Posted by Sari
Sorry for
the long silence, I have had a nasty carpal tunnel syndrome on both hands, and
thus have not wanted to strain them with tapping away at the computer other
than work-things.
I’m so glad
the next Olympics will be nearer my time zone. This getting up at three or four
a.m. is really not my thing. That said, compared to Torino the broadcasters have gotten more
internet savvy and bandwidth has grown so that at least for me, these are the
first winter olympcis where I am not dependent on broadcasters for what to
watch and when. There are number of feeds from TV-stations to choose from, not
to mention EBU’s marvellous streaming service. Now, if only the rights to
replay could be settled so that I could rewatch my favourites I would be a
happy camper. Because this is also first
skating season when I do not have means to record the performances myself.
But to
business, i.e Olympic Pair Scating. I have only one real gripe with judging,
though I do not agree with the end results. The gripe is the points awarded –especially
in the short program – to the homer team Dube/Davidson. I find they have very
good posture and great edges, but they made so many mistakes that their total
after SP was about 10 points more than it should have been. Most erroniously
they had positive grade of execution scores for their step sequence where
Davidson visibly stumbled. There need not to be anything more sinister than the
fact that judges tend to be more generous to home skaters and that audience
excitement will inevitably influence the panel.
The rest of
the results were completely defendable and I am a minority opinion. I don’t
think the chinese have nearly as good skating skills, transitions or
choreography as the germans. I also think that in the throws and the twist,
which garner such accolades for chinese teams, judges should pay more attention
to the form of the man at the trows and at the landing of the twist. Based on
that I would have had germans at least closer despite their mistakes. My last
point is wholly subjective and thus should not be a factor, but of course it
is: I have never gotten Shen/Zhao. I acknowledge that they progressed leaps and
bounds from 1999 when I saw them live but they never sent shivers down my
spine, not even with their “masterpiece”, 2003 Turandot which I found
technically rock solid but quite boring. I prefer Pang/Tong, but they don’t
really do it for me either. Savchenko/Solkowy on the other hand really rock my
socks. So bummer for Aliona and Robin, also for the Russians Kavaguti/Smirnov with Yuko's constantly dislocating shoulder.
Eating Muffins 