Posted by Sari
Hello, and welcome to my obsession. Well, one of them. Feel free not to read any further. European Figure Skating championships began today with men’s qualifiers and pairs’ short program. Eurosport did not show the qualifying rounds so nothing much to say about them, but they did all bar one pair live in the evening.
1) Sekrit judging sucks. Anyone who thinks that it is possible to arrive at more fair results by making the judging process anonymous and secret should get their head examined.
2) I am prepared to change to digital and pay big money if I can get my skating broadcasts with more sound options than two. Nicky and Chris from British eurosport would be nice. And the nicest of all would be a to get just the live sound feed from the arena without any commentating at all. Bliss.
3) The competition was mainly boring. Totmianina/Marinin were a total borefest with one gorgeous element (triple throw loop), rest were competent at best. And you really should not skate to Rachmaninov if you are as stone-faced as these two are. Petrova/Tikhonov were first in my book. Good flow and speed, wonderful split double twist and lift, and rest of the elements were well executed except breaking at the waist on the throw triple loop. Zagorska/Siudek were the only ones that had I felt reached out and preformed their very well coreographed program with real presence, and deserve their third place. (Actually, I have put them second, but that probably would have been my anti Tatiana and Maxim bias showing too much…)
4) Skating photographers really hate their job. It is near impossible to find shots where they have not gone out of their way to capture skaters in the middle of rotation when they look basically butt ugly…
Eating Muffins 
