In fairness, an injured Stojko was far better than anyone else Canada could have replaced him with. In addition, Stojko was delivering the content in practice. Rachel OTOH cannot even do a layback. There aren't a lot of GP spots to go around, and especially for SA which gets network broadcasting, so I think you'd at least like to showcase your best athletes at their very best.Originally Posted by Mathman
It seems like it. But they don't. Never have, really. There always seems to some sort of game going on, like we don't want one good U.S. skater to knock another out of the GP final, or whatever. For Skate America we should have sent Ashley, Gracie Gold, and ... um ... I would say Alissa, but ahe's injured... Mirai, then.
But then we would have missed out on Christina Gao's show-stopper, so what do I know?
And that makes it interesting...comebacks cannot be fortold. Zhang was washed up, then came 2012 Nationals. Gao was no one's fave skater, then she blew the roof off in a delicate way. How did she do it while a frosh a Harvard? Maybe it was the skate of her life...like Flatt at Olympics. I think RF's SP was very nice. Her LP was far from horrible. If she were skinnier she would not be getting slammed as much. It is so obvious people hate round folks and thinj only skinny bodies, little girls belong in gymnastics and elite skating. I hate rag on RF threads and will not read 8 pages on insults-who of you haters could match her in school or in the rink? I hope she avoids GS.
I can only speak for myself, but none of my criticism of Rachel has dealt with her weight, per se. I do think she appears out of shape for an elite figure skater, which is a different standard than a regular person. But that isn't the main issue of this discussion, which is whether she should be competing injured.
Many of us are round and don't hate ourselves or others.
Believe it or not, it could be worse. FSU is much worse on the Rachael rag threads.
I think the challenge for Rachael is to find programs that suite her style. She tried the whole cutesy thing, which didn't work in my opinion. Ironically, this year she has two power programs, which is more suitable to her athletic style, but the problem is that she doesn't have much power right now with her injury.
ETA: I asked my husband about this topic -- because he was seeing Rachael from a non-fan (but not an anti-fan either) lens. He felt that Rachael put up a respectable performance. And I asked whether she should withdraw because of her injuries. His response: "No. Unless there was some circumstance where she absolutely could not show up, i.e. can't walk or just was not doing any triples whatsoever, she needed to be there."
He further mentioned it was more a mental thing that she go out there and at least do the triple jumps. If she mentally knows she can do that much, she can build on it from there.
Some interesting food for thought.
Anyway that's just one guy's view -- Mr. P's.
In any case I hope he's right --I hope she does better at her Senior B next weekend...and that over the season she has some performances she can be proud of and as fans, we have two great programs we can watch.
Last edited by Mrs. P; 10-26-2012 at 01:13 AM.
Nigel, that is a sobering bit of information. Indeed it would be interesting to track injury statistics before and after CoP. I have to guess that ice dancing injury rates have grown at an even greater rate than in other disciplines, because they are doing so much more daring and strenuous tricks than they used to. Maybe I'll start following curling instead.
Curling has it's own list of injuries... watch paint dry, it's safer... except many brain cells die due to the paint fumes... hmmmm
Okay, okay, I'll stick with skating. They don't do curling to music, anyway.
you could watch mushing - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt9wa...1599C78226A2A3(hope that link is the right one lol)
That is awesome. I just sent it to like 5 people I knowyou could watch mushing - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt9wa...1599C78226A2A3
Those are some of the nicer "musher crashes" too... they don't show all of one clip where 5 time champ rick swenson broke his collar bone and had to run after his team as they kept right on going!That is awesome. I just sent it to like 5 people I know
and the one musher that looks like he's being drug down the hill is doing an age old technique to slow the team down... a lot of musher ride that hill like that. anything to make the dogs take it at something slower than (literally) break neck speed!
True...there's mushing.
There's even music for it. I don't know if anyone here knows the exceedingly old TV adventure show Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. Like The Lone Ranger (whose theme song kind of co-opted the overture to William Tell, from a Rossini opera), Sergeant Preston used part of an obscure opera overture called Donna Diana by a composer named Nicholas von Resnicek. Voici:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-9szYDYCic
...actually, this would be rather good to skate to!
(Hereby proving that Olympia is a deep-dyed music geek and unlikely to reform. It's all the fault of whoever invented YouTube.)
Oh yes, very familiar with Sergeant Preston... he's the reason the Seavey's live here... Boppa (Dan Seavey Sr) fell in love with the romanticized version of Alaska - and run dogs because of it...
Look up Hobo Jim, he's written several sled dog inspired songs.
Even harder than mushing is keeping a Rachel Flatt thread on topic
No kidding. I came back in and saw people were talking about curling....you can definitely get injured from curling, by the way.....those things look heavy!Even harder than mushing is keeping a Rachel Flatt thread on topic
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