"Power" is technically the ability to accelerate, ie, force x time. A skater with high power can accelerate quickly; a skater with low power takes a longer time to accelerate or does not accelerate to as high a speed.
IMO, some of the top Russian skaters have been among the best "power" skaters I've seen, though of course not all of them. My list of top power skaters:
Ilia Kulik
G&G
Bechke & Petrov
Irina
Berezhnaya & Sikharluridze
Mishkutenok & Dmitriev
Sasha Abt
Plushenko
Oksana Baiul (in her day)
(The time I saw Yagudin live was during his "problem" period with COI. He skated his program at half-energy, so I can't make an assessment, other than I was disappointed.)
Other skaters that come to mind (not limited to):
--Shen & Zhao became great power skaters during their last two or three years as eligibles. --Fumie Suguri starts out with great power in her LP but tends to fade in the last third. I think this is just a problem with training, though.
--Brian Boitano. Amazing power skater. Like Kulik, so strong and so technically over the "sweet spot" of the blade that the acceleration looks effortless.
Power ice dancers include, but are not limited to, IMO:
Grishuk & Platov
Anissina & Peizerat
Gorsha Sur (can't say Renee Roca, but she does have beautiful line, and skating with Gorsha certainly improved her power)
Anyway, those are just some examples. In order to get power you need several things. One is great strength in the hip extensors (gluteals, hamstrings) and knee extensors (quadicreps) to get a lot of force into the PUSH in back stroking. Another thing is the ability to get the center of gravity of the body over the relative center of the blade, what I call the "sweet spot" of the blade. You can be on an 80-degree angle on your blade and still have your center of gravity over its center if you've had the right technical training, especially if you've had it from a young age and you're also genetically endowed so that figure skating "applies" easily to your body. "Sweet spot" skaters are the ones who make little or no noise even when they skate at high speeds. G&G were masters of the sweet spot. I was lucky enough to see them live in '94 with COI and it was SO clear why they won over Mishkutenok & Dmitriev, whom I love as well. G&G had absolutely breathtaking speed, so much so that it clearly separated them from all but a couple of the other skaters. Plus their blades made absolutely no noise. It was almost eery. M&D were gorgeous, but you could see the effort.
Anyway, other things you need for great power is great endurance. It's not enough just to be able to lift five times your body weight with your quadriceps. You need to be able to generate that kind of strength over and over again. This is what I think really separates the gold from the silver. The biochemical system that provides the energy for strength, and for the most part for figure skating in general, is the anaerobic system or the lactic acid system as some know it. This system is not designed to put out a maximal effort for a very long time. Three minutes is about all it's meant for. Of course it overlaps with the ATP-PC and aerobic systems for producing energy, but the ATP-PC system lasts seconds and the aerobic system cannot sustain a maximal effort. So those skaters who can train their bodies to ENDURE that last minute or 90 seconds of a LP are the ones who are going to have an edge, if they have everything else, over other skaters in terms of power and maintaining the necessary energy output.
To use an example from track and field, the 400 meter race is known as one of the most grueling races in track because the runners have to sprint to their absolute physiologic limits. Runners who do the 400 meters talk about their legs going "dead" during the last 20 to 30 meters of the race. This is not because lactic acid is "burning" up the muscles. It doesn't work that way. Rather, it's because there isn't enough lactic acid left to run the anaerobic cycle. Anaerobic means without oxygen, btw, and anaerobic cycle refers the biochemical way in which energy is produced for short term, high intensity activities.
So for me, "power skating" refers to those skaters who with their stroking, especially their back stroking (a) can accelerate quickly; (b) can accelerate to a high speed; and (c) maintain that ability to accelerate throughout the length of the program. If they can do it on the "sweet spot" of the blade they not only will make little noise with their blades, but it will also be easier for them to accelerate. The best skaters for me have an underlying "power" ability, quiet blades, and all the artistic stuff on top. "Power" is kind of like a great chassis and engine on a car. If you have a great chassis and engine you can put a lot of not-so-good designs on top of it and it will still be a good car. But if you put an aesthetically beautiful and aerodynamic design on top of it, you've got yourself a Jaguar or a Porsche.
A lot of skaters are top of the line Chevys or Hondas (no reference to Takeshi), but you KNOW when you see a Porsche start skating on the ice.
Rgirl
