#ICYMI - Figure Skating Physics, with Olympic Medalist Sasha Cohen

The Winter Olympics are here! Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice kick off our series of episodes about Olympic sports with the physics of the most watched event: figure skating. Physicist John Eric Goff is back, along with figure skating analyst Jackie Wong, and Olympic silver medalist Sasha Cohen. Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on: TuneIn: tunein.com/playingwithscience Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360 GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjq SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-science Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-science NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/figure-skating-physics-with-olympic-medalist-sasha-cohen/ Photo Credit: Rich Moffitt (originally posted to Flickr as Opening pose) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:10Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:11Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science. Today, we glide with effortless grace whilst dazzling you with a double, or maybe even a triple. We will most certainly salco and most definitely do it all whilst on the edge.

• 0:26Chuck Nice?

  I think it's salchow, isn't it?

• 0:28Gary O'Reilly?

  No, salco.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  Salco? Oh, really?

• 0:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep.

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 0:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome to English language.

• 0:32Chuck Nice?

  Thank you. Yeah, that ain't English, believe me.

• 0:35Gary O'Reilly?

  That's enough.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  And for those of you who don't quite get figure skating as an Olympic sport, get out of here. You know you love it. You watch it all the time. It's got the highest ratings. Gymnastics went on a date with ballet and ended up in the ice rink and you know you love it.

• 0:49Gary O'Reilly?

  To make sure we nail this, once again, we have our good friend Professor Eric Goff, who is going to break down the science. And with us throughout the show, along with the good professor, we have figure skating analyst Jackie Wong, who will no doubt be marking both Chuck and I on our performance. And there is absolutely no hope of either you and I meddling.

• 1:08Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that is for sure. And to give us an unrivalled performance POV, we have three-time world championship medalist, former Team USA figure skater Sasha Cohen. Yeah, that's gonna be awesome.

• 1:21Gary O'Reilly?

  That is gonna be incredible. Right, welcome to the good professor. We will have you on board for quite a large part of this show. And in the studio with us, Jackie Wong.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Happy to be here.

• 1:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Look, the name of your podcast, once again, so as everybody knows upfront, please.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Ice Talk.

• 1:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Ice Talk.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Ice Network.

• 1:39Chuck Nice?

  Ice Talk?

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Yes, it's a little bit similar.

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  It starts off with Ice Talk.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  Very cool, very cool. And so I would assume that you have a very rabid fan base, because what I know about people who like figure skating is that they are some of the most passionate fans that you will ever encounter in your life.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  I mean, it's totally true, but it's also true that Patriots fans are a little bit...

• 2:07Gary O'Reilly?

  If I had to pinpoint the one standout feature of a figure skater, where would you go? Would it be they've got to be unbelievably graceful, strong, or is there one component, one component for you that screams top class?

• 2:22Speaker 02

  It's not something that you really see physically, but it's core strength. Everything is about core strength with figure skating. When you're, when you're jumping in the air and your landing jumps at, you know, whatever, eight to 10 times your, your body weight and in pressure, like you really have to be stable and you really have to figure out how you don't collapse when, when you land those jumps. And it's the same thing with the spins. You can't spin at the rate of revolution that, that we do without being actually very strong there.

• 2:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Eric, this is perfect timing for you. What sort of forces, male or female figure skater, once they start to perform, what sort of forces are they exposed to in terms of takeoff, spinning, landing, et cetera?

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Well, they're certainly having to get off the ice with a couple of times their weight if they're going to execute some spins. Keep in mind, the, the great athletes in the NBA who go up and we get dazzled by a 360 spin dunk. These ice skaters are going up spinning two, three, and even four times. And they're landing on a little blade on some slippery ice. They're not, you know, landing on a nice hard court floor. So the athleticism is incredible and I definitely agree with Jackie. You're talking about a lot of core strength involved in executing these techniques.

• 3:45Gary O'Reilly?

  So I think Chuck, what we've just learned is under no circumstances from now on do we applaud LeBron James.

• 3:51Chuck Nice?

  That's it, LeBron James. Uh, seriously, try that with some skates on, buddy.

• 3:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  See what, see what happens. All right. There you go.

• 3:57Gary O'Reilly?

  We just might, we just might applaud. Uh, okay, Jackie, what else? I mean, I, I look at, I look at figure skaters and I think they must be fearless. I don't want to walk on the ice. Right? This is just me, my inner coward has spoken, let alone start to skate, build up speed, and then perform a whole routine of twists, triples and doubles, and then even begin to think about landing without falling on my backside.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, fearlessness is certainly a characteristic. I mean, it's, it's not, you don't, you don't get the kind of downhill skiing kind of fearlessness, right? It's a different kind of, uh...

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Exposure to danger that you have with figure skating because you've got sharp things on your feet. You've got a surface that you're landing on that is completely, you know, harsh, right? It's the hardest thing that you can land on in terms of sports, the ice.

• 4:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  And, you know, any kind of slip of an edge or just any kind of accident, you've got problems, so.

• 5:07Chuck Nice?

  With that in mind, two things. One, so in gymnastics, you practice with a harness because when you're flipping, if you miss your flip, you don't want to hit the, and it's a mat that you're falling on, a nice little pad, but they still put a harness on you. I would imagine you can't do that when you are learning these maneuvers in ice skating, or do you?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  So there is, there are harnesses that you train on, and especially when you are training a new jump, especially when you're going one revolution up, right? Like if you're, if you're used to doing double jumps and it's the first time you've ever done a triple jump, you're usually on a harness.

• 5:44Chuck Nice?

  And how does that work? Are you on a trampoline? Are you still on the ice?

• 5:48Speaker 02

  The ice.

• 5:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  What, what happens is there are two, there are two types of harnesses that are generally used. One is a harness that is kind of connected to a wire that's like on the ceiling.

• 6:04Chuck Nice?

  Like on a track.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, on a track. And, and the coach will basically be, be the other side of the lever, right? Or the pulley, right?

