helsinkibaby

In honour of his return to competition at the Cup of Russia this weekend (how it finished notwithstanding), I bring you Johnny Weir's short program from the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. It's to Prince's I Love You, I Hate You which nicely sums up my history with Johnny Weir... around 2003/4/5, I loved him. 2006, I thought his diva streak came through a bit too much, particularly during the 2006 World Championships where after a particularly lacklustre short program he said in the press conference, words to the effect of "I don't care, I didn't even want to come here." All I could think of was the alternate for worlds, Michael Weiss, who had missed out on the Olympic/World team in a big upset to Matt Savoie who was at the end of his career and would have doubtless loved to be there... and if you know anything about how I feel about Michael Weiss, let me just point out that Johnny's behaviour made me feel sorry for a skater I absolutely cannot stand.

My thinking at the time was that the boy just needed to shut up and skate and post 2006, that's just what he did. He changed coaches to Galina Zemievskaya, (I have just butchered that spelling), was the lone USA medallist at 2008 Worlds ( I cheered), had an awful 2009 and didn't make worlds and then...

Then there was this.

Let me just tell you, there is a point in the midline step where you can all but see him flipping off the judges and the whole skate is glorious. Personally, I was in quite the dark place at the time of these games; this is one program that made me smile. Love him!

<--eschewing the 100 Things icon for Johnny.