text_skate
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Some clippings from German press coverage of the first gold medal in pairs figure skating for Germany since 1952
I really enjoyed reading them, and like to share. I will post each article in a separate post, with selected paragraphs translated.
[partial translation, by google with some additional editing]
Nur ein Weltwunder konnte helfen / Only a wonder of the worlds could help by Christof Siemes
http://www.zeit.de/sport/2018-02/eiskunstlauf-aljona-savchenko-bruno-massot-gold
(please click on the link, the journos have to make a living)
So many tears! So much luck! This is figure skating, the most emotional of all sports, the overflowing heart of this, of all the Olympics. In the end, the handkerchiefs, that Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot constantly pull out of the box that stands in front of them on a coffee table, are no longer enough. Behind a curtain sits the German figure skating couple, in front of it, is the Kiss & Cry corner, the executioner's bench, where the athletes are waiting for the grades of the judges after their free skating.
[…]
Everything started terribly the day before. "Falling is the mortal lot," says Goethe's poem Winter. The classic prince was himself an enthusiastic, sometimes smiled skater. "It's ice course again, farewell thou muses, or out on the rink!" Perhaps it would have worked faster with the naturalization of the Frenchman Bruno Massot, if "ice skating in German poetry" had been the subject of his test. So he had to cram for grammar until just before the Olympics, and maybe less tears would have had to be shed, to be at the top.
[The author is referring to this poem: http://www.gedichte-zitate.com/weihnachtsgedichte/winter/winter.html by one of the most famous and most important German writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, much feared by pupil and students alike]
[Paragraphs about SP drama]
"I was not strong enough for a triple jump today," he says afterwards, while Savchenko holds a kind of quarantine distance to him with an icy expression. After two bronze medals with her previous partner Robin Szolkowy, she definitely wants the gold, maybe too much. Frenchman Massot was a good but not an outstanding athlete when she chose him for her historic Olympia mission (only three German couples have ever won gold, most recently Ria Baran and Paul Falk in Oslo, that was 66 years ago [on a side note: Paul Falk has passed away only last year, 95 years of age]).
Castings across national borders are common in pair racing, a Czech for Italy, an Estonian for Russia, a Belgian for Germany's second Olympic pair – because top talent is so rare, the competition is a celebration of international understanding [This sentence got quite some hate in the commentary section, mercenaries in sports, buying medals, not speaking German good enough …]. Driven by the iron will of the native Ukrainian Savchenko, who was drilled in the Russian skating school, now caring by coach Alexander König, the two came nevertheless surprisingly quickly to an outstanding level.
"His rate at the jump is great, he is fifty times and not once," says König with wryly widened eyes after the SP. But in the pairs ultimately every easy-looking moment is difficult. And all the things judges paying attention to! In addition to the skating skills and mastery of the jumps, it's about transitions, timing, shureness, clean programs, rhythm, balance, precision, clarity, speed, power, personality, partnership, clarity of technique, ease in tempo changes, the "multi- dimensional use and design of the space of movement ", the "physical, emotional, intellectual grasp and presentation" of the material. Even a great brain like Goethe could start to spin.
They work with Christopher Dean, Bolereo…
Together they create to the music of the documentary film La terre vue du ciel never seen movements, entanglements, a Möbius band of human bodies, where you can hardly distinguish between below and above, inside and outside. Sometimes the athletes themselves no longer know how the braid dissolves happily in the end.
More about FS perfect drama […]
"It was hard for me yesterday," Bruno Massot admits, "but Aljona told me we're not done yet, we need to show everyone that our FS is gold medal material." Then he steps aside and stretches his thighs on the barrier of the mixed zone. Art is beautiful, but also very exhausting.
A coach, says Alexander König, should never admit that there could be a perfect FS. But now he has seen it, from the stands, he wanted to enjoy this Olympic moment amidst the spectators. Now he gives up the trainer job and goes back to Berlin, his home. In this competition, in this hall, on this ice, life nodes have broken loose and lifelines in a moment of sporting history.
Goethe, who knew so much about the hopes and fears, strivings and failures of the people, already had words for the magic-reconciling power of ice:
"Everybody strives and hurries and searches for and flees from each other,
but everybody is reigned pleasantly by the slippery course."
[translation of verses are neither google’s strength nor mine]
I really enjoyed reading them, and like to share. I will post each article in a separate post, with selected paragraphs translated.
