What skaters have left the biggest legacy?
- Thread starter rugbyfan
- Start date
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2005
That is an amazing record.
Almost unbelievable!
Useless trivia....
I have never been to a skating competition, so I haven't seen many skaters in person.
However, I remember seeing Irina Rodnina walking through North Station in Boston in 2001.
The US championships were at the "Fleet Center" (now Boston Garden again) which is attached to the train station.
I assume she must have been there in some coaching capacity.
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
Irina Rodnina did move to the United States in 1990 and she had something of a coaching career. Later she moved back to Russia and became involved in politics, being elected to the Duma in 2008. I think she also held posts connected to the Ministry of Sports.
This is a great example for the discussion over what "legacy" means. If a "legacy" refers to what you pass on to future generations, I think that it is legitimate to ask, "Did Rodnina pass her 3 Olympic Gold Medals and ten world championships down to anyone? She was great, but what did her greatness do for me?
What she did pass down, in my opinion, is the view that pairs skating is and should be more about amazing athletic feats than about graceful partnering. Subsequent pairs skaters tried to combine both, I suppose. The next great Soviet pair, Gordeeva and Grinkov -- to me they seemed to owe more to Belousova and Protopopov, although they didn't hold back on the tech.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2006
- Country
-
Indeed... However, I think the original conclusion was that it were Finns who came up with whole thing. I still can't believe that the original article got accepted to a peer-review journal and that it was picked up by the entire world's media in the end. And that no one in the business of archaeology thought of writing a better piece with real data and analyses and actually believable conclusions.
If you read the article in National Geographic used in the Wikipedia article, it starts with a claim that is simply misinformation - earliest bone skates from northern Europe are from the middle to late Iron Age (so about 3000 years AFTER the invention should have been made in those areas). The reason for this is probably pretty simple, precipitation in the north comes down as snow in the winter and bone skates are useless in snow. The snow covered the lakes as well as the all the other terrain. Skis were used in the north and there are quite a few very old ski finds from Fennoscandia and Russia. But no skates.
If you don't believe me saying this, I recommend the datebase compiled by two German archaeologists, Hans Christian Küchelmann and Peter Zidarov, in English. The database lists almost 2700 finds ranging from the Early Bronze Age to Late Medieval period from all over Europe.
What is striking in the earliest finds is that until the beginning of the Iron Age (roughly around 500 BCE), the finds come from central parts of Eastern Europe: Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine, and Slovakia. There are two skates from Germany and maybe something from Switzerland. During the Iron Age, the finds start coming from Germany and Austria, too, in addition to a lot of Hungarian bone skates. The first finds from the Netherlands come from the Roman Iron Age (1st to 3rd century CE), from Denmark in the Migration Period (4th to 5th centuries CE), from Belgium from 5th to 8th centuries CE, Sweden about the same time, Estonia 8th to 10th centuries CE, Great Britain 9th to 11th centuries CE, and from Finland in the 14th century CE. Norwegian bone skates are dated to “Middle Age”.
Based on archaeology, it looks like skating was in reality invented in the eastern parts of Central Europe, then it spread westwards and slowly also northwards, reaching Finland only very late indeed. That kind of makes sense, because they had cattle and horses down there - the bones used are most often cattle and horse leg bones - and they had cold winters, but not that much snow which left waterways frozen with clear ice which could be easily skated on bone skates.
All the experiments on bone skates I have managed to find have been done on clear ice (there is a great description on Knochenarbeit) and here you can also see how it works in real life (they actually used elk bone). And pay attention how the skater stops to a dead end when he reached the snow surface and has no trouble with slipping standing on it.
So, when ancient Finns and peoples in the neighbouring areas needed to move around during the winter they were most likely skiing, using a sledge or walking in snowshoes, they did not skate whatever Formenti and Minetti claim.
ADD: The original article is not available for free online, but this one is very similar in content, just in case you want to read it. I can also add another thing that those guys did apparently NOT know is that the Finnish nature has changed a lot since the end of the Ice Age. The thickest ice cover was right there and when it melted away, a phenomenon of land up lift started and it still continues. This means that the western parts of Finland slowly rise and the eastern parts tilt downwards. And this is followed by changes in waterways, watersheds etc., including shapes of lakes (an important argument for skating in Finland by Formenti and Minetti). They used modern satellite pics to simulate environment in 3000 BCE when all of Finnsh prehistory is about land uplift, shore displacement, reconstruction of past environments etc.
