They posted the team envelopes for next season at the USFS website yesterday; since I don’t think there’s any copyright infringement on re-printing a list of names, here’s the list…
P.S. I don’t really have anything to say about these envelopes at this point except for some curiosity at Katrina Hacker’s appearance in Envelope C—I thought she was retiring from competitive skating to focus on school. May have to check that out a little further.
P.P.S. Is the “tier” thing new this year? Either way, I’m not sure of its purpose. It’s probably better explained at this USFS link anyway.
Team A - Tier One
Ladies--Alissa Czisny
Men--Jeremy Abbott, Evan Lysacek
Pairs--Keauna McLaughlin & Rockne Brubaker
Ice Dancing--Tanith Belbin & Ben Agosto, Meryl Davis & Charlie White
Team A - Tier Two
Ladies--Rachael Flatt
Men--Brandon Mroz, Johnny Weir
Pairs-- Caydee Denney & Jeremy Barrett
Team B - Tier One
Ladies-- Ashley Wagner, Caroline Zhang
Men-- Ryan Bradley, Adam Rippon
Pairs-- Amanda Evora & Mark Ladwig, Rena Inoue & John Baldwin
Ice Dancing-- Madison Chock & Greg Zuerlein, Madison Hubbell & Keiffer Hubbell, Kim Navarro & Brent Bommentre, Emily Samuelson & Evan Bates
Team B - Tier Two
Ladies-- Becky Bereswill, Alexe Gilles, DeeDee Leng, Mirai Nagasu
Men--Stephen Carriere, Richard Dornbush, Armin Mahbanoozadeh, Ross Miner
Pairs-- Marissa Castelli & Simon Shnapir, Brooke Castile & Ben Okolski, Tracy Tanovich & Michael Chau
Ice Dancing--Maia Shibutani & Alex Shibutani
Team C - Tier One
Ladies--Amanda Dobbs, Christina Gao, Katrina Hacker, Ellie Kawamura, Bebe Liang, Angela Maxwell, Kimmie Meissner, Kristine Musademba, Brittney Rizo
Men-- Alexander Johnson, Keegan Messing, Curran Oi
Pairs-- Chloe Katz & Joseph Lynch, Caitlin Yankowskas & John Coughlin
Ice Dancing-- Piper Gilles & Zach Donohue, Trina Pratt & Chris Obzansky, Jane Summersett & Todd Gilles
Team C - Tier Two
Ladies-- Kiri Baga, Melissa Bulanhagui, Kristiene Gong, Mary Beth Marley, Angela Wang, Kendall Wyckoff
Men-- Jason Brown, Steven Evans, Joshua Farris, Grant Hochstein, Austin Kanallakan, Shaun Rogers
Pairs-- Molly Aaron & Daniyel Cohen, Cassie Andrews & Nicholas Anderson, Haven Denney & Daniel Raad, Olivia Gibbons & Tyler Harris, Britney Simpson & Nathan Miller
Ice Dancing-- Lauri Bonacorsi & Travis Mager, Isabella Cannuscio & Ian Lorello, Lynn Kriengkrairut & Logan Giulietti-Schmitt, Anastasia Olson & Jordan Cowan, Moriah Tabon & Matt Kleffman, Shannon Wingle & Tim McKernan
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Harding’s Book Still Awaits “The Oprah Effect”
I could be completely wrong about this, so if you have information to the contrary, please don’t hesitate to correct me…
I saw that Tonya Harding was making an appearance on Oprah’s show last week, and the first thing I thought was hmmm… must be a rerun, since Harding’s book (The Tonya Tapes) came out nearly a year ago… Except that they were talking about the 15th anniversary of you-know-what, so it had to be a current episode.
So then I just said hmmmm.
Why did Oprah bother? I’ve no clue, particularly since I didn’t watch it. There was one thing for which I did seek an answer, though: would Harding’s book get a sales boost? After all, Oprah’s touch is downright golden on just about everything she touches. Even if she didn’t make The Tonya Tapes the newest addition to Oprah’s Book Club, Harding was still on her show, making millions more people aware of her book than ever before. (Unless they saw her on HBO’s special, or saw her during the original press tour, or… you get the idea.)
