Y'Know, The Boy Really Can Skate



I have always been a very, very technique-oriented skater. Get it right or don't do it at all. Build your foundation well. Worry about the frills later.

Here I am confronted with someone who has taken the opposite path: The frills, as I think of them, and then the edges. Man used to damn drive me crazy. Why didn't he learn to skate?

Well, the edges are there, and if you can't see them, you need glasses. Let's see what we have now. The man is a gorgeous skater. Just gorgeous.

The top half has clicked with the bottom half. It looks good.

In fact, I have never in my memory seen a better skater. Yes, I have seen quintuple and sextuple jumps. But, come on, guys, let's say it all again: Jumps don't make a skater. Everything makes a skater.

And he's got everything. Next person who booes him because he falls deals with me.

You, presumably, at this point have read my Kittycat/Wildcat essays. The boy's better.

Better.

Better.

Look at the line. The stretch. The reach. The sheer emotion on the ice. It takes technique to bring it all out. Just because someone doesn't look like Tonya damn Harding doesn't mean they don't have technique.

Somehow in the last couple of months the boy has pulled an incredible turnaround. The edges are there. To complement everything else.

The same meticulous attention that this boy used to pay to looking pretty he now pays to skating right.

Which means he looks even prettier. He had that part down right well, he did.

I have never seen anyone train like that, and I cannot imagine what he has gone through to rip his entire technique apart and install those edges in the middle.

What he has done is almost humanly impossible. But it looks hellaciously good on the ice.

A boy of that talent I would have had wearing out the figure patch from babyhood. Build the edges in then.

But he's got them. And he looks gorgeous.

Can we stop criticizing this skater and just watch?