My favorite kind of tears Or How the SLC Games ruined Ladies Figure Skating

In 1997 I started figure skating really seriously, fell completely in love with the sport, and immersed my life in everything figure skating. I really liked watching Tara Lipinski skate. I also remember my coach telling me to ignore her. "Watch Michelle," she'd say. "That's what you want to be as a skater."

1998 came and I watched. I also cried. I'd never seen skating so poignantly beautiful and mature. I also cried that she lost to the jumping bean who eventually disappeared into obscurity. So began my love affair with the Winter Olympics.

The summer games are cool and all. I like gymnastics. The running rocks. Michael Phelps has the body of a greek god. But it's missing something.

Figure skating.

It's quite easy, really. Figure skating appeals to everybody, male and female, young and old, obsessed and disinterested. While we enjoy the human interest stories of all olympic athletes, we usually only watch them compete for a matter of seconds. Maybe a minute or two if we're lucky. It goes by so fast, we can barely catch a glimpse of their faces, much less their facial expressions.

In skating, we get to watch their bodies twist and manipulate for two and a half to four and a half minutes, but we also see their faces, too. We get to know these individuals as we watch them launch into the air and stretch into gorgeous spins. We cringe and sympathize when they fall or put a hand down or lose their focus. It's sort of like reality TV - we put ourselves in them for a few minutes, forgetting our lives, adopting theirs.

But skating has changed.

We all know what happened. It was DC - a senator from Ohio needed Pennsylvania to cooperate. You give me this particular vote, I'll give you that particular vote. Except it was Salt Lake City and it was France and Russia doing the dirty work. The clear winners were the Canadians, but then the Russians won and all hell broke loose. People actually cared about Pairs FS for about ten days or so. A drastic overhaul was completed, meant to eliminate bias, and the ladies of figure skating lost out BIG time.

Funny enough, the Code of Points (COP - the scoring that replaced the 6.0 system - ahhh, don't you miss those days?), serves pretty well for pairs and men. Luckily Ice Dance isn't as affected because they don't jump or do large lifts. But the Ladies? It killed it.

Exhibit A: Michelle Kwan. Arguably the finest ladies figure skater the world has ever seen. Even without Olympic gold, she'll remain the sentimental favorite, partially because of longevity, but mostly because of her emotional presentation in skating. Say what you want, but film scorers, sports fans, even politicians will testify of the power of a great beat, melody, or chord progression to get you going. We want to see awesome tricks, but when we talk about our favorite programs, the ones that touch us emotionally are the ones that win out. COP all but eliminated the emotional factor. And we had to watch brilliant skaters like Michelle Kwan fade away. Their artistry was still greater than the winner's, but they just couldn't rack up the silly points from jumping and ridiculously ugly spinning positions (incredulous? Go watch a youtube video of Irina Slutskaya).

Men, on the other hand have always incorporated intense jumps as well as the pretty stuff. The artist, no matter how gorgeous he is, will never win.

Example: Johnny Weir. Here's his short program from Tuesday night. Gorgeous, no? Yeah, so what if he's a fruit with a hot pink and black corset. His lines are stunning. Guess what? He's in sixth place.

Then there's Timothy Goebel, the fade-away bronze medalist from 2002. AKA The Quad King. Kid could jump but kid was AWKWARD.



And here's my favorite male skate in the Olympic Games, Alexei Yagudin. Now this is skating.




But where did this leave the women? Tell me this - do you know of any female skaters in the Olympics right now? Any? At all? Nope. You don't know them because none of them are inspiring. They're not inspiring because they're young. Eight years ago these girls were starting to lace up skates for the first time. They only know skating under the COP and therefore don't know what it means to skate beautifully because it means something. Beautiful skating now is done in the hopes of getting a higher point value on your spiral. The COP sucked the life out of ladies figure skating and most of us don't care anymore (a potential problem for people like NBC, who rely on Ladies Figure Skating to be the big ratings draw of the Games).

We will never see something like this, ever again, unless they can find a way to fix their regressive scoring system.



A note, however. You know the male skater's names. You know Johnny Weir. You know Evan Lysacek. You know Plushenko. Because for the men, skating hasn't really changed all that much. That's why we still see the above names along with Brian Joubert and Stephane Lambiel.

The most competitive and exciting figure skating competition is going to happen tomorrow night, not next week. Whoops. Sorry NBC. Blame the French lady in the big fur coat.