Of Makeup and Men...and other TEB 2009 Observations

I’m quickly recalling how busy this blog will need to be over the next few months… gotta watch, gotta post some observations, gotta look over the next week’s event, gotta make some more predictions before the compulsory dances get underway, gotta watch… and so on, and so on…
I’ll do my best to keep up, but as you probably already know, there are several places out there you can go to read results and scores quicker… right, Laura ? Or MRR ? Or Lifeskate ? Or Aaron ?

(In case you need a quick fix, though… Ladies? Kim/Asada/Nakano. Men? Oda/Verner/Rippon. Pairs? Muk/Trank, Dube/Davison, Szol/Sal. (They came in THIRD? Oh, how they did…)Dance? Vir/Moir, Pech/Bour,.Kerr/Kerr.)

(I was 6-for-12 on my predictions, by the way… better than last year, though I must admit that half of those good guesses were thanks to a fairly predictable dance event.)

But me, I’m better at watching it all, taking notes as I go, and processing the most interesting observations for bloglike consumption. Here are the five that seemed the most noteworthy, though there was much to choose from…

(In no particular order)

+ Adam Rippon is blowing my mind. My first thought in watching his SP was of how much more mature he looks this season… physically as well as in terms of his skating. Wow. I know his axels weren’t clean in the free skate, but from the “Rippon Lutz” on down (can we just call it that already?), I was very impressed.

+ Everything oldies is new again . Rippon’s SP was to music from 1973’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull (composed by Neil Diamond, arguably at his pop-music prime)… Dube/Davison skated to another 1973 hit soundtrack—or, more specifically, song—in Hamlisch’s The Way We Were. And Yu-Na Kim’s Bond Medley, perhaps the “it” SP of the season, had to be primarily stemmed in ‘60s/’70s tunes as well. And I think all three ideas really worked. Where have these would-be warhorses been for the past 30-40 years?

+ Love Stories Redux pt.1: Was it just me, or did anyone else see several shades of another Canadian couple who skated to another tear-jerker ‘70s movie soundtrack when Dube and Davison got their “Way We Were” performance underway? (I loved it all nonetheless, except I think the complete turn-away from each other at the very end is a little harsh… maybe they could face apart while still holding hands? Streisand and Redford’s characters don’t hate each other at the movie’s end, after all.)

+ Love Stories Redux pt.2: When I saw that the Canadians were immediately followed by Mukhortova/Trankov with the real music from Love Story, I had one hand on the phone, ready to call the irony police. BUT… when I saw how beautifully they skated in their FS, finally, and how they seem to be getting along better (at least for now)… I realized it was another irony that consequentially cancelled out the first one. No phone calls were made. (Except to Savchenko/Szolkowy I simply shouted “what were you thinking?” in German and hung up.)

+ Random cosMENtology observation: Between the clownish Szolkowy, the downtrodden John Kerr (playing a lost soul in the FD), and the face-of-time look taken on by Bourzat, I can’t remember when I’ve seen more noticeable makeup on the men. And Johnny Weir wasn’t even skating here… (rim-shot!)

Maybe more observations Monday or Tuesday, if time allows!

For the Clip of the Day, here is Virtue/Moir’s DDG (Drop Dead Gorgeous) Mahler free dance… holy cow, how lovely. Let me know if this link stops working; don’t know if the ISU will let the TEB posts stay up this year.

Trophee Eric Bompard: Showtimes, Predictions, and the Luck of the Magic 8-Ball

Twas the night before TEB, and what more can I do
But to post this weekend’s TV Schedules for you! (All times Eastern)

(oh, and give predictions… including those made by my very own MAGIC 8-BALL... in a minute)

On ICE NETWORK…
8AM Compulsory Dance
9:20 Men’s SP
11:15 Pairs SP
12:40 Ladies SP

On UNIVERSAL SPORTS…
Friday, Oct. 16 : 5-7 p.m. ET/Encore Presentation: 8-10 p.m.
Saturday, Oct. 17 : 5-7 p.m. ET/Encore Presentation: 10-11 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 18 (Universal Sports): 5-7 p.m.

And on NBC, as previously mentioned…
Sunday, Oct. 18 (NBC Sports): 1-3 p.m.

As for predictions…they will be brief, and hopefully more accurate than last year’s for TEB (during which I came up a pitiful 4-for-12!)

Ready?

For DANCE:
Gold: Virtue/Moir (CAN)
Silver: Pechalat/Bourzat (FRA)
Bronze: Kerr/Kerr (GBR)

I’d like to put the Kerrs in silver, but in that clip I posted the other day their twizzle sequences looked pretty shaky.

For MEN:
Gold: Brian Joubert (FRA)
Silver: Nobunari Oda (JPN)
Bronze: Tomas Verner (CZE)

The top two should be close, but I’ll hazard a guess that Joubert will be fired up enough in his home country to get the edge.

For PAIRS:
Gold: Savchenko/Szolkowy (GER)
Silver: Dube/Davison (CAN)
Bronze: Mukhortova/Trankov (RUS)

Sav/Szo are not perfect, but they’re the best by far in this assortment.

