This is a great idea for a thread!
YuNa's Roxanne, mainly because I just hate that crude song. Nothing wrong with her skating of it.
Mao: Bells of Moscow. That relentlessly droning version of the Rachmaninoff prelude seemed a waste of her fluid, buoyant skating.
Gordeyeva/Grinkov: Believe it or not, their Beethoven free skate in the 1994 Olympics. They had stretched so much artistically in their pro career, and then they went back to such tight formalism for this return to competition. Especially considering the emotional power projected by Mishkutenok/Dmitriev, I think it made G/G look very conservative.
Michelle: The recycling of East of Eden as her 2002 short program. This had such immediacy when she did it as an exhibition in both 1995 and 1998, but it looked squeezed into shape for the demands of a short program. The footwork especially didn't go with the music. Re-using this music after her break with Carroll only served to underline the fact that she was operating with fewer resources than she needed for such an important competition.
YuNa's Roxanne, mainly because I just hate that crude song. Nothing wrong with her skating of it.
Mao: Bells of Moscow. That relentlessly droning version of the Rachmaninoff prelude seemed a waste of her fluid, buoyant skating.
Gordeyeva/Grinkov: Believe it or not, their Beethoven free skate in the 1994 Olympics. They had stretched so much artistically in their pro career, and then they went back to such tight formalism for this return to competition. Especially considering the emotional power projected by Mishkutenok/Dmitriev, I think it made G/G look very conservative.
Michelle: The recycling of East of Eden as her 2002 short program. This had such immediacy when she did it as an exhibition in both 1995 and 1998, but it looked squeezed into shape for the demands of a short program. The footwork especially didn't go with the music. Re-using this music after her break with Carroll only served to underline the fact that she was operating with fewer resources than she needed for such an important competition.