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FS for 8chan

By: a guest on Jan 24th, 2015  |  syntax: None  |  size: 10.19 KB  |  views: 272  |  expires: Never
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  1. Figure skating. A sport where men are ignored and young girls wear skin-tight outfits. Truly the best sport in the world. It’s also a bit of an art form. Skaters don’t just work on their athletic abilities, they also learn to express themselves on the ice, they learn to tell the story and show their feelings. It isn’t just about winning, it’s also about showing something beautiful to the public. That's why after every big competition there’s a Gala event – a big flashy show where all the skaters perform without worrying about scores.
  2. Figure skating is full of fan service. No matter what you’re into, you’re getting it here. And yes, that means that sometimes you have to sit through a cringe worthy male gala program with a full-on striptease on ice. At the end of the day you’ll always be rewarded with what figure skating does best – cute girls doing cute things.
  3. Fan service is so important in figure skating, it’s actually a part of the score. Right there in the “performance” section. Scoring admittedly can be a bit complicated. Basically, there's a score for the athletic element (jumps, spins and all that) and a score for the artistic element (your flow on the ice, your choreography, how well you convey the emotions to the audience). If you don’t understand it, don’t worry, at this point even the oldest fans have trouble keeping up with all the nuances.
  4. Skating isn’t equally embraced all over the world. There are five main figure skating countries – Japan, Russia, US, Canada and China. These days Japan leads in male skating (and Japan is the biggest market, they have all the ice show and their events always sell out. And yeah, that means there’s a lot of animu figure skating material, just search フィギュアスケート in pixiv), Russia is the best in female skating, China is often winning in pairs and US and Canada mostly have to play catch up with the East. But really, who cares about anything other than the girls. So let’s get to it. We’re not trying to talk about all the good skaters here, just the cutest.
  5.  
  6.  
  7.  
  8. The girls
  9. Russian junta
  10. Elena Radionova (1999, senior) – A girl who looks 12 no matter how much she grows up. Cheerful and full of life, she’s very expressive and emotional on ice. The flow of her skating isn’t perfect yet, but everyone is in love with the Lena anyway. Two times Junior World Champion, senior Gran Prix 2014 silver medalist.
  11. Yulia Lipnitskaya (1998, senior) – The star of the 2014 Olympics. As tsundere as they come, she’s always ready to diss journalist, ignore interviews and even skip the award ceremonies. She may not be a fragile little loli anymore, but she’s still a cute introverted girl. Despite her successful early career, she botched the 2014-2015 season without even being elected to skate at European Championships, so she has a lot to prove next year. Olympic Champion 2014 in the Team Event, World Championship 2014 silver medalist.
  12. Seraphima Sakhanovich (2000, junior) – She has the cutest face in skating, but also a body of young weight lifter: her early training was all about strength. And she is a strong girl, both physically and mentally, she has a dominant quality about her, she seems to always be on top. Loves poetry, hates cats. Junior World 2014 silver medalist.
  13. Evgenia Medvedeva (1999, junior) – A fun “girl next door”. She’s Seraphima’s best friend and her biggest rival. Evgenia always seems to be the life and soul of the party, she’s a bit of a wild girl. In interviews, she’s kind and intelligent, but during a competition she can curse right into a camera and forget about it a minute later. Junior Grand Prix 2014 winner.
  14. Alexandra Proklova (2000, junior) – Her eyes seem to stare into the abyss itself, her smile always looks scary. She’s a mystery. And also, very cute. Number 4 in 2014 Russian Championships.
  15.  
  16. Russian youngsters
  17. Anastasia Gubanova (2002, novice)
  18. Ekaterina Kurakova (2002, novice)
  19. Polina Maslennikova (2005, novice)
  20. Victoria Bezrukova (2001, novice)
  21. Alice Lozko (2002, novice)
  22.  
  23. The Asian wave
  24. Miyahara Satoko (1998, senior) – Before you dismiss this girl for her admittedly weird face, look for an interview with her on YouTube. She has the cutest animu voice that has ever graced the world of sports. And she’s a really shy introverted person, so watching her interviews is always amusing. The kudere girl of Japanese skating. Four Continents 2014 silver medalist.
  25. Yuhana Yokoi (2000, junior) – A lively girl with a lot of energy and some weirdly manly manners. Before she skates, her coach always pulls her cheeks and taps her on the forehead. That’s her ritual. She’s weird.
  26. Elizabet Turzynbaeva (2000, junior) – Kazakh girl with a strong and stubborn personality. Came from Russian background, now she skates for Kazakhstan and studies under one of the biggest US coaches, Brian Orser. She’s also a violinist.
