The Most Controversial Voice In Figure Skating Can't Stop Saying What's On His Mind
Something odd was happening at Skate America and Dave Lease was all over it....
Was The Figure Skating Fix In? It Probably Didn't Matter.
Russia's Adelina Sotnikova delivered a shocking upset Thursday, when she–not reigning world and Olympic champion Yuna Kim, not former world champion Carolina Kostner, not even 15-year-old Yulia Lipnitskaya, who had been pegged for weeks as the co-favorite–won Olympic gold in women's figure skating. ...
Why Does NBC's Primetime Figure Skating Broadcast Suck?
For the past few weeks, I've been having a problem. My job, such as it is, has been to watch the Olympic figure skating competitions and to then write about it for this website. So nearly every day, clad in my pajamas and sporting my best last-panel-of-a-Cathy-comic hair, I've loaded up the NBC live...
Once Again, It's Yuna Kim Vs. The World
After weeks of hype surrounding 15-year-old Yulia Lipnitskaya's gold medal Sochi prospects, the Russian rising star crumbled under the pressure Wednesday, eating the ice on an uncharacteristic fall during her short program–and opening the door wide for a slew of competitors to challenge reigning Oly...
The Coach Who Doesn't Care: How One Man Turns Skaters Into Champions
Gracie Gold was having a bad night. The 18-year-old figure skater was about a minute and a half into her free skate at the U.S. International Classic in September when she singled a double axel. It was a significant mistake—a loss of a couple of points—but for a disciplined skater, that kind of erro...
Three Reasons 15-Year-Old Yulia Lipnitskaya Could Shock The World
If you'd asked the figure skating hivemind before the Olympics to bet on the results of the ladies competition, 90 percent of the money would have gone on defending Olympic champion Yuna Kim. Kim, the South Korean superstar who cleaned up in Vancouver with a record-high score, has long been consider...
Why Does Every Olympian Skate To <em>Les Misérables</em>?
There are still two days left of Olympic figure skating, and I have officially maxed out my lifetime tolerance for the Les Misérables soundtrack, something not even Russell Crowe could do to me. Same goes for the score from the 1968 movie adaptation of Romeo and Juliet: I have never seen this film, ...
Fixed Or Not, The World's Best Ice Dancers Won Gold
After four years of buildup, and at least a week of talk about possibly corrupt judges, U.S. ice dancing stars Meryl Davis and Charlie White–America's only real hope for a figure skating gold in Sochi–delivered the goods on Monday, beating Canadian rivals Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir by a healthy spr...
Men's Figure Skating Was A Disaster
From start to finish, from Evgeny Plushenko bowing out moments before his short program to the eventual gold medalist falling twice in his free skate, the entire men's individual competition seemed more than a little cursed. ...
Olympic Figure Skating Pairs: Are They Humping?
The pairs figure skaters performed their final Olympic programs today in Sochi and, as pretty much everyone expected, Russian superstars Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov took home the gold. Their teammates, Russia's Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov, won silver in a surprise upset over Germany's ...
Russia Is Dominant On The Ice; Can Team USA Get It Together?
After weeks of almost exclusively embarrassing reports out of Sochi, Russia finally got some good news today, when its star-studded figure skating team handily took home the gold medal in the brand new "mixed team" figure skating event, beating out Canada and the U.S. But what does this mean for the...
Confessions Of A Tonya Harding Apologist
I was 5 years old when I fell in love with Tonya Harding. The year was 1988, and I had just taken up figure skating. My favorite aunt, Julie, had recently moved from my Maryland neighborhood to Portland, Ore., and I was determined to find something to like about the state. Tonya, a scrappy Oregonian...