- Joined
- Apr 11, 2013
In fact Irina dominated 2000-2002 and 2004-2006. She beat Kwan at each and every competition where they met apart from two World Championships where she was unlucky to have faced perfect Kwan while being imperfect herself. However, had she skated cleanly in the FS she would've defeated Kwan both times. .
But..she didn't. When comparing competitive records, people talk about the results, not the what-ifs. What if Tara was "unlucky" to fall in 98 Nagano, Kwan could've been an Olympic gold medalist.
In terms of being a dominant and the most successful skater Irina wins hands down because she won roughly 8 out of 10 competitons with Kwan and all the others she took part in. She won all her Grand Prix competitions, Grand Prix Finals, Europeans and the only failure was Worlds.
Then from 2004-2005 she won everything apart from one GPF and the Torino Olympics. Slutskaya's record from the period they were big rivals with Kwan is actually more impressive because you can see win, win, win, win, win and so on
Peaking at the right time is incredibly important in skating and winning worlds >>> GPF. By 2014, the GPF has earned its place as the third most important competition after Oly and Worlds, but remember that it was only just created in 1996 when Kwan and Slutskaya were emerging.
Btw, I don't get why in these discussions people discount the period before Slutskaya became a true rival to Kwan (96-99). Sure, Slutskaya wasn't really a threat at that point, Kwan was battling for the title with other skaters, but all that shows is that Kwan became a title challenger much earlier in her career and maintained that for a decade, whereas Slutskaya had to climb longer to get to that level (consistently) for a number of years.
Like I said, when it comes to Kwan and Slutskaya, their records are neck and neck. Kwan's has the slight edge because she peaked at the right time (Worlds is always > GPF), while Slutskaya was more dominant overall starting in 2000. Kwan also has 9 world medals to Slutskaya's 5 btw.
It has been said many times in many places, but a lot of people believe Mao's placement and her score in Sochi are highly unjust.
I think Asada possibly deserved to get the highest free skate score in Sochi, at the very least better than Sotnikova...however even if they gave her the 150 instead of Sot, she'd still be firmly 4th, off the podium.