Gymnastics & Shuffleboard – On Ice. ATL UTD. Let It Be Light.

They Make It Look So Easy.  The Second Season.  Daylight Savings Time.

The “men of machismo” don’t always put men’s figure skating in the best light.  Maybe it is the costumes or the elegant flair that must be shown to differentiate your performance from others.  Maybe it is just the fact that the men are ‘simply’ ice skating and not competing in ski jumping, the luge, or on a 2-man bobsled team.  Though my baseline is zero as I have no clue how to even stand up on skates, I am one to hold these athletes in high regard.  Similar to gymnastics, the training begins early on and continues for many years.  Due to the lack of available ice time,  their first training session begins before dawn with the day ending in another late evening session.  The competition is fierce and culminates with the U.S. National Championships which is the qualification competition to make the Olympic Team.  One miscalculation, one chip in the ice that leads to a stumble, and after ten years of training, your chances of success go right down the drain.  They perform the infamous triple Salchow and the triple Axle….on ice.  I would enjoy seeing our infamous NBA, NFL, and MLB players trying these moves on a hard surface.  Maybe then the sport would receive the respect it deserves.  Scott Hamilton, a former gold medal-winning figure skater, who has survived four battles with cancer, estimates he fell over 4,000 times between training and his many years of competition.  He jumped back up 4,000 times.  Just for reference, here is the description of the Salchow move, named after figure skater Ulrich Salchow:  The Salchow is a figure skating jump with a takeoff from a back inside edge of one foot. The rotation in the air is made in the direction of the curve of the take-off edge. The landing is made on the back outside edge of the foot opposite the one used for take-off.  Really?  No thanks.

Speaking of lack of respect, I have heard many over the last two weeks crap all over the sport of curling.  “Shuffleboard on ice”, “stupid sport” and “what a joke” are some of the blurbs I have heard.  I will go down the same path as figure skating though the physicality necessary to figure skate and ‘curl’ are way different.  The technical aspects of curling are mind-boggling.  The ‘rock’ or ‘stone’ is sent down the ice with the designated pace and spin along with ‘sweepers’ warming the ice to move the stone down the targeted path. The objective is relatively simple: you want your stones to come closer to a bulls eye than your opponent when all the stones are thrown.  It sounds simple until you realize that the stone weighs 44 pounds and you must send it 150 feet down the ice to hopefully circumvent your opponents stones, or hit them out of the way to leave your stone closer to the bulls eye.  A bit weird to watch but it looks like a lot of fun to play.  That is, if you can stand and balance yourself on ice.

Atlanta United opens up their second season next Saturday afternoon at Houston.  Some new additions will add some additional fire power along with Josef Martinez and Miguel Almiron.  Watch for the pace when the counter-attack is on with newbies Darlington Nagbe, Ezequiel Barco and Franco Escobar. This should be a lot of fun to watch.

DST alert:  two weeks from today!

Have a Funday Sunday!