Wednesday, September 24, 2014

90 Seconds of the Ladies of the Olympics

I came upon this video in my travels about social media—it's a 90-second montage of Olympic ladies figure skating produced by the Olympic Movement.



It's well-done from a production standpoint, and makes me feel all the Olympic feels, but I do have a few things to say about it.

First of all, where the heck are Kristi Yamaguchi and Dorothy Hamill? They are two of the most iconic Olympic ladies in figure skating history. Didn't see either in the video. Also, no Nancy Kerrigan, no Midori Ito, Chen Lu or Shizuka Arikawa. There were a few skaters in there I don't even recognize, and we only see the back of Debi Thomas' head, which seems a little random to me. There are plenty of shots of her facing the camera out there, why wasn't one used? I can only surmise that either someone who doesn't know the sport edited it, or there were permissions issues with the use of footage. If I assume the latter, then I guess I understand the omissions.

Secondly, the video that is used, shows some major flaws on the part of these skaters. They are subtle flaws to the casual observer, but to skaters like me (and to judges), they are glaring. Some of them bobble on spins and footwork, the lutzes are flutzed and some of the triples are blatantly under-rotated. Oddly, this doesn't annoy me (well, it did at first). Whether it was intentional or not, it shows that even (some of) the best are only human. Kind of a message that competitive athletes, and their hardcore fans, should keep in mind.

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