Behind the scenes at Stars On Ice

Ever wonder what it's like to be a part of the media at a Stars On Ice show? Wonder no more! Professional photographer John Conroy (see right) was invited to shoot the Los Angeles show at the STAPLES Center in May. Below is his account of that magical night...

Through my affiliation with Sasha Cohen’s management team, I was invited to photograph the 2010 Stars On Ice (SOI) in Los Angeles. I was met at the STAPLES Center by SOI staff, who escorted me through hallways and down elevators and finally onto the ice. I was positioned at the opposite end from where the skaters come on the ice. I was permitted to be here with other members of the media for the first 15 minutes of the show. If you have seen SOI this is actually the first number where all of the skaters are introduced and  everyone skates. I had never photographed a professional skating “show”. I had my experience with ISI and USFSA skating events, but never something of the SOI caliber. I am used to dimly lit rinks where I really have to really push my equipment to get a good image. SOI has professional lighting and spot operators which made this  job so much easier for me. The choreography and many beautiful and fun costumes make a photographers job a breeze. SOI is in many ways similar to my experiences photographing Performing Arts. (At left, Sasha Cohen at SOI Los Angeles, photographed by John Conroy)

After the opening number, I was then led to my seat which was actually a better vantage point than on the ice. I was at center ice about two rows back on the isle. From this location I could operate smoothly without disturbing any of the audience around me.

By far the most difficult cast members to photograph were the men. Evan Lysacek and Jeremy Abbott generate so much speed before going into those triple jump combinations, that it is so hard to focus the camera and keep them in the frame when using long telephoto lenses. On the other hand, the women are more flowing and graceful, making it less challenging to capture movement. Of course, my Sasha Cohen images were far greater in numbers than other cast  members and she was certainly the crowd favorite in Los Angeles which is within close proximity to her home. My shots of Yuka Sato, Alissa Czisny and Rachael Flatt are equally impressive. Hope you'll take a look yourself!

Visiting South America: Anything skatingwise to see?

Just a quick shout out to the folks from Chile and Argentina who visit Lifeskate. Going to be buzzing through your part of the world in the coming weeks (mainly Buenos Aires, Santiago and Punta Arenas in the Southern Cone), and was looking for story ideas. Never go anywhere in the world without the camera. China, Finland and Vancouver are recent examples. Sadly wasn't able to rustle up anything in Iceland last summer -- beautiful country, incidentally, but went during the well-lit and volcano-less summer (did shoot a short documentary that we still haven't edited). Doing a story during a brief Middle East jaunt next month may also be a challenge, although Israel seems to abound in skating news (here and here).

So, if there's anything in those parts that you think we should check out, please leave a comment or pop me a note. Was going to make a little side trip to Ushuaia -- which has the world's southernmost skating rink -- but ran out of time. Have a fairly tight schedule, but can always make time for skating news!

All this for a billion? NBC disappoints American Olympic fans, again

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The way I understand NBC’s deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the network has U.S. rights to broadcast the games on both television and the internet.

Why then must fans endure a slice-and-dice approach to their favorite sports or a long delay before NBC releases video on the web?

I can understand NBC holding back on portions of events that it plans to show on its various networks (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, etc.). NBC chief Jeff Zucker is famous for his “trading analog dollars for digital pennies” comment and online advertising wouldn’t come close to replacing those big dollars for network ad buys, which can run $500,000 per 30-second spot.

But for the events that NBC has no intention of broadcasting live, why not show them on the Internet? The network has already invested the substantial sums to record the events, so live streaming shouldn’t be that much more expensive. And if the network sells preroll, adjacency and interstitial ads against that content at the going rate ($20-$50 per thousand impressions), it would definitely grab some additional revenue. As a poor substitute, NBCOlympics.com offers live text updates of what’s going on. Yawn. Newsflash guys: Vancouver2010.com does a much better job on text and score updates. Do like their iPhone app, however.

In figure skating thus far, NBC has mostly ignored the first few groups in each event and then cherrypicked skaters later in the competition for likely American appeal. Contrast this with the symbiosis between Ice Network and NBC for U.S. Nationals where you could get web streams of early competitors, with a black-out being imposed when NBC later picked up the coverage (although they usually dropped a group in the process). Diehard fans in any sport have to wait for the web videos to appear in the days after the events to see the end-to-end coverage; otherwise, the glorious broadcast highlight reel will have to suffice.

To add insult to injury, when American Olympics fans trawl offshore for video feeds for these events, NBC and the IOC shut them down as fast as they can find them. This is why we stopped tweeting URLs of these feeds for fear that they would disappear and deprive American fans their only source, lest we be the party pooper.

So let’s review: The Internet should offer NBC a marvelous opportunity to multicast as many events as it has the stomach to handle, blacking out only those events it plans to show on its television networks. Not unlike, say, every other major TV network on the planet. And it could make extra money. Perhaps not enough to overcome a reported $100+ million deficit in covering the games, but enough to cover fuel for NBC Sports chief Dick Ebersol’s private jet.

Guess this is NBC’s last Olympics before it gets swallowed by Comcast (and potentially spun off, as the Philadelphia media company purchased NBC Universal for its cable properties, not its perpetually fourth/fifth place broadcast network). Perhaps the new owners will figure out how to use the “Interwebs” properly in Sochi.

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Evgeny Plushenko, Evan Lysacek, the quad and the future of skating

Who would have thought just a week ago that so much ink would be spilled on the merits of a figure skater taking to the air and rotating 1,440 degrees before coming back to earth?

That the president of one of the world’s largest countries would weigh in, however obliquely, on the value of a figure skating move? That the word quad would enter the public lexicon and serve as debate fodder in barrooms (or at least chi-chi wine bars)?

Long a hot topic in the skating community, the quad has further polarized the issues of artistry and athleticism, thanks in large part to a certain trash-talking silver medalist and his entourage. And it has brought the oft-criticized new (or newer, as it’s been six years) judging system back to the fore. Greater minds and talents than mine have reflected on the week’s events, but I feel compelled to offer my two cents (in addition to this).

First, this is good for the sport. The fact that talking heads and skating greats can debate the quad and people care enough to listen show that figure skating, despite its annual obituaries, still remains relevant and exciting. It just needed an Olympic year to give the controversy enough juice to enter the public consciousness, instead of remaining a discussion among skating wonks as it had been previously. May not be pretty, but there are worse types of publicity.

Second, this is about the personalities involved, but also transcends them. Evgeny Plushenko stood on the podium in Vancouver Thursday night, projecting major ‘tude that was consistent with his bad boy image. But few would suspect that moments later he would first imply and later outright state to the press that awarding the gold to Evan Lysacek was “not progress; it's a regress,” later comparing the American’s technique to that of a woman skater (our illustration shows what Evgeny might have been imagining). Two-time Olympic silver medal winner and quad pioneer Elvis Stojko later wrote that Evan's skate wasn't "Olympic champion material." Evan, to his credit, has remained the upright sportsman, attributing Evgeny’s comments to emotion surrounding the disappointment and downplaying the schism. I’ve seen and heard at least a half dozen interviews with Evan over the past 24 hours, and he has acquitted himself honorably in all. Kudos to him for attempting to maintain skating’s dignity.

But the kernel of the argument boils down to something Evgeny and his coaches have repeatedly said over the past day, which I generalize here with less bombastic wording: If skating doesn’t push the athletic envelope, it becomes less a sport and more an art.

Some analysts point to the actual scores from Thursday night’s competition, where Evan outscored Evgeny in the “athletic” category (a/k/a executed elements and grades of execution) and they tied in the “artistic” category (factored program components). Well-executed quads provide a 3-4 point advantage over similar combinations with triples, but Evan showed that this can be overcome with high levels of execution throughout an entire program.

The simple truth is that the new judging system rewards certain things more richly -- ostensibly in support of a clean, unified performance -- and smart skaters structure their programs to optimize the points. Evan loaded the back half of his program with triples, while Evgeny spent the last minute of his with required step sequences, tackling more difficult elements earlier on. One could argue that performing strenuous jumps deeper into a program requires more stamina and athleticism, which is why the ISU Judging System applies a premium in scoring.

Pushing the envelope with more complex moves is admirable, but the object of figure skating competition is to win, not (just) show off. Marathon runners aren’t rewarded for their fastest miles, but for when they cross the finish lines and ahead of whom.

“It’s fine to be the best jumper in the world, but does that mean you’re the best figure skater in the world?” Evan’s coach, Frank Carroll, told journalists. “It’s not figure jumping; it’s figure skating.”

If it’s so bad, then Plushenko should marshal his fellow former Eastern Bloc pals and lobby the ISU to change the rules. Continued on-ice civil disobedience will simply result in continued runner-up status. (Interestingly, during the “Evan vs. Johnny years,” Evan took a slightly different position in advocating more of an X Games style in figure skating as compared to Johnny Weir’s more theatrical approach.)

But that being said, the intent behind Plushenko’s comments does resonate with skating fans. Runners are now faster than they were 20 years ago, baseball players stronger sluggers, and so on. Snowboarder Shaun White’s antics on the half pipe validate this clearly. Why shouldn’t we expect this generation’s skating champions to be better than those from years past. One could argue that an objective judging system provides an excellent barometer across the ages – just score more points than your predecessors. But as athletes’ abilities improve, simply have them perform the same moves with greater and greater precision does seem to be a bit, um, boring.

So how can the ISU move the rules bar higher, providing skaters more expansive ways to compete against each other and push the entire sport? The quad is one example, but there may be other changes that would stretch skaters in the athletic dimension. By providing a range of “bonus” options, the ISU would be providing multiple paths instead of just the “nuclear quad.” As an aside, a New York Times analysis showed that on the whole, including a quad in a program led to poorer total scores, mainly because of skaters’ inability to consistently hit it. You could ultimately see a two-class world where there are skaters with both Evan’s grace and Evgeny’s powerful jumps, and everyone else.

As to the “art vs. sport” comment, skating is a judged, subjective sport and there’s no way out of that argument unless someone finds a way to include a puck. Anyone who doubts that skating is a serious sport just needs to spend a few hours at a practice rink with one of these elite athletes and witness the grace and power and precision required. The best athletes in sports often approach art; would it be insulting to describe as art Michael Jordan defying gravity in his approach to the basket or Usain Bolt moving his limbs faster than any human should?

Fast forward to the 2022 Olympics, and we'll likely be debating the quint.

Google honors figure skating

As part of its continuing homage to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, Google replaced its normal search homepage with some figure skating art (at least for the English site google.com). Not coincidentally, the pairs competition starts today at 4:30 p.m. PST/7:30 p.m. EST with the short program. Stay tuned later today for a short video piece from Lifeskate about the venue where these competitions will be held (shot during our buzz through BC in December).

So, quick question: Who is Google portraying above in their illustration?

Microsoft's Bing is a little slow on the draw and the closest they have yet gotten to figure skating is the below speed-skating image.