As the Calendar Turns (Towards Vancouver)... Roundup #3

If Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert can come back with new stuff on this first Monday of the New Year, gosh darn it, so can I. (Just don’t look for me to be as hilarious or entertaining, and you’ll be fine.)

Here are a few of the newer developments of the past several days:

+ WILL SHE OR WON’T SHE? Here comes that pesky Four Continents event again… just after Euros this year, and much too close to the Olympics, as usual… and there goes even peskier Ottavio Cinquanta, making a “formal request” to South Korea that Yu-Na Kim show up at the event, along with alluding to possible rule-based sanctions from the ISU if they don’t get her to show. If you read this article of Phil Hersh’s—which includes Cinquanta’s answers to questions Hersh himself asked—be sure to pay extra heed to the part where Cinquanta tries to defend the ridiculous timing of 4CC’s by pointing out there’s a full 25 DAYS between 4CC’s and the Ladies’ event in Vancouver. Ah, yes! How stupid of Yu-Na and Brian Orser to want to bypass an event that would serve NO DISCERNIBLE PURPOSE other than to make the ISU a bunch of money and make an Olympic favorite a little nuts…not to mention exhausted and vulnerable.

+ WILL THEY OR WON’T THEY? Call it mononucleosis, or call it “glandular fever” as they do in this article from CTV, but it sounds like Aliona Savchenko’s got it bad, and in this case that ain’t good. Ugh! Europeans sounds doubtful, doesn’t it.

+ MAYBE THEY JUST SHOULDN’T? A new interview at Golden Skate has Russia’s Domnina and Shabalin talking about their “season” thus far (not much of a season when you can’t compete, eh?), the knee, the training, and the important role Domnina’s dog played in choosing their Aboriginal OD music. Yep, I said DOG.

Here’s their OD as performed recently at Russian Nationals. Will it be the monster hit in Australia that Davis/White’s Bollywood number is India (see below)? You tell me…