Putting the Ladies Back in Ladies Figure Skating

I love figure skating. I can’t do it to save my life. Despite literally years and years of effort I can barely manage to wiggle my backside and skate backwards. I can just about manage a two foot spin and somehow manage not to wind up face down on the ice.

I admire those, unlike me, who can actually skate.

Those people are on display this weekend at the United States National Championship.

The best Americans among them are generally the ladies. Or rather the little girls. Last year’s winner was all of fourteen year old.

This year’s winner was twenty-one.

This is good and bad.

The good news is that winner Alissa Czisny is a beautiful skater. She has wonderful lines, great musicality, fabulous extensions and nicely centered and intricate spins. She skates with speed and attack.

The bad news is that she fell during her long program and then only did three completed triple jumps.

I personally think jumps are just a bit overrated in skating. Modern day skating programs have turned away from the sort of stunningly lovely balance trick that Brian Boitano pulled with his spectacular spread eagles. Instead we see jumping contests.

The best program I’ve seen in my entire life was a signature Paul Wylie program. You can view it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGhKnfRXtpM

There’s only a single jump in this program yet you barely notice because it is so well done. He draws your attention and keeps it there.

Unfortunately international judges judge the sport. They want to jump and lots of them.

I loved Czisny’s skating last night. While not quite on the level of Wylie’s it was elegant and mature.

So it is fair to give her a higher score than her competitors who did far more completed jumps than she managed?

I say yes. Czisny’s nearest competitor was a young lady named Rachael Flatt. Flatt was technically quite proficient. She did jumps and lots of them. She had spins and she did them quickly and correctly.

What she didn’t do was draw me in. She didn’t make me sit up and make me take notice of her performance. She’s a young sweet little girl with a marvelous talent. But last night she was sixteen. She skated like a sixteen year old. She was on the ice without an understanding of her music or much artistry.

If skating is really to be a sport for the ages, the kind that it promises to be where you can watch performances over and over again, it can’t be about who can do the most triple salchows or quadruple jumps. In order to fulfill the promise of the sport, the very beauty inherent in it, it has to be about something else as well.

That’s what Alissa Czisny demonstrated last night even as she fell down.