En Bref (Short Stories)

On Artistry (Essay, Figure Skating)

I took my mom to Kelowna, to Skate Canada's Grand Prix event in 2019. There, she saw Hanyu, and since then she'd been watching whatever YouTube offered her on figure skating.

But this is not about the divine Yuzuru Hanyu, though as god is my witness, she adores the guy with the undying passion.

Another day, when we were chatting about the figure skating, she told me, "You know, I did watch figure skating before.

"It just popped into my memory, really strange. When I was a teen, they had interviewed this figure skater on TV. I saw him jump these huge jumps, and then he talked about wanting to go to the Olympics.

"And for two weeks afterwards, I got up at six in the morning to go running, because I thought, 'Wow, there is this guy my age, and he wants to be in the Olympics, and I want to be like him.'"

My mom competed locally as a hurdler when she was young. 

"I even remembered his name just now," she said.

I didn't hold my breath—my mom is nearly seventy, and for a couple of months I was used to her referring to Hanyu as Nijinsky—but when I asked after the name, she said, "Nepela."

Then she added, "Wonder if he ever made it into the Olympics."

I told her, "Yup, he did."

Ondrej Nepela, a Slovak skater, had become the 1972 Olympic Champion. He was also  a three-time World champion, and a five-time European champion. He was also born in the same year as my mom.

The point of this anecdote is that this conversation helped me figure out what I consider artistry, the most argued about thing about the figure skating. Everyone says their favorite has it in oodles and is underscored. Everyone says that those they don't love, don't have it and are over-scored. That's just human nature, I get it.

I saw Uno in 2018 Olympics, and he made me want to live, fight, achieve. 

I felt the same when I saw Trusova in 2019-2020 charge in again and again, jumping the quadruple jumps no woman had done before her to Drakarys--despite the snubs that this is not artistry, and doesn't belong in the ladies' skating.

But that's what artistry is to me. 

It extends the extraordinary to those who are watching it, lifts them up, instead of making them feel smaller. That's is the one true art.