After watching the links provided, here is my two cents from a layman's perspective. I don't know how to skate, so please correct me if I am wrong.
1. Compared with G/G and B/S, Shen and Zhao are weaker in both basic single skating skills and pair skating skills (not including the tricks). G/G flow effortlessly as one across the rink with great speed, while S/Z work through the ice as two individuals albeit in unison. The lack of togetherness is evidenced by their distance to each other. S/Z sometimes skate more than hand reach apart from each other while doing simple cross-over across the ice. This becomes worse when they are performing jumps or side-by-side spins.
2. Compared with S/Z and B/S, G/G had the worst programs--boring, for lack of a better word. They could still do the same program if one switches the music from Moonlight Sonata to any Chopin's.
3. Overall, B/S is the best, in my opinion, in terms of the most balanced team. They are very good in every element or skill, second best, though not the best, yet without weakness. They could jump, throw, spin, and most importantly, skate. And they have beautiful, interesting programs all the time.
I agree that Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze's Lady Caliph SP is the best SP ever. And the second prize goes to-----Pang and Tong's whatever program they performed in the last world championship where they won the short but screwed up in the long.
Interesting observations...some I agree with, some not so much.
1. I agree that from the perspective of pure basic skating skills, G&G are superior to S&Z. B&S, S&P, S&S also had better basic than the Chinese. But if skating were just about strong basics then there's no way that Nancy would have lost or Oksana or Michelle to Tara etc. Skating is also about creating a mood, generating excitement and building a total package
in the moment and Shen and Zhao were better at creating and seizing moments than any pair I've ever seen.
2. I would not mistake G&G's simplicity of choreography as being worse that another team. G&G were initially a purely technical and athletic team. Their technique was so brilliant and refined however, that they were able to transcend into a fantastic artistic pair. Of course their eventual marriage helped greatly in that regard. To my eye and those of many others, their clean and simple lines evoke a sense of purity and allow the viewer to fully appreciate what they were doing. Nothing was hidden behind choreographic flourishes because it didn't have to be. Their skating was strong enough to speak for itself 100 percent of the time. I find that refreshing in this current environment of contortionists and flailing arms.
3. I agree the B&S were a very balanced team, especially early in their career when there was a more even split between their technique and artistry. I found some of their later work to be a bit overdone at times. I felt they did not always need the extra touches in their programs. They were good enough without them.
Also in reviewing all of these wonderful clips of different teams, I think we should remember that we are looking at pairs teams over a fifty year long span. It's important to account for changes and improvements in basic technique and training regimes, varying contextual standards (choreography, height differences between partners, music trends and even fashion standards). In that regard at least, I view greatness not merely from the perspective of athletic difficulty or current aesthetic standards, but in terms of what that performance did to impact the sport. Also, remember that it's rare that athletic and artistic advances happen at the same time in skating. In pairs skating over the last 50 years, the trends in the sport have been set by the dominant team or country. In the 60's the Protopopovs pushed pairs toward improved artistry sometimes at the expense of difficulty. In the 70's the trend completely reversed and Rodnina and partners pushed pairs toward raw speed and increased lifting and jumping difficulty but also toward superb sharpness and unison. The Germans, some of the lesser Soviet teams and a few Americans introduced high risk throws to pairs at the same time, but they did not become a true standard until the early 80s. Technique for those elements took longer to refine as they were initially merely assisted jumps with the lady doing more of the work and the man amplifying it. Once that new technical base was set, artistry reemerged and went in a new direction by the mid to late 80's. Since then there's been a more frequent back and forth between the two. I think Shen and Zhao and Savchenko and Szolkowy both fall naturally into the athletic school of pairs skating and have influenced the sport in general toward more athleticism in the last two cycles. They are of course strong artistically, but their greatest strength is their athleticism.
I also think that this and other threads have had a tendency to significantly favor the most recent performance of skaters as being the greatest of all time. Whether that's because they are freshest in the memory bank or because the posters never saw older programs or because of a bias toward current standards, I worry that some of the great treasures of the past are being lost to history. One example of this is the programs of Rodnina and Zaitsev. They never did throws, but were virtually unbeatable. So to the contemporary eye, their programs can appear to be unbalanced. However, at the time, pairs and singles skating were much freer and there was no mandate for certain elements to be done in the free skate. Some teams did no throws, some did only one and some did as many as three. Still it's important to remember that during their time, true pairs skating elements were viewed as lifts, death spirals, pair spins and singles skills done in unison. Release moves like throws were seen more as pure show skating tricks by many purists that covered up for a lack of true pair skating skill. I can remember hearing comments from early 80's programs where former champions like Debbi Wilkes and Otto Jelinek expressed some reservation about such moves being overused and favored alongside traditional pairs moves. The same reaction occurred with more difficult singles jumps being done and of course with the one and half teams that came along. Still the trend was clear that athleticism was on the move (sometimes at the expense of artistry) in the effort to push the sport forward. So to allow for increased athleticism but in a balanced context, the ISU came up with it's well-balanced program concept with mandated minimums and maximums of elements. That is where our current paradigm of a good pairs program comes from. (2 throws, 1-2 twists, 2-3 lifts, 1-2 death spirals, 2 solo jumping passes, etc.) Still if you look at Rodnina and what she did, the sharpness and attack with which she skated, you can see where later teams, including G&G gained some of their inspiration and hopefully appreciate the inherent beauty of her efforts. Sadly though, I think that the current trend toward romantic artistry in pairs allow for less of an appreciation of the athletic and dynamic programs of Rodnina and other late 70's and early 80's teams like Underhill and Martini (as pure a pair team as one will ever see), the Carruthers, and Valova and Vasisliev. Speed and risk were all chiefly apparent in their programs particularly compared to today's pairs. All of their programs have a certain pizazz that most of today's pairs sorely lack in an effort to uniformly reenact a Romeo and Juliet vibe with every program.
