nymkfan51 said:
Thanks Rgirl ... some brilliant insights, as usual! :thumbsup:
I will say just one thing about Sasha's record. By most standards, her competitive career has been very successful. The only failure (for lack of a better word), has been her inability to take advantage of several opportunities she had to win the big prize. Obviously she must have hoped to win a National or World championship by now. And given the fact that Michelle scaled back on her competing, and her choreography, the past few years ... my feeling is Sasha may have missed her best chance to do that (especially the National title). I expect we will see a different Michelle at Nats this year ... plus the onslaught of Kimmie, Emily, Bebe, etc. So I think things only get more difficult from here on in (and that goes for MK too!) The good thing for her is though, that she already has 9 titles.
Hey, you--my favorite person to bump into in the strangest places at figure skating events, lol! Thanks for the nice compliment--back atcha.
And thank you too, Emma, for your great post. I'm blushin'
Nymkfan, ITA with everything you said about Sasha missing opportunities to win Nationals and Worlds, plus the fact that if Michelle and/or a healthy Irina had competed in the GPS/GPF, I'm sure they would have outskated Sasha--barring injury, which was one of the reasons (a smart one, IMO) Michelle decided to opt out of the GPS for two (or was it three?) years, to stay healthy and avoid injury. I also agree that things are going to be much tougher this year for everyone. I don't think we talked about it after COI, but I thought Kimmie Meissner looked much more flowing, strong, and graceful in person than she does on TV. Her arms especially impressed me, but so did the use of her legs and torso. Plus her jumps are very strong technically and once she got the nerves of her first Nationals out of the way, she seems to be a very consistent skater. Of course her consistency in the "big leagues" remains to be seen, but at COI I thought she was just lovely and was really impressed by her skate.
Hey, Joe--nice to read you again too. Thanks for explaining the origin of the brittle vs. fragile debate. As I said before, I thought Sasha was getting a more balletic, flowing style when she was with Tarasova, though I don't think it's her natural style. I think she would be more of a power skater if she had the technique and went back to putting more time into weight training, although maybe she is doing the latter and she just doesn't have the technique for her to use her strength. I find her biggest weakness to be her stroking, which thus prevents her, in part, from having strong, consistent jumps, plus overall speed and flow. And she's got the right ratio of femur to tibia/fibula too, that is, long thighs and relatively short lower legs. Sasha has the upper to lower leg ratio to have the kind of really powerful stroking as someone such as Fumie Suguri, but Fumie outstrokes Sasha by a mile. And in my opinion, it's all technique, or at least 90 percent. Relating to Nymkfan's point, not only do I think Sasha has missed opportunities at Nationals and Worlds, but I also think she's missed opportunities to improve crucial areas of her technique. Not that I think she didn't do what her coaches said, although I wasn't there so I don't know, but rather that I think Tarasova overtrained her in an effort to rack up as many COP as possible, which she achieved, but I don't think that approach helped Sasha's overall technique. With Robin Wagner I did see some important improvements in her jump technique and edging, but the "Swan Lake" choreography was so watered down--I mean to the point of almost being a junior level program--that I don't think Sasha was able to take those technical improvements and use them in more difficult choreography.
It's a tricky business no matter how gifted you are to arrange a athletic career, which goes without saying. For example, Denise Beilman was and still is a very gifted skater with a strong athletic style. But all she managed was one World Championship (I don't know offhand how she did at Europeans). And I'm sure we can all think of skaters who looked as they had it all, yet after a few seasons, it just didn't come together. I was also thinking of the skater who was the US National champ for several years before Kristi Yamaguchi who married Christopher Dean about five years ago--another name drain. Really beautiful girl and beautiful skater who was done in by her nerves. Angela Nikokinov is another example. Yet then there is Todd Eldredge and to a lesser extent, Rudy Galindo. Todd had a frustrating competive career for many years before he won his one and only World championship in '96. And at the '98 Olympics, as a consistent skater, he was virtually a lock for the bronze but he just lost his focus. I think it's sad to to grade a skater's entire career based on one Olympics in which he/she didn't live up to people's expectations, but for the most part, we all do it. Although OTOH, Kurt Browning was the chief example for a very long time until his masterful professional career erased most of the memories of his two disasterous Olympics.
Anyway, the reason I listed Sasha's placements in international competition over the past few years was to show another side to the assumption that she's the poster child for inconsistency. True she tends to either fall or two foot a jump in many or even most events (I haven't kept track) yet she's also had mistake-free performances, few though they may be. But to describe her as the perennial butt-slider just doesn't fairly describe her skating. I won't name them, but there are a number of other skaters who are considered contenders for the OGM who really are candidates for the Butt-Slider Award. Personally, I'd give Sasha the No-Brainer Screw-Ups Award, meaning she makes really dumb, relatively small mistakes in competition that I would bet she virtually never makes in practice runthroughs. And yes, she falls too, but I don't think as often as many people say she does. Of course anyone is welcome to count up her falls and compare them to skater with similar records in order to prove me wrong.
I've still got paperwork from April to get through so I'll leave that project to others.
As Nymkfan said, "This should be one heck of a season! Hang on everyone!" :agree:
Rgirl
P.S. Nymkfan--I'd never leave that part of your quote out
