Note: I wrote the following post around January 2018, but never published it for various reasons. Thankfully, my dim prognosis of the men’s event at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics turned out to be incorrect: contrary to my gloomy expectations, the men for the most part skated well, and the most well-rounded and complete men’s performances even made it to the podium (!).
For entertainment purposes, I’ve decided to dust this post off and publish it now . . .
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With the uppermost echelons of the men’s discipline firmly engaged in the high-risk, high-rewards quads arms race, the judges improperly lumping together the skaters’ Program Components Scores with insufficient differentiation between the skaters, and a storied history of major implosions and/or nerves among the top competitors, there is a good chance that the men’s event at the Pyeongchang Olympics will be a splatfest of major proportions.
This is disappointing, not only because it is painful to watch skaters’ lifelong, Olympic-themed dreams crumble amidst bitter tears and the gnashing of teeth in front of literal millions, but also because the men’s event at the past three Olympic games have also been absolutely dismal, featuring not only poor performances in terms of completed content but also mediocre programs and choreography.* Let’s take an unpleasant, but mercifully brief, stroll down memory lane . . .
2014 Olympic Games, Sochi
Ah, Sochi. Leaving aside the actual (dismal) performances of the men in Sochi for the moment, what was truly disappointing about Sochi was how utterly unforgettable most of the programs were. Yuzuru Hanyu’s Parisienne Walkways short program was acceptable, but his Romeo and Juliet 2.0 long program was a yawn-worthy attempt at a re-tread that made me swear off Mr. Hanyu’s skating despite writing flowery paeans to his utter perfection a mere two years before Sochi.** Mr. Hanyu had caught lightning in a bottle during the 2011-2012 season with his utterly electrifying long program set to Craig Armstrong’s Romeo and Juliet soundtrack, but the same bottle had long been emptied by the 2013-2014 season. Not that it stopped David Wilson, of course . . .
Similarly, the performances by silver medalist Patrick Chan–the other favorite heading into Sochi–do not fare any better with retrospect. Mr. Chan’s Four Seasons long program at Sochi was yet another pedestrian re-tread of a past (superior) program that was not only marred by Mr. Chan’s shaky jumps, but by the unfortunate fact that Mr. Chan skated like he was petrified with dread during significant portions of the performance (i.e. everything after the opening 4T-3T).
The other men–hobbled by injury, nerves and other associated maladies–paved the way for Denis Ten to win the bronze medal with an utterly bland set of performances, through which Mr. Ten managed to win the bronze by virtue of managing to stay upright on a night when skaters fell by the wayside like cattle being attacked by cattle prod-wielding cowboys.
2010 Olympic Games, Vancouver
Trying to choose a winner among Evan Lysacek’s and Evgeni Plushenko’s respective long program performances in Vancouver is like trying to choose between a root canal or a lumbar puncture (both done without anesthetic, of course). On one hand, we had Mr. Lysacek, whose skating represented the grim triumph of soulless IJS number-crunching punctuated with seizures thinly disguised as choreography. On the other hand, we had Mr. Plushenko, whose tilted, eeked-out jumps and slow spins were the least embarrassing things about his program, which operated as a functional tribute to two-foot skating and public onanism.
It’s bad enough that we had to actually suffer through those two “performances” and watch them win Olympic gold and silver respectively, but then there was that horrendously partisan “artistry vs. quad controversy,” in which people were forced to pretend that Mr. Lysacek was some sort of “well-rounded” artistic soul to defend the (utterly nonsensical) scoring. Vancouver was truly the worst of times for men’s figure skating: AGHHH!!
Vancouver, of course, also featured an array of meltdowns from top contenders, including Brian Joubert, Jeremy Abbott, Patrick Chan, Nobunari Oda, and Tomas Verner. The cherry on top of the sundae of misery that was Vancouver was that Stephane Lambiel’s final competitive performance of a skater was the perhaps, performance-wise, one of the worst skates of his career–while Mr. Lambiel remained (mostly) upright on his eked-out jumps, his skating that night was stiff and musical as a cardboard cutout. Of course, perhaps in an attempt to atone for years of under-appreciation, the judges showered Mr. Lambiel with high PCS nonetheless, but even I, an otherwise delusional Lambiel fan, was not fooled.
At least Daisuke Takahashi gave fantastic, gold medal-deserving performances of his utterly brilliant Eye and La Strada programs, except for the fall on the quad in La Strada. Daisuke Takahashi is the 2010 Olympic Champion of my heart!
2006 Olympic Games, Torino
The wildly varying placements achieved by the men in Torino–seen here–is indicative of how erratically the men performed at those Olympic games. Stephane Lambiel won the silver medal with a third in the SP and a fourth in the LP (with no 3A!)! Jeffrey Buttle won the bronze medal with a sixth in the SP and a sixth in the SP and a second in the LP! Evan Lysacek won the potato medal with a tenth in the SP and a third in the LP! Johnny Weir placed fifth overall with a second in the SP and a sixth in the LP! And so the chaos enveloped them all . . . we can only assume that the men were inspired by the ice dancers’ OD event at Torino, which featured equally dramatic plunges and rises up and down the rankings.
All this created the perfect storm for Evgeni Plushenko–by then safe in his sinecure as the Only Top Guy Who Consistently Landed Quads at the time–to casually stroll in and win his long-awaited Olympic title by about eleventy-billion points. Except that he had to do it in the most annoying way possible, which was to subject the poor audience to the ear-splitting tunes of Edvin Marton’s baleful fiddling while Mr. Plushenko flailed, windmilled, and swatted away a swarm of angry bees in a way that was totally divorced from the music or any sort of aesthetic appeal during the interminably long step sequences. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . .
*As feasible proof of female superiority over the male species, the ladies’ events at the past two Olympic games have featured excellent skating as a whole.
**Before the Hanyu fans eat me alive and/or pelt me with hate mail, I’ve since revised my opinion of Mr. Hanyu’s skating. Cf. “On Ecstatic Experience” with “A Rose By Any Other Name.” Please note the last sentences of both posts.