• 6:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Have a great relationship with your coach.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:15Gary O'Reilly?

  You really have to have a great relationship with your coach for that one.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  And you're, you're literally in this thing, and the idea is that you're not, the coach isn't pulling you up so much as they are.

• 6:25Chuck Nice?

  Spotting you.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Spotting you, yeah. So if you, if something goes wrong, you, the coach kind of keeps you from, you know, hitting your head on the ice.

• 6:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Everything is ice related then. You, you don't just start to take all of this performance routine, rehearse it. In a nice, comfortable environment. Every, so once, so every time you perform in competition, you have been performing on ice and training on ice all of the time. So it's reinforcing that.

• 6:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's time to you spend on the ice. As Gary said, everything is on the ice. So let's say, um, let's say I just wanna know, I wanna do a double, I wanna learn a double toe loop. How much time would I have to be on the ice? And first, before you answer that, walk us through what a double toe loop is. And then, how much time would I have to spend on the ice to learn how to do that?

• 7:13Speaker 02

  So, without getting too technical, the double toe loop is a jump where you pick off your, uh, your free leg, so not your landing leg. So if, if you're, if you rotate counterclockwise, which most skaters do, you land on your right foot. So you, uh, for, for those skaters, you pick off of your left toe pick and you go up in the air and you spend two times.

• 7:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Pick is the serrated edge of the.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  That is correct, yeah.

• 7:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, sorry.

• 7:41Chuck Nice?

  And when you say pick off, it's when you see them, they're skating backwards and then you see them pull that leg up and it looks like they're almost hacking the ice with the, with the front of the skate.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:52Chuck Nice?

  And that's a, that's a pick off, is that, that means pick off?

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Pick off, pick in, it depends on who you talk to, but.

• 7:59Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, so it's, it's, you, you take off from hitting the toe pick on the ice and generating that, uh, that force to go up in the air. And, um, and there's, there's certain kinds of other physics of like your leg swinging and your, your body being in the right.

• 8:16Gary O'Reilly?

  We'll get to those, don't worry about that. The good professor is waiting, ready to go on that one.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  I will, I will not be talking too much about physics, but the, um, uh, then after you pick off the, that toe pick, you rotate twice around and then you land on the right foot, your landing foot.

• 8:33Gary O'Reilly?

  The axis of rotation is head through to.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Correct. Yeah.

• 8:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 8:38Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty wild.

• 8:39Gary O'Reilly?

  So.

• 8:39Chuck Nice?

  So how long would it take to, how much time would I spend on the ice to do something like that?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  It's.

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  In hours.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  It's very, it's very dependent. I mean, I, I would not say I was the most talented figure skater in the world, but it took me. Probably a year of training to get to a double jump.

• 8:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god.

• 9:00Gary O'Reilly?

  You may have missed your chance.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh man. And okay, and now that we're there, how much weight would I have to lose in order to pull this off? No, I'm joking. Oh my god, a year?

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:13Chuck Nice?

  That's insane.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  You have to, you have to get all the basics first. You have to figure out how to actually move on the ice. You have to actually figure out how to jump on the ice and, and those take a lot.

• 9:22Chuck Nice?

  You guys consider that like a basic move, right?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  It is.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's like a basic move. A year of your life to learn one basic move.

• 9:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Day one stuff.

• 9:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh man.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  I mean, you, you, you'll see some of the, the more talented figure skaters will, you know, they'll, they'll be four years old and, and, you know, within a couple of months, they'll get a double jump.

• 9:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Right. You're crushing him. Absolutely crushing him with the, with the, you'll see four year olds.

• 9:47Gary O'Reilly?

  So let's get to the professor.

• 9:48Chuck Nice?

  Let me just say now, I'm hanging up my sequin tights.

• 9:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, well, not, not just yet. We've got plenty more show to go.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Rhinestones now.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  Well, let me pick up a couple of points real quick.

• 9:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Please do, please do. Double toe loop and then pick up from there, wherever you want.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  So, you know, Jack had mentioned that the training methods, I've seen some of the, the British divers. Uh, when they train, they can go into a nice padded gymnastics facility and they actually have a diving board in there and they can practice leaping from the board. So as long as you're over, uh, you know, liquid water and your main experience in the Olympics is what you're doing above the water. Then you can do that in a nice, warm, cozy facility. But of course with ice, uh, there is no way to simulate that. You just have to get out on the ice and do your training out there. Um, so as far as taking a year to do the training too, I mean, I, I think Gary, you could probably tell Chuck how long it takes to hit a nice 30 yard cross into the box.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  Uh, 30 yards, you know, with a nice bend on it with a soccer ball. I mean, you know, those types of things take a long, long time to, to perfect.

• 10:54Gary O'Reilly?

  It's, it's how much time you have. It's how.

• 10:57Chuck Nice?

  I got 10 minutes.

• 10:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, the, there's, there's got to be an equation professor, and I am not the one to, to, to push that forward, apart from suggest that there is. The amount of natural ability you have, and we are still talking about figure skating here. Plus the amount of time you have, plus the dedication and the amount therein. The coefficient of dedication. Well, I've just invented something. Well done, mate.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  I like it.

• 11:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, thank you. And you add all of that together and then you get an idea of how much time it takes. Because some guys, as you say, this four-year-old who's just absolutely natural, or this other person who gets there because they work their way through it and they dedicate and they have this other thing going on.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  There's a revolution of off-ice training that has changed quite a bit over the last, you know, a couple of decades where you do a lot more off-ice training and it's not literally just, you know, you just do jumps on the ice. There are kind of these machines that you'll see, like if you Google Mariah Nagaslu, for example, she's got a video that somebody did of her where you see her training the triple axel off ice and it's literally her on this kind of lazy Susan kind of thing

• 12:15Speaker 02

  where you get the harness to rotate in such a way that when she jumps, she's literally just pulling in and doing the rotations. So there are different methods of training now that have made things like all these quads that the guys are doing, the triple axels that the women are starting to attempt more now, that makes those things much more possible.

