OMG! I am so sad to read this news. Judy was one of the kindest, most reasonable posters here. It was always a pleasure to read her insightful posts. May her memory be for a blessing.
Olympia said:You're right about the disconnect that many people perceive between masculinity and gracefulness. That's one reason I love skating, because it has so many examples of men who are both. I also agree with you about the splendid effect of "what can happen when pairs teams stick together and with the same quality coach consistently." John Nicks was my first pairs coaching idol. I loved the smooth, jazzy, definitely western-hemisphere style that he imparted to Shelley and Starbuck and later to Tai and Randy. Both of these pairs had long careers, both as amateurs and pros. It was interesting that both the men never grew very tall, while both of the ladies did. The lifts that each pair did looked even more impressive to me because the guys had to be so strong. Tai and Randy were still skating when Cherkasova/Shakhrai were doing the gorilla-flea act with Sergei tossing twelve-year-old Marina into quadruple spinny things. The contrast was, as you can imagine, striking.
I was always fascinated to watch a pair or an ice dance couple do a move where just one of them (always the same one) did a spread eagle, and the other did not. The two examples I can remember are Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze (where she did a spread eagle with a lovely turnout) and Klimova/Ponomarenko (where, oddly, he was the one with the great turnout).
As for the skaters we're discussing now, I think I still prefer Curry and Wylie to Hanyu. They add more artistic maturity to the move. But I'm eagerly awaiting Yuzuru's artistic growth!