ITA with Windspirit. If certain people are upset with what certain posters are saying about Michelle on other boards, please complain about it on those boards. I've seen Michelle get nothing but praise on GS, even from people who have said she is not their favorite skater. I've seen these other boards too, and IMO the anti-Kwans are not "out in force." Rather it's a few people with very LOUD posts, literally screaming about how it's their right to not like Michelle SO THERE! and "Tosca" was a whole lotta nothing and all kinds of ridiculous stuff. But on those same boards, I've also seen 90% of the other posters say how Michelle was the clear winner of the gold medalist, or that even though they weren't fan she had them in tears, and all kinds of positive things about Michelle's skating. So 5%, maybe 10% at the most of posters on the various boards are saying negative things about Michelle. Please don't try to make it out as if 90% are refusing to see reality. It just ain't so.
KwanisQueen,
You know from my post that ITA with you that "Tosca" doesn't need anything more to it in terms of choreography as long as Michelle is skating it. But I would like to clarify something about Sasha's "Swan Lake." The version she did at Nationals had A LOT of choreography cut out compared to what it had in the GP series. For exampel, at Lalique, she had fw before every triple, just not before the 3/2 combos. Her fwd inside scratch spin was a combo spin consisting of a camel spin into a full sit spin with the leg to the side going up into the fwd scratch. Her spiral sequence included a change edge. Her fw sequence was serpentine, packed with a lot more movement including Russian splits. And her final combo spin was camel into layback into sit into BC.
At Nationals, what was missing from Sasha' "SL" was the fw before the jumps, the camel and sit spin before the fwd inside scratch, the change edge on the spiral, her fw was straightline and a lot simpler, and her final combo was missing the layback. Taking all this out left more time for Sasha to pretty much do nothing. That's why I said "Swan Lake" at Nationals compared to what it had been on the GP circuit was basically gutted.
I'm not making excuses for Sasha. She was rightly judged on what she did at Nationals and what she did was not nearly good enough for the gold medal, at least in the LP. But it's not like Sasha has one locked-down version of "SL." Apparently Wagner felt that given that the juding system would be ordinal not COP, as a strategy she would take out all the extras so that Sasha could concentrate on her jumps. I don't know this, but that's what it looked like to me. Unfortunately for Sasha, the strategy didn't work. IMO, all the changes to "SL" may have worked against Sasha because she never had the chance to get a set version to the point of muscle memory. But even if Sasha had done her most difficult version of "SL" as clean as a whistle at Nats, I still have no doubt Michelle would have won. Michelle skated in a way that was bigger than life and no one else came close to doing that--at least not that I saw.
So ITA that "Tosca" has plenty of choreography in it. If Artunian wants to put more in it, he may only be thinking of preparing Michelle for NEXT year, when it's possible that the COP will be used at Nats and Worlds. But I would hope that when you speak of "SL" that you identify it as the "Nats version of SL" since there were almost as many versions as there were events that Sasha skated in, lol. IMO, it's just a matter of being accurate and fair. If Michelle had different versions of "Tosca" I would think you'd want people to identify which version they meant.
Rgirl