So once I saw the promo, I went to Amazon’s web site to make a mental note of The Tonya Tapes’ sales ranking prior to her Oprah appearance. It was somewhere in the 500,000 range. (As a frame of reference, Scott Hamilton’s recent release The Great Eight currently hovers around the 50,000 rank for sales.)
And a couple days later, I went back to Amazon to check the ranking again. It… was… somewhere in the 500,000 range. Still.
I could’ve simply been a day too late; Amazon rankings can fluctuate quite a bit, even from hour to hour. Harding’s book could have received an Oprah-riffic shot in the arm; I might have missed the whole thing.
Or… maybe even an Oprah episode wasn’t enough to generate interest?
If so…now there’s a sign of something.
As far as a Clip of the Day goes on this subject—I dug up Nancy Kerrigan’s FS from the ’91 Worlds, where she took bronze as part of a US sweep that included Kristi Yamaguchi and, yes, Harding too.
I saw that Tonya Harding was making an appearance on Oprah’s show last week, and the first thing I thought was hmmm… must be a rerun, since Harding’s book (The Tonya Tapes) came out nearly a year ago… Except that they were talking about the 15th anniversary of you-know-what, so it had to be a current episode.
So then I just said hmmmm.
Why did Oprah bother? I’ve no clue, particularly since I didn’t watch it. There was one thing for which I did seek an answer, though: would Harding’s book get a sales boost? After all, Oprah’s touch is downright golden on just about everything she touches. Even if she didn’t make The Tonya Tapes the newest addition to Oprah’s Book Club, Harding was still on her show, making millions more people aware of her book than ever before. (Unless they saw her on HBO’s special, or saw her during the original press tour, or… you get the idea.)
So once I saw the promo, I went to Amazon’s web site to make a mental note of The Tonya Tapes’ sales ranking prior to her Oprah appearance. It was somewhere in the 500,000 range. (As a frame of reference, Scott Hamilton’s recent release The Great Eight currently hovers around the 50,000 rank for sales.)
And a couple days later, I went back to Amazon to check the ranking again. It… was… somewhere in the 500,000 range. Still.
I could’ve simply been a day too late; Amazon rankings can fluctuate quite a bit, even from hour to hour. Harding’s book could have received an Oprah-riffic shot in the arm; I might have missed the whole thing.
Or… maybe even an Oprah episode wasn’t enough to generate interest?
If so…now there’s a sign of something.
As far as a Clip of the Day goes on this subject—I dug up Nancy Kerrigan’s FS from the ’91 Worlds, where she took bronze as part of a US sweep that included Kristi Yamaguchi and, yes, Harding too.
Friday, April 24, 2009
A World of Skating Pain... and Gain (As in weight gain. The good kind. Seriously!)
Time for a little round-up of, shall we say, “medical or otherwise life-altering” news happenings that have surfaced since Worlds ended a few weeks ago…
-- Got to start with the newest news: Isabelle Delobel, of the former world champion ice dance team Delobel & Schoenfelder, has a pain dans le four (rough translation of the English slang “Bun in the oven”). According to this and several wire reports, she is expecting and due in September. French skier Ludovic Roux is the proud pere-to-be; they plan to marry next year. From the article at icenetwork.com:
Delobel's pregnancy has not discouraged her Olympic dreams. On the contrary, she said, "However unexpected the news came, I can assure you that I never thought this would force me to stop skating," she said. "You know, those pregnant woman's wishes ... They are just like the will for a special victory," she offered in a smile.
I must say, when I indicated earlier this month that D & S could probably bounce back into things relatively quickly next season, I didn’t consider THIS possibility! It will indeed be interesting to see how this affects their final Olympic bid, though perhaps not as interesting as it would be if the baby was due in… say…December.
-- Skating While Injured, part 1: World Champ Evan Lysacek knew (but the public didn’t) at the time of Worlds, he was competing while contending with a stress fracture in his left foot. But former World Silver Medalist Fumie Suguri did NOT know she was competing while contending with a fractured rib… the ninth rib, to be more specific. Yeow! You can read a little more here about her plans for recovery (which don’t seem long enough, but I’ve never dealt with a cracked rib so what do I know…).
