Because Skate America is more interesting than writing an essay...

As Skate America approaches (it's October and that means skating in 23 days...and reasons for me to procrastinate), I was thinking about the ladies competition there and decided to write this pretty random post full of my musings.

Basically, the ladies competition is completely stacked. You've got the upstarts from only two years ago (now, because this is figure skating, viewed as the old veterans), Yu-Na Kim (who's been held back by injury but finally seems healthy again), Miki Ando (what happened?), Yukari Nakano, and Kimmie Meissner (the reigning SA champion looking for some redemption this season). I'm interested to see what they're going to end up doing. I don't really know what to say about Yu-Na except that I absolutely adore her skating, but hate that we haven't really seen her full potential--she never managed to put down two clean skates last year, but she's also been hampered, perhaps more than any ladies skater out there right now, by injury. She's made the wise decision to not attempt the triple axel ever in competition, but, honestly, if this girl skates to her full potential, I don't think that she'll need it. There is also Miki Ando, who followed up a stellar 06-07 season with a dismal 07-08 one. She hasn't changed coaches, as seems to be the trend with the Japanese skaters this season, but she has hopefully dealt with her injury problems. Miki can be one extreme or the other--extrememly brilliant or painful to watch. She's rumored to be nailing quad sals in her program run-throughs, but we've been hearing this for awhile...and have yet to see it in international competition. And, of course, we can't forget about Yukari Nakano--I think that anyone watching Worlds last year thought that the girl was going to do the seemingly impossible and beat Mao Asada for the gold and then stared at the marks in complete disbelief as she settld for fourth place. It was small deductions that cost her a medal, but you can't deny that she has talent...even though her habbit of wrapping her foot on ALL of her jumps makes me cringe. She doesn't seem to have much support from the Japanese Federation either, which can't make things easy on her.


And then there's Kimmie, who I think deserves her own paragraph. She won this competition last year (her first GP gold) and then went on to win silver in France...and then crashed and burned for the rest of the season for "personal reasons" that haven't been made public (which, I think, is most certainly her perogative). Recent interviews have shown her looking happy with her new coaching situation in Florida with Richard Callaghan and Todd Eldridge. What problems she's been having seemed mental to me (nothing else really would have caused that sudden downfall in her skating), and she did look a lot better at Worlds after her coaching change, results aside. As an American, I'm rooting for her--remembering how it made me feel to watch her win her world title in 2006 is enough to keep me supporting her. Plus, I don't think that you'll find a sweeter girl in the entirety of the sport.

Those are the veterans...now for the American upstarts. After the Kimmie self-destructed at US Nationals last year, she not only opened a wide door for the young girls who medalled, but also left them with huge shoes to fill. While we've excelled at many aspects of the sport, it is the ladies competition that the US is truly known for...and is Mirai Nagausu, who was too young to even qualify for senior Worlds, ready to step into the position that greats like Michelle Kwan, Kristi Yamaguchi, Dorothy Hamill, and Peggy Flemming have occupied? Maybe yes, maybe no--we'll probably get to see it this season. There's also World Champion, Rachael Flatt (I don't mean to be too biased, but I am just not a fan...her skating just doesn't really interest me at all), who enters the competition armed with triple-triples (not as gorgeous as Yu-Na Kim's, but still impressive for such a young skater. It actually reminds me of Kimmie a bit).

And, because this is figure skating, it's never a good idea to fully count out the rest of the competition. Mira Leung, who's placed second at Canadian Nationals for the past few years but has never really made a splash on the world scene, Yan Liu, Susana Poykio (part of a new era of skating in Finland), Annette Dytrt, Valentina Marchei (if she doesn't place, she always has the loving arms of her boyfriend to run to--this guy named Brian Joubert...I'm not sure if you've heard of him), and Tugba Karademir will all be competing as well.

Whew, this was a long entry.

And mostly full of rambling about a competition that's not going to happen for another three weeks. I can't help it...I'm excited :-)