What is your least aesthetic move in figure skating?

[Diana Delafield]

haha no.. it's what some call the A spin... facing down... I know they can be ugly but when they are well done, they are truly nice.

A few examples of well done : Donovan Carillo, Emmanuel Sandhu, Antoine Goyette.

I see. The "checking your laces" spin. It does look better on men, with a, um, narrower area upraised.

 

[Meg LU]

I have a hard time with Spider lunges ( johnny weir ), they are so cool IF you do them right, but they can get sloppy-
Same with a broken leg where the leg is splayed too far, it actually looks broken LOL ( the leg is straight instead of being bent)
My ladder is a scratch spin where skaters push down. It looks very... uh not pretty? ( where instead of pushing your arms up to the sky, you push them down between your legs)

 

[dorispulaski]

I really dislike the three jump combination where the second jump is a scrappy looking Euler.

There are some skaters who can do it in an esthetic way, but most look very messy in the Euler even if the first and last jump look OK.

Jason is one of the few that can make it look good.

I also hate the version of the donut spin where the skater has to stick their rump in the air before they can get into the donut position. Quite a few skaters can make it look pretty good, but a lot can't.

 

[Mathman]

I really dislike the three jump combination where the second jump is a scrappy looking Euler.

There are some skaters who can do it in an esthetic way, but most look very messy in the Euler even if the first and last jump look OK.

Jason is one of the few that can make it look good.

For me, Patrick Chan was the first skater who could do that Euler thing and make it look like he did it on purpose and it wasn't just a stumble.

 

[RobinA]

I'm not fond of Y spins, but the move I REALLY hate 98% of the time is an illusion. You don't see them a lot anymore, but the problem is virtually no one does them well. If done right they actually look good. Then there's the contortionist pair lift. Spare me from every single one of these horribles. If it doesn't look nice it just looks hard. Skating is not supposed to look hard.

 

[Bluediamonds09]

The jump that has to be completed after a spin. It's so ugly!
And why oh why do the skaters with the best spirals hold them for half a second, but the skaters with the worst spirals hold them forever?

 

[Diana Delafield]

The jump that has to be completed after a spin. It's so ugly!
And why oh why do the skaters with the best spirals hold them for half a second, but the skaters with the worst spirals hold them forever?

Maybe they're struggling to raise it higher?

 

[labgoat]

Outside forward death spiral in pairs. No one does it estheticly.

This is my absolute pet peeve

 

[labgoat]

There is a video of Protopopov and Belousova performing each type of spiral one by one. Their outside forward ds was something else and probably incomparable.

I wish others would try to do this - it is a lost art

 

[Diana Delafield]

I wish others would try to do this - it is a lost art

I've tried to do it in her position and just ended up cleaning the ice with my skirt and tights every time. It's such a difficult and challenging element that most pairs ambitiously attempt to learn it and then abandon that dream (wistfully). She made it look so easy.

 

[labgoat]

I've tried to do it in her position and just ended up cleaning the ice with my skirt and tights every time. It's such a difficult and challenging element that most pairs ambitiously attempt to learn it and then abandon that dream (wistfully). She made it look so easy.

Then do something that can be done well and be pleasing to see. Sandra Bezic and Radka Kovarikova used to do versions of a back inside death spiral face down that were really cool and elegant.

Sandra & Val Bezic


Radka Kovarikova & Rene Novotny

 

[Diana Delafield]

Then do something that can be done well and be pleasing to see. Sandra Bezic and Radka Kovarikova used to do versions of a back inside death spiral face down that were really cool and elegant.

Sandra & Val Bezic


Radka Kovarikova & Rene Novotny

That one I've done, although I don't think it's on film anywhere. It was popular for quite a while in my era, and I'd like to see it come back. The balance on the blade shifts when the head rolls forward, so that's the part that makes it a bit more difficult than the standard sideways lean where your head is partly behind the shoulder of your grasping arm. Rolling your head in front of the shoulder is more difficult for the man also -- your weight is pulling at his arm more then and he has to resist more.

The majority who try to master the FO can't and don't put it into programs, although they may continue to plug away at it in private. A show program is aimed at pleasing the spectators. A competitive program, not so much. That's where you try to stack all the most technically difficult things you can do, hopefully staying on your feet when it counts. Whether that fan sitting up there in row 12, second seat in from the aisle, thinks it looks pretty? I haven't known too many competitors who cared. You try to learn new moves because you're an athlete challenging your own body -- and your mind, if there's fear involved.

