Monday, January 3, 2011

30 Days of Skating - Day 21: Team Johnny or Team Evan?

Warning: This will probably unleash my inner kraken.

Team Johnny. As I've mentioned a couple of times, I have been a Johnny Weir fan for a very, very long time.  And actually, I was a fan of Evan Lysacek too until the 06' - '07 season. At that time, Evan's skating lost the sense of fun it had and began to bore me, and things he'd say in interviews began to irk me, especially his need to be the "masculine" skater and whatnot. Of course, taking digs at Johnny, who happened to be my absolute favorite, certainly added fuel the fire.

I also became annoyed with Evan's use of skating music war horses - I mean, every skater uses some common ones at some point, but starting in the '05 - '06 season, he went to town with it,  using Carmen (for two seasons), The Feeling Begins, Tosca, The Firebird, Bolero, Rhapsody in Blue, and Scheherazade.

Then of course, the cat fighting eventually began and while Johnny certainly did play his part in it, I tend to think that it made Evan come off worse. Despite that though, I do have to give Evan credit for being determined and realizing his goals, even if I still can't reconcile myself with the fact that he is an Olympic gold medalist (I never, ever really even considered that happening for some reason). Johnny accomplished a lot less competitively, which will probably be a source of frustration to me for a long, long time. I get the feeling that Johnny is this generation's Christopher Bowman, in a way. As beautiful as his skating is and as ridiculously talented as he was, he just wasn't as dedicated as most of his competitors. I mean, do you honestly see Johnny ever putting in all the work that Evgeni Plushenko put in for his comeback?

As much as I love Johnny, he seems to be becoming more of a gimmick than anything else and I fear that he is making figure skating look like a joke not just with his off ice projects, but even with his latest on ice endeavors (i.e. His last performance on Skating With the Stars... with a birdcage.). 

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