Skating fans, admit it: You like the men better than the ladies, don't you?
I was finishing Skate Crime by Alina Adams yesterday (which worked out nicely since it was the same day ESPN showed the men's final @ the world figure skating championships). Adams is a TV skating producer so you guess she must know about stuff like this, and late in the book she says something like the networks and the competition organizers tout the women skaters, but the men are really more popular. I think she's right: If someone were to say to me, I have 2 tickets for the men's figure skating final and 2 for the ladies', choose only one, I'd go for the men's event every time. Not to dis the ladies, but I think the men are technically stronger, in any group of men skaters you see a wider variety of music and artistry (more rock-n-roll alongside the classical stuff) and the men are more outgoing and flamboyant (they showed a little in memoriam of Christopher Bowman and he was practically lunging into the crowd and hugging people); whereas the ladies are more cookie-cutter cute little ballerina types (the more noticeable with the post-2002 scoring system change, packing more moves into their programs to run up more points). And before this year, the ladies' title was always the last to be decided, but this year @ both the US nationals and the worlds the last event decided was the men's.
The downside to the men being more flamboyant is that they're more likely to take risks and make mistakes: Johnny Weir, whom I like, admitted he was being pretty conservative with the program that sewed up his bronze medal, and he said what I've been noticing all along: Michelle Kwan was VERY conservative, you maybe didn't notice it so much because she always skated to slow dreamy music.
Whaddaya think?
Last edited by ANOther; 03-24-2008 at 10:59 AM.
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