I'm light years away from competitions, and rarely do club shows. Not my thing. I only want to challenge myself, to see what I can still do. Age has slowed our reaction times so that my partner and I don't do triples anymore, but we see how many doubles (including the Axel) we can string together in a sequence. We're having a lot of fun trying to do the biggest delayed throw Axel we can manage. His wife has tried to film our attempts just so we can see if it looks like it feels, but so far she hasn't managed to get us both in the frame at the same time. (Which we say proves we're getting close to our goal .) To be sure, there are many skaters who tailor programs because they're craving attention and approval from others, but they're balanced by those for whom the inner satisfaction of mastering a difficult element is more important.

 

[Karoltyna]

That one I've done, although I don't think it's on film anywhere. It was popular for quite a while in my era, and I'd like to see it come back. The balance on the blade shifts when the head rolls forward, so that's the part that makes it a bit more difficult than the standard sideways lean where your head is partly behind the shoulder of your grasping arm. Rolling your head in front of the shoulder is more difficult for the man also -- your weight is pulling at his arm more then and he has to resist more.

The majority who try to master the FO can't and don't put it into programs, although they may continue to plug away at it in private. A show program is aimed at pleasing the spectators. A competitive program, not so much. That's where you try to stack all the most technically difficult things you can do, hopefully staying on your feet when it counts. Whether that fan sitting up there in row 12, second seat in from the aisle, thinks it looks pretty? I haven't known too many competitors who cared. You try to learn new moves because you're an athlete challenging your own body -- and your mind, if there's fear involved.

I'm light years away from competitions, and rarely do club shows. Not my thing. I only want to challenge myself, to see what I can still do. Age has slowed our reaction times so that my partner and I don't do triples anymore, but we see how many doubles (including the Axel) we can string together in a sequence. We're having a lot of fun trying to do the biggest delayed throw Axel we can manage. His wife has tried to film our attempts just so we can see if it looks like it feels, but so far she hasn't managed to get us both in the frame at the same time. (Which we say proves we're getting close to our goal .) To be sure, there are many skaters who tailor programs because they're craving attention and approval from others, but they're balanced by those for whom the inner satisfaction of mastering a difficult element is more important.

When she manages, please post it here so we can admire you and your partner

 

[Diana Delafield]

When she manages, please post it here so we can admire you and your partner

Admire? Unnhhh. I doubt that . First she needs to learn how to hold her phone steady. We look like we're skating on a very small cruise ship in a heavy storm.

 

[pesto]

Outside forward death spiral in pairs. No one does it estheticly.

I really wish the outside death spirals didn't have a higher base value than the inside ones. They are much less pretty, but skaters are compelled to go for them to optimise scores.

 

[TontoK]

Cartwheels. Absolutely unnecessary and uncalled for.

The pitiful illusion entries to spins. A good one, I don't mind as much, but some of these half-hearted attempts are just sad.

The skate-grab feature in camel spins when the skater has to drop the free leg to about knee level to reach it. Very rarely, I see a nice one where the skater doesn't drop the free leg at all, and I admit those can be effective.

 

[pesto]

The skaters spend so long learning and perfecting their elements to get high GOE on very difficult skills, and then they throw in cartwheels that mostly look like something I would have done on the back lawn as an ungainly 8 year-old.

 

[TallyT]

The spin where they bend their leg for a loooong time (not just long enough to grab the heel)

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

I don't know who invented that a half-hearted illusion kick into a layback spin thinking it looked good, but it ain't cute. It seems like so many skaters (especially the younger Russian skaters) do it.

On that note, a sideways leaning spin is rarely ever done well, and just an excuse to avoid a layback. Like a death spiral not going low enough, they really need to deduct/cap the level on an LSp that doesn't actually lay back or lean sideways.

It also isn't fun to watch skaters attempt flexibility moves when it clearly hurts them or is awkward for them - you see it in a lot of Biellmanns, and contorted lift positions (omg, I remembered when a Bielmann was a dance lift feature and people who couldn't do them still forced themselves to do them).

 

[meem]

No idea what it's called but this move reminds me of a carnival ride, the Dive Bomber. It's hardly done nowadays and is a move that seems to be tossed in toward the end of a program. I don't even know how to adequately describe it. Done on one skate while the skater spins vertically a few times. Is this what you're calling a cartwheel? It sets my teeth on edge every time.