-- Skating While Injured, part 2: Rockne Brubaker, one-half of the current US Pairs Champion team McLaughlin and Brubaker (or McBru as they’re often called here), competed the entire season with two “sports hernias”, and skipped the ISU World Team Trophy so that he could get right on the necessary surgery to repair them. From the icenetwork article:
"The injury was not severe but bothersome to Rockne's performance," said Dr. John Reasoner, the medical director of performance services at the United States Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs, Colo., who treated Brubaker throughout his injury.
Ya THINK? I really haven’t dealt with (nor am I likely to deal with ) one hernia in my lifetime, let alone two at the same time… so again, what do I know… but I’m going to wince every time I watch a playback from this season showing Brubaker executing a lift. Egads!
Speaking of which, let’s wince right now… just kidding. The Clip of the Day showcases McBru back at the Nationals Gala from January. It appears to be grimace-free :-)
-- Got to start with the newest news: Isabelle Delobel, of the former world champion ice dance team Delobel & Schoenfelder, has a pain dans le four (rough translation of the English slang “Bun in the oven”). According to this and several wire reports, she is expecting and due in September. French skier Ludovic Roux is the proud pere-to-be; they plan to marry next year. From the article at icenetwork.com:
Delobel's pregnancy has not discouraged her Olympic dreams. On the contrary, she said, "However unexpected the news came, I can assure you that I never thought this would force me to stop skating," she said. "You know, those pregnant woman's wishes ... They are just like the will for a special victory," she offered in a smile.
I must say, when I indicated earlier this month that D & S could probably bounce back into things relatively quickly next season, I didn’t consider THIS possibility! It will indeed be interesting to see how this affects their final Olympic bid, though perhaps not as interesting as it would be if the baby was due in… say…December.
-- Skating While Injured, part 1: World Champ Evan Lysacek knew (but the public didn’t) at the time of Worlds, he was competing while contending with a stress fracture in his left foot. But former World Silver Medalist Fumie Suguri did NOT know she was competing while contending with a fractured rib… the ninth rib, to be more specific. Yeow! You can read a little more here about her plans for recovery (which don’t seem long enough, but I’ve never dealt with a cracked rib so what do I know…).
-- Skating While Injured, part 2: Rockne Brubaker, one-half of the current US Pairs Champion team McLaughlin and Brubaker (or McBru as they’re often called here), competed the entire season with two “sports hernias”, and skipped the ISU World Team Trophy so that he could get right on the necessary surgery to repair them. From the icenetwork article:
"The injury was not severe but bothersome to Rockne's performance," said Dr. John Reasoner, the medical director of performance services at the United States Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs, Colo., who treated Brubaker throughout his injury.
Ya THINK? I really haven’t dealt with (nor am I likely to deal with ) one hernia in my lifetime, let alone two at the same time… so again, what do I know… but I’m going to wince every time I watch a playback from this season showing Brubaker executing a lift. Egads!
Speaking of which, let’s wince right now… just kidding. The Clip of the Day showcases McBru back at the Nationals Gala from January. It appears to be grimace-free :-)
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The First Annual State of the Skate Address
Note: In honor of this blog’s 1st anniversary (which occured, well, today), please kindly tolerate my attempt at a leader-esque “speech” intended for those who adore skating as much as I do.
And by the way, thank you ever so much for reading. Whether you are a regular or not, I deeply appreciate you taking time out of your day to visit! --KL
My fellow Figure Skating Fans…
I sit before my computer screen today, wondering what I might say to lift people’s sprits regarding the direction in which our beloved sport is headed, and astonished to great extent that spirits are even in need of lifting.
If you’re reading this from certain parts of the world, your spirits might be raised to the hilt already: South Korea, Japan, China, Canada, certain parts of Europe… yep, I’m talking to you. And I’m grateful for your unbridled enthusiasm much more than you know. It’s worth its weight in gold—and yes, perhaps Olympic Gold as well—right about now.
For the problem, at least from my particular perspective, lies here in the USA—land of the free, home of the disenchanted.
(Assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that the massive problem that is ISU President Ottavio Cinquanta is a given. I don’t care for what he’s doing/has done to figure skating, and I don’t know of anyone who DOES care for it. But to rant about him specifically, at this particular point in time, seems like a waste of my own blog space. Maybe I’ll save that for another address.)
By that, I do not mean to imply that the US holds all the cards when it comes to skating’s success. The wave of popularity its currently enjoying in those aforementioned “certain parts of the world” is proof of that. But we are a nation of over 300 million people that, in the past 33 years, has produced 19 figure skaters that have won Olympic medals… 43 who have won World medals… and as many as 45 million of us sat in front of our TVs at the same time, in Prime Time, and watched at least a couple of them do it.
But things change. National champions have to settle for 11th place at the biggest event of the season. Fans can’t find NBC’s scant two hours of traditional TV coverage of Worlds with a freaking magnifying glass, and the ratings show it. Die-hard fans are left praying they can find streaming video online from somewhere—anywhere(!), and in time to see someone they recognize.
How did we get here? You can count the ways any way you like: Miserable management (or should we say mis-management?). 2002 scandal. New scoring system. No fresh, consistent, memorable breakout stars. Kwan is all but retired. Young demographics would rather watch snowboarding. The list could stretch on into the summer and through to next season, but it hardly answers the next question: What do we do about it?
I don’t profess to have the answer listed in hidden code anywhere on this blog. Yes, change can feel most effective when it comes from the top— one look at our new presidential administration will tell you that. But we don’t get an election in our little frozen world.
So, we can bemoan the paint-by-number routines, the suspicious judging, the “cost-cutting” reduction of judges, a seeming conspiracy to keep skating from even being seen at times… and even talk, openly and often, about how we don’t even watch when we DO have the opportunity… that IS something we can “elect” to do.
But it feels an awful lot to me like we’re giving up if that is all we do.
I love figure skating. From the moment I saw Dorothy Hamill in Innsbruck in 1976, it was love at first sight. And for me, at least, it’s not something from which I can divorce myself. It’s a blood relative, you might say. I competed for a while, won some stuff, and would like to think I could still at least turn in a decent forward scratch spin if I laced up my skates right now.
But televised skating is what has kept me connected through the years. It’s what hooked me, it’s what kept me in touch (just barely) as I got busy with other things in my high school and college years, and it’s what allowed me to know the sport inside-out, particularly in the 1990s. I may not love what’s being done to it at any given time, but I simply can’t abandon it. There has to be a better way.
So while the State of the Skate is anything but ideal, and we consequently head into this upcoming Winter Olympic season with a sense of anxiety more than we do a sense of eager anticipation, wondering who we can complain to, where we can best make our feelings known, and why a particular boneheaded decision is made in the first place.. the only definitive thing I can say is this: Keep watching, by any means necessary.
Because to watch is to care, to care is to get involved, and even if “getting involved” requires a god-awful amount of banging one’s fists against the wall, sooner or later, you’ve got to believe that the wall will crumble. And I, for one, would still love to see what’s on the other side of it.
And by the way, thank you ever so much for reading. Whether you are a regular or not, I deeply appreciate you taking time out of your day to visit! --KL
My fellow Figure Skating Fans…
I sit before my computer screen today, wondering what I might say to lift people’s sprits regarding the direction in which our beloved sport is headed, and astonished to great extent that spirits are even in need of lifting.
If you’re reading this from certain parts of the world, your spirits might be raised to the hilt already: South Korea, Japan, China, Canada, certain parts of Europe… yep, I’m talking to you. And I’m grateful for your unbridled enthusiasm much more than you know. It’s worth its weight in gold—and yes, perhaps Olympic Gold as well—right about now.
For the problem, at least from my particular perspective, lies here in the USA—land of the free, home of the disenchanted.
(Assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that the massive problem that is ISU President Ottavio Cinquanta is a given. I don’t care for what he’s doing/has done to figure skating, and I don’t know of anyone who DOES care for it. But to rant about him specifically, at this particular point in time, seems like a waste of my own blog space. Maybe I’ll save that for another address.)
