Reply to Winter Olympics 2026

Forum Index » Sports General Discussion

Reply to "Winter Olympics 2026"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What a well-supported, well-articulated response.

Even casual watchers of this year’s women’s skating events would have picked up on the improbability of a comeback leading to this level of success. Jonny, Tara and Terry talked about it in their commentary. Ask Rachel Flatt, Gracie Gold, Elaine Zayak and the Shibutanis how their comebacks after a long break went.

The Canadian pair skater Deanna Stellato-Dudek (American by birth) has a phenomenal comeback story, including World’s gold, but unfortunately a recent injury threw the pair off and they didn’t medal at the Olympics. [/quote]
Some of your examples are weakened somewhat by the fact that some of them were involuntarily out of the sport due to injury, and all of them were significantly older than Alysa, but your point is noted.

However, it's alarming that people have already forgotten about [b]Guillaume Cizeron,[/b] the French ice dancer.  Going into Milan, his international record was much more accomplished than Alysa's as the defending Olympic champion, a five-time World champion, and an eight-time European champion.  Then, after sitting out three seasons -- one more than Alysa -- he gets himself a new partner, wins two Grand Prix events, and legitimately secures his second Olympic gold medal.  (And, sorry not sorry, Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron out-skated Madison Chock and Evan Bates.  I'm wondering whether all those people who claim Chock and Bates were robbed were equally as vocal when they won the 2023 World Championship despite Madison ending the free dance with her butt on the ice.)

That said, based on Alysa's experience, I think US Figure Skating should explore a two-year rumspringa for 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds -- an organized runway out of and back into skating that would allow girls (and, yes, it will probably be exclusively girls; boys already have the Icemen program, although that effort has largely been ignored by everyone not named Scott Hamilton) to adjust to the physiological, mental, and social changes of adolescence.  A network of psychologists should be deployed to check up on them.  Coaches should be educated on how to modify training to best serve the skater's physical and emotional needs during her sabbatical.  An annual sectional camp where they can spend a few days with other skaters who are in the same space -- think of it as Dev Camp meets Champs Camp.

When I consider the competitive skaters at my rink, it's a weird little ecosystem.  The girls pretty much live at the rink where all the adults pretend that their online schooling is adequate.  The boys have the luxury of going to a physical school building and having a life away from the rink.  The male anatomy and the smaller number of competitors blesses them with more time in the sport.  I don't remember the last time a highly-competitive female singles skater negotiated on-campus college classes, training, and a driver's license that would legally entitle her to an alcoholic beverage -- Gabby Izzo?  Boys do it on the regular, and they did it at Yale (Nathan Chen), Brown (Vincent Zhou), Columbia (Camden Pulkinen), and MIT (Kevin Shum).  Maybe a structured two-year pause would give the girls an opportunity to have something close to what the boys have.  Alysa was able to pull it off because she already had a closet of national hardware and a big enough name to restart her career on her terms.[/quote]

And such a splendid individual, too! /s[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics