Last night I watched and enjoyed something I usually detest and run away from. My wife was watching Women’s Figure Skating, and I decided that I needed to spend some time with her doing something she liked. Now granted, I was’t glued to the set, as I did have a baseball magazine with me, but I did want to watch some of it with her. Now before I say anything else, I must say I normally don’t watch this, so if any figure skating experts read this, forgive any “green” comments.

I think I saw four routines. The first one that really grabbed me was Fumie Suguri of Japan. She looked really smooth, and didn’t make any mistakes I could fiind (granted, I’d probably miss a lot being a neophyte). After her routine, I thought she was really good – and she was, but she didn’t place first (I think third). She also caught some of the stuff that’s thrown on the ice at the end of routines, which my wife said wasn’t normally done.

I did not see the routine of Irina Slutskaya, who is the one name I know from past competitions I’ve heard about. I knew she’d be good, and she was in first place the whole time I watched. I’ll have to watch hers on a rerun.

However, I have to admit to being totally surprised at how transfixed I was by the routine of Sasha Cohen. Normally I don’t pay this close attention (Yeah, yeah, skating’s on – where’s my baseball stuff?) – but this was very impressive. Yes, she took first place with her routine. But that’s not why. Normally skating doesn’t interest me – for the most part I feel that all of them have certain things they all do, and personal interpretation of said moves is something that escapes me. I generally feel they all look the same. But not this one. There was something extra in here – energy, style, smoothness – I don’t know what, but wow was it impressive. I even asked my wife not to delete the event off the TiVo, that I’d want to watch it again. Not only that I told her I wanted to watch the long form skating on Thursday night with her. Cohen looked good on the ice, it seemed perfect to my eyes. She did something impressive, and that’s actually make me want to watch skating again. That is an accomplishment with me of epic proportions.

You can see her routine over at NBC’s website for the olympics here.