Figure skating is in transition. The season after the Olympics tends to be transitional anyway, but this year it seems to be more so. Careers tend to end during transitional years; most notably in 2006, Olympic gold medalist Shizuka Arakawa. Rumors have also floated about this year regarding the retirement of both Evgeni Plushenko and Irina Slutskaya, and while Slutskaya has denied the rumors, Plushenko is still uncertain about his future in competitive skating.
For Russian skaters, you would think that the absence of the big names such as Slutskaya and Plushenko would be beneficial for a new generation of Russian skaters, but that has not proven to be the case, at least not this year. According to Anna Kondakova at Golden Skate.com, “Russian figure skaters and ice dancers have lost their dominate position in the sport as a whole.”
Kondakova goes on to say that in spite of what I would call a gaping hole the new and lesser known Russian skaters have had the opportunity to fill this season, none have as yet stepped up. This seems to be true in the junior circuit as well; in this years Junior Grand Prix finals, held a week after NHK in Bulgaria, American skaters almost swept all medals in all four disciplines.
This does not seem to be the case in Japan or China for the seniors. The Japanese men and women, and the Chinese pairs, have enthusiastically dominated their disciplines. The sport has never been more popular in both countries, especially in Japan, after Arakawa’s gold at the Olympics in their home country.
The end result was that Japan swept all medals in both the men and women’s disciplines at the NHK Trophy, held in Nagano the first week in December. China won the two highest spots in pairs. Mao Asada was so good, she not only made her personal best in her scores, and she broke the record in both her programs and in her total score, beating Slutskaya’s previous record by almost an entire point. The top three men, again all Japanese, were equally incredible. Each made their personal bests.
References:
The IFS Interview: Evgeni Plushenko (International Figure Skating) http://www.ifsmagazine.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=177
Figure skating star Slutskaya becomes TV star (Pravda.ru)
http://english.pravda.ru/news/sports/08-11-2006/85422-Slutskaya-0
2007 Russian National Figure Skating Championships Preview (Golden Skate.com) http://goldenskate.com/articles/2006/123106.shtml
International Stating Union http://www.isu.org/vsite/vtrial/page/home/0,11065,4844-128590-129898-19296-68634-custom-item,00.html
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