Also, this article lists all the ski finds - which actually date to around 3000 BCE in the Nordic countries.
E
Yuna Queen
1, influenced a generation of skaters (male, female, korean, non-korean), created global figure skating fans and figure skating cultures (from figure skating traditional power country to figure skating desert country)
2, the standard of great figure skating and what figure skating should be in all aspects.
3, the forever pride and highlight of Olympic winter games represented by the sport of figure skating(among other winter sports) (2010 legendary performance, 2018 light the olympic cauldron)
4, exposed/raised Figure skating injustice/corruption (Sochi scandal) to the global level awareness with grace and dignity, which may benefit skaters(fair judging) in the long long future (even if not right now). Google changed her name from Yuna Kim to Yuna Queen during the whole period of Sochi scandal.
5, Yuna's accolades during her figure skating career, since Yuna herself is very humble, I won't list here
6, hundreds of years from today, as long as there is humanity (and perhaps no borders of any kind), when thinking about the sports of figure skating, people probably will still go back to watch Yuna's performances, simple because it is GREAT.
1, influenced a generation of skaters (male, female, korean, non-korean), created global figure skating fans and figure skating cultures (from figure skating traditional power country to figure skating desert country)
2, the standard of great figure skating and what figure skating should be in all aspects.
3, the forever pride and highlight of Olympic winter games represented by the sport of figure skating(among other winter sports) (2010 legendary performance, 2018 light the olympic cauldron)
4, exposed/raised Figure skating injustice/corruption (Sochi scandal) to the global level awareness with grace and dignity, which may benefit skaters(fair judging) in the long long future (even if not right now). Google changed her name from Yuna Kim to Yuna Queen during the whole period of Sochi scandal.
5, Yuna's accolades during her figure skating career, since Yuna herself is very humble, I won't list here
6, hundreds of years from today, as long as there is humanity (and perhaps no borders of any kind
), when thinking about the sports of figure skating, people probably will still go back to watch Yuna's performances, simple because it is GREAT.
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2014
I would double like this comment if I could!!
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
Everybody check this out!
I have found my LP music for next season: Inuit Wedding by Sainkho Namtchylac.
And now for the Küchelmann and Zidarov database. 2700 items. Whew! I better get started. :yes:
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
She took South Korea from a country where there were not even any facilities dedicated to figure skating, to an international power in the sport.
6, hundreds of years from today, as long as there is humanity (and perhaps no borders of any kind
Hundreds of years from now when North and South Korea have settled their differences and present a united front to the world, historians will look back of the figure skating diplomacy of the 2018 Olympic Games and the legacy of Yuna Kim. :yes:
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2007
- Country
-
1994 Where have all the flowers gone was special for me.
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2007
- Country
-
I'd like to add Tai & Randy as legends for American pairs. Fantastic competition and exhibition skaters from 1974-1979 who were never quite the same after their Olympic disappointment. Fans were drooling over the 1980 Olympic showdown with Rodnina Zaitsev that was derailed by injury.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2013
- Country
-
That would have been an epic battle. I think each pair excelled in areas that might be considered the other's weakest points.
Of course, at that level "weakness" is a very relative term.
I was a young Tai/Randy uber back in the day. Of course, this was in the middle of the Cold War, and that might have contributed to my nationalistic favoritism. And that's OK.
It was only in later years that I really came to appreciate the old Soviet pairs and exactly what they brought to the table - which is a considerable legacy.
The Protopopov's were ballet on ice - poetry on blades - and that was groundbreaking. Irina Rodnina and partners were BAM! Eat my dust and marvel at our athleticism! And, that, too, was groundbreaking.
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2017
Points to Yuzu performing Bielman spin because his hero did it too, mushroom hair cut, striving and emulating Plushenko's competitive spirit. Yeah. You want to say Plushenko has no influence on Yuzu when Yuzu straight up SAID he was a big influence on him?
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2014
Give it a few more years, and Yuna will be right up there, along with those that are considered to have influenced the most. Clearly, we can already see the seeds that have been planted in Korean figures skating. Now we just need to wait for it to grow bigger, more prominent.
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2017
I thought I read interviews or ariticles from Curt or someone else that Tonya's infamy killed the pro skating circuit. I don't know what he means by it, but I remember there being more of an after amateur competitive career with shows etc. I don't think I'm imagining that ice shows are suffering in North America (while the opposite is true in Japan with the number and proliferation of ice shows now).