• 12:42Gary O'Reilly?

  A quad being?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Four times around.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Four times, yeah.

• 12:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. Whoa. So, okay, Professor, Chuck wants to do a double-toe loop.

• 12:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's go through some of the physics involved in that and then we'll go for the big stuff. We'll go from double-toe loop to a quad and then break down the physics and the forces and everything else that takes place within executing that kind of, what do we call it?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Routine? Program.

• 13:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Program.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Program, yeah.

• 13:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  So Jackie's exactly right about the, you know, the new training techniques. It's a lot of things you can do off the ice, but of course, if you're going to train to do the actual jump, you really have to. Perfect how you get off the ice. And you absolutely want to be able to do it right. After you're off the ice so that the core strength, the training on how to pull the arms in, the rotation feel. Uh, learning to prevent a little bit of dizziness with focusing on certain points. And all those things are could be done off the ice, but uh, unlike a uh, a diver, you really have to perfect that launch off the ice.

• 13:46Chuck Nice?

  So talk about, talk about the actual physics there, Eric. Uh, when, when you talk about launching off the ice, what are the physics involved there? When you talk about pulling your arms in and rotation, why and, and what are the physics there?

• 13:58Speaker 03

  So the rotation part is a, it's a, just a classic angular momentum conservation example. Uh, as long as we don't have any torques acting and you get a little bit of frictional torque from the ice. But you'll notice when a skater goes into the final, you know, massive fast spin. Uh, what the skater will do is have the arms completely out, perhaps even one leg out, trying to get uh, his or her mass as far from that axis of rotation as possible. And then right whenever the turn is initiated. Bringing everything in as tightly as possible so that the mass is confined to the axis of rotation as close as possible. And that causes the skater to spin even faster. And you can try this at home.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  If you have a nice swivel chair, uh, or if you're at work and maybe your heart's game isn't working on your computer and you need to kill time another way. You got your swivel chair, you get a couple of books in your hand and you hold them outstretched. And you get a good spin going on your chair, then pull them in real tight. And with your feet off the ground, of course. Um, and you're gonna notice you're gonna speed up when you pull those arms in. It's a fantastic feeling if you've never experienced it. If, if you're over 40, watch out for dizziness. You don't want to fall out of your chair, but it's, it's a, it's a fun feeling.

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  Well, thank God I'm a few days from forty. Our inner child. I'm about to do this right now and just.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  What a scientist is, it's a child asking questions.

• 15:24Chuck Nice?

  Well, I'm just, I got the child part down pat. Biggest kids in the world. Here we go. Alright, so here we go, man. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take my arms, I'm gonna give a spin. I'm gonna, uh, take my arms, I'm gonna give a spin and then we're gonna see what happens. Alright, and Jackie, I want you to judge, uh, how good this is. Okay, here we go, and.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  There you sped up.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  I did, yeah, I did. It actually works.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  Let me tell you how you have to jump.

• 15:51Chuck Nice?

  Let's do it again. Let's do it. No, I'm joking.

• 15:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's not. Let's do it during the break. During the break. Sorry, Professor.

• 15:56Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  Well, let me tell you how you're gonna have to jump. So if you're gonna get in the air and you're gonna do, say, a quad. Now, you know, the men are the ones that can do this first because they've got the stronger legs. So if you're gonna do a quad, if you're gonna spin four times in the air, you're gonna need to jump really high. You're gonna need to get three to four feet off the ice, your center mass elevated by that much, which means jumping between 10 and 11 miles an hour off the ice.

• 16:24Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  You need to be in the air between five, six, then a full second. So your, your launch speeds here have to be, you know, in that 10 mile an hour range. And to spin four times, you know, you're talking four hertz or four, you know, rotations per second. This is getting, you know, maybe about half the rotation rate of a football that's throwing a nice, tight spiral. So you're gonna have to be able to elevate, you know, get a hang time comparable to what an NBA player could do if you're gonna execute four of those spins.

• 16:54Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 16:55Gary O'Reilly?

  See, the thing is, in gymnastics, on the floor routine, the floor is itself is sprung.

• 17:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:01Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, I'm, I'm.

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 17:02Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm no expert, but I'm guessing you can't get a sprung.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

  You're not getting any spring off of ice.

• 17:07Gary O'Reilly?

  So how much more effort, Professor, does it take to push down into the ice to get that up? Or is it all done through the speed of the skater?

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Well, notice right before they go into these big spins, they get a little bit of speed going before they execute the spin. And then there's kind of a pound off the ice to really get that impulse off the ice vertically upward. So when they get launched off that ice, you know, at 10 miles an hour, they have to get those rotations in before they come back down. They gotta keep their arms in tight. And that's another thing. If they keep their arms in tight, they keep their legs in tight, that's gonna enhance their spin rate. If their arms are out too far, they're gonna spin slower, as Chuck just showed us in the chair.

• 17:49Chuck Nice?

  And Jackie, do they get judged on that? They get judged on air position. Air position.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, if so, if if the axis of rotation is is completely off, that is something that you would you may get a

• 18:03Chuck Nice?

  A deduction.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Execution grade less on. So that's that's how they judge the elements.

• 18:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Imagine, I'd be thrilled to bits with just one rotation.

• 18:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:12Gary O'Reilly?

  You've done you've done a quad, but you haven't quite got it in a position that the judges want, and they mark you down.

• 18:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Gary O'Reilly?

  That must be really hard work.

• 18:19Chuck Nice?

  Has there ever been a skater who just got poor marks and stood up and go, really? Let me see you do that. Huh? You're so damn hot with your judging. Let me see you do it. Hey, the ice is right there, buddy. The ice is right there.

• 18:32Gary O'Reilly?

  John McEnroe.

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  The McEnroe of skaters. The McEnroe of skaters.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Hot mics backstage, right?

• 18:40Chuck Nice?