For LADIES:
Gold: Yu-Na Kim (KOR)
Silver: Mao Asada (JPN)
Bronze: Caroline Zhang (USA)

Even without Cohen there it will be a rather tight field; others competing include Kostner, Nakano, and Gedevanishvili. Assuming Kim and Asada are some variety of 1-2, it should be interesting to see who gets in there for the 3rd spot… and if anyone will bother doing the “Hmm… could the podium look like this in Vancouver?” speculation.

And last but not least… this time, I’m offering up a little experiment: I’m letting my own, personal Magic-8 Ball take a stab at the predictions as well (in the Men’s category only this time)…
And if it has better luck than I, we might just have to change up the way we do this :-)

The MAGIC 8-BALL’s predictions for the Men:

Gold: Nobunari Oda (JPN)
Silver: Tomas Verner (CZE)
Bronze: Yannick Pansero (FRA)

At this time, the Magic-8 Ball has no comment on the choices it has made, including its apparent prediction that Joubert is going to tank… :-)

Gotta have a 2-part Clip of the Day this time… the most memorable performance of last year’s TEB, for me, was this two-parter from Canada’s Duhamel/Buntin. They took bronze… and a whole lotta bandages, as you might recall after watching this.

Updates: Finlandia and Grand Prix TV Coverage

Suddenly there’s so much to talk about, and that’s not even counting predictions for this year’s TEB… which I guess I’ll have to post tomorrow evening…whew!

Skating’s “pre-season” wrapped up over the weekend with, among other events, the Finlandia Trophy. The event (which only competes mens/ladies/dance—NO pairs) proved a fine testing ground for winner Daisuke Takahashi, as I mentioned last time. First time back on the international circuit (I think?) after being out all last season, and he’s looking stick-pin sharp. As with the ladies, that pool of highest quality male skaters over in Japan is getting mighty deep! (Understanding that the ladies of Japan have surpassed “deep pool” stage and moved to something that closer resembles a lagoon.)

Alena Leonova was the winner on the ladies’ side; not really an upset except for the thought/hope that Fumie Suguri would at least be somewhere in the medal hunt. (She wasn’t; she was only 7th.)

Finlandia also proved a nice place for The Kerrs to sneak folks a peek at their dances for the new season-- Here’s their OD as the Clip of the Day.

Here are the results from the Finlandia website itself in case you want to know more.

I also wanted to provide a little update on the additional NBC coverage of GP events this season: for those of you who also have access to the Universal Sports Network (also owned by NBC), it will (usually) have additional GP coverage… but, I'm seeing conflicting information with regards to times, so here’s the Universal Sports Schedule, to see what you can see until I can get it straight!

Oh, and as for those in the broadcast booth… looks like Andrea Joyce and David Pelletier (of Sale & Pelletier) will be heard from on the NBC side. As for the Universal side—don’t be too surprised if you happen to hear former ABC/ESPN analyst Peter Carruthers at the mic. (Alas, Susie Wynne and Terry Gannon won’t be with him.)

Strike One on Sasha... (as Cohen Withdraws from TEB)

A week from now, the TEB (Trophee Eric Bompard) will be nearly in the books… but Sasha Cohen’s name won’t be in that book after all.

Though she hasn’t yet withdrawn from the entire GP Series (as Kimmie Meissner just did), Cohen is citing tendonitis in her calf as her reason for withdrawing from TEB. You can read more about it here.

While this means we won’t get a sneak preview of how Cohen measures up to both Yu-Na Kim and Mao Asada side by side, we should still see how she compares the current world champion when she and Yu-Na meet up at Skate America. At least, that appears to be the plan for now.

So is it too late for the US to get an alternate to Paris for next week’s events? I’m looking at the roster and noticing that BeBe Liang only has one assignment thus far…

The Clip of the Day is from the ongoing Finlandia Trophy event, of which I’ll probably mention in a couple of days. But if you like Dice-K (aka Daisuke Takahashi), be sure to check this out. It’s a far cry from Olympic-ready, but I’m already digging this new free skate. Glad he’s back!

Meissner: She'll Always Have Calgary

If you happen to follow The Amazing Race, you probably noticed that there was one of those “shocking twists” this season that we’ve, ironically, come to expect with this genre we call Reality TV. In the case of Race, there was a straight-out-of-the-gate challenge that resulted in one of the teams being eliminated, quite literally, before they even got started. The rest of the teams boarded planes to Tokyo; this one unfortunate team was last seen standing with Phil Keoghan at the site of that “Thunder Road” scene from Grease.

In figure skating this season… misfortune, thy name is Kimmie Meissner.

As this article in Meissner’s hometown paper (The Baltimore Sun) reports, she has officially withdrawn from her GP events due to injury, which essentially means she’s out for the entire season. From the article:

The former world and national figure skating champion from Bel Air has not recovered quickly enough from a dislocated right knee cap and tendinitis, which forced her Thursday to withdraw from both of her Grand Prix assignments.

