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Who's your favorite skater?(single female/male)

Male...wow I have a lot. Despite his flaws, I'm a long-time Joubert fan. I know, I know...but I just can't help but love him. This season I've also become a massive Jeremy Abbott fan, and I'm praying he gets assigned TEB next season because I so very much want to see him live! My other favourites are Lambiel, Brezina, Kozuka, Oda, Weir, Verner, Bradley, the list goes on! Other than Plushenko (sorry!) I pretty much love them all.

Ladies, I don't have so many favourites in. Whilst I love Yu-na and Mao, my real favourite lady is Joannie Rochette. I also adore Ashley Wagner, Alissa Czisny, Sarah Meier and Elene Gedevanishvili.

Whilst you didn't ask, I think I'll tack on that my favourite pairs are Savchenko and Szolkowy, and my favourite dancers are...almost all of them! I'm a diehard Marlie and Virtue/Moir fan though.

However, readers of my blog probably know this already; I'm not too good at keeping my biases under control!

Ask me anything

Music Clash Round 2

For this next round of Music Clash I've chosen what has to be one of my favourite pieces of over-used music; the soundtrack to The Mission. Many skaters have used this music, especially the Gabriel's Oboe section, but today I'm just focusing on the use of it for ladies' short programs - in this case, between Alissa Czisny and Carolina Kostner.

For me, this one was definitely a runaway for Alissa; her spiral sequence in the program was fantastic and her cut of the music managed to include a lot of different sections without feeling erratic. She also seemed to have a much better interpretation of each part of the music than Kostner and Czisny's program seemed less rushed. But I'm sure many will disagree with me - what do you think?

I've embedded both programs below. I tried to find the best performance of each but Youtube would not let me embed many of Kostner's programs, such as her gorgeous performance from 2006 Europeans, so I had to settle for the one below from 2006 Worlds, which was less successful for her.