Remembering The Beautiful '90s Tradition That Was The Rock 'N' Roll Ice Skating Championships
In 2016, Joey Cosco paid tribute to the tragically short-lived 1998 reality show "Skate TV." In honor of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, we are republishing his article.
Throughout the mid to late '90s there existed something called the Rock 'N' Roll Skating Championships, and in 1998 it was broadcast on television as a reality show called "Skate TV." It is exactly what it sounds like. Grown men and women, skating to some classic dad rock. It's the kind of thing that'll make you wonder why we spent the first decade of the 2000s watching "American Idol" instead of this.
This is Vyacheslav Zagorodniuk. He got third place for his routine to "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba.1
Meanwhile, in the women's competition, Surya Bonaly — an Olympic figure skater who was consistently docked points for doing backflips on the ice, a trick which, while illegal, was her favorite — finally got to be herself to the tune of the Spice Girls' "Spice Up Your Life."
Surya got second place, because fellow Olympian and skating superteen Tara Lipinski did her thing to "The World Is New" by the ska band Save Ferris.2
Back to the men, and on to what was perhaps the most egregious injustice of the contest. The judges3 clearly had never heard of irony, because the simple act of ice skating to "Walkin' On The Sun" somehow didn't net Scott Williams a gold medal and a major motion picture.
For round two, Scott followed up Smash Mouth with "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" by the Spin Doctors in jeans and a mesh crop top. He ended up in fourth place.
How can a Smash Mouth/Spin Doctors combo lose? He skated in jeans. What kind of crazy routine does one have to pull off to win this thing?
Meet Kurt Browning, winner of "Skate TV" and master of the figure skating universe.
Leather pants. We should have known.
The '90s, man.
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