Adam Rippon, the 2016 U.S. men’s figure skating champion who is believed to be the first openly gay U.S. Winter Olympian, criticized the White House’s selection of Vice President Mike Pence to lead the 2018 U.S. Olympic delegation to South Korea in a phone interview with USA TODAY Sports Tuesday night.
“You mean Mike Pence, the same Mike Pence that funded gay conversion therapy?” Rippon said. “I’m not buying it.”
Rippon, 28, who was selected to his first Olympic team earlier this month after finishing fourth at the U.S. national championships, said that he would prefer not to meet Pence during the traditional meet-and-greet between the official delegation and U.S. athletes in the hours leading to the opening ceremony. It’s possible Rippon would have to miss that event anyway to be part of the team figure skating competition.
“If it were before my event, I would absolutely not go out of my way to meet somebody who I felt has gone out of their way to not only show that they aren’t a friend of a gay person but that they think that they’re sick,” Rippon said. “I wouldn’t go out of my way to meet somebody like that.
“I don’t think he has a real concept of reality,” Rippon said of Pence. “To stand by some of the things that Donald Trump has said and for Mike Pence to say he’s a devout Christian man is completely contradictory. If he’s okay with what’s being said about people and Americans and foreigners and about different countries that are being called ‘shitholes,’ I think he should really go to church.“
Rippon did say that if given a chance to meet Pence after competing (unlikely considering the relatively short length of any delegation’s visit to the Games), he would consider it.
“If I had the chance to meet him afterwards, after I’m finished competing, there might be a possibility to have an open conversation,” Rippon said. “He seems more mild-mannered than Donald Trump. … But I don’t think the current administration represents the values that I was taught growing up. Mike Pence doesn’t stand for anything that I really believe in.”
Instead of weekly previews for each Grand Prix event, this year we will write introductions for each discipline as a whole (time permitting). Here’s Part 1 of our Grand Prix previews, covering the glamorous field of ice dance!
For those not in the know, ice dance is loosely based on ballroom dancing. Skaters are scored on step sequences, lifts, spins, and twizzles. Teams compete with a short dance and free dance; the short dance has a predetermined style of music and step sequence patterns. The theme for the 2017-18 season short dance is Latin, and the pattern dance is the Rhumba.
1) Why skaters skate to the same programs whole season? Why don’t they do many (short and long) programs with various choreography in one season? It’s boring to watch only several options.
Because it can be very expensive.
To get choreography is not cheap, and if you’re top skaters you are supposed to get choreography from top choreographers who charge you a lot. Sometimes the bill can be up to 10,000 USD. My friend is just a low level skater and he had to pay 1000 USD for his some competitive programs.
And not to mention the costumes, some top skaters spend 5000 up to 10,000 USD per year for their costumes, meanwhile my friend keeps crying about his 700 USD costume.
And because figure skating is a difficult sport.
Each program is set up with some certain pattern with certain choreography, but the main goal is still to land your jumps and execute their other elements with good quality. Skaters have to focus on their elements first and foremost, and those elements are freaking hard to do. Triples and quads are difficult and energy-consuming.
If you don’t execute your elements well, who care about your choreography?
Furthermore, skating to the same program in a whole season helps the skaters improve their presentation and they get better scores by the end of the season thanks to the improvement, thus judges have gotten used to their programs it’s easier to judge. This is still a sport to get more points and better placement after all.
2) Why some skaters change their programs after each season, why some skaters keep their programs?
They love their programs so they want to keep it. They want to save money, no new choreography, less payment, less bill. They didn’t skate their programs to full potential from last season, so they want to skate it to the best this season. They think their current programs are very loved by the judges and if they skate them for another season, they might get even better scores.
So, skaters don’t change costumes and programs like dancers, singers… Because no one give them more money, more time, more support and more health for that.
3) So male skaters can do 5-6 quads in a program like in the anime?
Well, NO. The current maximum layout a top male skater can skate clean in a long program is 4 quads.
And with too difficult jump layouts, the quality of the performance in general has become lower because the skaters have spent too much energy for jumps and they lost points in other elements. There is no free scores. High risks, high reward. Skaters with less difficult jumps can win when they execute their programs with great quality in all other elements. Judging in figure skating is designed to value all elements, from steps, jumps, spins, presentation… NOT JUST jumps. So a well-rounded skater winning over other skaters with obvious mistakes and weakness is normal.
5) But the anime is supposed to happen in the future? The score will go up?
In reality, the whole system will be revamped after 2 years and scores will go down as the number of elements will be lowered, thus the total scores will be lowered too.
The scores won’t go up because after Olympic 2018, ISU might cut down one jump pass and possibly the choreographic sequence in the men free program, they will also adjust the Grade or Execution and Program Component Scores.
6) Why real skaters don’t jump as many difficult elements as in the anime?
Because in reality we have technical issues, age issue and health issue.
No male skater at age 27 can do 4 quads in a program, let alone to do a quad combo at the end. It’s impossible. When you’re 27, in figure skating world they call you grandma/grandpa already. Please remember that most competitive skaters are very young.
In reality, there are under-rotation, pre-rotation, wrong edge in the take off (with Lutz and Flip jump), wrong use of toe pick, downgrades, weak spin position, not enough number of spin revolutions, step sequence has wrong patterns and lack of steps…
Not everyone has correct technique in reality, in fact most skaters don’t have pure technique, many of them get deductions in competitions because technical panel and judges think their techniques are flawed and should be punished.
Top skaters are injured all the times just like other top athletes, ice is freaking slippery you don’t expect them to execute difficult elements when their bodies don’t allow it.
7) If there is any other question about figure skating, feel free ro ask me. I am not a pro but I will try my best.
SourFlame 