Is 'The Quad' King of Men's Figure Skating?

How important is this damn jump? The quad is of course what I'm talking about.

Almost exclusive to men's figure skating (Miki Ando of Japan is the only women to have landed one in competition), the quad is four revolutions in the air as opposed to the usual three.  The most common quad is the toe-loop, but the salchow has also been landed in competition.

You'd think it was the most important thing in Men's figure skating considering the dust up it caused between French skating star Brian Joubert and his closest rivals for two consecutive World Figure Skating Championships. At last years' World Championships in Sweden, Joubert had a bit of a press temper-tantrum post event after being smacked by Canada's Jeffrey Buttle in the free skate, sans quad. He complained that the quad should be rewarded and that skaters who don't try it shouldn't win events.  Fast forward to L.A. last month and apparently Joubert wasn't over his defeat from last season when he brought the topic up again. This time, American Evan Lysacek and Canadian Patrick Chan worked him over, again with no quad.  Joubert and Chan had a bit of a press tug-of-war as Chan backed his teammates win the previous season and Joubert continued his temper-tantrum...

For the record, at both events, Joubert hit gorgeous quads in his free skate.

Back to the question, is the quad ultimately so important? There has been so much chatter about in the blogosphere and other media outlets, but this season it has been kind of like, "Great if you got it, but really not necessary." The judges are as apt to greatly reward a fantastic footwork sequence as they are a nice quad.

Where I have seen the quad given its due is when it is combined with remarkable artistry...that's rare however. There have been few 'quad-in' peformances since the retirement of the Russian Greats Alexei Yagudin and Evgeny Plushenko (who is reportedly coming out of retirement...but we'll see) that would make one sit up and go "Whoa...that was amazing!" In recent memory I can only come up with two such performances...Daisuke Takahashi's (Japan) 2008 Four Continents Cup performance and Brian Joubert's 2006 Cup of Russia performance (the program was really helped by the fact that he hit 3 quads...only two other men have done that; Timothy Goebel and Takeshi Honda).

In the end, I guess the quad can be a great separator of equally matched talent. It can lend a great performance an extra nudge and make it the best performance of the night. However, if you are using the quad to overcome other shortcomings in your skating such as crap choreography, lack of speed, bad spins, etc., it really doesn't get the job done and becomes almost obsolete...as a competitor like Brian Joubert can no doubt tell you given his experiences the last two seasons.

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Needless to say Aaron Harris is crazy about figure skating! He eats, drinks, and breathes the sport! You can check out more of Aaron's figure skating thoughts at his blog, Axels, Loops, and Spins

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