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2018
ISU for their 125 yr anniversary released a walk down memory lane tribute for figure skating, speed skating and synchronised skating. (https://www.isu.org/news/145-news/11655-isu-world-n-63-special-edition?templateParam=15)
The figure skaters featured (meaning they have made a mark in history some way in ISU's book) included the below people
Sonja Henie
Carol Heiss
Karl Schafer
Herma Szabo
Dick Button
Michelle Kwan
Katarina Witt
Scott Hamilton
Alexei Yagudin
Yuzuru Hanyu
Liudmila Pakhomova/ Alexander Gorshkov
Irina Rodnina / Alexander Zaitsev
Madge & Edgar Syers (first lady to compete in Worlds!)
The figure skaters featured (meaning they have made a mark in history some way in ISU's book) included the below people
Sonja Henie
Carol Heiss
Karl Schafer
Herma Szabo
Dick Button
Michelle Kwan
Katarina Witt
Scott Hamilton
Alexei Yagudin
Yuzuru Hanyu
Liudmila Pakhomova/ Alexander Gorshkov
Irina Rodnina / Alexander Zaitsev
Madge & Edgar Syers (first lady to compete in Worlds!)
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2005
Maybe I'm conflating events, but I thought that all skating skyrocketed in popularity after the whole Tonya/Nancy affair.
At one point there seemed to be almost an overload of the "pros" on TV.
It was either a competition, a pseudo-competition, or just an exhibition or some sort of special.
For me anyway, I remember at one point looking forward to seeing amateur competitions, because it was starting to be the same thing week in week out on TV with the pros.
There's a skating bubble theory that Scott Hamilton has elaborated on in the past. Basically Tonya/Nancy caused a huge but unsustainable boom for a niche sport. The market become oversaturated with skating eventually leading to a crash.
There seems to be a great deal of truth to this but I've never tracked it myself in terms of looking at the numbers and data.
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2012
No, I totally can see your point. I agree about T and M yet somehow they overtook and beat S and Z fair and square. But I guess the term legacy can mean a lot or a little. I agree also about for example G and P I mean really it is in the eye of the beholder, depends what you use as definitions,, and at the risk of being shot, I thing this Forum while we try to be objective like judges lol we are prone to our biases and who we like..There are definitely some definitional issues with the thread. I just think we should let the current skaters do their thing and judge their legacies later. For example when ranking ex-presidents historians usually wait until a decade or so after they're out of office.
Luckily we're discussing legacies and not Olympic golds or number of competitions won. I think given that it is quite easy to distinguish S/Z from T/M. Sorry T/M fans but much like the current T/M this was a charisma-less team with great skating skills. S/Z were a team who captured and moved people. Folks are still looking back at their programs and trying to capture that magic. Not so much for T/M.
I think you're going too far down the slippery slope. Even if we are to include all of the ice dance teams you mentioned (and I wouldn't) that's still just a handful of teams over the years. Now if we wanted to make a Mount Rushmore of teams (pick the four most iconic) that would be a more difficult exercise. (My list would be M/M, T/D, K/P, and V/M--- I really don't care that G/P won two gold medals :dev2
For example I think Katarina Witt's skating was overrated BUT her charisma, her competitiveness and the end result is undisputed. TAra Lipinski was a great technician and Sarah Hughes had her SLC moment but they aren't special or magical - something you can't explain like Baiul or even Cohen. While Emi Watanabe may have started the Japanese coming of age in ladies skating for Japan it was Ito who revolutionized it and put them on the map.
I think itis hard to really include or not include the current or more recents. I think we need to wait or distiance ourselves especially since often the current skaters are all or mainly what we know so naturally they tend to be included on the legacy list.
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2012
Katarina was unique/special/ she had charisma and power - no not great skating skills but power with the judges. I wonder if you took her 1994 skate andused today's rules if she would get clobbered in pcs because ehr tech was significantly lower than the other ladies and it is hard to giv her great pcs when it is much easier to do her jumps. She had like a horseshoe with her if she fell others fell more. Yes, that means she is more competitive but in 1994 I would have had her even lower for lack of tech.Humbleness also might be good for her but that's another issue. Despite my "issues' that she was overrrated in many ways - she is a legend.
