Dream of the Perfect Double Axel

I've never considered Evan Lysacek one of my favorite skaters, but tonight, he blew everyone away... and ended up with only the third highest score in the free skate, earning him fourth overall--he was robbed, robbed, I tell you, ripped off like the prom queen's dress after the dance! Okay, I can forgive the judges for putting Plushenko ahead of Lysacek in the free skate. Yeah, he did more STUFF. That all important quad, god damn the thing! Like Totmianina and Marinin in their gold medal pairs performance, Plushenko was perfect, but almost unbearably uninspiring. Sandra Bezic called him "tight," which I'll translate as "skates like he's got a stick up his ass." A chill ran up my spine tonight as I watched Plushenko skate, and I realized it was because he might as well have been a cyborg.

Lysacek, on the other hand, was on fire, full of passion, and oozing charisma--and his technical prowess was at its strongest. He gave another performance that moved me to tears, like Totmianina and Marinin's short program. In his final straightline footwork run, it was as if he were going to take off and soar through the stadium roof when he reached end of the rink, and part of him probably did. The cameras spotted him in the stands after Jeffrey Buttle's beautiful, but mistake-laced, skate, and he looked confident that he had captured the bronze. The look on his face a few seconds later, while the person next to him urged him not to emote since the cameras were still on him, was the perfect illustration of the word "crestfallen." I felt the same.

Buttle's unwarranted scores confirmed the sneaking suspicion that started to invade my consciousness after the short program skate, in which Buttle got scored higher than my fave Matt Savoie despite far inferior skating: I believe that deep down inside, judges can't help simply judging in favor of their emotional favorites through a sort of subconscious, old-school ordinal placement system. Somehow, these atavistic, unprofessional urges continue to push their way through the dense science and technology of an increasingly byzantine system, in which I no longer have any faith.

There's NO WAY that Buttle should have scored second behind Plushenko in the free skate; simply no way--I don't care how gorgeous his line or complicated his choreography was, or how much the judges love him, which Dick Button (who was having an off day) kept harping on. Lysacek, for CERTAIN, should have been scored higher than Buttle. As I said, he got robbed. Period. Lambiel, too, should have been scored higher than Buttle, but he wasn't. I mean, really, could Buttle have received THAT many points for attempting a quad toe loop and falling? Does he get extra credit for that eerily professional child-star smile?

Okay, now I'm simply venting. How rude of me. Let's just say that I hope Lysacek rips them all a new asshole and takes the gold at the World Championships. Is that wishful thinking? Okay, so what if it is? And while I'm at it, I'll put Lambiel second and Savoie third (or the other way around--that would be fine with me, too) at the Worlds. That would suit me fine. Evgeny WHO?

To close, a big shout out to Johnny Weir for not accepting the "gay medal" in lieu of the Olympic one (after a skate that NOBODY should be ashamed of). Don't let them back you into a pigeon hole, Johnny! Fly, be free!

And an even bigger shout out to Shawn Sawyer of Canada, who had an incredible skate tonight, and showed off the greatest flexibility and spinning talent in the entire men's field, eclipsing even Lambiel's centrifugal force, which was a little off center tonight. Sawyer's final standing catch-foot spin was far more extremely extended than even Sasha Cohen's at its finest, and the entire announcing booth population audibly guffawed over it. If I could sponsor a figure skating "moment" like AT&T or Kodak does at the SuperBowl or wherever, Sawyer's final spin would have been it for tonight. Alas, he was another sacrifice to the judges' whims, scoring nowhere near as high as those who skated comparably (such as Takahashi, Joubert and Savoie), and ending up 12th. After tonight, I've decided to stop caring what the judges think--which is probably good advice for most aspects of my life.

Categories: Torino, Olympics, skating