- [Scott] Yes! The galloping peacock.
And look at him getting air on that.
Flawless, just textbook perfection.
[dramatic opera music]
And there are very few women
in the history of this sport
that skate with this kind of beauty.
- When he is doing this motion with his hand,
like, that doesn't,
that gets you zero points.
This is something that figure skaters know and make fun of.
Like, we always are like, "Oh, the peacock."
Hey GQ, I'm Mariah Bell,
and this is part two of "The Breakdown."
[funky upbeat music]
"The Cutting Edge 3."
[soft music] ♪ With only a dream ♪
[low ominous music]
Okay. Yeah, no.
Okay.
We'll just go ahead and pause that.
In the beginning, that was very realistic
because that's called the head banger.
So, like, pairs actually do that move,
but never, ever would they be thrown out of it.
So that's extremely unrealistic.
Pairs do something called a twist,
and that's where the guy throws the girl
directly above him and catches him like that.
So the end of that was a move,
but they would never go together.
Like, that doesn't even make sense
because it's also like you can't throw somebody
who's upside-down and then all of a sudden,
they're rotating right-side-up.
And then the guy throws
and then gets over underneath her and catches her.
It's a cool concept, but it would never happen.
So a triple twist is what pairs actually do.
And the end of what you saw before,
when he was catching her,
that's the end of an actual triple twist.
It's so funny because in movies,
they always want to portray figure skating competitions
as, like, spotlights, and it's dark.
That never happens in competition.
It's actually really hot and really bright
because of all the TV cameras and lights and stuff.
The guy wearing jeans would also never happen in skating.
You can't skate in jeans,
doing lifts and throwing and jumping.
Really, nobody skates in jeans.
"The Mighty Ducks."
- [Announcer] Third period, and the Ducks trail 4-2,
trying desperately to get back in the game.
The Ducks with Tammy and Tommy Duncan on the ice.
Tammy Duncan goes in front of the net,
Tommy with the puck, and Tammy's spinning,
a figure skating move.
The Hawks are just looking at her.
- Come on. - Come on!
- Now!
- [Announcer] Tammy Duncan shoots! She scores!
[crowd cheering] - Yes! Yes!
We're still alive!
- The biggest thing between hockey and figure skating
in terms of the equipment is
that hockey players don't have a toe pick.
So, we have a toe pick on the edge,
or at the end of our blade,
and that's what assists us in jumping
and getting up in the air. So, it's like the pick point
when we want to jump up into the air.
And hockey players don't have that,
but I think hockey players would be, like,
tripping over the toe pick a bunch,
and then figure skaters would be like,
"Where's the toe pick?"
It would be a lot easier
for a figure skater to get used to hockey, probably,
because there's no jumping and spinning.
But a hockey player would definitely have
the foundational skating skills,
but to actually spin and jump would definitely take time.
Hockey players are super, super powerful.
And so, in our program, there's times
when we need bursts of energy,
and we need to gain a lot of speed,
and so we do edge classes or power classes,
which hockey players would be able to do.
So it's all the same stuff.
We're not jumping or spinning,
we're just working on maneuvering about the ice.
And so, honestly, their power and speed is something
that figure skaters could definitely benefit from.
I do know a couple people
who were hockey players and figure skaters,
and then they kind of ended up choosing figure skating.
The basis of the two sports are exactly the same.
"Blades of Glory."
[dramatic opera music]
[chuckles] Okay.
Actually, can we go back just a little bit?
Okay, that's a triple axel.
No way that somebody that tiny would do that.
You can see it's obviously very edited when he's rotating,
but the basis of this,
yes, people do this exact jump,
but not this small.
I don't think it's possible to do it
when you're that little
'cause it requires so much strength and power.
And you can see, actually, just in the way he's skating,
he's very, not low level, but just young.
So actually, the skating skills wouldn't match
an element like that.
[dramatic opera music]
[crowd cheering]
- [Scott] Here it comes.
And he nails it! [crowd cheering]
- Okay, the spin that he did from transitioning
when he was little to big is called a front scratch.
The jump that he just did was a double sal,
which is way easier than the jump
that he did when he was little.
So, that doesn't really make sense.
