- Joined
- Jun 16, 2010
But S/Z were more artistic then S/S; S/S to me was more about the difficult elements, which get more difficult to accomplish with age.
I dont agree S&Z are more artistic than S&S. S&Z had to develop great artistry over time, and S&S were almost from the start. S&S did more creative and interesting programs, and in terms of unision, extension, line, while they might not be quite on par with V&T they are still clearly above even the matured version of S&Z.
The only problem with S&S is for all their technical abilities and artistic boldness and innovation they never had the consistency and mental toughness to really dominate the way teams like Totmianina & Marinin, Shen & Zhao, and Voloszhar & Trankov recently have. They just made too many mistakes and too few totally clean performances to do that. Yeah I know they have won 5 worlds but that is mostly when their main competition wasnt even there (eg- Shen & Zhao were at none of the 5 worlds they won, V&T were only at 2 of the 5, one months after becoming a team and in their debut event, and the other where they finished 8th in the short program). They never really felt like the dominant team, atleast without a little caveat such as "what if Shen & Zhao come back". It is pretty shocking for a 5 time world champion to have never gone into the Olympics as the gold medal favorite.