rack
01-23-2003, 11:49 AM
I've been thinking a lot about fans of skaters lately; watching threads on the Nationals board get halted will do that to you. Here are some of my thoughts:
It's the nature of how the sport of skating is presented that we only get to see (and thus develop fondness for) the best of the best of the best. Television selects for us which skaters we're going to see, and most of us don't go to competitions to see the skaters whose programs aren't televised. We don't see the junior or novice level skaters compete, or the lower level seniors (for the most part). Even when Grand Prix events are shown, with their much smaller fields, we don't see all the competitors. But since we are rooting for a specific skater, we tend to forget that that skater's competitors are at an extremely high level as well, and thus we underrate what those competitors can and do do. Unlike fans of a team sport, whose favorite team can have bad seasons (or decades of bad seasons), fans of a skater have no opportunity to develop loyalty to losers.
Skaters have very short shelf lives, and we don't necessarily see them or notice them in the earliest years of their competitions. Todd Eldredge came in fifth in his second US Nationals, so he probably was televised. Anyone care to name the silver medalist that year? Eldredge's first senior US Nationals was in 1988; he competed in 12 altogether, a remarkably big number. But I'd be surprised to learn there are as many as 10 baseball players in the Hall of Fame with careers that short. Skaters come and go in a flash; our passion for them burns hot and fast.
We don't see very much of skaters even in their peak competitive years. Take Sasha Cohen for example. I first noticed her in the fall of 1999. Between then and Worlds 2002, I probably saw her compete for no more (and quite possibly less) than one hour. Or take this season, where Sasha has competed a lot. Suppose she skates in 10 competitions, all televised, all with short and long programs. I will have seen her compete for perhaps a little more than one hour. Naomi Nari Nam's 15 minutes of fame was truly just that. If baseball is a Homeric saga (I could easily watch my favorite baseball team for 500 hours in a single season) then skaters are haiku, with every syllable magnified a thousand times over.
Since we are rooting for the best of the best of the best, who we see for the first time when they've already achieved an extremely high level of accomplishment, our reasons for favoring one over another can be as subjective as a judge's scoring. My dream skater would be a long-legged Jewish African-American with a great Ina Bauer and a high Russian split jump who skates to Stravinksy and is attending NYU Law School. Extra points if Fave Skater speaks Hungarian, has season tickets to the NYC Ballet and a membership in the ACLU. Should Fave Skater fail on 3 requirements in the short program and 7 elements in the long, I would still complain that the biased judges didn't give Fave enough credit for the Ina Bauer. And if the skater who won whispers how nice it would have been to get 9 6.0s instead of only 8, I'd be yelling about the ego of that skater, and who cares if the winnner's full body cast was removed only 5 minutes before the short program- Fave's Russian split jump was better. And if Fave claims that 2 of the judges belong to the KKK and 3 are legally blind, I'd be out there praising Fave for courageously revealing the truth about judging.
We pick our favorite skaters for a variety of reasons. We see entirely too little of them even in the course of a long career. We elevate them in our minds, and underestimate their competitors, because that's the nature of rooting, and because unlike most sports, the final result is not determined essentially objectively. And we dissect the smallest details of what our favorite skater does, and what that skater's rivals do (or fail to do) because skating is a qualitative not quantitative sport. All of which it might be helpful to remember the next time we sing praises to our favorites or skewer their competitors.
It's the nature of how the sport of skating is presented that we only get to see (and thus develop fondness for) the best of the best of the best. Television selects for us which skaters we're going to see, and most of us don't go to competitions to see the skaters whose programs aren't televised. We don't see the junior or novice level skaters compete, or the lower level seniors (for the most part). Even when Grand Prix events are shown, with their much smaller fields, we don't see all the competitors. But since we are rooting for a specific skater, we tend to forget that that skater's competitors are at an extremely high level as well, and thus we underrate what those competitors can and do do. Unlike fans of a team sport, whose favorite team can have bad seasons (or decades of bad seasons), fans of a skater have no opportunity to develop loyalty to losers.
Skaters have very short shelf lives, and we don't necessarily see them or notice them in the earliest years of their competitions. Todd Eldredge came in fifth in his second US Nationals, so he probably was televised. Anyone care to name the silver medalist that year? Eldredge's first senior US Nationals was in 1988; he competed in 12 altogether, a remarkably big number. But I'd be surprised to learn there are as many as 10 baseball players in the Hall of Fame with careers that short. Skaters come and go in a flash; our passion for them burns hot and fast.
We don't see very much of skaters even in their peak competitive years. Take Sasha Cohen for example. I first noticed her in the fall of 1999. Between then and Worlds 2002, I probably saw her compete for no more (and quite possibly less) than one hour. Or take this season, where Sasha has competed a lot. Suppose she skates in 10 competitions, all televised, all with short and long programs. I will have seen her compete for perhaps a little more than one hour. Naomi Nari Nam's 15 minutes of fame was truly just that. If baseball is a Homeric saga (I could easily watch my favorite baseball team for 500 hours in a single season) then skaters are haiku, with every syllable magnified a thousand times over.
Since we are rooting for the best of the best of the best, who we see for the first time when they've already achieved an extremely high level of accomplishment, our reasons for favoring one over another can be as subjective as a judge's scoring. My dream skater would be a long-legged Jewish African-American with a great Ina Bauer and a high Russian split jump who skates to Stravinksy and is attending NYU Law School. Extra points if Fave Skater speaks Hungarian, has season tickets to the NYC Ballet and a membership in the ACLU. Should Fave Skater fail on 3 requirements in the short program and 7 elements in the long, I would still complain that the biased judges didn't give Fave enough credit for the Ina Bauer. And if the skater who won whispers how nice it would have been to get 9 6.0s instead of only 8, I'd be yelling about the ego of that skater, and who cares if the winnner's full body cast was removed only 5 minutes before the short program- Fave's Russian split jump was better. And if Fave claims that 2 of the judges belong to the KKK and 3 are legally blind, I'd be out there praising Fave for courageously revealing the truth about judging.
We pick our favorite skaters for a variety of reasons. We see entirely too little of them even in the course of a long career. We elevate them in our minds, and underestimate their competitors, because that's the nature of rooting, and because unlike most sports, the final result is not determined essentially objectively. And we dissect the smallest details of what our favorite skater does, and what that skater's rivals do (or fail to do) because skating is a qualitative not quantitative sport. All of which it might be helpful to remember the next time we sing praises to our favorites or skewer their competitors.