  Sure. Hot mics backstage.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:43Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, with that thought, we're going to take a break. John McEnroe on ice. Yeah, we're going to probably need to lie down and consider that fully. Right, we're going to come back. The good professor Eric Goff and of course Jackie Wong, the figure skating expert and analyst will be with us for our second part. Don't go away. Plenty more to come.

• 19:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 19:07Chuck Nice?

  I'm Chuck Dais.

• 19:08Gary O'Reilly?

  And this, of course, is playing with science. And today, we're unravelling the physics involved in the elegance of figure skating, which is also known as ballet on ice. And having seen Chuck execute the most immaculate turn, you can see why.

• 19:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I am. I am a pitcher of grace and poise.

• 19:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Isn't he just? Yes. And with us in the studio, we have figure skating analyst Jackie Wong, host of the podcast Ice Talk.

• 19:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, Ice Talk. So remember that one. And via Skype, we have the good professor Eric Goff, the author of Gold Medal Physics. You'll remember, it was a stocking stuffer back end of last year. And

• 19:47Chuck Nice?

  And still is.

• 19:48Gary O'Reilly?

  It still is. And the book for all sports fans who love their science.

• 19:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. This is a really fascinating topic because the figure skating is the most watched event of the Winter Olympics. There's nothing that gets higher ratings, so clearly it is extremely popular. What do you think makes for this popularity, Jackie?

• 20:11Speaker 02

  I think partially it's the dramatics of it all. It's all the kind of histrionics of figure skating, of having music, having programs, and then the fact that, you know, when you're a figure skater, you're really expected to be sort of a sign of perfection. So, you know, one little slip up and it's like, oh no, you've got something wrong. And you forget how really incredibly difficult this stuff is to do. And, you know, I think the intrigue of it is that you can, you see these skaters doing these, you know, you would think physically impossible feats, but they do them in such a way that it just seems like they're just, you know, skating around casually.

• 20:56Gary O'Reilly?

  How many people like Chuck and I are sitting there thinking, "I'm tuned in because I want to see you fall over." And how many people are tuned in because they want to see you execute the most immaculate program?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  I think it depends on those rabbit fans you were talking about earlier.

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, it's like NASCAR. There are some people who definitely watch for the crashes.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:14Chuck Nice?

  You know, that's all there is to it. There's gotta be that.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  I mean, there are YouTube videos online that are all about figure skating faults. So, yeah.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  So, speaking of crashes, I saw a video, and I just want to ask you if it's real. This is an aside, where there was a ice dancing doubles, and one of them got cut with a skate.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Oh, it happens a lot.

• 21:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Just Blades of Glory. They're just watching.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  That's decapitation there.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  That's a different kind of cutting. But, yeah. No, I mean, figure skating accidents happen all the time, especially when you're in ice dancer and pair skating where you're, the two people are so close to each other.

• 21:55Gary O'Reilly?

  And then the degree, can I say this? Yes, I can. Degree of difficulty of the program...

• 22:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Has to have some sort of dynamic movement and obviously if you're going upside down, that means the skates are coming closer to your face.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally and you you even see that in practice because there are, you know, when you're when you're actually training, you're training with five to 10 to 15 skaters and, you know, one one little slip up and you crash into somebody else and you're done.

• 22:24Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, but now we're on the subject of the skates themselves. Please, please explain and then we'll get the professor to break down the physics behind the skate itself because it's not a single blade, is it?

• 22:36Speaker 02

  It's a it's it's two edges on a blade. So if you if you turn the blade upside down, you literally see two kind of knives and then there's this kind of U-shaped.

• 22:48Chuck Nice?

  So it's two like razors with a trough in in the middle?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah. And that's called the rocker.

• 22:54Chuck Nice?

  That's called the rocker, that little trough in the middle?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 22:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and is that so that you can turn either left or right and get a blade on the ice either way or does that speed you up? What's the purpose of that?

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Well, it's it's to allow you to have a an inside edge and an outside edge without without it literally just being one one blade that that that goes on the ice and it's it's about a three sixteenths of an inch thick. So it's it's not it's pretty hefty, but it's not that hefty.

• 23:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 23:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, with with the double edged blade, what are we working with in terms of the physics with it as an inside and an outside edge? And can I shave with it? Yes. Yeah. You probably could.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know about shaving, but you certainly get a little bit of enhanced stability when you have two options instead of one for your your blade placement. So as Jackie was saying, you have, you know, certain moves are going to require an inside edge, certain moves are going to require an outside edge. So you have a little wider flexibility than you would with a single blade. So the pressure melting was a popular theory for how you might actually get the ice to be slippery, but that's been somewhat debunked. So you could actually get those thin blades. To start slightly warm the ice and reduce the friction coefficient and actually help you go a little bit faster.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  I think the ideal ice temperature is around minus five and a half or so degrees Celsius, which is what 22 or so degrees Fahrenheit. And you so you're not going to be able to warm it quite up to pure melting, although the surface is a little different from the bulk, so you can get a little bit of melting right at the very, very surface layer. And that thin blade, whenever you're on just one, one or the other, can actually enhance that melting process. So you could actually get a little bit more lubrication and a little bit more speed.

• 24:49Chuck Nice?

  So Jackie, wait, speak to that for one second. From a skater's standpoint, is it better to have, what what's better, like softer ice, harder ice, what's faster, do you want faster ice, or what do you, what's the perfect ice conditions?

• 25:02Gary O'Reilly?

  You're going to have it soft for landing, are you?

• 25:03Chuck Nice?

  I would like, yeah. Can you get rubber ice so that when you fall?

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Go on, please. For for a lot of figure skaters, they love the softer ice because you, the softer ice allows your edge to to really

• 25:15Chuck Nice?

  Carve.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  Into the ice.

• 25:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  So the harder the ice there is, the harder your edge, it it's it is going to be for your edge to actually make the curves that you want to make.

• 25:25Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  And so harder ice actually gets to be a bit more slippery.

• 25:30Gary O'Reilly?

  So the softer ice allows more control?

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a little bit more control, yeah.

