When Did You Fully Appreciate All of Figure Skating?

[Joe Mendoza]

I had been watching figure skating in and out since the Michelle Kwan / Irina Slutskaya days - and mostly just watched the women's event. Back then, I could not figure out then what jumps they were jumping - I just appreciated the aesthetic and artistry of it. I think this year is actually the first year I think I have fully appreciated figure skating for all of it - actually figuring out whether someone jumps a flip or lutz (or a flutz or a saltoe) and appreciating and being able to also identify specific dance and pair elements and majority of the scoring (coz we know that PCS scoring is well..you know).

How about you? Could you recall the time when you did fully appreciate all of figure skating?

 

[Mathman]

I always followed the great U.S., ladies like Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill and Kristi Yamaguchi. I got interested in the men's discipline in the era of Todd Eldredge and Rudy Galindo. Ice dance caught my eye with all the drama surrounding Grishuck and Platov versus Usova and Zhulin. I also, from childhood on, enjoyed ice shows, especially Ice Capades and then later Stars on Ice and Champions on Ice.

I can thank Golden Skate for sparking my enthusiasm of all aspects of skating -- learning to identify different kumps and other technical moves, etc., as well as questions regarding scoring and judging. Many experts and knowedgable fans contributed then, as now, to the forum to help educate us amateurs.

 

[el henry]

I‘m afraid I would quibble with the title of the thread, actually.


I still can’t really separate the toe jumps ”on the fly”. I couldn’t tell a flutz from a lip from the proverbial hole in the ground. I do enjoy reading such commentary sometimes, as long as it’s not endless YouTube videos showing frame by frame some skater’s blade.

So I guess 50 years after my first sight of FS on television, I still don’t fully appreciate “all” of figure skating.

 

[gkelly]

I skated for a couple of years as a kid, so I always knew how to identify the elements.

What really changed my appreciation for the sport was when I started attending competitions, both elite and local. That's when I saw that the quality of the way the skaters moved across the ice -- and the quality of the elements -- was at least as important than which elements they were doing.

 

[Lamente Ariane]

I initially read this thread title as being about when (if) you started following all the disciplines so I'm going to answer that question

Ladies/Women was what I first followed as a kid, and I think I started paying attention to the Men around 2006 or 2010. I definitely noticed ice dance for the first time in 2010, I remember being captivated by the compulsories! Pairs took the longest, as I initially saw a lot of programs that were more focused on the elements than the choreography and didn't like a lot of the modern lift positions + how some of the pair guys just seemed to fling their partners carelessly across the ice. But I was charmed by Peng/Jin and Savchenko/Massot's SPs in I think 2016-17, and I started making more of an effort to pay attention to Pairs in 2017 when I knew I was going to see a Pairs event live in Lake Placid. Which, I will add, was the perfect event to get me hooked: Savchenko/Massot were just incredible live and I also loved Yu/Zhang and Duhamel/Radford.

 

[Arriba627]

I remember watching Scotty Allen win his bronze medal at the 1964 Olys while watching on our little grainy black and white tv and loving skating! Once I started taking figure skating lessons, I really appreciated everything the elite skaters were doing. The way they made everything look so easy fascinated me now that I realized how difficult it all really was!

For me, one of the coolest things about watching skating is that you can watch it on so many different levels -- you can be an expert on the rule book, you can spot all the jumps and spins or not care at all, heck - you can even understand how ice dance is scored!!!!! There's so much more to it though. I have a friend who watches cos she LOVES the costumes and gets ideas for costumes she designs for an amateur group. Another loves the energy of the crowd, the music being blared over the loudspeakers, and on and on. There's no one right or wrong way to appreciate it.

 

[4everchan]

1988 was the start for me... for all except ice dance ... which took longer...i'd say until the duschesnays, the finns, and then Bourne and Kraatz. 2010 with Mahler was a glorious moment as well... and then another level of fandom : seeing first competitions live, and especially the best men in the world and above them all, Patrick. Nobody skates like him and that made me love the sport even more.

 

[ladyjane]

The first I saw of figure skating was Dianne de Leeuw getting a silver medal at the 1976 Olympic's but I didn't really 'get' what was going on. It was Jayne Torville and Christopher Dean who made me really take notice, so that was in the early 80's. Mostly Ice Dance at first, and then I started to get interested in men and ladies. I still like Ice Dance, although I don't really understand it!

After a while my interest in ladies fell back a bit (although there was a bit of a surge upwards during Surya Bonali's hey day), but the men continued to captivate me...Robin Cousins, Kurt Browning, Paul Wylie, Brian Boitano, Elvis Stojko, Phillipe Candeloro, Viktor Petrenko, Todd Eldridge, Rudi Galindo (his 1996 nationals LP still gets a watch), as well as Ilja Kulik, Alexei Urmanov, Alexei Yaguding, Evgeni Plushenko, etc. Currently I still love watching the men.

Somehow my interest in pairs came a lot later. It was Natalya Mishkutenok/Artur Dmitriev who pulled me into a long and abiding love for that discipline which continues to this day. I bought video tapes with Olympic and world's programmes, mostly for the men and the pairs, but I also recorded a lot myself of Europeans and World Championships in these two disciplines. I would root for Artur and his partners, for Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler, Radka Kovarikova and Rene Novotny, for Evgenia Shiskova and Vadim Naumov, for Jenni Menno and Todd Sand, for Sarah Abitbol and Stephane Bernardis, for Marina Eltsova and Andrei Bushkov, Dorota Zagorska and Mariusz Sziudek (great lifts!) Mandy wotzel and Ingo Steuer....I can go on and on about the pairs I loved right until today. My ultimate favourite would be Aljona Savchenko and her two partners, but there's many more while there'll always be new pairs on the rise. Fascinating!

