Must... resist... getting.. drawn... into... past...
::resistance crumbles::
Newsflash: None, zero, zilch of the Olympic ladies champions ever landed all 5 triples cleanly in their Olympics FS. With Katarina Witt and before ladies weren't even doing all 5 triples. Kristi Yamaguchi couldn't salchow (may have been a flutzer too). Baiul had all sorts of little mistakes in her FS. Lipinski flutzed, Hughes, too. Shizuka Arakawa is a lipper. In fact, Yu Na Kim is the first ladies skater to win the Olympics with totally clean jumps in the FS in the era of triples (no edge errors no under rotations no two footed landings no nothing).
Also whoever said Shizuka Arakawa is an unmemorable Olympics champion? That is so wrong I don't even know where to begin. To people outside Japan, yes her win wasn't that special because she did just enough to win (what people missed is that she psyched out the competition with 3/3s and 3/3/3s in practices until they were wrecks and made mistakes in the competition). But in Japan, Shizuka Arakawa's Olympic victory is the most significant event in the history of figure skating there. Up until that point in the Turin Olympics, Japan had failed to win even a single medal. Japanese media blasted that news nonstop and people were gnashing their teeth and bashing their heads on walls in despair. Then what happens? In one of the last days of the competition, Arakawa sweeps in and wins the gold medal in the most watched and prestigious event of the Olympics, turning the entire Olympics around for Japan. Shizuka became the biggest celebrity and hero in Japan that year. Anything she skated to became hits. The term "ina bauer" was one of the most used phrases that year. The current and ongoing boom in figure skating in Japan was started by Shizuka's Olympics win.
To put it into perspective, Shizuka's Olympics win was, in terms of what it did for skating's popularity in a country, equivalent to the Tonya/Nancy knee whack in the US. Take a country where skating is already popular, but not overwhelmingly so (the US already had skating stars in Boitano and Yamaguchi at that time, and Japan was fascinated with Mao Asada's potential in 2006). Then throw in a huge skating related headline that dominates the media. Then have talented and media-friendly skaters carry the torch after the event to keep interest alive in the sport (the US had Kwan, Lipinski, Cohen after The Whack. Japan has Mao, Daisuke, Miki and more). And suddenly figure skating becomes a newly opened gold mine in that country. Of course, unlike the Knee Whack, Shizuka's win is an entirely positive event which works even better.
But what Shizuka's win did is important outside Japan too. Japan is now the #1 destination for top skaters go tour and make money. It's pumping millions and millions into the sport and funding skaters from all over the world. It's keeping the sport alive while its popularity has tanked in the US. Skating's mainstream popularity in Japan also eggs on the Mao/Yuna rivalry in South Korea, which helps keep the sport in the headlines in Korea too.
Now part of all this is that Shizuka was in the right place at the right time (and then delivered). In Turin it could've been any Japanese lady who won unexpectedly. If some other Japanese competitor at those Olympics made it onto the podium before, Shizuka's win would not have been as huge an event. But it happened the way it did. And as a result Shizuka Arakawa's Olympic win is the most influential event in figure skating since the Salt Lake City pairs controversy.
(The emoticon means I am being sarcastic. Just in case you didn't understand. Like my satirical comment about the "popped 3A" --> 2A, which never was a real suggestion but rather a jab at the inconsistency of the IJS.)
Besides we don't know if she's going to compete.
Miki and Elene looked gorgeous. Can't wait for the skating to start!!
:sheesh:
