Now that I've finally stopped crying for Irina's LP performance and win (tears of happiness for her), I can read people's remarks and hopefully my own typing.
First of all, I thought the final results for the ladies were fair and accurate, which is what any judging system is supposed to do. Seems to me that the ladies skated programs mostly based on the 6.0 system so what choice did the judges have but to judge what they saw, except mark down the component score for choreography for everyone who barely had any. I've only seen the average scores for CHOR for each skater and the judges didn't seem to reward the skaters with good or much choreography over those who didn't. I may be wrong in terms of the way the COP is supposed to be interpreted, but I've always felt that the choreography of a program isn't separate from the elements or "tricks," i.e., jumps, spins, spirals, footwork. It's the way everything goes together as much as having interesting in-betweens.
For example, in Kostner's LP, she had three separate combo spins near the middle of her program. To me that's part of the choreography, choosing to put the combo spins in sequence like that. However, clearly the men, at least those at the top, chose to use the COP to put less emphasis on jumps and more emphasis on what I'll call "in-betweeen choreography." Several of the top men also chose to use unique and interesting music, particularly Buttle, Lambiel, and Weir. The women, for the most part, used classic skating music.
However, with the exponentially rising injury rate for the men, who have been in the quad era since 1998, there was a lot more to lose by staying with the "more quads is the way to win" approach, i.e., more injuries, shorter competitive careers, vs. more to gain by putting more emphasis on choreography as well as spins and FW rather than trying to increase the number of quads. A quad combo was still important to win the gold, but the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place finishers each won without one. The ladies, OTOH, have never had an eight-year run of the top five or 10 needing a two 3/3 LP in order to win and thus have not suffered the physical consequences of such. Therefore, it makes sense to me that the women, having learned the training methods from the men necessary to consistently do different kinds of 3/3s, would go there first rather than risk their first COP Worlds on $20,000 worth of choreography.
I think when the women have had their "two 3/3s per LP" era; start suffering the kinds of chronic injuries we're seeing in men such as Plushenko; and start experiencing the high risk of making your LP or SP dependent on landing two clean 3/3 combos, i.e.,, fall on one or both and you lose gobs of points, then we'll start to see the women start going in the direction the men did this year.
Back to what we actually saw the ladies do:
--I fell in love with Irina as a skater from the moment I first saw her skate at Euros to that awful Broadway tune medley as a tiny 16-year-old with that tacky ostrich feather "trim" (it was more like the entire sleeve, lol) on her sleeves. She was bow-legged with feet that wouldn't point, more a bundle of energy than what we think of as an elite ladies singles skater. But as we've seen over the years, she's rarely been without a smile on her face and as I think Terry Gannon said "There's not an insincere bone in her body." But what I loved most, always, was her skating: The power, the race-car speed, the 45-degree angle to the ice on her edges, spins with killer torque, her ability to do both aggressively athletic and gentle romantic programs, and her love of the sport that came through it all. I never thought I'd see her happier to win World gold than she was in '02, but needing the prize money to pay for her mother's kidney transplant and winning it, not to mention her own very serious health problems. I know it's "movie of the week" stuff, but it's real life. Plus it's the real life of someone whose skating I've enjoyed both on TV and live for almost a decade. Irina was the best skater throughout most of the competition, though I agree that her SP scores were a bit of a gift. But even take away 2-3 points from her SP and she still would have won. I'm truly thrilled for Irina Slutskaya.
--Kudos to Sasha for doing three strong phases of the competition, executing her first seven-triple program in competition, and truly winning the silver rather than just getting it, if that makes sense. Obviously her jumps weren't all clean, but she didn't fall and she landed most of them beautifully. And though I hate to address these kinds of things, I'll second the observation that in no way did Cohen "pull a Bonaly" on the podium. On US TV we didn't see her skate out and greet Irina, we only saw Cohen and Kostner's faces for a bit while they played the Russian national anthem. Both Cohen and Kostner's experessions were what I'd call "respectfully neutral," which is what most silver and bronze medal winners have on their faces when the anthem of another country is being played.
--Congratulations to Kostner for overcoming her own inconsistency problems, living up to her own hype, and squeaking by a five-time World champion to win the bronze. She has many lovely qualities and I hope this means that in the little figure skating coverage we get in the US that now we'll get to see more of her. Also, interesting that her programs had the best choreography, IMO, and that one of the choreographers was Kurt Browning, who choreographed one of my all-time favorite programs for himself, the pro program "Mercutio," not to mention the many great SOI programs he choreographed for himself. Great choice, Carolina!
--Most people have commented on Michelle's performances and finish at these Worlds and what it all means. I'll try not to repeat them. The only comment I have is that many people believe that you never learn from your sucesses, only from your failures. If Michelle needed to learn something, best to do it before the Olympics with a skin-of-her-teeth loss to someone like Kostner.
Comments on a few other skaters:
--Ando looked out of shape and mentally unfocused to me. I enjoyed her skating last year and wasn't bothered by its unfinished look because she was fresh out of Jr. Worlds. But she hasn't seemed to improve one iota in any department and seems to have backslid some. It looks like a case of the puberty witches casting an evil spell. But I agree with whoever suggested she train with Tarasova. If she can handle it mentally and emotionally, it could do her wonders.
--Shizuka--poor thing! I'm not at all surprised that she never felt comfortable in the role of World Champion. She was never even a contender. She was Japanese champion for two or three years (not sure), then didn't even make it to Worlds for five years, and within a year or two of returning to Worlds is champion. Even for the most determined skater, that's a tough set of circumstances to overcome.
Those are the only ladies we saw on US TV. With all those little snippets of "our trip to Russia" ESPN could have squeezed in another LP in each discipline. I've SEEN Red Square, for cryin' out loud! I've only seen Susanna Poykio skate once! Instead of sending e-mails about the sky-cam (they must have spent $75 to $100 grand on the thing--they're keeping it) or complaining about the silly comments about who Brian Joubert is or is not dating, e-mail ESPN about showing MORE SKATERS! Tell them (nicely) to study the CBC's coverage.
One last thing about the "Japanese triple threat." An area all the current Japanese ladies have a problem with is consistency. Both Shizza and Fumie have improved tremendously in every area of their skating (for Fumie, I think Lori Nichol has been just the right person) except consistency. Takeshi Honda, with all his talent, has had the same problem year after year. This is not a criticism and obviously JMO, but I think that in order for the Japanese to be a force in individual sports such as figure skating that perhaps something in their cultural mindset needs to be addressed by sports psychologists. IMO, the Japanese skaters are too good to not be winning more World medals.
I thought this was a great, though bumpy Worlds. But anytime you introduce a new judging system to replace a decades old one, bumps are going to be the order of the day. I'm happy with all the medalists--okay, I like Weir better than Lysacek but Weir was both injured and not feeling well and lost by a very small margin--and at least for me, I think it will be interesting 10 years from now to look back and think, "Remember the first Worlds they used the COP?"
Rgirl
Your wording is so funny. I predicted this long time ago even when some diehard Sasha fans (at FSU) said she need to skate clean to win. Nop under CoP you don't have to, as long as you have the ability to make up points in other eareas.