• 25:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 25:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Professor, is is there a sweet spot, because we always find that in in in sports, there's this inextricable part of being a sweet spot on the blade. And if there is, whereabouts is it and how does a performer get to utilize it?

• 25:49Speaker 03

  So, I mean, just to pick up quickly on Jackie's point, the the added slipperiness is going to come when you're trying to push outward, like when you're trying to make a turn. So when the ice is harder and you don't quite get that, that melted layer that you want right next to the blade, you can't actually, you know, it can enhance the fall, you're not going to grip it, as he was saying. If you're going straight on the ice and you're looking to have a slight reduction in the coefficient of friction associated with the the blade and the ice, if you get a little bit of warming and you kind of soften that Ice slightly, you can actually lower that coefficient a little bit and help you go faster in a straight line, but but definitely when you're when you're trying to head out on a

• 26:31Speaker 03

  turn and you're trying to get that nice and triple force inward to help you keep moving in a circular path, you definitely like that softer ice to be able to kind of cut into it and kind of hold you there a little bit better than you would if the ice was a lot harder and you don't have that give in it.

• 26:46Chuck Nice?

  Where is the sweet spot on that blade and what and what does it do? I mean, either one of you can answer that. Jackie, you skate. So what's the sweet spot about and what and why would you even want it or need it?

• 26:57Speaker 02

  So the sweet spot in kind of like in a lot of other sports, it's it's the ball of your foot and and that's there. There's what I was talking about earlier, the rocker, right? The the rocker is basically this curve of your blade and and there is this part in the blade where literally if you stand on it the right way, your toe pick, which is in the front.

• 27:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Yep.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Is elevated. The back of which is the heel is also elevated. So you're you're not like the blade is not flat to the ice. The blade has a curvature to it. And so that's where the rocker is where you want to be when you're spinning, because that that keeps you.

• 27:35Chuck Nice?

  Less surface.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  That keeps you in.

• 27:36Chuck Nice?

  Less surface in contact with the ice.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Exactly. And and the thing about spinning is what you don't see is it's literally just circles that you're making around the ice. It's not that you're like rotating on one point. You're you're rotating in very, very small circles.

• 27:50Chuck Nice?

  Wait, now speak to that because I watched this. I don't know when it was. Maybe it was the last Olympics or it might have been world championships that were on NBC. Okay? So the young lady was doing the super fast spin at the end, but the announcer, I remember distinctly saying, uh-oh, uh-oh.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Traveling.

• 28:11Chuck Nice?

  She did a little traveling there, as you can see. And she talked about the circles. Moving across, and it moved like, I don't know, an inch and a half, two inches. I'm like, really, lady?

• 28:22Gary O'Reilly?

  The judge is that brutal?

• 28:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm like, is that a big, right, really, that's a big problem, but anyway, what is that? Is that, is that, you have to be in one, you gotta stay in that place?

• 28:31Speaker 02

  If you wanna get, if you wanna get the best marks on an element, yes. It's, it's, it's about speed, it's about positioning, it's about centering, which is what.

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Centering.

• 28:39Gary O'Reilly?

  It's not about the Russian judge, that's the way it used to be. Oh, you watched figure skating because you wanted to see how low your mark was with the Russian judge.

• 28:50Chuck Nice?

  And the Russian judge gives her, oh, a minus six.

• 28:55Gary O'Reilly?

  See, all of this, all of this has changed, hasn't it? With, there is now a different system of, of marking and judging. And it seems an awfully complex procedure, because I just thought, I can cope with six or less. With my math, I'm good with that. Now, you can get marks up to over a hundred and thirty and wherever.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and that has a lot to do with, uh, figure skating trying to make itself more objective. And, and so, half of the mark now is much more on, along the lines of like, here are the elements that were done, what, here are the base values of the elements that were done. This is how well it was done, that's how you get to a number. Because when you, when you go back to the nineties and before, and you had the six point O system, you literally had, you know, the Russian judge giving five point five.

• 29:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Everybody knows the Russian judge.

• 29:48Chuck Nice?

  And the Russian judge gives, oh, what is that on the card? Capitalist pig, I didn't even know that was a score, anyway.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  And you, and you wonder what those marks mean. And now, at least there is some sort of accountability.

• 30:00Chuck Nice?

  Quantify them, like, there's a, there's a, but, uh, speaking back to the traveling, very quickly. Eric, does that come from leaning one way or the other? Or like, or what creates that little bit of traveling when you're in the process of that spin? From a physics standpoint?

• 30:16Speaker 03

  So when you enter the spin, you're obviously coming at it from a certain direction. And whenever you enter that spin, you are going to have a slight drift unless you can arrest it somehow right on that first turn. It's very difficult to maintain an exact spot on the ice whenever you're doing that spin because you have to enter the spin with some kind of velocity in some direction. So when you start the spin, you may have a very slight drift involved unless you can do a lean or some type of a little cut on that first part of it just to hold yourself steady at the beginning. But you gotta have a little bit of a circle down there to help give you that inward push. But once you get started on that spin, you can make that circle pretty small.

• 30:59Gary O'Reilly?

  That comes back to your core strength.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely. So a classic example, yes, core strength. Everybody breathe in. Holding my breath for the rest of the show now. When we get to a break, Jackie, how much more can we see from the performers in terms of, so we've got to a quad now, which was, I don't know, 20, 30 years unthinkable. Can we go further?

• 31:23Speaker 02

  I think so. I think so. I don't know when that's going to be. You've got coaches thinking that there's, right now, the quad Lutz is the hardest jump. And there's one other quad, which is the quad axel, which adds a half rotation. So it's four and a half rotations. That's why the axel's more difficult than the rest of it because it's an extra half rotation because you're taking off forwards and landing backwards. So there are coaches out there who think that a quad axel will be landed sometime in the next couple of years or so. There are skaters who are actually play trying them. They're not actually training them seriously, but that's possible.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Whether or not a quintuple jump is going to be around in the next 10 years, we'll see. It really, a lot of it depends on how much people are willing to push themselves, how training methods change.