Nobody at the Olympics does a double sal.
They're doing triples and quads.
Not that there's anything wrong with it,
but like nobody would ever wear what he is wearing.
[laughs]
And he did this move where there was, like, glitter
that came out.
If anything that is on us falls on the ice,
we get a minus-one deduction,
so that would never happen.
[dramatic opera music] - Now there's the arm.
And you know what that means.
- [Scott] Yes, the galloping peacock!
And look at him getting air on that!
Flawless, just textbook perfection.
And there are very few women
in the history of this sport
that skate with this kind of beauty.
[crowd cheers]
- They talk about this move that he does
like it's some huge point-gaining element.
You don't get any points.
That's a transitional move.
We have two scores.
So, we have our technical score
and our program component score.
And this would help you get grade of execution points
in your program component score,
but this isn't a point-gaining element.
So there's no reason for them to be like,
"Wow, this is so incredible."
Except if the judges like it,
they can give you some boost in your grade of execution
and interpretation and that kind of stuff,
but you don't have a set amount of points
that you would get for this element.
This is something that figure skaters know and make fun of.
Like, we always are like, "Oh, the peacock."
But it's great because it's super funny.
Oh, that thing! He did this thing.
That's also just a transitional thing,
but I've never seen anybody at a high level do that.
I feel like the judges would be like,
"I don't know about that."
We do have a rule for men and women,
and it's kind of changed
throughout the last couple of years,
but 70% of your torso and body has to be covered.
Some people were going pretty scandalous,
and if it's too much,
you can get a costume violation for that.
So it just has to be, I guess, tasteful.
That didn't last very long, 'cause, like,
what's tasteful and what's not?
It became too much of a debate.
I mean, maybe the front of this.
Like, he has mesh and some sequins, that would happen.
There would never be something on his butt.
He better hope he doesn't fall
because I don't know how that would feel,
[laughing] something on your butt.
But no, nobody would ever wear that. [laughing]
"Kiss and Cry."
- I just think he meant dating an athlete was hard because-
- I know what he meant.
- Carley!
No phones!
On the ice. Now!
["Paper Legs" by Sky Barbarick]
♪ Stone walls on a heavy ground ♪
♪ Paper legs will fold without a sound, sound ♪
- We can stop there for a second.
I think that they're, like,
they seem like they're training with this group of people.
The girl that's just standing up has rental skates,
so that doesn't make any sense
because if you're training,
you would have your own pair of skates.
Also, the rink that they're skating in,
I believe is called Cricket Club,
and it's in Canada,
and it's like a very high-level rink.
It's notorious for not having any boards.
There's not many rinks that don't have boards.
So, basically, that would mean
that there's no hockey happening at this rink.
So the boards are really for the hockey players
to check and run into,
and the glass, that's so the pucks wouldn't hit people.
There's no hockey happening at this rink,
this is dedicated to figure skating.
We don't need boards for anything.
If we fall, sometimes we'll hit the boards,
but it's not very common.
I haven't skated in many rinks with no boards,
but it is really fun.
It's also incentive to, like, not get too close
to where there's no wall.
When she's sitting on the ice, I feel that
because I will fall sometimes, and you just need a second,
so you just sit on the ice for a little bit.
So right here, she's setting up for a jump.
So what she would be setting up for is an axel
or a double axel.
And then when we go through,
she just skates through it.
So that doesn't really make sense.
That's, like, that would be like a mistake.
You setting up for something, and then you are like,
"No, I'm not focused enough to do it."
A skater would be, "Oh, she missed that."
But somebody who doesn't know, it's just skating.
Skaters that are a little bit older,
if you're injured, and you're getting back into skating,
you have this ability to skate and to coach,
so if you can't train, it's like,
"Well, I could be making money."
You know, like teaching younger skaters.
And it's also a great way to be on the ice.
So usually if you're injured,
you're not coming back full-on right away.
You're kind of doing little things to get back.
And these basic elements,
even just her helping coach little kids,
would be a great way that you would start skating again.
Most skaters who are competing are also coaching,
especially this younger level.
This is definitely something that people coming back
from injuries would do.
So that's like, I think, illegal.
