Rgirl said:
The media are like, "What? Michelle has been #1 since '96? Well let's hurry and get her out of there so we can make more money off somebody else!" To me it's just money and silliness. I would hope that this year at least prior to Nationals there will be a slew of articles with headlines such as "Michelle Still the Favorite and Better than Ever." There actually was a time when the longevity of an athlete was a thing to be admired.
Well, the ideal seems to be that everything and everyone is disposable (in most areas of life, if not all). But I don't think that media are going to forget about Michelle anytime soon. They're just shopping for a new model. What I don't like is all the hype, making a product out of someone, and treating them as such. Everything is about selling and buying something. How sad.
As for what you wrote previously -- wow! My hat's off to ya! Thanks for such an informative post. Very interesting, too. And halfway through it I've started thinking: "someone should give it to Tarasova"...
I wonder if she's ever going to work with Leonid Raitsin ("a general physical training coach", who have worked with many, many elite Russian skaters) again. He helped Tarasova prepare Kulik and Yagudin, with the best results, as we know.
(I think he had a lot to do with Kulik's peaking at the right time; as for Yags, he doesn't take the credit for his Olympic win, since he had stopped working with him after Worlds in Vancouver, but good teaching lasts a lifetime, eh?)
I've just re-read quickly one of Raitsin's interviews (I was wondering what he thought about skating the whole programs in practice). He said that once he took a skater (didn't name him) that others had already given up on. The skater was very unreliable in competitions. The judges and coaches thought there's nothing wrong with his technique, but he didn't have a good psychological preparation. So, he worked with a psychologist for a year. That didn't help. His jumps were very inconsistent. To make the story short: they worked on his speed and strength endurance (and cut his ice training in half...). Anyway, after 6 months, the skater's jumps were 40 cm higher, and much more consistent (we're talking about triples, he didn't have a quad yet, but he was much closer to it after that). Raitsin said that it's because he was no longer using up all of his resources on one jump, but about 60% of them. In result he was able to skate a few of his programs at one practice, and, for example, when he skated his free program three times (with all the elements), from the 20 different kinds of jumps he blew only two. (It's just my attempt at summarizing one part of that long and detailed interview).
Well, I wonder what he would say about Sasha's problems, and what would happen if he worked with her for some time.
:sheesh: In spite of that attitude, she still managed to impress enough people to walk away with silver. Bless her forever. Where would Sonia Henie be without Madge?
I say something similar (though not as well) about how since the advent of the popularity of entertainment reporting, every US ladies skater since Kristi has gotten these kinds of "may be greatest ever" articles. But I particularly like your point that while figure skating fans do not see Michelle as "aging" at 23--PUH-lease, Nancy Kerrigan was the OGM favorite in '94 at 24! And as if 23 is "getting up there" by any standard except elite women's gymnastics--the entertainment-sports media food chain wants new blood, a "fill-in" as you said. That's what I think drives this, the impetus from the culture at large for high-rate celebrity turnover. The "If you ain't new, you're old and blue" kind of thing. 