• 32:20Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, Professor, how long, how much airtime, hang time, call it what you may, will a quintuplet?

• 32:27Speaker 02

  A quintuple?

• 32:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Quintuple take. I mean, it's probably going to take longer than it takes me to say it or not. I don't know.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  So remember, if you can jump in the air and stay in the air for one second, you're gonna have to elevate your center mass about four feet. Now, that is better than even some NBA players could do. You have to jump 11 miles an hour off the ice, and you need to stay in the air for a full second. And you're really, the laws of physics are constraining what can happen here. So you have to get four feet in the air, and you're looking at, you know, five rotations during that second. That is just about the limit of what a human can do right now.

• 33:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Can we up the speed? And would that have any benefit? Or just, that's me in the front row of the audience.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  Up, what do you mean, up the speed?

• 33:16Gary O'Reilly?

  On, on the ice.

• 33:17Chuck Nice?

  In other words, if you go faster and get into the, and get into the jump and the rotation faster, will that allow you to get to the fifth rotation?

• 33:25Speaker 03

  Well, it's kind of like this, you know, trade-off you have when you do a long jump. I mean, you want to get a lot of speed whenever you're taking off for the jump, but you also need a good bounce in the air to go high, because you need to stay in the air a long time. It's the same thing with the skate. You, you can go fast into the turn, into the spin, but you're gonna sacrifice a little bit if you're going too fast, because you have to have that, that hard jump off the ice that gives you that vertical force upward, so that you can have that nice vertical velocity into the air. You have, you have to stay in the air at least a second, turning four times, and you're gonna be four feet jumping into the air. I mean, this is gonna take incredible athleticism, core strength, you know,

• 34:11Speaker 03

  you know, just as, as strong as you could make it. And you're gonna have, for five rotations, I think we're way off for that one.

• 34:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay. I'll show you, Doc. I'll show you.

• 34:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, so, right, while...

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  You'll all see.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  But you gotta get out of the chair, Chuck. You can't stay in the chair.

• 34:28Gary O'Reilly?

  We are gonna take a break. And when we come back, Chuck will have had six rotations. That is guaranteed, right? Staying with us, the good professor, and of course, Jackie Wong. But to join us will be former US champion and Olympic medalist Sasha Cohen. Absolutely. Playing with Science is still here, and we're back with those wonderful people after this break.

• 34:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 34:54Chuck Nice?

  And I'm still Chuck Nice.

• 34:55Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Still Playing with Science. We're here in the studio with figure skating analyst Jackie Wong, who has been fabulous with us, and his host of podcast called Ice Talk. Please go and check that out. And joining us via Skype, we are thrilled. We are thrilled, aren't we?

• 35:08Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 35:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely thrilled to have Sasha Cohen, 2006 silver Olympic medallist, three-time world championship medallist. The list goes on and on and on. And Chuck, I do believe this lady was involved in the Blades of Glory movie.

• 35:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 35:25Gary O'Reilly?

  To make you even more jealous.

• 35:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. Because you know, that's like, that would have been my dream to be in Blades of Glory. Anything where I can wear tights and skates.

• 35:33Gary O'Reilly?

  So, welcome to the show. You may want to leave now.

• 35:36Speaker 04

  Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on.

• 35:38Gary O'Reilly?

  It's a pleasure for us to have you here. So, okay. You started off as a gymnast, as a, in an early age, and then graduated into figure skating. The gymnastics background, that must have been such a help for you.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  It was. I actually was a bit of a terror. I destroyed the house. So, my parents were trying to figure out a way to, to use up my boundless energy. And that was, that took the form in three hours of gymnastics a day, which ended up giving me a chance to develop my coordination and strength. And then by the time I started skating, I kind of already had some natural athletic ability. But ice is still slippery. It's a difference.

• 36:19Chuck Nice?

  It certainly is. Yeah. Hey, you know, I think, Eric, you have a question for Sasha, isn't that right?

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've actually got a couple, but let me start with this one. So, when we do a little karate or martial arts, we're taught when we're doing spins to try to have a focal point. And I'm just wondering, when you're spinning on the ice so much, do you do any kind of training to get you to the point where you can spin like that in an effective way without getting dizzy? Or are you, do you have a focal point that you're checking out when you're in a spin? Or is there a certain technique to help you with that?

• 36:56Speaker 04

  So the the secret is, which is very different than dance, which um you spot your head with every turn in order to not get dizzy, uh with figure skating, you have to stay centered. If you stay within one foot, your pattern's tracing over and over, you will miraculously be able to come out and not be dizzy. But if you start traveling, which is um you know, points off and not the ideal way to go in in a competitive figure skating spin, you'll get very dizzy and I think it's something to do with the inner ear and losing your um um your kind of vertical alignment within space and that's when you completely lose it and would come out and see stars and be very dizzy but if you stay in one spot, you can come out and be fine as if nothing ever happened.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  So you really you really need to keep the vertical drift to a to a minimum whenever you're doing that, I guess.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  Within inches is you know, as soon as you start to travel two feet or three feet, you come out of it and you're you're very disoriented.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, so um the horizontal drift is is minimized, your vertical drift is minimized, so your your head's pretty much staying in the same spot, it's just spinning, I guess. Well, let me ask you this question about stretching because um you you're you're famous for, you know, doing these splits on the ice, these vertical splits where you know, one leg's way up in the air and you can do spins and like that. Uh do skaters engage in any kind of sophisticated stretching uh routines whenever they're training? I mean, do you use uh equipment for this? Or is it just kind of a standard get on the mat and make sure you can do a split?

• 38:29Speaker 04

  So I was fortunate to start with a core of gymnastics, uh but then it's it's a da- stretching is a daily habit, it's um it's a commitment and it's a discipline, so at night I would take a bath and then if I wanted to watch TV, I would be sitting in the splits. And the discipline of of of stretching, of repeating daily, is how you you cultivate that kind of flexibility. And then you work on the strength component to be able to hold those kind of flexible positions in a spiral when you're out on the ice, um I don't have the floor to support you. Uh so I would say I would maybe sometimes use a theraband to to stretch out my hamstrings.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  Um, or IT bit, but generally, I think I'm flexible enough that I can kind of just grab on to my calf and pull it close to my face, uh, if I'm on my back. But I think if you're a beginner.

