Made In China = Quality

Frankly, I’m just a little distracted by the Olympics right now.

I have paid essentially no attention whatsoever to figure skating since the Olympics before last. So imagine my surprise at tuning in to discover three (3!) viable Chinese pairs competing this year.

Welcoming these athletes to the international stage are wagonloads of poor starving orphan stories abound about young Chinese skaters practicing on outdoor rinks in -35 degree weather. The tone of some of this commentary is a little condescending, but it is true that most young Canadian figure skaters aren’t even allowed near outdoor ice in their “good” skates. Never mind wearing skates three sizes too large and waiting six seasons to grow into them. The average Canadian figure skater knows how to fit a skate and complain that it’s too tight sometime around her seventh birthday. I think CanSkate even has a badge for that.

The reason I fell away from figure skating for oh, eight years or so, is that the sport moves in cycles, and after a while the cycle you’re in can start to get boring, or simply not have the magic of the last one, or like, you just have stuff to do. I need an eight year break every once in a while.

I really have to hand it to these people for rending the sport unböring to me again:

If you missed this, you obviously don’t have access to the CBC, which replayed The Incident about five times during its broadcast, and then re-broadcast the broadcast two more times after that, making for a good 15-20 opportunities for you to catch it… or for Zhang & Zhang not to.

See, these nice people, Zhang & Zhang, attempted what could have been the first throw quad salchow landed in competition. But poor Zhang opened up one large half rotation too early, which resulted in her taking a fall straight down, into a spread-eagle position, banging both kneees in the process. It didn’t just look like a long-program-terminating fall. It looked like a career ending fall. It looked like every muscle in her groin and inner thigh should have torn, and her kneecaps reduced to pulp. I have NEVER seen a fall like that. It made me feel like I was going to throw up from the pain. I think Barb Underhill almost passed out in the commentating booth. Then, just as Paul Martini was writing the whole day off for the team, THEY PICKED UP WHERE THEY LEFT OFF AND KEPT SKATING. Not only that, but she kept landing jumps, and they took the silver medal.

In the words of Dodgeball commentating legend, Pepper Brooks, “I feel shocked!”

Then again, this is exactly the kind of mayhem the Olympics are good for.