Beauty and Grace on Ice

Scoring a record (combined short program and free skate) 228.56, South Korean superstar Kim "Queen" Yu-Na, took home a gold medal in women's figure skating, a first for her country. Her scores for both the programs set new records, although it was her brilliant performance in the short program that set the tone for her competitors. She scored so well, in fact, that it was speculated she could have two major mistakes in the free skate and still have a good chance to win gold.

Unfortunately, the only videos of this year's Olympic performances by Kim can be found on NBC, which may only be viewable to people in the United States.

But we've found some older videos of this superstar (as well as other figure skaters) for you to enjoy. This video includes some nice slow motion and zoomed-in enhancements which allow for a more detailed analysis. With figure skating videos, it's difficult to accurately calculate angles and distances, as the camera and skater are rarely positioned perfectly at the key positions of the movements; but the poster of this video does his best.

The 2010 Winter Olympics will be ending soon, but we've certainly enjoyed watching all these amazing athletes performing at the highest level. Despite facing some additional natural challenges (e.g., poor weather), this year's Olympians have put together some terrific runs that we'll be able to enjoy watching for many years.