Team figure skating fine opening for Games
GANGNEUNG, South Korea – It takes some getting used to, this Olympic figure skating team competition. All those individualists mixed in with their nation’s pairs skaters and ice dancers, thrown together over three days of competition at the start of the Games, then sent back to their own disciplines to try their luck at an individual medal.
I admit it’s kind of strange to see a half-dozen skaters per country sitting together and cheering for each other in their purple team sections, the OAR (the nation formerly known as Russia) positioned next to the United States based on the alphabet, certainly not kinship.
Figure skating purists are unmoved by this Ryder Cup on ice, preferring their sport just run through its normal Olympic drill every quadrennial: pairs, men, dance and, finally, women. What in the name of Peggy Fleming, they say, is going on here?
It’s called progress. Consider the Olympic men’s and women’s gymnastics schedule: team events, individual all-around events, then all the various apparatus finals, 10 in all, four for the women, six for the men.
Every four years, someone wins a gold medal on the balance beam and someone else wins a gold on the pommel house. It’s as much of a gold medal as the men’s or women’s 100-meter gold in track and field.
Is it so strange, then, to have a wellearned team medal in figure skating?
And, while we’re at it, why not a jumping competition gold, silver and bronze for the male and female skaters who can land the most jumps in, say, two or three minutes?
And an artistic competition as well? Why is figure skating allowing gymnastics to hoard all the loot?
Slowly but surely, the Olympic team competition logically has to start growing on the naysayers. In addition to giving the TV networks three more skating broadcasts — which is never bad for ratings — it also gives the competitors a chance to get a short or long program under their belt before they compete later in the Games in their particular event.
Quad specialist and medal favorite Nathan Chen was to skate the men’s short program for the United States on Friday morning, with Adam Rippon picking up the long program duties on Monday.
Rippon, competing in his first Olympics at age 28, said Thursday that he already was raring to go.
“Honestly, I have so much energy and inspiration right now that I could do the long program for everybody in the whole event,” he said. “I’m just so happy to be here. I’m looking forward to it. I think it’s a great way to kind of get the competition started — hope to get a medal for Team USA.”
The team event began with the men’s and pairs short programs, with the rest of the competition to follow on Sunday and Monday, when medals will be awarded.
While there is great intrigue for the individual events here, in the team competition, the placements are almost a foregone conclusion: OAR, Canada and the United States, just like in 2014 in Sochi, the inaugural Olympic team event.
Or, perhaps it will be Canada first, then the Russians. Maybe there will be enough mistakes by one of those two nations to allow the United States to move up to second. Or enough slips and falls by the Americans to open the door for Japan or China to finish third.
But that’s it, folks. Very few countries can field entries in all four disciplines who can compete with the overall depth of Canada, Russia and, to a lesser degree, the United States.
“I think we have a pretty good shot of getting on the podium,” Chen said. “Also, we’re at the Olympics, we get only one shot on the ice, so to have another shot is like a great experience.”
A few more ringing endorsements like that and Olympic figure skating might really be on to something here.