The best pair won

Now the US Figure Skating Chamionships is over for me. I got to see the pairs short and long programs. The pair I picked to win won. So that was cool. I only know her first name, Brooke, and his last name which I don't want to spell wrong. I'll come back in and edit this and fill in the names. The reason they won is that they never screwed up and were so tight and together on everything. Plus she was the most atletic of all of the women. They got a standing ovation tonight after their performance and nobody else did. It was just their night.
This photo is from the short program, but it shows how high he could throw her and how buffed she is. She has "junk in her trunk". (I know a guy who used to play football for the Chargers who taught me that.:) She looks good from behind anyway.
They looked good from all sides. They deserved to win. Below is the guy who wore fishnet the other day. She was also really athletic. They are young and still improving as a pair. He almost fell when he threw here in this shot.
She is going to be really good. When they were warming up she was skating backwards and making these "slalom turns" back and forth and I think it was one of the most beaufiful things I saw during the whole event.

So I guess I learned a few things. First, photography:

I learned how hard it is to get decent shots at something like this from the crowd. It was ok to take photos, you just can't sell them, you couldn't use flash, and you couldn't take movies. There's a lot of "noise/ grain" in the photos as I'm pushing my camera to it's limits to get exposures, zoom in, and still stop action. So these don't have much value except for e-mail or something. I did crop and shrink the size down to post. The ice was so bright and the seating area was dark, so if I metered light off of the ice, the shot would be dark, before each shot I'd meter between the the two and then turn and get the shot. At the same time I'd zoom, compose, and focus and judge when something cool would happen. It wasn't easy. There are a lot nicer digital cameras than mine. At some point I'll up-grade, but no matter what camera you have you still have to understand a few things to make it all work. It isn't like you can go out and buy a great camera and it will do everythihg for you. It just doesn't work that way.

Second: I no longer have the attitude I used to have about figure skating. I mostly had an attitude because of how terrible the coverage of ski racing is during the Olympics in compairson. I realize that skating makes for a more popular TV show and is easier to cover. But when it comes to "sports" I'm not sure if this is pure sport. This kind of crosses over into entertainment, especially when the results are not clear to the viewers. Several times the scoring made no sense and just seemed unfair. I think that's a problem they need to work on. But tonight the best pair won and I had picked them as my favorite, so it's all good. (Plus it was FREE!)