---- Sandra Loosemore <pondscum@...> wrote:
> Don Winn <dwinn10@...> writes:
>
> > Hmm, I can't agree. Fadeev had, what, 7 triples (?), no second 3A,
> > and a mistake on the 3S. Although he had a many interesting moves
> > (e.g. 2A-flying sitspin) and wonderful speed, the choppy,
> > disco-esque music cuts were excreable. He really had no tempo
> > variations, no highs and lows, no mood changing, and no elegance.
> > He basically just barreled through the program, showman style, short
> > limbs flailing...just like Scott Hamilton, and the kind of program
> > that was his trademark! Maybe that's why Hamilton just raved about
> > it while commentating.
>
> It's easy to poke holes in Fadeev's skating looking back 20+ years on
> it. But, if you look at it in the context of his time, he really was
> an amazing skater compared to the standards back then.

Got to agree, and will explain why along with what Sandra said.

> Maybe he
> didn't do so much on the music or choreography side, but he was the
> one who really started pushing the technical boundary for men.

I wouldn't call him "the" one (several men were pushing the technical, or at
least jumping, boundaries at the time, including both Brians and Jozef
Sabovcik), but he was right in there.

> I'm pretty sure I remember Hamilton saying at some point that he was
> glad he retired because he was afraid of Fadeev, and he was right to be
> afraid.

Actually he expressed more fear of the Brians, but Fadeev probably didn't help
any.

> Hamilton never really had more than 3 different triples in his
> repertoire, which was pretty typical of most of his peers in the late
> 70s and early 80s. In his program in 1982 he did 3 toe loops, 2
> salchows, and a lutz. The next year, because of the Zayak rule, he had
> to take out one of the toe loops and was trying to add the flip to make
> up for it. A lot of guys were still filling out their programs with
> double jumps at that time.

Very much true. And right through the '80s, many men were still taking time to
do a delayed SINGLE axel in their long programs, just to prove they could do it
because it was so impressive and audiences in those days appreciated the beauty
of that long hang time the way NBA audiences today appreciate a really
gorgeous-looking spinning move to the basket.

> Meanwhile, I think Fadeev was already
> attempting a complete set of triples by 1983; it wasn't just that he had
> the axel and Hamilton didn't. In fact the jump content Fadeev was
> attempting ca 1983-84 was head and shoulders above what any of the other
> guys were putting in their programs, even Orser.

In the sense that Orser always had trouble with triple flip, and didn't feel the
need to begin including triple loop until later, yes. I don't know whether I'd
put him above Boitano in the jumping department, though.

I have video of one of
> his performances of that era with Toller Cranston commentating, and by
> the end of the program Toller is totally raving over the amount and
> difficulty of the technical content. Anyway.... in Tokyo in 1985,
> Orser pretty much took himself out of contention,

To be fair, Orser was sick as a dog with pneumonia.

> Boitano was not "soup"
> yet, and Fadeev gave one of his best performances ever, so it was a
> well-deserved win.

Absolutely. And I would add, nobody in 1985 gave a damn that he had no second
triple axel, because two triple axels in a long program were not the going
standard in 1985. In fact, I believe we need to give Fadeev long-overdue credit
for being the first male skater to win worlds with ANY triple axel in his long
program, period.

Two triple axels in a long program didn't become "standard equipment" for men
until Orser did it in '87. Even then, Boitano was able to get away with winning
in '88 with none at all (he subbed a failed quad attempt for one and popped the
other) only because Orser buried himself by missing the combination in the
short, Fadeev had withdrawn with an injury after figures, and Browning (lander
of the first ISU quad) and Petrenko weren't soup yet. Under the rules and
scoring distribution at the time, and given the performances he was up against,
Boitano could afford to miss quite a bit and still win.

> And heck, I don't even think his music was that awful
> compared to what other skaters of that era were using! :-P

Hear, hear. I have a tape someone made me of the complete men's long program
from '81 worlds, and if that provides even a taste of the dreadful music the
majority of male skaters were using at the time, it's enough. (Recall also that
men's long programs in 1981 were still five minutes long and you get some idea
of how painful the whole thing is to watch.) Men being less generally inclined
to want to skate to that "froufrou" classical music than women, the majority of
them chose to perform to what passed for more "macho" musical stylings, which in
the '80s consisted largely of:

--synthesized electronic crap...and when I say "synthesized," I don't mean
simulations of actual musical instruments; I mean stuff that SOUNDED like
electronic squeaks and squeals...a combination of R2-D2 from Star Wars and the
sounds that could be heard emanating from any video arcade of the era

--orchestral versions of popular rock songs: The London Symphony Orchestra plays
the Rolling Stones, the London Symphony Orchestra plays the Moody Blues, the
London Symphony Orchestra plays the...

--DISCO!!!! (Actually, to be fair, the disco in those days was actually of a
higher quality than some of today's dance music in that back in those days, it
was still performed using "real" instruments...REAL string sections, REAL horn
sections...but then you'd get a disco-fied version of a classical piece like
"The Firebird" or an old pop-music chestnut like "Tangerine" or whatever.

There were fewer Jerry Bruckheimer movies in those days, so the guys lacked lots
of movie soundtracks full of orchestras playing new macho music from the latest
teen blow-'em-up-real-good action flick. Lacking that, they chose, I think it is
safe to say, some of the absolute worst music available to them. And don't
forget, it was usually poorly recorded, with plenty of pops and hisses (some
competitors back in those days were still having their program music recorded
onto vinyl discs) and not much in the way of stereo fidelity, edited by a rusty
razor blade (no Macs in those days), and all too often with the telltale loud
"beep!" sound at the beginning that announced where the music officially
began...

In that climate, Fadeev's crimes of music sounded no worse than any of the other
guys'. Really.

As a person who is only going to Keep Getting Older, I feel morally obligated on
occasion to provide realistic pictures of the "good old days" of skating to
balance out the natural human tendency to misperceive the past or unfairly
compare it to today.

Trudi