Nothing hurts a team more than early success, and this team endured a lot of bad feelings regarding their 1994 Olympic Gold medal against the incomparable Torvill and Dean, and others. Most viewers did not realize they had been in the 1992 games, and were junior competitors in the 1980's. I very much enjoyed their early skating; however....., they started a very regrettable trend, (that has continued far to long, in my opinion), of very fast skating that had only the most superficial connection to their music. Ice dancers CAN skate TOO fast!!! Here, they very definately show us what sultry, sexuality is all about!!! (and then some)....Pleschenko's Sex Gun had NOTHING on this girl!!!!
I knew my interest in figure skating had deteriorated to a new low, when (in 1996) I almost came to blows in a fisticuffs with some members of the Russian mafia in the parking lot of the Skating Club of Wilmington!! (Maybe we should have started building that illegal immigrant wall around the University of Delaware??!) Technical brilliance is one thing......preening, quite another! .....and slapping a Crucifix on your costume and calling it "great art" is bound to raise a craw in the throat of any true skater with integrity! It took me a long time to acknowledge that "yes" they were good, but in the end...not many west of the Baltic Sea ever really cared....which is a shame, because Platov, it turns out, is one of the nicest people on the planet!!! On final balance, I give them a very "sticky" thumbs up!!!
