Are You There, God? It's Me, The One With The Skating Blog.

(No, not that skating blog… the other one. Yep, now You’ve got it.)


So, God, I was watching the Grand Prix Finals over the weekend, and boy were my predictions a joke! I was only 5 for 12 this time. I was starting to think that maybe I’d gotten better at guessing the podium because we’ve now been following most of these competitors for the better part of four years, and have a better sense of what to expect… but then the GPF comes along, and I realize all over again how clueless I am when we get down to brass tacks! Yes, ice is slippery. Thanks for reminding me.

But as long as I’ve got Your attention, there are a few prayers I’d like to send Your way…

+ For the pairs: could You please help make the event in Vancouver as exciting as it was in Tokyo? As the only event at this particular GPF where every likely top Olympian actually competed, it was exceptionally compelling. I was surprised to see another flawed performance (or two) on the part of Sav/Szol, but if anyone deserved silver ahead of them it was definitely Pang/Tong. I would love to see all three of these teams on the podium in Vancouver…

+ By the way… if anything happens to Shen/Zhao between now and mid-February, I will weep openly and often.

+ For ice dance: I know it is a lot to ask from this particular discipline, and I know I’ve brought it up before…but in watching the loveliness that is Davis/White and/or Virtue/Moir as they twizzled it out yet again, I was saddened to think that history dictates at least one of these fine teams (if not both) will be denied an Olympic medal, even if they are spot-on when others falter. Please, can the big news this time be that an Olympic ice dance competition was judged fairly??

+ For the ladies, a few individual requests: a) that Akiko Suzuki still has some gas left in the tank for Japanese Nationals, because I like her more and more… b) that some sort of “skating angels” come down and keep Ashley Wagner’s feet from screwing up a powerful and gorgeous program with edge calls and 2-footed landings… c) that Joannie Rochette works out her pre-Vancouver jitters, or whatever’s keeping her from turning in great programs of late.

+ And for the men—look, here’s all I want to say… these guys are STUNNING. Save for the pitiful performances of Tomas Verner (I didn’t hear the NBC commentary yet—does anyone know if Verner was still sick?), they are amazingly talented, have by and large dug deep this year to assemble some beautiful programs, and deserve so much more than for His Evgeniness to stride in like he owns Vancouver, throw down a couple of quads, flail his arms like a contender in a Dance Fever tournament, wave his stupid “#1” finger in the air, not even bother to put an ending pose on his program… and walk out with the gold. Can You think about it? Oh please oh please?

Amen for now… (but I’ll probably be back with several more “minor” requests later)

The Clip of the Day just had to be one of the many glowing SPs from this past weekend’s men’s event, so I went with the one at the top of the heap (Dice-K).