[Article] As Kim Raises the Bar, South Korea Delights.

26.2.10

[Article] As Kim Raises the Bar, South Korea Delights.

[Article] As Kim Raises the Bar, South Korea Delights
Inside the Rings (The New York Times)
By JERÉ LONGMAN - February 26, 2010
Repost : http://twssg.blogspot.com/

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Dressed in azure, skating to Gershwin, Kim Yu-na of South Korea seemingly floated to the clouds with her soaring jumps and airy elegance Thursday night, winning an Olympic gold medal and her rightful place as one of the greatest women’s figure skaters of all time.

Demonstrating technical superiority and ethereal grace at 19, Kim delivered a world-record performance of 228.56 total points. Math alone cannot fully describe the resourcefulness, complexity and artistry of her skating, except in this context: Kim would have finished ninth in the men’s competition, nearly 10 points ahead of the American national champion, Jeremy Abbott.

Mao Asada of Japan became the first woman to land two triple axels in a free skate at the Winter Games, but she still finished a distant second by more than 20 points. Even before Asada skated, she knew that her chances for gold were futile after Kim’s refined and charming performance.

“I could hear the crowd going crazy,” Asada said.

What the audience of 11,771 at Pacific Coliseum had witnessed was an unprecedented combination of technical difficulty and willowy sophistication as Kim became the first South Korean skater to win an Olympic gold medal. She held up under enormous pressure to succeed as an athlete, a cultural icon and a vanquisher of competitors from Japan, which occupied the Korean peninsula for 35 years through the end of World War II.

“Today, I was more confident than ever,” Kim, the 2009 world champion, said.
It is impossible to precisely compare skaters from different eras. Rules change. Athleticism increasingly demands its place alongside artistry. But a number of Kim’s gold-medal predecessors were present Thursday, and all seemed thoroughly impressed that Kim had been so poised and lissom in her presentation and vaulting in her jumps.

“How do you compare that to Sonja Henie?” said Kristi Yamaguchi, the 1992 Olympic champion, referring to the three-time gold medalist from Norway in the 1920s and 1930s. “Everything is relative to the time and era.”
Still, Yamaguchi added, “Certainly, it has taken women’s skating to another level. Technically. The whole package.”

Assured, serene, Kim opened with a triple lutz-triple toe combination, a triple flip and a double axel-double toe-double loop combination. Through four minutes of the challenging program, she skated with speed, lightness and engaging openness in a style that her coach, Brian Orser, calls unselfish and welcoming.

“She reaches the last row of the building,” Orser said beforehand. “People feel they’re invited to enjoy it as she is.”

Thursday, Kim whisked like a feather across the ice.

“Technically, she’s the greatest of all time,” said Ted Barton, a Canadian who helped devise the new points-based scoring system. “If she skates a little longer and does this over the next three or four years, she will be the greatest skater of all time.”

Scott Hamilton, the 1984 men’s Olympic champion, compared Kim to Seabiscuit, the thoroughbred, as dominant athletes who broke their competitors’ will.
“Yu-na has only been at the top of her game for a couple of years,” Hamilton said. “But if she’s here another four years at this level, a lot of skaters would break down. They would try to up their games so much, there would be injuries. There’s no weakness there. Compare her with anybody; she’s got it all. Under any system, anywhere, anytime, she’d win.”

Encomiums have been handed to Kim here in bouquets, like flowers. Michelle Kwan, the two-time Olympic medalist: “She’s the fastest skater I’ve ever seen.”

Katarina Witt, the 1984 and 1988 Olympic champion: “She has a lightness to her skating and her jumps are very high.”

Dorothy Hamill, the 1976 Olympic champion: “She’s the whole package. Her jumps are soaring and they’re equal. You don’t have one big one followed by a little tiny jump. I think she’s grown choreographically. She’s very musical. The whole thing is very beautiful and athletic but not too athletic. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything when I watch her.”

Some believe that the new scoring system, with its incessant technical demands on jumps and steps and spins, does not allow skaters the same charisma and signature artistry afforded Peggy Fleming and Hamill and other stars from previous eras.

“As far as being renowned as a legendary artist, I don’t think so,” Frank Carroll, who coached the fourth-place finisher Mirai Nagasu of the United States, said of Kim. “As a really great skater, technically, yes.”

David Kirby, an American coach and a technical expert, said: “Clearly, she’s the best girl, but it’s because she’s the best technician. She’s 70 percent sport, 30 percent art. Peggy Fleming was a real artist and real athlete. I don’t think that balance of art and sport is the Olympic champion this year.”

This will be seen as needless quibbling in South Korea, where Kim is the country’s most popular athlete. So intense was the interest in the Kim-Asada rivalry that Korean reporters and photographers began arriving at the arena 12 hours before Thursday’s competition, only to find that some of their Japanese counterparts had spent the night at the rink.

“This is not sports, this is war,” Lee Jiseok, a reporter for the Daily Sports Seoul newspaper, said with a laugh. He and his colleagues had already prepared stories on Kim, her mother and her coach. “If she loses, we’re dead,” Lee said. “We’ll have to explain why she lost.”

That would not be necessary as Kim won the most glamorous event at the Winter Games.

“I think the whole nation is in front of the television,” said John Moon, chief of staff of the South Korean Olympic Committee. “Kim Yu-na is the country’s special sister. Every athlete is important, but her medal is more important than the others. She is beautiful. She’s our pride. I think the Koreans will have a lot of drinks.”