- Joined
- Feb 5, 2004
Thanks to the delights of yourtube i've gone back and watched several competitions i know i watched at the time but that i didn't have on tape - a lot from 93, 94 and 95 an one thing that really struck me was in the mens competitions.
Some observations that are good and some that are bad.
The first is with regards to the jumps - all the big players left at least one of their important jumps til the end of the program, not all opened with the big risk element like they do now. I was thinking of Elvis Stojko in particular - in the 1993-1994 phase his quad attempt was usually in the second half, if not the final third of his program and he often had a Lutz to close out the jumps. Later on he moved the quad to the second jumping pass but then he always had either a trilpe axel or a triple lutz (sometimes both) towards the end if not at the end of the program.
Randomly looking at other skaters from that era - Todd Eldredge also usually had a triple axel towards the end of his programs. Condeloro also had the triple axel as his final jump. Urmanov often a long sequence that started with a triple salchow, then had at least two or three single jumps, and ended with a triple toe.
All of those guys had something hard and high risk for the end of their programs. Nowadays you can check off the jumps almost in the order of difficulty opening with the quads and triple axels, if you're lucky you may get one of the harder triples before a repeat of the quad or triple axel and then most of the skaters end with an easier triple fo a double axel.
However as another observation - the programs from then seem very high in cross overs. For all the complaints about CoP, i guess i hadn't really noticed until i went back and watches these programs from over ten years ago that Nowadays skaters get berated for having too mancy cross overs and not enough transitions or field moves in their programs...i myslf hae been critical of skaters for this but really some of teh top skaters from the early/mid 90s had mostly cross overs in their programs with set sections of field moves that seem like distinct sections of the program.
Anyway it was just an observation i made!
Ant
Some observations that are good and some that are bad.
The first is with regards to the jumps - all the big players left at least one of their important jumps til the end of the program, not all opened with the big risk element like they do now. I was thinking of Elvis Stojko in particular - in the 1993-1994 phase his quad attempt was usually in the second half, if not the final third of his program and he often had a Lutz to close out the jumps. Later on he moved the quad to the second jumping pass but then he always had either a trilpe axel or a triple lutz (sometimes both) towards the end if not at the end of the program.
Randomly looking at other skaters from that era - Todd Eldredge also usually had a triple axel towards the end of his programs. Condeloro also had the triple axel as his final jump. Urmanov often a long sequence that started with a triple salchow, then had at least two or three single jumps, and ended with a triple toe.
All of those guys had something hard and high risk for the end of their programs. Nowadays you can check off the jumps almost in the order of difficulty opening with the quads and triple axels, if you're lucky you may get one of the harder triples before a repeat of the quad or triple axel and then most of the skaters end with an easier triple fo a double axel.
However as another observation - the programs from then seem very high in cross overs. For all the complaints about CoP, i guess i hadn't really noticed until i went back and watches these programs from over ten years ago that Nowadays skaters get berated for having too mancy cross overs and not enough transitions or field moves in their programs...i myslf hae been critical of skaters for this but really some of teh top skaters from the early/mid 90s had mostly cross overs in their programs with set sections of field moves that seem like distinct sections of the program.
Anyway it was just an observation i made!
Ant