Word: skaters
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...over whether a quadruple jump of any kind is necessary in the men's program or amounts to nothing but showboating. Lysacek decided, coming into Vancouver, not to include one in his program; he tried it at the U.S. nationals in January and fell. But he's the only skater among the top competitors who made that decision, sparking all kinds of buzz among the skating cognoscenti about whether he was pushing the sport back...
...skater, the reason for quad queasiness is simple. If you can't land it, it's not worth even trying under the current scoring system. A quadruple toe loop jump, the most popular version of a four-revolution jump, gives you a base score of 9.8 points. You can add on a point or two for performing it well or lose a few points for bobbling the landing, but 9.8 is what the judges start with. A triple-triple jump combination yields 10 base points, without the hammering on your ankles and the angst of launching yourself into four revolutions...
...quad is only the most glamorous example of what the sport might be losing if the penalties for trying one aren't reduced somehow, whether by awarding four-revolution jumps higher base points or by reducing the penalties for skaters who try and flub them. Plushenko, one of the most consistent quad jumpers around, landed a quadruple toe loop jump in the early seconds of his program and still came up short of the gold on Thursday, earning a silver. He has been outspoken all week about how he feels about the quad jump. "I believe that the quad...
...pairs skating finals on Monday night in Vancouver, a historic event in which Chinese teams took gold and silver, thus ending a run of 12 Olympic pairs gold medals for the Soviet Union-Russia skating dynasty, I ignored the sheets that detail the names of the moves the skaters would perform. Terms like the double Lutz twist lift, Group 5 toe-lasso lift and fly change foot combination spin are as useful as hieroglyphics. The only one that makes sense is the death spiral, a macabre moniker that describes the move in which the male skater spins his partner...
...Sunday evening, my wife sent me a message saying that our 3-year-old son was obsessed with the pairs skating short program that was being broadcast on NBC. Every time a skater would stick a landing, he'd yell "Whoa!" at the television. At one point, he looked up at his mother and said, "This is so much fun." After hearing that story, I realized he was onto something. When a man summons the strength to lift a woman and throw her in the air while gliding across the ice, that's an amazing athletic achievement. When the woman...