Skates (was Re: corked bats)

[Jodi]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Cindy C." <cindysphynx at c...> 
wrote:

> 
> How many skates do skaters need, I wonder?  

Ooh, figure skating! My obsession (though sadly only as a fan). It's 
figure skating forums that are to blame for eating up all my online 
time so I can't keep up with HPFGU properly. Anyway, most skaters 
only have one pair of skates. When you're coming down from three or 
four revolutions in the air to land on a tiny sliver of steel 
everything has to be so precisely right in order to pull off the jump 
that even the tiniest thing can make a difference - like the very 
slight variations between two pairs of skates. It would just be too 
difficult to get sufficiently familiar with more than one pair of 
skates to be able to have full confidence in them. Also, breaking in 
skates can take months, and it can be pretty painful, so skaters 
generally don't like to have to do it any more often than is 
absolutely necessary. And then there's the cost; very few skaters 
actually make any money from their sport and it's an expensive one to 
pursue. For most skaters, even ones competing on the world level, 
it's a huge struggle to get together enough money to continue from 
year to year and they simply can't afford more than one pair at a 
time.

And actually this question comes up quite often as it's not all that 
uncommon for skaters to have to withdraw from a competition because a 
blade breaks or a boot gives way and they don't have any spares. It's 
also fairly common for skaters to be taken out with injuries from 
problems with new boots which is another reason they don't like to 
have to break new ones in too often. So all my supposed knowledge on 
this is basically just repeating the answers I've read before ;o)

> Cindy -- who would *love* to rifle through Michelle Kwan's 
collection 
> of skating costumes, and who would promise not to try to wedge 
> herself into any of them

Jodi, who found the greatest revelation in seeing skating live for 
the first time was not the speed or the power or the sound of the 
edges but how much prettier and sparklier the dresses are than on TV. 

(And I'm posting from the web for the first time so I hope this 
works.)