After the 2024 Olympics wrapped last summer, I found myself missing sports. Luckily, we found a bunch of free (and commercial-free!) sports to watch through CBC’s website.
One of the regularly featured winter sports was figure skating. We tuned in casually at first, not sure what to expect over the days-long competitions, which repeated throughout the fall and winter. Would we really want to watch hours (and hours) of performances, many the same routines from the same skaters?
The answer, it turned out, was an emphatic yes! By the world championships in March, we were hooked. We had favourite commentators and skaters, a growing knowledge around the components and GOEs*, and an appreciation for the sport like never before.
And that, my friends, is how we found ourselves at this year’s Stars On Ice tour. It was a delight to see select competitive skaters in person, many of them performing the competition programs we’d enjoyed online during the season (Piper and Paul’s Beach Boys rhythm dance was particularly great live).
More than anything, being rink-side emphasized how hard the four disciplines (women’s singles, men’s singles, pairs, ice dance) are! When you can see the height of the jumps and throws, hear the hard scraping of the skates, and experience the speed of the skaters going by, it’s truly amazing that anyone is staying on their feet at all—let alone doing choreography in time to music.
We even loved the cheesy group numbers. Watching the skaters perform together (many from different disciplines) while often being goofy (looking at you especially, Jason Brown) was just plain fun.
Now we have a reason not to mind so much when fall comes around again: it will be the start of a new skating season, and in an Olympic year no less. We’ll love returning to all our viewing and learning and cheering. (Go Kaori go!!!)
The ISU’s YouTube channel is good place to stream many competitions, should any of you wish to join us. ;-)
*Grade of Execution = the points awarded that reflect the quality of a completed skating component, which is added to (or subtracted from) the base score of the component.