• 39:18Chuck Nice?

  Show off.

• 39:20Chuck Nice?

  You are such, you are such a show off Sasha.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  No, I've spent way too long stretching. I mean, imagine everything else I could have done with my life if I wasn't sitting in the splits for half of it.

• 39:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely. Way to touch my toes if I bend, if I bend my knees.

• 39:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 04

  Well, look where you are now.

• 39:37Chuck Nice?

  Hey, listen, uh.

• 39:38Gary O'Reilly?

  We've got to say goodbye to the good professor because he is a man in demand. He has a lecture to attend and there are eager students awaiting him. So, uh, professor, thank you so much for your time. Um, and we look forward to your company soon.

• 39:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 39:51Gary O'Reilly?

  As always.

• 39:52Chuck Nice?

  We'll see you soon, Eric. Take care.

• 39:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you.

• 39:54Speaker 03

  Bye bye.

• 39:55Gary O'Reilly?

  So, we have Sasha here, Jackie. What was her trademark? What was her unique point in her performance? That, that everyone just went, oh, wow. Or people would cram through the doors to see every time she performed.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Well, it was a good segue because her trademark really was her flexibility.

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  And probably still is her flexibility when she's on the ice. Um, and, and so much of Sasha Cohen's, uh, appeal was the, the way that she presented herself in, you know, in the music, in the choreography. And then the, the jumps really were in a lot of ways secondary for her performances. Like they were, they were just seamlessly kind of integrated within her program. And, and that's, that's why people loved her so much.

• 40:41Chuck Nice?

  And Sasha, we're not talking about you like you're not here. Uh, it's just, it's just that, uh, it, we don't, we don't want you to have to toot your own horn. But you know, you are a fan favorite. It seems as though, um, you're known and people love your performances, your routines, your programs. Uh, does that give you a bit of an advantage, uh, during a competition? Knowing that you're so beloved by the audiences that are watching?

• 41:13Speaker 04

  I think that's very personal for every athlete. I think ultimately on a personal level of approval and connection to an audience, it's a wonderful feeling to have to have cultivated a relationship with the audience over your decade competing in the sport. And you know, some people thrive in that position. Some people thrive as the underdog and when no one knows them. But I know that, you know, when I came back in 2010 for the national championships, just knowing that I had been here and been competing at this event for probably the last 15 years, it just, it becomes home to you. And the people have seen you grow up and seen you skate since

• 41:57Speaker 04

  you were 12 years old. And that's a wonderful connection to have when you've grown up with your audience. So it's something that I very much cherished.

• 42:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Just to endorse what Chuck was saying, you have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, which was 2016, I believe. So congratulations to that. A lot of people would look at your performances and say they were effortless. How did you and how much effort did you put in to achieving effortless on the ice?

• 42:24Chuck Nice?

  And does that ever hurt you? Because you know, when you make something look super easy, when you make it look like you're not put like you're, it's a day in a walk in the park, couldn't that kind of, I don't know, change the psychology of the way the judges are looking at you? Kind of like, you know, like, yeah, she's not really, you know, she's not really putting that much into it. Because honestly, that's how easy you make it look.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Well, I appreciate that. But I think this is something that applies to the whole sport of figure skating. It's our job to make it look easy. We're not supposed to be breathing heavy and struggling and grimacing. This isn't football. And so we have to make it look easy. And when I go back and watch videos, I'm like, oh, wow, like it just seems so effortless. And now when I go back and I, you know, try to skate for a few minutes, I'm Bent over, doubled over and like barely breathing, everything is sore, my calves are cramping up. Um, but I think skating is like an art as well as a sport like ballet.

• 43:25Speaker 04

  And so the beauty is um, kind of this exterior shell for for the deep athleticism that we cultivate underneath that. And it's it's part of the figure skater's job to make it look easy, you know, I think there's not many people that get to a really high level that that make you think, wow, like they're really struggling.

• 43:43Gary O'Reilly?

  So, just. If you can, at the heights of your performances, what kind of routine, daily routine would you go through? From start of your day, to you know, getting out of bed to going back to bed. What would your day encompass to make you a top elite athlete?

• 44:03Speaker 04

  So my day would start, you know, I'd get up around six thirty. I would make some coffee and then tea and then I'd get right on a Pilates mat. I had a Pilates mat in my kitchen and I'd spend about thirty minutes on a foam roller, stretching, doing uh, ten minutes of core work and and ab work and some stretching, just to kind of get the body warm. Because when you wake up in the morning, everything is incredibly painful and stiff, you know, from five hours of training the day before and the day before and the last fifteen years and that that really that builds up. And then I would go to the rink and then I would warm up again with a twenty minute run and you just really wanna be so supple, so warm, you're you're running, you're sweating.

• 44:47Speaker 04

  And and then you start to cultivate coordination and quickness and that that quick twitch muscle fiber uh, with doing jumps off the ice and really quick drills, see how fast you can move your feet. Um, and then it would be the start of of the skating day, which would again start with thirty minutes of edge work and really feeling your feet and your blade like exactly where it was on the ice and your your shoulders and hips over your feet. Um, and then maybe an hour later, you would start jumping and spinning and working on the choreography because the body is really a finely tuned machine and it doesn't just turn on. It it takes, you know. Takes a couple hours to really kind of cultivate to where you're able to do um a peak

• 45:30Speaker 04

  performance and I think that's part of the reason why we've kind of trained ourselves to compete at night which is you know for viewership when all the events are your body's most awake.

• 45:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:42Speaker 04

  And you've kind of worked through all the morning stiffness and and that's when you're you're kind of in in peak capacity.

• 45:48Chuck Nice?

