Thursday, February 23, 2006

Skating to the 70s


I'm fairly certain one of the Olympic competitors just skated a portion of her long program to an orchestral arrangement of "All By Myself" by Eric Carmen.

Ice skating used to seem more exciting. You could fudge a few landings, but if you had brilliant choreography and put on a great show, you could eke out a win. Not anymore. Now it's all about the math.

You must now include 12 quadruple jumps, 37 spins at varying heights and speeds, 4 somersaults, 2 in a pike position, and skate all that to a generic symphonic piece because no one's listening to the music.

Most of the programs are surprisingly boring given that they're racing around a slick surface and at any moment could go down in a slippery, icy wipe out.

It might be time to conduct the short track speed skating at the same time as the figure skating.

3 comments:

ms. crafty said...

The "By Myself" was hilarious. But, for some reason wasn't quite as hilarious to me as the skater who performed to an orchestral arrangement of Madonna's "Dress You Up in My Love" (or something from the same album...I have already forgotten) in the short program.

What are they thinking?

ms. crafty said...

It was "Like a Prayer". Just fyi.

Hazel Nootsmaak said...

Oh no way - Madonna, too? I missed that. I think if you're gonna skate to pop music, you have to leave it in its original form. Muzakking it doesn't make it "pretty" or "classical."