I never enjoyed watching the women as much although I did and do have a few favourite skaters like Madori Ito, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan, Irina Slutskaya, Lu Chen, the already mentioned Surya, and of course the first Russian woman to ever a win a WC: Maria Butyrskaya. Currently I follow Loena Hendrickx and Liza Tuktamisheva, and Carolina Kostner was also a big favourite. I'm also very pleased that there's finally a Dutch woman going to the OG again.

However, even though I skate a bit myself, I know what an outward edge or vice versa is, I know the correct take off for a jump, I confess to mostly not seeing it when it happens wrongly. Not on screen, not live at a competition. I need it pointed out. So, in that sense: I suppose I can't appreciate 'all' of figure skating!

 

[iluvtodd]

It all started with the 1988 Winter Olympics - the Battle of the Brians, G&G, and Midori Ito! After that we started following Worlds, US Nationals, Europeans, attending COI (and SOI starting in 1993). I was also drawn most of all to the men (thank you Brian O., Paul Wylie, Kurt, Todd, Elvis), and that continues to this day. I never understood why Midori was not considered artistic as well as athletic. Re: ice dance, watching the North Americans break through was a strong incentive to get more into the discipline (thank you, Bourne & Kraatz, Tanith & Ben, Meryl & Charlie, the Shibs, Chock & Bates, Hubbell & Donahue so many of the Canadian dance teams). I've always enjoyed the pairs, but I worry about the injuries & re: the American pairs, they need to stay together longer to develop a long term partnership.
,

 

[lariko]

I can’t appreciate all of it and I am not aiming to. I watch what I like, and I love junior Grand Prix competitions the most.

The things I normally skip are:

rhythm dance in both tiers
free dance in seniors until last warm up group
Senior women till last two warm up groups in free
First warm up group in pairs free
Anything by two specific skaters whose styles I don’t like
Canadian ice dance untill LaLa this year due to music selection
Anyone who doesn’t capture me by the first jumping pass
Skating prior to 2018 and without scoring window

And I don’t think I will ever watch synchronized skating

 

[TontoK]

I can’t appreciate all of it and I am not aiming to. I watch what I like, and I love junior Grand Prix competitions the most.

The things I normally skip are:

rhythm dance in both tiers
free dance in seniors until last warm up group
Senior women till last two warm up groups in free
First warm up group in pairs free
Anything by two specific skaters whose styles I don’t like
Canadian ice dance untill LaLa this year due to music selection
Anyone who doesn’t capture me by the first jumping pass
Skating prior to 2018 and without scoring window

And I don’t think I will ever watch synchronized skating

This is a very interesting take... things a dedicated fan skips. I have a few, but they vary from season to season.

I used to skip pairs altogether because at the advent of IJS, the programs were snoozes. I thought the discipline had been ruined. I've recently begun to re-engage.

I used to skip the early warm-up groups in all disciplines, but I've uncovered some low-key favorites who are working themselves up the ladder... or some who will never make it up the ladder, but are interesting to me in different ways. If someone is not worth the time to watch, that's my bathroom or refridgerator break.

I only very recently started following juniors at all, but I do enjoy junior men now.

I'm skipping Rhythm Dances for the rest of this season. I've given them a good try... but I just can't stomach that any more. I think they're just awful - every single one.

 

[sadya]

I think I started to appreciate all of it around 1996-1997. I'm 1 of those people who 'discovered' skating because of the extra coverage due to the scandal. Skaters used to set up a lutz jump differently in the '90s, it was easier to recognize for me. Nowadays a lot of times I don't recognize a flip from a lutz. The other jumps I still do recognize. I remember people talking in the '90s about flutzes, it wasn't as important as now, but at the time I didn't really care much about that and neither did most skating fans as far as I remember. I didn't recognize flutzes myself though, skating commentators would point things out like:"and here she changes to the outside edge for the correct take off at the last minute so ... blablabla", that would give me some understanding.

I have to mention footwork. When I first started watching skating, spirals and jumps obsessed me. I loved the ladies events and pairs. I didn't enjoy the men's programs very much, to me they were less artistic and there were few programs I liked. I liked the elements of ladies skating much better too so that influenced me as well in liking ladies skating more (such as spirals of course, but also layback spins, I still love those). I had no idea about difficulty of footwork though. And in the 90s, most people had a lot of similar steps! Only after following the sport for a few seasons did I understand what difficult footwork was and why that was also an important part of skating. I remember a commentator gushing over a skater who did a lot of footwork on 1 foot, I had no idea that that was special and difficult.

And o yes, the edges of spirals, I just liked the well done beautiful spirals with the lovely positions, I had no idea about spirals on deep outside edges for example. That also took time to understand and appreciate. Or simple things like a skater not "scratching" much when skating. And how about bended knees? That one really confused me for a long time, what did they mean?

Ice dance was the last discipline I began appreciating more. Now I like all the disciplines, some eras do have better ice dance programs or more enjoyable pairs or nicer ladies or mens programs, so it also depends on the kind of skating we are seeing. It does take a few years I think, before people like me, who aren't skaters, can appreciate 'all' of skating and even then, I'm sure there are elements we still don't understand.

I also understood the thread title as appreciating all disciplines btw For me that would be: ladies first (pun intended, my apologies for my cringy Mum joke, if any young person is reading this and if you had the patience to come to this sentence, I do hope you will have a better weekend than this), pairs, men and last but not least the ice dance.