2010 Skate Canada Recap: Pretzel Logic, Part 2

So did you catch the announcement of the Skating with the Stars cast on Tuesday night’s Dancing with the Stars? If not, click the link to read all the news, such as it is. As with DWTS, all the demographics are represented… the soap star (Rebecca Buddig), the reality show star (Bethenny Frenkel), the athlete (champion skier Jonny Mosely), the kids’ show star (Brandon Michael Smith), the actress-with-a-crazy-reputation (Sean Young), and the alpha male rocker (Vince Neil of Motley Crue). The only thing you won’t find is Cloris Leachman… or anyone “of a certain age”, I guess (watching a “star” fall on their tush gets a lot less fun as the risk of broken hips goes up).

The bigger question/bigger mystery, for now, is what poor saps did they line up to teach these people how to skate? The above article says not to expect “household names”, although Johnny Weir is expected to be one of the judges. The promo that ran last night (and on the ABC website) works pretty hard to avoid any direct shots of skater/trainers, but I’m pretty sure I caught a glimpse of Keauna McLaughlin (late of the pairs team McLaughlin/Brubaker). Did you see anyone else? Three more weeks until the fun begins…

And now, we continue with the Skate Canada recap I’m calling Pretzel Logic, part 2:

+ I'll be blunt-- Patrick Chan shouldn’t have won, for the simple reason that he should never have had so many points after that train wreck of an SP. (Sorry, but the program should’ve been named “Take Five Back”.) If you study the protocols , check out the distance between Chan’s technical score in the SP and that of Alban Preaubert (who finished just below him). I know Chan made up most of his points with the component mark (which ranged from 7.25 all the way to 9.25), but to me even his tech scores are suspect. Not saying it’s his fault; just saying... it’s the judges’ fault.

+ Pretzel logic actually worked in my favor when it came to guessing the fate of Canada’s Kevin Reynolds… for even when he was in the thick of the medal hunt, I was thinking about how many times I’ve seen him pop those damn triple axels right after nailing a killer quad. Whether it’s an adrenaline thing, lack of concentration, whatever—I hope he gets it straightened out soon because he’s certainly got a lot to offer the sport.

+ With all the fuss surrounding the changed SP rules, we got new choruses of how the men “must” have a quad to be competitive. But here’s where pretzel logic applies: Chan had the quad, yet (in my opinion) shouldn’t have won gold… while someone like Adam Rippon didn’t have the quad, and should’ve won silver! (Whoa. This is starting to make my head hurt.)

+ We had not one, but TWO cases of programmus interruptus in this competition. Spain’s Sonia Lafuente caught a toe pick and crashed down hard on one knee early in her SP--so hard that for a while it looked like she might withdraw altogether. And the next day, Canada’s Jeremy Ten suffered a snapped boot lace one-third of the way into his FS (yep, shades of Tonya Harding; even Ten himself drew the comparison on Twitter) and had to spend a couple of anxious minutes skating around with one pant leg up, trying to re-tie the lace and retain his composure all at the same time.

But guess what? Lafuente not only stayed in the event, but can now say she’s outskated a former World Silver Medalist (Fumie Suguri) at least once in her career! (OK, that’s not saying as much as it used to, but she still earned more points than Suguri in the FS and that’s still something.) And as for Ten… he seemed to skate even better after the equipment malfunction, pulling down an 8th place finish; it’s his best result in two years at a GP event.

+ And P-Logic even tried to send a message to Switzerland’s Sarah Meier (who suffered an ankle injury just prior to SkCan and had to withdraw)… the message being Girl, you need to get out of this sport before you’re another day older. See Suguri? She hasn’t medaled in the GP in 2 years and just turned in her lowest finish EVER in 15 years of GP events. Don’t be a Suguri, Sarah…the bum ankle was a gift. Take it and run… or at least hobble quickly!

Even though I didn’t mention her here, I’m including Alissa Czisny’s gorgeous Free Skate (to selections of George Winston’s “Winter into Spring”) as the Clip of the Day … just because I can.

Cup of China predictions and airtimes coming Thursday!