  That's funny, that's that's like singers.

• 45:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:50Chuck Nice?

  Singers sing at night because you know you need the day to warm your voice up and your vocal cords to that point, that's really wild.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what your voice sounds like in the morning. I have half a voice in the morning, it takes some time.

• 46:01Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  The body's the same.

• 46:04Chuck Nice?

  I have a love song I'd like to sing, yeah, okay.

• 46:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh dear, no more Barry White, please, you're barred from Barry White.

• 46:10Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute, um.

• 46:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, in the big competitions, just before we get to to Jackie, in the big competitions, were they always at night or did you find yourself having to perform your programs during the afternoon and therefore you're out of sync with the whole buildup that you've had?

• 46:26Speaker 04

  Well, there's certainly um an element of being out of sync just from jet lag and time zone difference, um so you try to get there in advance and that's switch as fast as you can, um but usually always the final rounds will always be at night, um wh- what can really mess you up though is the qualifying rounds, like at a world championship.

• 46:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 46:45Speaker 04

  Um and you might have to do your full long program at eight in the morning.

• 46:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  And and that's very difficult for the body, so you would get yourself up at four AM and really try to work into it, warm everything up, go to your practice, um because the body again just takes so much time to get amped and ready to peak.

• 47:03Chuck Nice?

  Wow, wow, so Jackie, you had a question?

• 47:07Speaker 02

  I did, well, fir- first of all, the well, the thing about the Olympics this year is actually that it the skaters are going to be mostly competing in the morning, so that that's going to be an interesting one, um and it's a lot based on the fact that uh you know NBC wants primetime coverage and that's the agreement, um so we'll see how that affects the skaters, but Sasha, I wanted to go back to something we talked about here on on on the air um earlier in the show, which was. Quads and and you know, we talk about the men doing a lot of quads. You, I think there's a certain amount of athleticism that we don't credit you with. But at one point in your career, you were training quads.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  And there's a very skating famous video of you at Skate America, 2002, I think, 2003, 2001, one of those, doing and landing a quadruple sau cow. And I wanted to ask you, as a skater who has done quads and trained quads, what that process was like, because I certainly can attest to training quads.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  It's a different paradigm. And I think especially for a woman, you know, our body does not rotate as fast as the men do. And and it was such a different paradigm from a triple to a quad. And for me, you know, it was really only a possibility with my sau cow. Because on the takeoff, I I had an edge that I could just really whip. And and as I was going up into the air, I could start to get incredible torque in order to be able to complete four rotations. But what's scary about, you know, a quad is you have to go in with more speed. You have to kind of, it's like a bow that you're pulling back. And so you kind of have to pull a little further to get up higher.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  And if everything is not set completely straight and right, and you launch with that much torque and velocity and it's wrong, when you fall, when you go down, it can it can end really badly. And that's something that, you know, is mitigated to a certain extent in a triple and even more so in a double. You've got time to correct when you're rotating more slowly. And so with a quad, it just, you know, I trained with a harness and to kind of get comfortable launching my full athletic torque behind it. Because there's like, there's a safety element. Again, we we take off, I took off backwards from my inside edge of my left foot. And if I was, my shoulders were dropped like two millimeters to the right,

• 49:37Speaker 04

  I could end up putting a lot of torque into it and kind of. Getting pretty crooked in the air and then I would go down and just kind of ruin my hip. Um, so, so there's, there's that balance that you have to take in account. Um, everything has to be that much more precise. When you're putting another layer of torque into it.

• 49:56Chuck Nice?

  I was going to ask.

• 49:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Science.

• 49:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I was about to ask you, do you, are you cognizant of the physics while you are training and performing? And the answer clearly is yes.

• 50:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think at a kinesthetic level, you feel it. You're so in tune with your body as an athlete. It is your medium. It is something that you develop for 20 years in different capacities. Um, so you're just very aware. And, and then there, you know, there's a level of awareness you develop when you're, you're learning a quad and how different. You know, it, it takes a very different level of awareness of your body and messaging to your specific. You know, your arms, your legs, what needs to be done in order to get up, to get around four times and to land. Um, and so I think, yes, from, from that level, um, from a kinesthetic level, I'm, I'm aware of the physics. But from, from the angles, the torque, the scientific laws, um.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  You know, you, you might have to fill in, you know, do the backfill from there.

• 50:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Get the professor on it.

• 50:57Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 50:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Sasha, thank you.

• 50:59Chuck Nice?

  Wow, nice. Yeah, so great to talk to you.

• 51:02Gary O'Reilly?

  To talk to you and for you to share your time with us. Uh, I'm sure our listeners are thrilled, just as Chuck and I are. Um, so thank you very much for being one of our guests.

• 51:10Speaker 04

  Likewise, it was a pleasure. Thank you again.

• 51:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you, and thank you.

• 51:13Chuck Nice?

  To Jackie.

• 51:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, very cool, man. Thank you.

• 51:16Gary O'Reilly?

  To South Korea, you will be at the Winter Olympics. Sure will. It's gonna. And you'll be tweeting like a man of handsy. Tweeting, typing on all kinds of things, yes. Well, safe travels and have a great trip. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. Uh, well, that's our show.

• 51:31Chuck Nice?

  That is it.

• 51:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Figure skating.

• 51:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 51:33Gary O'Reilly?

  If you weren't really into figure skating before, hopefully now what we've done is roll back. The curtain to allow you to good look at what's going on.

• 51:42Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 51:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Interest is piqued because Chuck and I, although we don't look great in lacquer or sequins. Um, we may just take to the ice and skate. What do you think?

• 51:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we're, we're off right now to go practice our doubles program.

• 51:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. Um, we'll do that. Male on male ice dancing, it's a thing. Isn't it? I just made it that. Okay, uh.

• 52:04Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm a bit scarred now. Right, that's it from us. Blades of gory, not blades of glory. Isn't it just? Right, so that's it from Plague Science. Hope you've enjoyed it. We will be back with a new episode very, very soon.