As The Calendar Turns (Towards Vancouver)… Roundup #1

For some, Black Friday= early rising, marathon shopping, awesome deals.
For skating fans, Black Friday= A Friday in late fall without any GP events.

What on earth are we to do—watch Skate America reruns on Universal Sports? Watch college football? Catch up on gardening? Play with our children? Read??

If you tend to lean toward that last one, I’ll try to help you out. While I was whipping up Thanksgiving pies over the past few days, life rolled on for Olympic hopefuls around the globe. Here are the headlines:

No BelGosto at the Grand Prix Final.
According to this Phillip Hersh article and other reports, an infected wisdom tooth of Belbin’s that requires immediate oral surgery means no GP Final for them. Rumor has it that the 1st GP dance alternates, Khoklova/Novitski, have passed on their invite to the GPF (citing illness), which means Canada’s Crone/Poirer are next in line.

Also, no Jourbert at the GPF.
Might I just start this briefing by saying injuries are especially dreadful to read about—and live through, I suppose—when the injured one reports, at one point, that “he could see bone”. Aack!

In any case, here’s the Ice Network article that explains Brian Joubert’s withdrawal/injuries. Next one in line to go to the GPF, should he accept such a mission, is Tomas Verner. Just what you want to hear at the last minute when you’re recovering from the flu… yep, let’s hop a plane to Tokyo, breathe other people’s germs for hours on end, exert tons of energy I wasn’t planning to have to exert again for a while, and get sick all over again in time for Olympic trials. Sounds good. Where’s my Zorba costume?

Verner is probably not much of a whiner, so you’d likely never hear him say that outloud. But as others have said before me—why would any skater hoping to make that season’s Olympic team really want to make the GPF a priority? Perhaps they should allow each competitor to simply throw on their costume and perform from their home rink while it’s shown via webcam…

Oh, and by the way—no Lutai anywhere for a year.
Here’s the article talking about his ban due to the post-Skate America incident. After what happened to Nobunari Oda a few years back when he was charged with a DUI while on his moped, I suppose we saw this coming. Unfortunately for Lutai (and unlike Oda), he wasn’t competing strong enough for this ban to have much impact on the skating world.

*PURE SPECULATION ALERT*… do you suppose somewhere deep inside the guy might’ve just said look, Plushenko’s gonna get the bid, I’m not skating that well anyway, let’s just take myself out of the running now…?

On a lighter note, for PETA’s sake…
If you’ve ever wondered What Tai Babilonia looks like (almost) naked , click on the link because this is your lucky day. All I have to say here is that I hope I look that good (almost) naked when I’m 49.


Finally-- ICE CASTLES… the trailer is here!
In lieu of a Clip of the Day, I’ve got the Ice Castles trailer at the ready if you click on the link. I recently heard they still weren’t sure if this film was to be a theatrical release, a direct-to-video, or a TV film… does anyone have an update? It would seem the TV option is out if they’re sporting a trailer…