By that, I do not mean to imply that the US holds all the cards when it comes to skating’s success. The wave of popularity its currently enjoying in those aforementioned “certain parts of the world” is proof of that. But we are a nation of over 300 million people that, in the past 33 years, has produced 19 figure skaters that have won Olympic medals… 43 who have won World medals… and as many as 45 million of us sat in front of our TVs at the same time, in Prime Time, and watched at least a couple of them do it.
But things change. National champions have to settle for 11th place at the biggest event of the season. Fans can’t find NBC’s scant two hours of traditional TV coverage of Worlds with a freaking magnifying glass, and the ratings show it. Die-hard fans are left praying they can find streaming video online from somewhere—anywhere(!), and in time to see someone they recognize.
How did we get here? You can count the ways any way you like: Miserable management (or should we say mis-management?). 2002 scandal. New scoring system. No fresh, consistent, memorable breakout stars. Kwan is all but retired. Young demographics would rather watch snowboarding. The list could stretch on into the summer and through to next season, but it hardly answers the next question: What do we do about it?
I don’t profess to have the answer listed in hidden code anywhere on this blog. Yes, change can feel most effective when it comes from the top— one look at our new presidential administration will tell you that. But we don’t get an election in our little frozen world.
So, we can bemoan the paint-by-number routines, the suspicious judging, the “cost-cutting” reduction of judges, a seeming conspiracy to keep skating from even being seen at times… and even talk, openly and often, about how we don’t even watch when we DO have the opportunity… that IS something we can “elect” to do.
But it feels an awful lot to me like we’re giving up if that is all we do.
I love figure skating. From the moment I saw Dorothy Hamill in Innsbruck in 1976, it was love at first sight. And for me, at least, it’s not something from which I can divorce myself. It’s a blood relative, you might say. I competed for a while, won some stuff, and would like to think I could still at least turn in a decent forward scratch spin if I laced up my skates right now.
But televised skating is what has kept me connected through the years. It’s what hooked me, it’s what kept me in touch (just barely) as I got busy with other things in my high school and college years, and it’s what allowed me to know the sport inside-out, particularly in the 1990s. I may not love what’s being done to it at any given time, but I simply can’t abandon it. There has to be a better way.
So while the State of the Skate is anything but ideal, and we consequently head into this upcoming Winter Olympic season with a sense of anxiety more than we do a sense of eager anticipation, wondering who we can complain to, where we can best make our feelings known, and why a particular boneheaded decision is made in the first place.. the only definitive thing I can say is this: Keep watching, by any means necessary.
Because to watch is to care, to care is to get involved, and even if “getting involved” requires a god-awful amount of banging one’s fists against the wall, sooner or later, you’ve got to believe that the wall will crumble. And I, for one, would still love to see what’s on the other side of it.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
The US Shows That Figure Skating CAN Be a Team Sport
We’re #1!!!
As far as the ISU World Team Trophy is concerned, that is… USA in first, with Team Canada finishing second and Team Japan in third.
Solid, if not winning, performances by the remainder of Team USA clinched the victory:
--Caroline Zhang pulled up to 3rd, behind 2nd place Canada’s Joannie Rochette and Japan’s Mao Asada (who apparently turned in a gangbusters performance and a nice bounceback from Worlds).
--Rachael Flatt pulled up as well, finishing in 4th right behind Zhang.
--Denney/Barrett lost some ground in their free skate, but still managed to hang in for 4th place.
Oh, and lest I forget (since it hadn’t happened yet when I posted last), Evan Lysacek won the Mens division, while Belbin/Agosto did the same for Dance.
You can read more about the three-day event here.
As far as the ISU World Team Trophy is concerned, that is… USA in first, with Team Canada finishing second and Team Japan in third.
Solid, if not winning, performances by the remainder of Team USA clinched the victory:
--Caroline Zhang pulled up to 3rd, behind 2nd place Canada’s Joannie Rochette and Japan’s Mao Asada (who apparently turned in a gangbusters performance and a nice bounceback from Worlds).
--Rachael Flatt pulled up as well, finishing in 4th right behind Zhang.
--Denney/Barrett lost some ground in their free skate, but still managed to hang in for 4th place.
