The Wall Street Journal profiled Brian Boitano.
IG gave us a Katelyn Ohashi update. The WOGettes are off for a few days for the holidays. Katelyn performed a new standing arabian on beam in South Africa. Valeri Liukin is determined for Katelyn to get a new combo on bars. He is clearly grooming her for the 2013 Worlds and beyond. The new combo she is in the process of mastering is: insider-Stalder to el grip+ front giant+ Ono.
Anastasia Grishina is eager to resume training with the Russian National Team at Round Lake on January 5th. Anastasia took the second half of 2010 off from competition in order to rest her sore back. She says she is on track to be back for Russian Nationals in March. Her goal is to make the 2011 European Youth Olympic Festival in Turkey and do well. She turns 15 on January 16th and will be eligible for senior international competition in 2012 due to the FIG's dumb new rule that prevents Olympic-eligible gymnast compete in the previous year's World Championships.
Olympic documentarian Bud Greenspan passed away at 84 years of age.
Michael Weiss drove nine hours to appear on the Today Show this morning. Unfortunately, his performance was canceled because the rink was buried in snow. He did offer to shovel.
A feature on Evan Lysacek's year. He says his goal is to return to competition in the fall of 2011. It will be curious to see whether his Stars On Ice contract would allow that and/or if he could even be competitive for gold without a quad. The men's field has changed since he won Olympic Gold.
The NY Times says it will wait, but not forever, to review the disaster that is Spiderman The Musical. They don't want their definitive review of the show to be out-of-date by the time the producers finish making all of their changes to the production.
Stanford posted a preseason recap montage. They look a bit stronger than they did last season:
Kurt Browning still has 'it' in spades. Here he is from the recent Holiday Festival on Ice:
It is not just that the field has changed but the rules were changed because of HIM and his anti-athletic victory at the Olympics. He was Mr. Quadless master artist. No quads but great artistry was his thing if he starts doing quads would that mean he is not as artistic? He wouldn't want to deligitimize his victory by doing quads. Much better for him never to compete again. Everyone knows his stress fracture was used to get rid of an inconsistent quad and so he can focus on his awful triple axel. Start bringing the qaud back -well then the axel problems may return. He will never compete again. His quadless artistic ally was Patrick Chan and now he is a leader in successful quads. Lysacek can never return.
ReplyDeleteI hope I am right. I wish his gold medal could be taken away. What a disgrace.
Evan is not artistic. He just flails.
ReplyDeleteHe may not be artistic at all but Lysacek was super super successful in selling himself as artistic after he dropped the quad! He was all "I traded my quad for artistry!! Give me marks for it!!" THe judges bought it. But now quads are worth more! And steps are worth less! Patrick Chan is doing quads. What is there for Evan? Zlich.
ReplyDeleteLook at Kurt. He was the first skater to land a quad in competition, but he also has incredible footwork and artistry. Now, he's 44 and he doesn't jump quads (although he still has some good triples), but he's much more interesting to watch than Evan.
ReplyDeleteBravo, upnights- Kurt is AMAZING.
ReplyDeleteMy two favorites are Kwan and Browning- screw the OGM!