Opening Day

It has been thrilling to witness the growing excitement and anticipation building for the Opening of the 21st Olympic Winter Games. The host of the 2010 Olympic Games Vancouver, BC is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and is looking her best. The city is bustling with activity preparing for the largest sporting stage in the world. You can feel the passion in the air as you easily navigate the city streets past all the Olympic logos, colors and rings everywhere.

For the next 2 weeks this PSA blog will follow figure skating and provide analysis of coaches and skaters competitive strategies as they play out in the Pacific Coliseum (PAC) the venue for all figure skating Events. The PAC arena is also the venue for all the short track speed skating Events.

At the 2006 Olympics in Torino, Italy the International Judging System (IJS) was used for the first time at an Olympics. In my opinion in Torino because IJS was so new the details and strategies of IJS were really only known by the athletes and coaches who took the time to get educated on IJS. In Vancouver I feel that detailed knowledge of IJS is growing into the media and the general public.

Maybe the media realize that IJS is not as difficult to understand as many people said it would be. Or maybe audiences will want more details on how figure skaters are being judged. I have always felt that figure skating audiences are intelligent. However, TV producers seem to keep their announcers comments limited to things like, “That was a good spin.” or “That was a poor jump”. It has almost been like the media was afraid to talk about how athletes can gain or lose points with each element the athlete executes.

IJS brings to figure skating an enormous amount of information that an intelligent audience can understand. I hope that the media covering these Games reports more details about how skaters can increase their elements levels of difficulty or how the judges use the Grade of Execution and Program Components to measure each athlete individually. And guess what, the one with the most points, WINS the GOLD.
Now how hard is that to understand?

Thank you for following this long blog (I’ll try less words next blog).

But, just one more note on a quote I read today. It read; “It is the inspiration of the Olympic Games that drives people not only to compete but to improve, and to bring lasting spiritual and moral benefits to the athlete and inspiration to those lucky enough to witness the athletic dedication.” By Herb Elliott, Australian middle-distance runner who was world record holder in the 1500 m race (1958-67).

Enjoy the Games!