Welcome To The Circus
Let's see if we can't get a consistent group of evaluations up for every skater, amateur and professional, out there. Amateur rules are as follows: All World Championship skaters. All Champions Series skaters. And whoever the hell else I feel like. (More on the "whoever the hell else" bit later.) Professional -- I'm going to do my best to catch everybody all the way back to the Protopopovs. What I will do is put all skaters from the same country in the same category. That gives the professional skaters more structure as they look at what the amateurs are doing, keeps me from developing headaches when people switch categories, and gives the "young kids" something to look at (sorry, Tara). Skaters from countries that no longer exist will be classified in that country's (newly created) listings. In other words, Katarina Witt will go under the German Democratic Republic heading (East Germany) because that system trained her and that's where she won her medals. The old Soviet skaters will be brought in under the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics heading. It's fair. Unless there has been a very clear nationality switch, as in the case of the Duchesnays, I will go with where they got their training and what country they generally tended to skate for. Clear enough? Ekaterina Gordeeva will be USSR. Ilia Kulik will be Russia. They are trained differently. Politics affects this sport and it's time we admitted it. And besides, Katia had to outqualify what are now jillions of little-republic skaters to get to where she was. Ilia has to fight his way up past those kids in competition now on the international level. It is really different.
I have listed mens', ladies', pairs, and dance separately. I have provided, in addition to the individual-competitor evaluations (for pair switches, I'll just list what they're doing currently), discussions on how you might want to consider judging, watching, or analyzing the sport (whichever category you happen to be in), and my own 1-2-3 (and sometimes more, but only in emergency cases) rankings for the highest-level competition each year (for 1998 it was the Olympics, and for the three years after that it will be Worlds). My friends have to listen to "Olympic mania." I don't see why you shouldn't as well.
These evaluations are not meant to be hurtful, only to be honest. Different skaters require different tactics.
The pro evaluations are not in yet (4/27/98) but at some point that will be rectified as I now have time to devote more to the skating section here. I laid it in hard for Nagano and Worlds, and then had to get back to other areas of this site that had been neglected, and who had hit clients that were screaming. Royalists just don't understand......
Shall we?
Evaluations of Ladies' Eligible Competitors
Judging/Analyzing/Watching Ladies' Skating
Nagano Olympic Results, Me-Style
Evaluations of Mens' Eligible Competitors
Judging/Analyzing/Watching Men's Skating
Nagano Olympic Results, Me-Style
Evaluations of Pairs Eligible Competitors
Judging/Analyzing/Watching Pairs Skating
Nagano Olympic Results, Me-Style
Evaluations of Dance Eligible Competitors
Judging/Analyzing/Watching Dance
Nagano Olympic Results, Me-Style
