Saturday, January 14, 2006

TV Preview: Ice Skating

This weekend, they'll be choosing the ice skating Olympic team, so ice skating is everywhere on TV. Look for it at ESPN2 at 6 p.m. and ABC at 8 p.m. Sunday it's back on ESPN2 at 1 p.m. (followed by women's college gymnastics at 2:30 p.m.) and concludes on ABC from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. That's a lot of triple lutzes!

On the men's side, the big news is Johnny Weir, skating better than ever. [Photo by Eileen Blass/USA Today.] Even ice skating officials call him "flamboyant," and since we're talking about the world of men's ice skating you know that's saying something. He wears a swan-like costume that Bjork would be proud of to skate to the music "The Swan," complete with a red glove on one hand that represents the beak. Weir calls the glove "Camille."

And now Weir is in trouble for continually using drug references to describe the routines they perform. Per USA Today, which has the best ice skating coverage of any newspaper in the country:
On Thursday, he compared the fans' reaction to his slower program and another skater's more lively one by saying, "This one they kind of sat back and had their cognac and cigarettes and relax. His was more like a vodka shot, let's snort coke kind of thing."
Top that, Bode Miller! It's only a matter of time before Weir gets his own reality show.

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