In Yusupovsky Garden in St. Petersburg, Russia, the 1903 World Championships were held and Sweden's Ulrich Salchow was crowned the victor. At the time, it was probably even impossible to imagine a time that female skaters competed at the Olympics, let alone no compulsory figures, soaring triple axels and a judging system that required footwork sequences that looked like you were being chased through a Pacman maze in a windstorm. With that said, how can we with any real certainty say where the sport will be in 100 years? We can't but we can certainly speculate. How do I see it all playing out? Anything is possible...
In memory of his grandfather, Evan Lysacek III would be busy publicizing and planning his big comeback in time for the 2114 Winter Olympics in Quarterpounderville, McAmerica, the new capital city of what was once the United States after it was sold to the McDonald's corporation in the year 2024 by 78 year old re-elected president George W. Bush, who said it was what Jesus wanted and "the terrorists" didn't like McChicken sauce so it was a good way to scare them off. Time was ticking for Lysacek III, who needed to compete before the 2114 U.S. National Championships. Having missed all other opportunities and only having 2 days and 3 hours left, he was apparently feverishly busy planning the Evan Lysacek III Invitational and inviting media for photo shoots. He had an Olympic title to defend!
The disembodied heads in jars (a la Futurama) of Dick Button and Peggy Fleming would be skating's biggest and most beloved supporters, commentating the sport on SkyVision, a holographic TV station that you saw right up in the sky, which you're supposed to call the McSky, on account of the McDonald's takeover. Dick was a big fan of SkyVision. It's "first rate... first rate...", he enthusiastically exclaimed.
After they finally got rid of the failing IJS system in 2014 when Patrick Chan achieved an unprecedented personal best score of 9675.34 for his marred routine at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a new judging system was redeveloped based on the 6.0 system. Skaters were given marks for Technical Merit, Presentation and Spandex Realness, the latter established after drag legend RuPaul was brought in as a consultant by the new ISU, who finally accepted that any sport full of spandex costumes and plunging necklines needed to be marketed as what it was: a whole lot of fabulous. In addition to a short program and free skate, skaters were being judged not only on their ability to perform difficult jumps, spins and challenging footwork and interpret music but also on how well they worked the ice in show stopping costumes and hair jacked up to Jebus. At the end of every competition, skaters and audience joined hands for a "if you can't love yourself, how the hell are you going to love anyone else? Can I get an Amen?" Ottavio Cinquanta and Didier Gailhaguet, who were set adrift into the Atlantic Ocean on a floating door by an angry mob of judges, ice dancers and B list choreographers, reportedly weren't amused. Didier reportedly kept yelling something incoherently about not letting Ru attend either Skate America OR the Rostelecom Cup... just like that Brian Joubert one and his little dog too. People just stopped listening at this point.
Required elements for the singles and pairs short programs and short dance were finally updated in 2056. Men were now required to do a quintuple jump out of steps, a quad Axel and a quad/quad combination jump. Ladies were required to do footwork into a triple Sketchy Boo Boo (whatever the bejesus they could stand up on), a triple/triple combination and a triple Maoxel... a lot like a regular axel only you could land whenever and however you wanted. After the disembodied head of Dick Button had outlawed all other spins in favor of the layback, men and ladies all performed 5 layback spins in their short programs at his specific request. "If that doesn't put a fanizzle in their shanizzle nothing else will!" cheered Button's disembodied head!
.jpg "Photograph of figure skater Johnny Weir in a flashy costume")
Pairs short programs now include side-by-side quad jumps, a throw quad Sketchy Boo Boo, a split quad lateral twist and an overhead lift where the male partner moonwalked and the female did the choreography from Lady Gaga's new hit single "Something Something... Monsters". An interesting fun fact: this lift was invented by the pairs team of Weir and Weir, Johnny Weir having cloned himself so he could make a glorious return as a pairs skater after his Johnny Weir Lady Gaga Extravaganza show in Las Vegas came to an end. In the short dances, they had to do as many twizzle sequences as they could before the music stopped... you know, kind of like musical chairs or a cake walk but with more twizzles. After all, they needed a way to distinguish who was best in ice dance. Right?
Leading up to the Olympics in Quarterpounderville, all eyes were on McAmerica's biggest stars on the Grand Prix circuit... Sheryl Davis, Harley White, Lacey Gold, Jason Purple... all descendants of past champions of the sport a mere hundred years previous. A lot of respect was given to 133 year old Qing Pang and her 134 year old partner Jian Tong, STILL competing in hopes of an Olympic gold medal in the pairs discipline. No one had such a long competitive career in the sport since Evgeni Plushenko was forced to reluctantly retire in 2060. In the world of choreography, no one was hotter than the disembodied head of Tatiana Tarasova. They wrapped the jar in a giant fur coat and you just put a little vodka in there every so often to take the edge off. Her prize pupils Lutzinskaya and Flyingcamelov's "Carmen" free dance was coming along really nicely in time for the Games in 2114. In Moscow, you'd hear this beaming voice coming from the rinkside fur-wrapped jar: "MORE FLAILING ARMS! TATIANA VANT VODKA! LOOK ANGRY LIKE PASHA... DA... DA!" Only 15 other teams had picked "Carmen" as their free dance music at these Games, but she had nothing to worry about. This "Carmen" was DIFFERENT.
In addition to the fact that there was no more oil or natural gas, fresh untreated water or real food, precious metals were in short supply. Instead of gold, silver and bronze medals, winners at the Olympics were given a lifetime supply of Chicken McNuggets, because nuggets had something to do with gold and all of the Coca Cola they could drink, Coca Cola being the owner of the Olympics and many other countries than McAmerica at this time. It could have been worse. It could have been that Dr. Pepper. Ain't nobody got time for that. One thing for was for certain: with a judging panel that consisted of robots, the disembodied head in a jar of Al Gore and the hologram of Marie-Reine Le Baguette, anything was possible.
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