  27. Julia Li (1999, retired) – A former Russian skater with Asian origins. She quit skating recently without really achieving any great results. The reason? “My mom just came and took me home”, she says. It really is a tragedy. Her cuteness made her a legend in the world of weirdoes who watch figure skating just to see cute little girls.
  28. Honda sisters – three famous Japanese skaters. The middle one, Miyu Honda, is a child actress, and her popularity made her relatives famous as well. If you ask me, Miyu is a bit too annoying and her older sister Marin is not only a better skater, but also a cuter girl. The younger sis Sara is tiny and adorable. Miyu and Sara are also famous for starring in some figure skating TV shows in Japan.
  29.  
  30. The westerners
  31. Amber Glenn (1999, junior)
  32. Daria Gozva (2000, junior)
  33. Diana Nikitina (2000, junior)
  34.  
  35.  
  36.  
  37. So what do I watch?
  38. In figure skating, there are 3 types of events:
  39. -B-events – mostly from October to January
  40. -Grand Prix events – 7 junior events around September and October, 6 senior events around November and December and a joint final in December
  41. -Championships – national championships in December and January, European championship in January, Four Continents championship in February, World championship in March, World Team championship in April
  42. Confusing, isn’t it? Yeah, there’s a lot of events. From September to March, there’s an event pretty much every week and many of them are streamed online for free. So it’s a really fun sport to follow, there’s always something to check out.
  43. So let’s break it down. The season starts in September with Junior Grand Prix, that’s 7 events all over the world with a huge roster of skaters. These are some of the most interesting series in the entire season and you won’t get that many lolis in one place anywhere else. And it’s streamed for free in HD quality on YouTube, so you really should be watching it.
  44. Then the B-Events start in October. The medals awarded at B-events are not as important and for most senior skaters those events are just an opportunity to showcase their new programs for the first time. Watching early B-events is fun, this is where you see the results of the off-season training for the first time. Some B-events have juniors, some don’t.
  45. After that comes the senior Grand Prix in October. That’s 6 events, once again all over the world (there’s one event in US and another in Canada as well). This one has a smaller roster than the junior version, so it’s a competition for the best skaters in the world. How is that different from World championships? World is a competition between countries, Grand Prix is a battle between individual skaters. So there’s a harsh limit on how many skaters each country can have at World and in Grand Prix this limit is much more loose. These events are pretty high profile, so they’re not streamed for free, you have to watch them on TV. Or on a pirated TV stream somewhere. Or you could wait for an HD version of the events that inevitably comes to YouTube in a few days (usually to be deleted a couple of weeks later).
  46. Both Grand Prix series end with a joint Finals event where only the best 6 skaters from each discipline come to compete. This is the place for the best of the best, just getting here is already a major achievement.
  47. The final stage of the season starts in December with national championships. The best seniors from the nationals go to Europe or Four Continents and the best skaters from those events go to World. Juniors skip Europe and Four Continents and only go to Junior Worlds.
  48. As for the youngest novice skaters, they only compete at certain B-events and at local championships.
  49.  
  50. It’s not just the girls!
  51. Yep, boys, men and women are doing figure skating as well. Sometimes they even do it together, that’s called pair skating and ice dance. The difference between pairs and dance is pretty simple – pairs throw each other, dancers don’t. Pairs lift each other up high, dancers can only lift their partner a little bit, not all the way. Unlike most sports, in figure skating men aren’t necessarily better than women. Sure, they’re stronger and they can do jumps with 4 rotations that women still haven’t mastered, but they’re also not as flexible and their movements are rarely as fluid and graceful. The same applies to junior skaters – they’re not just a poor unpolished version of a senior skater. As girls grow up, they lose a lot of flexibility, so if you’re only watching lolis on ice, don’t worry, you’re not watching B league. Some things that lolis can do, no one else can.
  52.  
  53. Talk to the stars
  54. Here’s the best part about figure skating: the sport is so niche, you actually get to talk to those girls. Most Russian juniors, for example, have an ask.fm account and you can go there right now and ask them questions. In the off-season when girls had nothing better to do, you could have a proper conversation there or ask them to make a certain photo. Obviously, the biggest stars like Radionova and Lipnitskaya don’t have time to talk to random fans, but girls like Medvedeva and Sakhanovich do. Try it, it’s fun! Or you can comment on their Instagram accounts, that’s also a popular thing among skaters. They don’t always answer, but they do read it. If you actually go to the event, you can throw a gift to the skater right into the ice rink. That’s normal, that’s what people do.
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