Tuesday, November 23, 2010
This and That
Life is often difficult after gold. For those who win unexpectedly, it is often even tougher. After watching her struggle since Salt Lake City, it is moving to see Sarah Hughes look so healthy and skate so well. It looks like she is skating for herself with great joy once again.
Miles Avery, Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin, Battle of the Blades and more!
Shawn Johnson made it through a week of camp. She tweeted about needing a nutritionist, which means that Martha and/or her cronies made one hell of a cutting remark about her current fitness level.
In honor of Oprah's Favorite Things, the following paragraph should be read in the voice of the deity:
Nastia Liukin is back in the gym. IG visited Plano recently and caught Nastia practicing a LAYOUTTTT JAEGARRRR FROMMM ELLLLL GRIP! Kaitlyn Ohashi amazed with a 2 1/2+Rudi. Valeri Liukin is officially the king of combination tumbling. He took someone from GAGE, a gym with wonderful form but horrible code whoring, and turned someone into a serious contender. Now if only he could do the same with Ivana Hong (who reportedly looks back in fighting shape.) Grace McLaughlin is making herself hard to ignore with a new Jaegar 1/2 on bars.
Rebecca Bross told IG that her shin injury was indeed a stress fracture. She recently had two screws implanted to help the bone heal properly. It is unclear how this injury will impact her future training. Rebecca is currently limited to Uneven Bars and conditioning. It has also been reported that Dina The Sasquatch has left WOGA for reasons unknown. Dina was close with Anna Liukin, which makes the split more curious. While Valeri is certainly capable of coaching beam, having a beam coach enables him to divide his students and have his juniors on beam while his seniors are on bars, etc. With a little schedule reshuffling, Natasha Boyarskaya (coach of Carly Patterson, Hollie Vise, etc) would certainly be capable of fulfilling the balance beam coaching duties.
Miles Avery resigned from his position of Head Coach at Ohio State last week. Miles has always been controversial ever since many felt he took more than his share of credit for Paul Hamm's success. Why he left is unknown, but surely there is a story to be told.
Ekaterina Gordeeva and Valeri Bure were crowned champions of Battle of the Blades! Sadly, there is no longer a trophy after Katia dropped it!
Shae-Lynn Bourne was the runner-up for the second year in a row. Their second performance can be seen on facebook. Youtube muted it due to a copyright claim.
Their second performance can be seen on facebook. Youtube muted it due to a copyright claim.
Isabelle Brasseur and Todd Warriner finished third.
The Results
Denney and Barrett are focused on improving.
Author's insight on Voir.
Skating With The Stars' ratings are in:
SWTS could stabilize over the coming weeks, but this was not a good series' debut. You can't quite count the first hour because there was spillover from DWTS. It's too early to predict whether they'll have a second season, but the half-hour drops aren't great.
Skating with the Stars (ABC) – series premiere
9:00 p.m. – Viewers: 19.45 million; A18-49: 4.4/11 (#2) – Dancing with the Stars from 9-9:13 p.m.
9:30 p.m. – Viewers: 10.97 million (#2), A18-49: 2.7/ 7 (#2)
10:00 p.m. – Viewers: 7.83 million (#2), A18-49: 2.1/ 6 (#2)
10:30 p.m. – Viewers: 6.00 million (#2), A18-49: 1.7/ 5 (#2)
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You go Nastia! Layout jaeger or not, her bars are very valuable to team USA. Her comeback would be an inspiring story in general. Sarah Hughes looks fabulous. I wonder if she's working on getting jumps back.
ReplyDelete6 million people were still watching SWTS by 10:30? Then again, that includes people who passed out, but left the TV on.
Battle of the Blades, while still ridiculous and unnecessary, is incredible quality compared to SWTS. Katia is a gorgeous skater, even while skating with a clunky hockey guy (who surprisingly isn't bad at all).
I don't find Battle of the Blades ridiculous or unnecessary. I've really enjoyed the skating this season.
ReplyDeleteIs Battle of the Blades ever broadcast in the U.S.?
ReplyDeleteNot yet.
ReplyDeleteI don't see BoB as ridiculous and unnecessary at all. A few short years ago, CBC's coverage of figure skating had really dwindled. SC was the only GP that had coverage and one year (I want to say three years ago, but I'm not 100%) the GP Final wasn't shown at all. But there's been much better GP coverage this year, and I'm sure the fact that BoB is one of the most popular shows in Canada (and is CBC's top show) is playing a role in CBC's decision to give skating more coverage. Granted, we're still not back at the glory days when Worlds garnered prime time CBC coverage for a week, but this is an marked improvement.
ReplyDeleteI cannot stress strongly enough how popular hockey is here in the Great White North, and how much weight hockey stars promoting figure skating carries with a lot of Canadians. So as a Canadian skating fan, in my eyes BoB is terrific for the sport. It's also fun and entertaining in its own right. Even my dad will watch, and he usually avoids skating like the plague!
Anyway, delighted that Katia and Val won!
"Battle of the Blades, while still ridiculous and unnecessary, is incredible quality compared to SWTS. Katia is a gorgeous skater, even while skating with a clunky hockey guy (who surprisingly isn't bad at all)."
ReplyDeleteBecause Valeri was trained as CKSA (Dynamo) Moscow. Russia regularly churned out (and still does) some of the finest hockey skaters, but CKSA had a particularly special talent for it. Valeri's brother Pavel is an even better skater.
It seems wrong that they used that particular Bryan Adams tune for the BotB victory lap - I'll always think of it as Brasseur & Eisler's signature song (their 94 Olympic exhibition was skated to it, and I think one of their two gala programs after their Worlds win in '93, as well).
ReplyDelete