Tears. I don’t know what to say. I can’t read the thread yet because then more tears.
I’m sure people have said most everything so I will try to just share one of my personal memories.
For those of you who don’t know, Denis is one of my favorite skaters of all time. He
is my favorite men’s skater of all time. After many, many years of staying off FSU, Denis’s performances during the 2014-2015 season are why I returned to posting here. But this memory is from earlier.
My memory:
-I first saw Denis at the 2009 Worlds. It was a
long competition. There were no world minimums, and we saw a
lot of singles skaters. There were a lot of rough skates in the men’s competition, per usual, and we sat a long time. In events like these, the crowd really is dying to stand up for anyone who goes clean. But there were not a lot of clean skates in the men’s event. And then this young kid from Kazakhstan came out on the ice for his free skate, and we really didn’t think anything about it.
By we, I mean my mother & I or anyone close by. Mom and I watch a lot of skating, but those were the days when you generally couldn’t get more than the top 5 athletes in any competition on U.S. television, and you sure couldn’t get anything with juniors.
So out Denis goes, and he knocks off a clean triple axel and
whee, we’re in the game. He’s clean. He holds his landings. We’re happy.
And he has Yagudin’s low sit spin, which is the point at which I remember saying, “Oh, he can spin.”
Then he’s still clean. And he has a tano position on one of the jumps (back when 99% percent of the athletes never did a tano position). Which makes the crowd gasp.
And at this point, we really, really want him to go clean. And he lands the last couple jumps, and tops it off with a frigging Plushenko biellman spin, and at this point everyone in the audience is in love.
We’re clapping clear through the footwork sequence and standing up. Not because it was a clean skate but because it was an
awesome skate. Because he had all the pieces. Everything we were looking for in a champion skater at that time but in this young kid from a country far, far away with no obvious record of skating champions.
Of course, then we realize he’s with Tarasova.
Denis went up relatively early. A lot of athletes skated after him.
But I remember walking back to our hotel with a group of other skating fans afterward & discussing the great performances from the event. We remembered Evan’s, of course. He had won.
Mother & the other ladies were thinking & thinking.
And I said, “And Denis Ten.”
“Denis!” Everyone in the group said. “Denis was wonderful!”
None of us had known who he was prior to the event. And I would wager no one in the arena ever forgot.
