Once upon a time, back when I was a teenager, I was a big, big, big fan of figure skating. I eagerly followed all of the greats of the time: Oksana Baiul, Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler, Maya Usova and Alexander Zhulin, Kristy Yamaguchi, Kurt Browning, and Elvis Stoijko were just some of my favorites. I always knew when the next competition was going to be coming up on tv, who had won what, who the top competitors were, etc. I remember one time when I was in Junior High and the staff in the main office actually called me down once to ask about the Nancy/Tanya debacle…

Over the course of time, my interest started to wane. The networks carried fewer and fewer competitions, shows, and exhibitions, and it seemed like my old favorites were disappearing left and right. Oksana Baiul had a number of troubles with her personal life; Usova and Zhulin divorced and stopped skating together; others just seemed to fade off into oblivion for no clear reason. For the most part, I really couldn’t get into the new and upcoming stars of the sport. I always appreciated Michelle Kwan’s skating, but I never got excited over watching her. I just wasn’t that big of a fan of Tara Lipinski. Between 98 and 2002, I did follow Canadian ice dancers Bourne and Kratz and the pairs team of Sale and Pelltier on a vague level, but that was the extent of it. If I caught a competition, great, but mostly I was more concerned with my undergraduate studies, and in my free time, my interest in ice skating had given way to other things.

Between the end of the 2002 Olympics and the start of the current 2006 Olympics, I saw a grand total of 1 ice skating competition–the ladies event at the 2004 World Championships.

More for tradition than anything else, I decided to watch the ice skating events being broadcast from Torino. I was disappointed much of the time while watching the pair’s and men’s competitions. The new scoring system seemed to have turned skating programs into checklist of technical skills. The skaters, particularly the pairs, all seemed to skating with calculators in their hands, trying to figure out the way to get the most points in the safest way possible. With the pairs, it didn’t seem like partners were connecting with each other, much less the audience. The thought that watching robots skate would have been just as interesting passed through my mind several times. The programs lacked the daring, artistry, and passion than the programs I remembered from the past. Just to confirmed my suspicions, I hauled the tapes with the pairs’ competition from 1994 in Lillehammer. My memories were right. The top pairs of 1994 had a true and evident connection to each other and a rapport with the audience. Brasseur and Eisler had all these fantastic and difficult lifts and moves. None of the couples I saw last week came even close to performing like B&E did. Yes, B&E’s stuff was more risky, but that risk was what made it all so fantastic to watch. None of the lifts I saw done last week came even close to matching the breathtaking Brasseur and Eisler Star lift or their magnificent split triple twist. None of the pairs could match the artistry of Gordeyeva and Grinkov, or the true oneness that Jenni Meno and Todd Sand displayed so often. (And, for the record for anyone keeping score, I still stand by my opinion that B&E should have won gold over G&G in 94…)

The men’s competition was somewhat better than the pairs, but not by much. Choreography and artistry seemed to largely be a thing of the past… It was all about the jumping. Johnny Weir was amusing to a certain extent, but certainly not because of his skating…

Then, finally, we got to the ice dancing. I had been doing some reading online ahead of time so I wouldn’t be totally lost, and when I first started, I had been surprised to learn that the US had one of the best dance teams in the world. Back in my Fan! days, the US was not exactly known for turning out the world’s greatest ice dancers. I tuned in to watch the first part of the ice dance competition last Friday, and I fell practically immediately for the Americans, Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto. Not only were they fantastic skaters, they had in spades what seemed to have gone flying out the door with the old scoring system: Charisma. Not since Usova and Zhulin have I liked a dance team so very, very much. I was thrilled that they took the Silver, and I’m hoping they stay around long enough to go for the gold in 2010. I really, honestly believe they can do it. They’ve got everything it takes, and also, they have time on their side. They’re only 21 and 23 now–relative babies in ice dancing, where age seems to be an advantage rather than a curse.

Moving on to the ladies, I was impressed last night with the skaters. They seemed to have remembered to actually put some choreography in their programs. Sasha Cohen was amazing, and the kiddos Kimme Meissner and Emily Hughes couldn’t have done better. I was proud of them, particularly Emily for coming in at the last minute when she wasn’t expecting it and putting up a new personal best score for her short program. It seems like, especially in the US, there seems to be so much emphasis put on winning a medal–particularly the gold medal. Seeing performances like Hughes’ though really reminds us all what the Olympics are really about: an athlete performing at his or her best. Elene Gedevanishvili of Georgia (the country that was a former Russian republic, not the state) was delightful to watch. She’s young, but she’s going places. Despite the fact that she unfortunately fell last night, I also have become a fan of Carolina Kostner in the last 24 hours. I actually remember seeing her skate when I was watching the one competition back in 2004, and thinking that she could go places. From reading, it seems like she’s hit and miss, but I don’t think a bit of it is due to technical ability–she’s clearly very talented. She may come out of this as my new favorite though, and I’m definitely going to be rooting for her in the future.

Between the ice dancing Americans and the talented group of up-and-coming ladies, I have a feeling that ice skating is going to make a big comeback as one of my interest.

Now that I’ve bored everyone (all 4 or 5 of you who actually read this thing…) to tears with my ice skating analysis, in other news, I’m in the process of adopting two fanlistings. One is for Las Vegas ep 1.13 and the other for the tv character Mike Cannon from, what else, Las Vegas…

I’m actually starting to think about a new layout for this site. My roommate and I are taking a spring break road trip in a couple of weeks down to Monterrey to see the aquarium and then down the coast to see the Hearst Castle. I’m thinking that trip should yield some really nice pictures for a layout that will likely, no doubt, have an ocean theme of some sort. I’m working on a new layout for something else too, but that one won’t be up until April…