Oh, and lest I forget (since it hadn’t happened yet when I posted last), Evan Lysacek won the Mens division, while Belbin/Agosto did the same for Dance.
You can read more about the three-day event here.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Introducing the (Totally Anti-Climactic) ISU World Team Trophy!
I’m a little backlogged at the moment with writing assignments, so my apologies for not coming up with a full-blown post… but, indeed, this Team Trophy thing has gotten underway, so here’s just a few things you might be interested in knowing…
+ “On demand” video will be available at IceNetwork.com soon… but not as I write this.
+ After Day One, the US team is in the lead, followed by Japan and Canada.
+ Lysacek (in 2nd) and Belbin/Agosto (in 1st) led the US pack; Zhang and Flatt are 4th and 5th respectively. Denney/Barrett have yet to start for the Pairs’ division.
+ Any notable surprises in the standings came in the Mens’ SP: Kozuka popped his axel, crashed on another jump and finished 10th in the field of 12, while Chan fell on TWO jumps and had to settle for 9th. (And Abbott, with another blown triple axel and an additional fall on footwork, found himself in 5th.)
+ Asada and Joubert are the SP leaders; Asada by a huge margin (the triple axel combo put in an appearance); Joubert by only a couple of points.
You can check out all the results here…
And for the USA Today article about the event, look here.
More as the weekend progresses…
+ “On demand” video will be available at IceNetwork.com soon… but not as I write this.
+ After Day One, the US team is in the lead, followed by Japan and Canada.
+ Lysacek (in 2nd) and Belbin/Agosto (in 1st) led the US pack; Zhang and Flatt are 4th and 5th respectively. Denney/Barrett have yet to start for the Pairs’ division.
+ Any notable surprises in the standings came in the Mens’ SP: Kozuka popped his axel, crashed on another jump and finished 10th in the field of 12, while Chan fell on TWO jumps and had to settle for 9th. (And Abbott, with another blown triple axel and an additional fall on footwork, found himself in 5th.)
+ Asada and Joubert are the SP leaders; Asada by a huge margin (the triple axel combo put in an appearance); Joubert by only a couple of points.
You can check out all the results here…
And for the USA Today article about the event, look here.
More as the weekend progresses…
Monday, April 13, 2009
Back to Cali (Review): Four Dance Lessons Learned in Spite of it All
Imagine, for the duration of this post, that there were no controversies in the judging/scoring of ice dancing. Yes, you can imagine at the same time that democracy is flawless, and educators are paid what they’re worth and then some…
Then return to my dance judging fantasy-land as you study the final standings at Worlds for 2009 , 2008 , and 2007 (the years since the last Olympic season). What might they teach us at face value? Well…
1) Compulsories can make the difference between going home with a medal, and going home empty-handed. A lot of fans (myself included) were stunned to see USA’s Davis/White on the short end of a virtual tie with Canada’s Virtue/Moir, especially when they’d actually beaten V/M in the free dance (by mere hundredths of a point, but a win’s still a win). But if you look at the event segment by segment, you find that the biggest discrepancy between them was actually in compulsories… where V/M’s 39.37 was more of a tie with Belbin/Agosto (39.65), and D/W’s 37.73 was actually more in line with Khoklova/Novitski (37.34).
2) The point totals don’t automatically shoot higher every year. Over in the Ladies Final, the big question was “Can Yu-Na Kim break 200 points?”… something that had not previously been achieved in the new system. But while the 200 point mark was surpassed by ice dancers as early as 2005 (the first year the CoP system was used at Worlds), the top score from year to year has fluctuated wildly since than. In fact, the best overall score at this year’s competition (Domnina/Shabalin’s 206.30) would have only been good enough in ’05 for… 6th place!
3) An off and/or injured year doesn’t mean you have to re-earn your place in the line upon returning. Belbin/Agosto took an infamous tumble at compulsories last year, and didn’t seem to be bouncing back with any gusto (pun intended) this season… until Worlds, that is, where they came as close as they ever have to winning the title. Domnina/Shabalin have struggled with Shabalin’s knee injuries for years, to the point where they had to withdraw from Worlds altogether in ‘08… and we all know what happened with them. So for anyone worrying that Delobel/Schoenfelder might have a tough time of it next season, perhaps those fears can be put to rest a little early.
