Word: skater
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that move alone, however, that secured Kulik highest honors. His entire routine, skated to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, was playful and precise. He landed every one of his eight triple jumps flawlessly. And when the competition was finished, the generally impassive skater even managed to show a trace of humor. "The shirt won," he joked to reporters, referring to his less-than-becoming giraffe-print top. "It's lucky. I don't think I'll be getting any more questions about the shirt...
...than usual. Skating to the sound track from the movie The Ghost and the Darkness, he seemed sapped and uninspired. The sport's most explosive jumper, he failed to awe the audience as he so often does. Although a master of the four-revolution jump (he was the first skater to land a quad-triple combination in competition), he couldn't muster the fortitude to show one off in Nagano. Moreover, he was sloppy in landing a triple loop, normally an easy move for him. Stojko had hoped to break the "Canada curse" and win for his country its first...
...through the long one. He turned two triple-triple jump combinations into triple-doubles, singled one triple Axel and fell while trying to insert another at the end. Watching the performance, his training partner and friend, gold-medal contender Tara Lipinski, nervously gripped the arm of U.S. pairs skater Jenni Meno. When Eldredge fell, Lipinski covered her eyes in sadness. "Nothing went all that great," he said later. "I'm disappointed. It took me six years to get here. Maybe I wanted the medal too badly...
...Lillehammer in 1994. What sets the Russians apart from most rivals in the sport--a combination of ballroom dancing and skating--is not only their innovative choreography but also their breathtaking speed. Grishuk, an aspiring actress who has changed her first name from Oksana to avoid confusion with singles skater Oksana Baiul, is particularly admired for her quick, clean-edge turns known as "twizzles." The high technical difficulty of the pair's programs has resulted in a few falls this season, but they accept the risk. "If we made our dance easier, we would never fall," says Platov...
...sport of speed skating is at one of those pivotal junctures, with good old tradition being upended by a Dutch contraption called the clap skate. Unlike the conventional skate heel, the heel of the clap skate's boot detaches from the blade like a one-way seesaw. The skater's heel lifts off the blade, lengthening the blade's contact time on the ice, then the blade snaps back to its original position with a noisy "clap." The result: 16 world records fell in a two-month period--some by more than a second...