Angela Nikodinov - 1997 United States Figure Skating Championships, Ladies' Free Skate

[slcrawford2003]

Angela had a really good free skate, her only bobble was fall- out at the end of the triple loop. she should have gotten higher markes for a clean program. But as always politics in figure skating. As the years go by, Angela had the consitancy of being a beautiful skater to watch on Ice. In this performance, there are shades of Eastern European skating. which is a compliment :-)

[CharlieShipleyMusic]

@russianskatingfan I don't disagree with you. I just found it interesting that she was so far removed from everyone else even in the technical mark. You're right though, the overall impression of her skating that night was labored and not very impressive. The worst offense, a true LOL YOUR JUDGING moment, was the one judge who marked Michelle above Tara (5.7/5.9 vs. 5.8/5.8)

[russianskatingfan]

@CharlieShipleyMusic that judge should be banned for life for sheer incompetence.

[CharlieShipleyMusic]

The judging was just bananas at this event. I'm a numbers nerd, so I did some ordinal crunching: she lost to Nicole 6-3 and Michelle 7-2 (!). Only one judge had the presence of mind to place her 2nd in the free skate, as she rightfully should've been. She landed 5 clean triples, only bettered by Lipinski and equaled by... Amber Corwin?! 5th-places-across-the-board Amber Corwin? Yeah. It was a weird night.

[russianskatingfan]

@CharlieShipleyMusic I wasnt impressed with Amber's skate. I thought 5th was right for her. Angela was robbed bigtime though. The judges probably wanted to make sure Nicole made it to Worlds once Tonia bombed and with her low short program placing the only way to do that was to mark Angela down below both Nicole and Michelle in the long. She was the sacrificial lamb, as she often was in the U.S.

[barkingtree88]

She had a better skate than Nicole Bobek and Michelle Kwan... technically much more difficult!  And goood enough artistically to make the world team, IMO

[russianskatingfan]

@barkingtree88 I know, it was terrible she was put down off the team. Total BS decision. Bobek bombed the short and despite doing a sort of clean long had only 4 triples. Kwan bombed the long (although still did 4 triples, the same as Nicole's good performance which lazy underachiever Nicole should be ashamed about, hehe). It was purely political.

[russianskatingfan]

By the way Kwan was by far the most overscored for her shitty lame performance that night which a couple of moronic judges even scored as high as 5.7 for technical and 5.9 for presentation.

[officeaddict33]

@russianskatingfan - there were multiple years where Kwan prob should not have won Nationals.

[russianskatingfan]

@officeaddict33 not sure if I agree with that. I find most years Kwan was scored fairly at Nationals (well as far as winning, most of her 6.0s were ridiculous). This was one year she was really held up though.

[stefrevollo]

great to see she was so strong till the end, landing five clean tripes (even if prerotated, they are so straight and quick) incl. two flutzes and one beautiful flip.

I also think she shoud have placed above Bobek who was overmarked with only four easy triples (exc. for the futz they for once called a flip which it is !)

[russianskatingfan]

@stefrevollo if she placed above Bobek she would have also placed above Kwan. Bobek was 2nd in the long above Kwan, and only didnt beat her since it was 1st and 6th place finishes in the short. Nikidinov coming 2nd in the long to Kwan's 4th would have passed her overall though.

[xmykeyx]

Really deserved Silver at these championships... I would've placed her 3rd SP and 2nd LP.

[ft192]

Beautiful skate for her. She was a breath of fresh air in that championships. Thank you for posting this.

[EddieEntertaiment]

Love Her =)