4) (Speaking of tough times…) It can be just as cold and cruel out there on the ice for dancing as it is any other discipline. Italy’s Faiella/Scali finished 9th back in 2007, and 5th in ’08… but rather than continue or at least maintain their ascent, they suffered a fall in the OD this year and finished the season back down in 8th. And while their problems were pretty plain to see, those of Russia's Khoklova/Novitski were more mystifying: after claiming bronze last year and doing quite well for themselves in earlier season events (including a win over Dom/Shab), they could do no better than 5th in any one event here and ended up 6th overall. Hmmm...
And for what it’s worth:
I predicted Khok/Novot for gold… they finished 6th
I predicted Domnina/Shabalin for silver… they won gold
I predicted Davis/White for bronze… they finished 4th
1 out of 3 for the podium; no correct placements
Since I mentioned everyone in the Top 6 except Pechalat/Bourzat, here they are as the Clip of the Day with their whimsical, circus-inspired FD (which has really grown on me, I must admit).
ISU Team Trophy coming up later this week! (What the heck is that?! Stay tuned and we'll find out together.)
Then return to my dance judging fantasy-land as you study the final standings at Worlds for 2009 , 2008 , and 2007 (the years since the last Olympic season). What might they teach us at face value? Well…
1) Compulsories can make the difference between going home with a medal, and going home empty-handed. A lot of fans (myself included) were stunned to see USA’s Davis/White on the short end of a virtual tie with Canada’s Virtue/Moir, especially when they’d actually beaten V/M in the free dance (by mere hundredths of a point, but a win’s still a win). But if you look at the event segment by segment, you find that the biggest discrepancy between them was actually in compulsories… where V/M’s 39.37 was more of a tie with Belbin/Agosto (39.65), and D/W’s 37.73 was actually more in line with Khoklova/Novitski (37.34).
2) The point totals don’t automatically shoot higher every year. Over in the Ladies Final, the big question was “Can Yu-Na Kim break 200 points?”… something that had not previously been achieved in the new system. But while the 200 point mark was surpassed by ice dancers as early as 2005 (the first year the CoP system was used at Worlds), the top score from year to year has fluctuated wildly since than. In fact, the best overall score at this year’s competition (Domnina/Shabalin’s 206.30) would have only been good enough in ’05 for… 6th place!
3) An off and/or injured year doesn’t mean you have to re-earn your place in the line upon returning. Belbin/Agosto took an infamous tumble at compulsories last year, and didn’t seem to be bouncing back with any gusto (pun intended) this season… until Worlds, that is, where they came as close as they ever have to winning the title. Domnina/Shabalin have struggled with Shabalin’s knee injuries for years, to the point where they had to withdraw from Worlds altogether in ‘08… and we all know what happened with them. So for anyone worrying that Delobel/Schoenfelder might have a tough time of it next season, perhaps those fears can be put to rest a little early.
4) (Speaking of tough times…) It can be just as cold and cruel out there on the ice for dancing as it is any other discipline. Italy’s Faiella/Scali finished 9th back in 2007, and 5th in ’08… but rather than continue or at least maintain their ascent, they suffered a fall in the OD this year and finished the season back down in 8th. And while their problems were pretty plain to see, those of Russia's Khoklova/Novitski were more mystifying: after claiming bronze last year and doing quite well for themselves in earlier season events (including a win over Dom/Shab), they could do no better than 5th in any one event here and ended up 6th overall. Hmmm...
And for what it’s worth:
I predicted Khok/Novot for gold… they finished 6th
I predicted Domnina/Shabalin for silver… they won gold
I predicted Davis/White for bronze… they finished 4th
1 out of 3 for the podium; no correct placements
Since I mentioned everyone in the Top 6 except Pechalat/Bourzat, here they are as the Clip of the Day with their whimsical, circus-inspired FD (which has really grown on me, I must admit).
ISU Team Trophy coming up later this week! (What the heck is that?! Stay tuned and we'll find out together.)
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