In a text message to The Baltimore Sun, Meissner, 20, said she is not retiring from skating."I want to thank everyone who has supported me," she said. "My heart will always be in Maryland with the people who cheered for me first."

Incidentally, the article also happens to mention that part of the injury came “when she attempted to pull out of a jump to avoid a younger skater who had drifted into her path… She landed on her right knee, which swelled and stiffened.” Can you imagine if you happened to be the kid who got in her way? Who probably idolized Meissner? Yikes. Poor thing.

Anyway, her coach Richard Callaghan indicated that it could be far from the end of the road, pointing out that Shizuka Arakawa was 24 in Torino when she won gold (among others that have peaked in their mid-late 20s). Of course there’s that FOUR MORE YEARS part… and keeping up with costs in the face of increasingly fewer exhibition opportunities… and wondering if she could find herself as injured in 2014 as she does today.

There is all that.

There is also the fact that she’s already found the kind of success most skaters of her generation—heck, any generation—can only dream about: successfully landing a triple axel in competition… national title in 2007… WORLD title even before that… thank goodness those achievements can never be taken away from her.

Could there still be a happy sequel in Kimmie Meissner’s future? If the injured knee proves anything, it proves that fate is an enigma, wrapped in a conundrum. But if she happens to make it back, she’ll be the most deserving graduate the School of Hard Knocks has ever seen.

Till then, we can always enjoy the good times… like this Calgary World Championship.

Skating. On NBC. Starting October 18. WRITE IT DOWN...

Call it an Olympic necessity, call it more tests for the equipment, call it whatever you like—but NBC appears to have recently added more Grand Prix coverage to their Fall schedule…

+ Trophee Eric Bompard will air Sunday, October. 18, 1-3 PM

+ Rostelecom Cup (replacement for Cup of Russia) will air Sunday, October 25, Noon-2PM

+ NHK Trophy will air Sunday, November 8th, 2-4 PM

These are all to air in addition to the ladies’ final of Skate America, airing live from 2-4PM on November 15. All of which is, of course, nothing but good news for skating as well as its fans. While NBC’s Universal Sports Network is a terrific outlet for skating and other Olympic sports, it’s not nearly as wide-reaching as NBC itself.

Here’s an online schedule you may want to keep handy if you haven’t bookmarked it already… it also includes all the Disson shows and other pro skating specials, including Kaleidoscope (Scott Hamilton’s “comeback” show), airing on Thanksgiving Day.

The long and the short of it is… skating’s back on TV in less than two weeks! YEA!

Meanwhile, I’m going up North to show you a clip from the premiere week of CBC’s Battle of the Blades. Wonder what Dick Button, Sandra Bezic and Kurt Browning are all up to at the moment? Find out here.

Babies and Battles and Promotions (and Dancers)... Oh My!

With October already upon us, and the kickoff to the 2009-10 GP season just a few weeks away, it seems like I’d better shake out of the summer schedule for this blog (which amounts to about 2 postings a week max), and get fitted for the winter version (which is at least 3 postings a week). But it may take a little longer for me this year—I’m in the final stages of a HUGE project I’ve been working on for quite a while, and may be doing well to keep with the 2x/a week updates until the project is complete. With any luck, that “complete” date will be within the next couple of months. Please bear with me… thanks!!

In the meantime, please scroll through the assortment of updates until you find one you like:

+ C’EST UN GARCON: From the “Where has the time gone this year??” files… one minute I’m blogging about a certain ice dancer’s pregnancy, the next, pregnancy time is over already and Isabelle Delobel’s son is born. Here’s one of probably several articles about it… but of course, the most important news is that mère et le fils se portent bien. Will she and Olivier Schoenfelder get back into competitive form in time for Vancouver? The watch is on to find out…

+ GAME ON: Though I haven’t really mentioned it here at my site, go to just about any other skating blog and you’ll see at least one post about the CBC reality show Battle of the Blades… or look here, or here. In any case, it sounds like a cool chance to watch well-known hockey players team up with first ladies of Canadian figure skating and try to look the least ridiculous on live TV. First team out has to watch a 6 hour marathon of all the Cutting Edge movies. (TOE-PICK!!) And if that’s not enough to have non-Canadians mining You Tube for clips… Kurt Browning co-hosts. It gets started this weekend.

+ ALREADY?: The fine folks that make up the local organizing committee for the 2011 Nationals (in Greensboro, N.C.) want you to know about their So Good, It’s Scary promotion set to run throughout October. It involves package discounts on tickets, and like so many things in life today, it involves getting followers on Twitter. So by all means, check it out and become a “follower” if it suits your fancy.

+ STILL DANCING: In case you were wondering, Emmanuel Sandhu continues his remarkable turnaround from his very early season 1 departure from So You Think You Can Dance Canada… and is still on the show (aka “hasn’t been voted off yet”) as of this week. Add to that the fact that he’s apparently competing with broken fingers, and it’s hard not to be impressed.

I can’t find a new video of just Sandhu (and partner) from the show, but in lieu of that I’ll post this season-to-date composite... during which you will see him several times.