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Monday, February 11, 2013

Oksana Baiul

Mentioning Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan in the previous post reminded me of Oksana Baiul. (This has become a stream of consciousness blog.)


I don't even watch the Winter Olympics anymore, and I've never been a dance fan. (The two most boring events I've ever attended were a piano recital and a modern dance performance.)

But I do remember being wowed by Baiul at the 1994 Olympics. Her figure skating had a willowy grace which far outshone the robotic performance of Nancy Kerrigan, the silver medalist. I enjoyed Baiul's ice dancing even more. Being able to perform this kind of euphoric dance while on skates is impressive. (The routine starts 40 seconds into the video.)

Baiul wasn't classically beautiful, but she somehow managed to be incredibly attractive. Watch the video and see if you disagree.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

John--She's not my type (not Asian) but she has that X factor of feminine character that's very attractive. And what an amazing skater she is, wow! Very interesting--Brian

John Craig said...

Thanks Brian. Yes, she's very feminine, though I also looked at some more recent clips of her and she seems a little less so. A lot of Russian (Ukrainian, actually, in her case) women seem to end up developing a hard look, not sure why.