US figure skaters....

US figure skaters....

okay, here it goes! Not to offend anyone from the US but howcome a lot of the US competetive figureskaters does an outside edge when making a flip and does a inside edge when making a lutz...
In scandinavia we tend to call it an "AMERICANA " when you see it

Hey don't get mad at me!.. it's just a hypothese i have! Correct me if i'm wrong! But i do believe i've seen it alot do the AMERICANA the past years...

Re: US figure skaters....

Hey Spree - I love the term, 'Americana'. and yes to a certain extent I agree but not exclusively.

When one learns figure skating, the 'safest' position is on the flat. I think American skaters (and other national skaters) fall back on the flat as a sense of security. MK, for example, either hits the lutz correctly or falls back on the flat. I've seen Irina do the same, although not as often as MK. But neither turn it into a flip as so many others do. There is no such thing as a flutz. Either it is done correctly, or not as its best, on the flat. Otherwise it is a flip, and the judges should be noticing that the routine had no lutz and two flips!

Back to the Americans. I'm aware of Sarah and Sasha. I am not sure about the boys. Johnny Weir has a perfect lutz. I'll be watching Michael and Tim more carefully.

Joe

Re: US figure skaters....

Tim flutzes aswell doesn't he? And Michelle does sometimes.

(I thought a lutz on an inside edge counted as a bad lutz, not as a flip)

Re: US figure skaters....

no, a inside edgeded LUTZ you just call an AMERICANA

Re: US figure skaters....

No offense taken Spree.
Maybe skaters from different countries doing things differently has to do with how much importance the coaches from these countries place on the different moves. You're probably correct that the US skaters don't do as clean a lutz as say, someone from Russia. On the other hand, the US ladies, for instance, seem to place more importance on the spiral.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Re: US figure skaters....

Do you think that skaters have gotten worse at this over the years? For instance, did Kristi Yamaguchi, Midori Ito, Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan have solid true Lutzes?

Whether rightly or wrongly, I think that judges do count an inside edge Lutz as a failed Lutz attempt, rather than an extra flip. Now that there is so much secrecy in the judging process it's hard to know. There is lots of speculation that at Worlds, Sasha and Sarah were both severely penalized in the short program, but whether for doing "Americana's" (flips) or just bad Lutzes, it is hard to tell.

As I just remarked on another thread, hardly any women can do a Lutz at all, because it requires so much upper body strength to wrench your body around in the direction opposite the one that your edge is trying to take you.

Spree, are you an ice dancer?

Mathman

Re: US figure skaters....

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Mathman: Spree, are you an icedancer?[/quote]
yes Mathman i am..or i am an icedancer and a solo competitor!... since i was 11 i couldn't figure out wich of the two categories i wanted the most, so i decided to do both. Now i'm 17 and i still do both ... i love the feeling when you jump, being in the air, rotating, and then land...but i also love skating with a partner, with nice clean edges, moving in rythm....


Back to the topic...i think it's unfair (not to offend anybody again) that Sarah Hughes could win the Olympics 2002, with a couple of Americana's!! I think we owe Irina the gold!..

I just don't think it's fair!.. Alright she's has her 3s/3s, her happy face, her femininity... But i do not think that Americana's can save you gold!! <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/grin.gif ALT=" >D">

Re: US figure skaters....

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I think we owe Irina the gold!..[/quote]No, no. You mean Michelle!

MM

PS. You seem to have a very large and active club, to have enough talented skaters to fill all the adult roles for the Wizard of Oz, plus all the little "Munchkins."

Re: US figure skaters....

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I just don't think it's fair!.. Alright she's has her 3s/3s, her happy face, her femininity... But i do not think that Americana's can save you gold!! [/quote]

Uh...okay.

You root for Irina, I'll root for Michelle, and in the end, it won't make a difference as neither of them won Oly gold and nothing can be done about it and this horse has been beaten to death. Repeatedly.

Next topic?

lutz...flutz.. whatz??

Spree... I agree with you.... many american skaters like to "cheat" the lutz.... and I believe that it has gotten worse through the years.... I think this is mainly due to the fact that there are many coaches out there at the lower levels that like to cut corners....not to insult any fundamentally sound coaches out there because there are many... but there are some coaches that like to teach students who don't have the fundamentals to do all the more difficult jumps becuase they believe it will make their students winners faster. if any of you have ever witnessed the smaller skating clubs (not training centers necessarily although it happens there as well), you see a lot of this going on... it's important that the coach have the best student even if it's a disservice to that student... it's a shame... because there are no shortcuts in skating.... especially jumping.....
and this is why you see so many inconsistent skaters at the top now as well.... they haven't been taught the basics through the triple jumps so all the bad technique carries over... sometimes they can pull it out, but most of the time it never happens.... here's an example... Michael Weiss's triple axel. if you look at where he takes off of the blade on the jump you can see it's off the HEEL of the skate... this is completely incorrect as it puts his body in a bad position in the air... this is why he has had so many problems with this jump.... he has been able to muscle it out in the past, but if you look at the averages, he has missed it more often than landed it successfully... and he will continue to miss it as long as he leaves the problem unfixed.
and it's the same with the ladies here in this country.... the jump to have is the lutz. many coaches think as long as the skater's upper body looks like a lutz and the pattern of the entrance to the jump looks like a lutz, then it's a lutz... and it's not true in the least.
kristi, tonya, and nancy had ablsolutely clean lutzes.....

Re: US figure skaters....

Icenut - Sorry but I have to differ with you. The flutz is a misnomer given to Tara Lipinski as she flipped her way to the Olys. It was just to save the embassasment of saying it was a flip and not a lutz.

Once a skater toes off from a back inside edge the skater is executing a flip! That is the definition offically of a FLIP.

The official definition of a LUTZ is to toe off from a back outside edge. Any other edge is NOT a Lutz.

If you rock over to an inside edge from an outside edge before toeing off, you are still taking off from a back inside edge and that is a FLIP. The FlIP is a legal jump!

If a FLUTZ were to become official it would be toeing off from a flat. FlatUTZ otherwise it could be called a poorly executed lutz.

I don't know why viewers don't see a back inside toe off as a flip? It's right out of the official language, and YES, many American skaters do that. Let's watch closely at the next competitions - not only Americans but all skaters. And praise to be stop calling a Flip a Flutz.

Joe

lips and flutz

I don't think it is just an American thing. IIRC one time Soldatova liped her flip and flutzed her lutz in the same program!!!

AP and Ye Bin are our hope, if they do not skate for Korea instead. Oh wait AP lips her flip, oh well.........

Re: lips and flutz

I gotta give Michelle credit this year-her lutz, particularly the single lutz near the end of the program has been off a true lutz edge rather than the flat.

I could well be wrong, but I think the difference is due to the fact that Michelle has been working with a trainer and has built up a lot of upper body strength this year.

Other side up, Sasha, when interviewed, said that she had not been able to get her physical training set up in CT as soon as she liked. As a result, you see her upper body has less defined muscles than last year and her lutz is more
flutz-y.

As previously said, the best lutz in the US belongs to Yebin Mok at this time. But this year, I would give Michelle second and moving up fast!

But if the Americans flutz the lutz, you have got to check out the European skaters that lutz correctly, but lip their flip.
Should we call a lip a Russiana?

?

Doris, you beat me to it about the "lipping."

And oh, by all means, let's give Irina the OOOOO gold for the masterful performance she gave.