Welcome to the second part of my round-up of my favorite performances from the 2018-19 figure skating season! As always, I had approximately one zillion favorites, which I have narrowed down to one competitive program per skater or team. Instead of dividing things up by discipline, I’ve sorted the programs into five broad categories, which… Continue reading Great Skating Performances of 2018-19: The Ingenues
Category: Season in Review
Great Skating Performances of 2018-19: The Breakthroughs
The sun is shining, my taxes are due soon, and another season of figure skating is in the books. (We still have the World Team Trophy to go, but its format is so different from most skating events that it feels more like a year-end party than a real competition.) That means it’s time to… Continue reading Great Skating Performances of 2018-19: The Breakthroughs
The 15 Greatest Men’s Figure Skating Disasters of 2017-18
I don’t know if it was the pressure of the Olympic Games or a season-long worldwide outbreak of mushy ice, but the skating disasters were frequent and painful in 2017-18. As a result, I’m spreading them over three posts this summer, so we can all relive the falls and pops, the resigned shrugs and the… Continue reading The 15 Greatest Men’s Figure Skating Disasters of 2017-18
16 Great Ice Dance Performances of 2017-18
Because it was an Olympic year, everything seemed heightened in 2017-18. When I asked a friend to help me narrow down my lists of best performances, she instead convinced me to add more. And there was no way to shorten my list of the season’s biggest disasters. If all goes well, my look back at… Continue reading 16 Great Ice Dance Performances of 2017-18
The 16 Most Epic Skating Disasters of 2016-17
Skating fans like to pretend we’re in it for the successes: the biggest and cleanest jumps, the most engaging and original performances, the mascara-ruining happy tears in the kiss and cry. But there’s something cathartic about an enormous failure. Often, the most memorable programs at a competition are not the technically cleanest ones, but the… Continue reading The 16 Most Epic Skating Disasters of 2016-17
14 Great Ladies’ Performances of the 2016-17 Figure Skating Season
I pretend to be more invested in men and dance than ladies, but tell me I have to narrow things down to ten great performances, and I turn into a gesticulating mass of feelings. I enlisted my friends to help me whittle things down, but they left me to my own devices for too long afterward.… Continue reading 14 Great Ladies’ Performances of the 2016-17 Figure Skating Season
10 Great Ice Dance Performances of 2016-17
It’s crunch time in my line of work, so these year-end best-of lists are going to roll out slowly. I’m starting with ice dance for a simple reason: it’s the one I’m most terrified to post. Ice dance fans are territorial and passionate, and boy, will they fight with you. Sometimes they’ll fight with you… Continue reading 10 Great Ice Dance Performances of 2016-17