thatshamelessyaoishipper:

In case you didn’t get to watch the figure skating events at the Olympics, but you’d like to check out the male singles events but don’t really have 4 hours on your hands to watch the Short Program and then another 4 hours to watch the Free Skate, I decided to compile a list of figure skaters I think you should absolutely check out if you want to see a variety of great performance and not just the ones of the most famous skaters.

I’m not including Hanyu, Chan, Chen, Fernandez and Uno here because I expect that you already know of them and have therefore either already watched their performances or are planning to do so or maybe aren’t interested for whatever reason. This list will be a selection of the less famous, less media-covered skaters out there – because there are some beautiful skaters out there that the casual fan may not know simply because they’re not internationally popular.

All of these programs should amount to a total of around 50 minutes of watch-time (though obviously if you also watch the big names then that’ll take longer).

As a rule of thumb, I think the Free Skates of all of these skaters are worth watching, but also feel free to pick and choose based on your preferences. (Also keep in mind that some of these didn’t qualify to the Free Skate event at the Olympics.)

Also do keep in mind that you won’t find any of these on YouTube at the moment, however, if you check this site and find your country you should find a way to legally stream the events on demand wherever you live. If you’re in Europe, I especially recommend the current Eurosport deal, I got it and I’ve been really happy with the service (when will Eurosport sponsor me for all the good press I give them lol).

Note that this isn’t a ranking – I listed them chronologically based on their start times.

Without further ado, here’s my list:

• Chafik Besseghier – great energy, awesome steps and choreography, I really like his “taxi driver” theme and his personality on the ice. Honestly it’s a shame he doesn’t do better because more people should see him
• Vincent Zhou – skating to “Chasing Cars” in his SP and just giving wonderful performances in both of his programs, he’s a must-watch
• Matteo Rizzo – skating to Il Volo in his SP and I’m a slut for everyone who skates to Il Volo because I think their music really lends itself to emotional/intense performances so including them is a must
• Michael Christian Martinez – the only Filipino skater, sadly didn’t qualify to FS but worth checking out in my opinion
• Han Yan – skating to “A Thousand Years”, beautiful artistry
• Julian Zhi Jie

  Yee – the only Malaysian skater,
  sadly didn’t qualify to FS but worth checking out in my opinion

• Morisi Kvitelashvili – skating to “Feeling Good” by Michael Buble, and well, what’s more to say – it felt good
• Michal Brezina – gave a really clean performance in his SP and I honestly found it quite impressive, considering he’s not a young skater anymore
• Junhwan Cha – the hope of South Korea, training under Brian Orser with Hanyu and Fernandez. He’s really impressive despite being only 16. (He’s under Brian Orser – you know he must be good)
• Jorik Hendrickx – skating to “Je Suis Malade” and here I have similar reasons to Il Volo –
  I’m a slut for everyone who skates to

  emotional French songs because they lend themselves to intense programs so I always find them worth watching, but also I think Jorik’s steps are really captivating and work really well with the music

• Daniel Samohin – another one skating to Il Volo (though a different song of theirs than Matteo) so that’s an instant must-watch; I also think he’s interesting competition to Alexei Bychenko – his teammate
• Adam Rippon – must I say more than his name? You should already know you need to see him. LGBT icon and beautiful skater, that’s all the most important info.
• Dmitri Aliev – skating to a waltz in a very prince-like costume, he’s truly enthralling and I really like him – his SP at the Olympics was amazing and I think he’s an absolute must-watch
• Keiji Tanaka – the Japanese skater that people don’t talk about nearly enough, has a lot of personal appeal and his own artistry and just the way he skates is a pleasure to watch. He’s also skating to the tune of an electric guitar and we don’t have nearly enough of that in figure skating so this is welcome variety (also his SP costume looks similar to Yuuri’s FS costume but if anyone asks, you didn’t hear this from me)
• Alexei Bychenko – the “old man” of men’s singles but experiencing what is probably the best season of his life and it’s hard to not cheer for him. He’s also skating to Hava Nagila – a Jewish folk song which is pleasant diversity and he actually looks like he’s enjoying himself which is also great (and is weirdly rare for figure skaters).
• Deniss Vasiljevs – probably my favorite skater, amazing energy, beautiful steps, beautiful spins (as you’d expect from Stephane Lambiel’s student), he’s only inconsistent with jumps, but he’s a joy to watch regardless
• Boyang Jin – aka the amazing figure skater most forgotten by the media. If you haven’t seen any of his performances – you’re missing out. Such a joy to watch.

I do hope that one day all of these will be on YouTube so that I could make a playlist of them and make it easy to watch for new fans but this will have to do for now.

So what about you? What were some of your favorite performances during these Olympics? I might make a separate post for ladies and ice dance but for now, let’s discuss here!

All in all, I thought all skaters and their programs were great and worth watching in some way but I don’t expect most people to have enough time to watch all of them so hopefully this was an interesting overview of males singles at the 2018 Olympics!