[partial translation, by google with some additional editing]
Nur ein Weltwunder konnte helfen / Only a wonder of the worlds could help by Christof Siemes
http://www.zeit.de/sport/2018-02/eiskunstlauf-aljona-savchenko-bruno-massot-gold
(please click on the link, the journos have to make a living)
So many tears! So much luck! This is figure skating, the most emotional of all sports, the overflowing heart of this, of all the Olympics. In the end, the handkerchiefs, that Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot constantly pull out of the box that stands in front of them on a coffee table, are no longer enough. Behind a curtain sits the German figure skating couple, in front of it, is the Kiss & Cry corner, the executioner's bench, where the athletes are waiting for the grades of the judges after their free skating.
[…]
Everything started terribly the day before. "Falling is the mortal lot," says Goethe's poem Winter. The classic prince was himself an enthusiastic, sometimes smiled skater. "It's ice course again, farewell thou muses, or out on the rink!" Perhaps it would have worked faster with the naturalization of the Frenchman Bruno Massot, if "ice skating in German poetry" had been the subject of his test. So he had to cram for grammar until just before the Olympics, and maybe less tears would have had to be shed, to be at the top.
[The author is referring to this poem: http://www.gedichte-zitate.com/weihnachtsgedichte/winter/winter.html by one of the most famous and most important German writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, much feared by pupil and students alike]
[Paragraphs about SP drama]
"I was not strong enough for a triple jump today," he says afterwards, while Savchenko holds a kind of quarantine distance to him with an icy expression. After two bronze medals with her previous partner Robin Szolkowy, she definitely wants the gold, maybe too much. Frenchman Massot was a good but not an outstanding athlete when she chose him for her historic Olympia mission (only three German couples have ever won gold, most recently Ria Baran and Paul Falk in Oslo, that was 66 years ago [on a side note: Paul Falk has passed away only last year, 95 years of age]).
Castings across national borders are common in pair racing, a Czech for Italy, an Estonian for Russia, a Belgian for Germany's second Olympic pair – because top talent is so rare, the competition is a celebration of international understanding [This sentence got quite some hate in the commentary section, mercenaries in sports, buying medals, not speaking German good enough …]. Driven by the iron will of the native Ukrainian Savchenko, who was drilled in the Russian skating school, now caring by coach Alexander König, the two came nevertheless surprisingly quickly to an outstanding level.
"His rate at the jump is great, he is fifty times and not once," says König with wryly widened eyes after the SP. But in the pairs ultimately every easy-looking moment is difficult. And all the things judges paying attention to! In addition to the skating skills and mastery of the jumps, it's about transitions, timing, shureness, clean programs, rhythm, balance, precision, clarity, speed, power, personality, partnership, clarity of technique, ease in tempo changes, the "multi- dimensional use and design of the space of movement ", the "physical, emotional, intellectual grasp and presentation" of the material. Even a great brain like Goethe could start to spin.
They work with Christopher Dean, Bolereo…
Together they create to the music of the documentary film La terre vue du ciel never seen movements, entanglements, a Möbius band of human bodies, where you can hardly distinguish between below and above, inside and outside. Sometimes the athletes themselves no longer know how the braid dissolves happily in the end.
More about FS perfect drama […]
"It was hard for me yesterday," Bruno Massot admits, "but Aljona told me we're not done yet, we need to show everyone that our FS is gold medal material." Then he steps aside and stretches his thighs on the barrier of the mixed zone. Art is beautiful, but also very exhausting.
A coach, says Alexander König, should never admit that there could be a perfect FS. But now he has seen it, from the stands, he wanted to enjoy this Olympic moment amidst the spectators. Now he gives up the trainer job and goes back to Berlin, his home. In this competition, in this hall, on this ice, life nodes have broken loose and lifelines in a moment of sporting history.
Goethe, who knew so much about the hopes and fears, strivings and failures of the people, already had words for the magic-reconciling power of ice:
"Everybody strives and hurries and searches for and flees from each other,
but everybody is reigned pleasantly by the slippery course."
[translation of verses are neither google’s strength nor mine]
Last edited:
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. They said "Allez", focus on their strength, the FS. Giving-up was never an option. Aljona knew with the first elements, they have a run, she needed to focus until the end and hold her concentration, because she had so much energy. Too much energy might take you right into mistakes.
IMO T/D's choreo works even better 
: 
