Goosebumps.

It's amazing that as much figure skating as I've watched in the last thirteen days, I just can't seem to get into the ladies. All of the talk about the new scoring system detracting from the artistic elements has finally caught up to me I guess. While watching the pairs and the ice dancing I thought it was great that the system was now demanding athleticism to be brought in to the routines, but we expect something different from the women as they skate alone. We want grace, and we get endless spinning crotch shots. We want them to float, not speedskate. We want art and power, and the times we get both seem to be few and far between anymore.

Perhaps I spoiled myself when I accidently broke cardinal rule #1 and clicked on ESPN.com this afternoon and was a touch too slow to raise my hand to the screen. Perhaps I further inflamed it when I went to NBColympics.com and clicked up the video of Sarah Hughes' free skate in 2002. But I'm not sorry for the latter; it was perhaps the most sublime performance I have seen in eight Olympics, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I choked up a good number of times while rewatching it. In every Olympics I have what I like to call the 'goosebumps test': who makes me absolutely unable to sleep that night after watching them. Sarah aced that one four years ago, a rising performance that just took your breath away with each element.

Tonight, there was sadly none of that (though of all the Olympians this time around, Irina was most certainly my most favorite to watch). I wish a gold medal could always be won in the strength of a competition, and not merely by default. With this new system yes we get plenty of jumps, but we don't get our goosebumps. Athletics and aesthetics, when done right, should be inseparable. When done right, they should make us jump.