I think coaches can't solicit themselves.
That seems a little extreme,
but I've just always heard coaches don't solicit.
Coaches don't go be like, "I'm gonna coach you."
Like, no, that doesn't happen.
Also, I don't know why he would watch her coach
and be like, "I'm gonna coach her,"
because she's not doing anything.
Coaches might see skaters and see potential in them,
but it always comes from,
the skater has to want to work with that coach.
In Russia, for example, I know things are different,
so you're told what coach to go to
'cause they have this, like, assembly line of skaters,
and they're all pretty much going to this one camp.
In the U.S., we don't have that,
so you can work with whoever you want,
and I've never heard of a coach scoping out an athlete
to work with and being like, "I'm gonna coach you."
"Ice Castles."
[dramatic building music]
[crowd cheering]
At this point, I believe she's already blind.
It'd be really hard to skate if you couldn't see.
The idea of it is amazing, though,
that she's like so in touch with the ice
that she can do all of this.
So the last thing that she did was called a lunge.
She ended on the ice.
It's kind of confusing,
but there's a new rule recently that you can have,
usually, and at this time for sure,
if she would've put her hand down,
that would've been considered a fall.
Now, the rules are a little bit different,
but if you do a move like that now
but you look a little unstable,
the judges can call it a fall if they feel like it.
But the way that she ended is a very common way
that people end,
and the transitions and everything
that she did, skating-related, is very accurate.
It would be really hard to have body awareness and jump
if you were visually impaired.
Even skaters that aren't visually impaired,
you're dizzy.
You're very, very dizzy coming out of spins.
That would be really hard,
to not really be able to see that well,
and then just skate out of a spin.
It's interesting 'cause when we jump, we don't see.
Like, I don't see things when I jump
because everything is so quick,
but just the proprioception to know where you are,
I think it would be almost impossible
if you couldn't see to kind of know where you were.
In the movie, she learns where the boards are,
and you could probably do that.
But skaters that aren't visually impaired,
we're still running into the boards,
so that would also be very hard.
"Go Figure."
[funky upbeat music]
Again, this idea of it being dark
and there being spotlights,
there's never been a competition like that.
And, yes, I remember this movie being about
she couldn't get a scholarship for skating,
so she got it through hockey.
So you can get a scholarship through syncro
because there are colleges that have syncro teams,
and that's where there's, like, 12 or 20 skaters
all skating together.
But individual skaters, there are no scholarships.
So that's very accurate
and sad that there aren't,
that there isn't that opportunity for skaters.
It's sort of like an illusion.
An illusion is an element that you do
where you swing your leg up, and your body tilts down.
I can't remember what this, specifically, is called,
but it is a common thing that people do,
and you are allowed to do it in competition.
It seems like it's more of a show element, though.
This is something that you would kind of do
into a spin or whatnot,
and a lot of times, when you're going into a spin
or kind of transitioning, you're trying to recover.
And so you're not gonna do elements
that are a little more tricky, usually.
Sometimes, to make it more creative,
but this isn't super common for people to do in competition.
Usually, if you're doing this many steps and turns,
you're starting a footwork sequence.
She doesn't do enough to actually make a footwork sequence.
She's essentially wasting time. [laughs]
You only have so much time
in a program to get elements done,
and it's not common that you would do a transitional thing
that's that long 'cause you're just eating up too much time.
On the boards, it said "Senior National Championships,"
around the wall.
We don't have that.
It's just National Championships,
and then there are different levels that you can compete at,
but there's nothing that's called
Senior National Championships.
The spin doesn't make any sense
because we have leveled spins.
You need a certain number of number of positions
or you need to hold things a certain number of times.
I'm not even sure what level she would get on this
in today's skating.
You would never do a combination spin like that
because you're not hitting enough bullets
to get a level on it.
Also, her friends are, like, in full hockey attire
at the side of the boards.
I don't know why they would do that.
There's never been a national championships
that's close to hockey happening.
So, yeah, and then, it just irks me that everybody thinks
that we compete in spot lights.
It's never happened.
But everything else is pretty much good.
Thanks so much for watching these clips with me.
I hope you learned something.
See you next time.
[upbeat music]