = Berating a skater with incessant, repetitious and pernicious johnny-one-note attacks.

Posters who do this will be banned permanently.
I assume this is the answer to my question.
Well, I hope this will be done.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
^ I think it is Italian for "candy" (confection.) People used to throw candy down to paraders at Carnival, and the little pieces of paper are supposed to be symbolic sweets.
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
How neat! I never realized that this was the origin of the word confetti.

Speaking of languages, it's so great having people on the site who understand the other "skating" languages, like Japanese, Korean, and Russian. For the first time, I feel well informed about what news services in other countries are writing about the skaters.

(I'm on standby if they start a figure skating competition in ancient Rome....but I gather that's not likely in the near future....Latin is such a handy language for everyday life, isn't it?)
 

Bennett

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 20, 2007
No, "something like a container of confetti." They say it seemed to be something supposed to be for an event prior to this skating compeition and it just accidentally fell off during her performance.


What I gather from this explanation is that the confetti themselves were already used during an event prior to this skating competition and the container of confetti just remained there and then fell off.
 
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Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Well, since it has been brought up, I think her 1997 program was the weakest one she had between 1996 to 2004. It was really just a far less exciting version of Salome from the year before.

I had thought that, too, but I went back to watch the program, and it has some lovely features. There are arm movements and irregular turns that give this program such texture and originality. I think I've avoided watching this because it was a "bad" year for Michelle--she lost her world championship to Tara and had a few falls and bobbles. But in this competition she did her falling in the short program (ending up in fourth place there) and pulled herself up with this long program. It's a flowing program with great subtlety, and you can see Michelle's increased maturity. She moves with the command and completeness of a great dancer, and as if her motions were creating the music. For anyone who likes to see what skating is capable of, it's definitely worth another look.

I agree with Olympia. I think the Taj Mahal program was utterly charming, but mostly we remember 1997 as the year Michelle struggled and Tara picked up all the goodies (U.S. and World championships.)

Again, to go along with the earlier discussion, technical imprecision takes its toll on artistry. If we went to a ballet and the dancers lacked the technique to transmit the choreography to the stage (or if they fell down trying), we would not leave the theater marvelling at the wonderful work of the choreographer.

About the Kwan/Carroll/Nichol collaboration :love: , it is interesting to me that after the break-up, not only did Michelle turn to the "tried and true," but Lori Nichol did, to some extent, too. Her programs for other skaters -- many of them wonderful, as for instance her work with Sale and Pelletier -- did not have quite the idiosyncratic musical punch of the Kwan cannon. I think it is because Michelle was a unique vehicle for Lori's muse, never again to be completely matched.
 
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