Caveat: Virtue and Moir are the best ice dancers in the world and proved it again at Worlds. Fans pitching a fit over the results (including some of Scott's family and friends on his aunt's facebook) should learn how skaters accumulate points under CoP - something you'd think Scott's family and friends would know already. Watch Tessa and Scott's wonderful skate and see where they left points on the ice. And grow the fuck up.
After sitting out most of the season and seriously training the free for only the past two months, not to mention competing it for the first time at Worlds, Scott and Tessa were just a footwork level and a couple of slightly cautiously executed elements away from gold. For Davis White fans, in the context of this season, that must be devastating.
Davis and White were as polished as they possibly can get. The program was trained to their maximum over many many months of competing, re-working and refining - long before Scott and Tessa seriously started getting their free dance ready. While not the danciest ice dancers on the planet, Meryl and Charlie are an extremely capable and powerful elite level team. Yet they won with only a 3.5 margin over a VM who are just beginning to stretch their legs. (VM's winning margin in the Vancouver Olympics, touted as a close contest with DW, was 5 points.)
The win wasn't about talent, dance ability and whose program was more engaging - it's who accumulated the most points. You can't speed up muscle memory - it takes a season to make a program seamless. But what I'm reading is that an undertrained, sloppy(ish) in spots, a bit slow(er) and tireder in others Scott and Tessa should be able to defeat their maximum trained, maximum competed, maximum performing training mates. Scott must be lying when he says he knows he and Tessa must be at their best to beat Meryl and Charlie. At Worlds, Scott and Tessa were great but not their best - with more time they are capable of skating that free so as to make the Worlds outing look like a placeholding gala rehearsal. You know it's a compliment to say this wasn't their best, right? That they can be better, but Meryl and Charlie hit their ceiling?
Tessa and Scott will presumably compete a full season next season. If that's not enough, it should be Tessa's first pain free season in three years. The sky's their limit. Gratitude wouldn't be amiss.
Davis White got 110 but I think that happened because the judges threw every point they could possibly find at Tessa and Scott and then some - that's how much they loved VM. Since Davis White had tons of difficulty, speed, and greater polish and I think at least one higher element level, the judges had to dig around for more points for them. We want judging to be fair - and it's lots more fair under CoP. At least that's what Scott always says.
It's a bit rich to expect these two - on mostly talent + two months training (not to mention everything else that went down this year) should beat an extremely competitive, driven, athletic team trained by Scott and Tessa's own brilliant coaches. If they'd done so, hurrah, but as they didn't, copping an attitude is poor sportsmanship. As is being sour grapes about a couple of skaters who by all reports - including Scott and Tessa's - are good friends of your kids.
I would like to address a comment by Alma Moir:
Alma's graciousness aside, I agree - Davis White couldn't skate Scott and Tessa's programs - any of them of the past three years. Virtue Moir could skate Davis White's and then some. My opinion; I'm sticking with it.
Know what let's do as well? Rewind to 2002. Have Sale & Pelletier skate Bereshnaya & Sikharulidze's Olympic short and long. S&P can attempt Lady Caliph and Meditation from Thais. B&S will do S&P's short and that stop-and-pose-between-elements lp, Love Story. Alma (and Carol, and Sheri - and a young Scott - and others) kicked up a righteous fuss back then:
Per Moirville, Anton's slight stumble in the 2 axel meant S&P should have gotten gold outright. Level of difficulty, speed, power, unison, close together skating, complex holds and transitions, quality of execution, intricacy of choreography done brilliantly - screw it. S&P didn't stumble while miming throwing snowballs at each other in between setting up for elements. Where's the justice.
Didn't S&P ditch a much more complex program from that season's Canadians because they couldn't skate it clean, and default back to their old warhorse Love Story? S&P would have mopped the ice with their backsides attempting Meditation or Lady Caliph. As it was they fell at the end of their short.
And what OF Lady Caliph - probably the most perfect pairs short in Olympic history? Is there a reason the two North American judges placed S&P's short first against that? Nah - it's only the French judge who was "corrupt". I personally believe she was pressured to confess to something that did not happen. When Scott Hamilton screams that much on NBC to an audience of billions, and the figure-skating ignorant American media starts howling, officials will do anything to shut him up. Hamilton was in rare form in Salt Lake City - he thought Yagudin could end up third in the free skate after Yagudin skated Man In The Iron Mask. That's some solid skating commentary right there.
(A favorite observation on this pairs uproar, made back then by an American, went that contestant "A" sings "Happy Birthday" flawlessly and contestant "B" achieves a brilliant aria with one cracked note. Indubitably, our "Happy Birthday" warbler sang the best.)
Considering all the American media did to pressure Olympic officials into tossing a spare gold at S&P, you'd expect the Moir crowd to be less churlish about Davis White. If their last names were Davidovitch & Pasternak, then I concede - they couldn't possibly have won with legitimacy. We all know Russians can't figure skate.
So, I was surprised to see the "skate each other's programs" out of Alma, because I've gotten chuckles imagining S&P having a go at B&S's Salt Lake City programs.
Stay gracious, Ildertonians. Keep representing for the thousands of international fans you know can see Carol's wall. Set that example for kids, show respect for others to whom you are not related or who are not Canadian. Even if the "others" have parents who have always been loving towards your loved ones when their kids were the ones standing on the second tier of the podium.
After sitting out most of the season and seriously training the free for only the past two months, not to mention competing it for the first time at Worlds, Scott and Tessa were just a footwork level and a couple of slightly cautiously executed elements away from gold. For Davis White fans, in the context of this season, that must be devastating.
Davis and White were as polished as they possibly can get. The program was trained to their maximum over many many months of competing, re-working and refining - long before Scott and Tessa seriously started getting their free dance ready. While not the danciest ice dancers on the planet, Meryl and Charlie are an extremely capable and powerful elite level team. Yet they won with only a 3.5 margin over a VM who are just beginning to stretch their legs. (VM's winning margin in the Vancouver Olympics, touted as a close contest with DW, was 5 points.)
The win wasn't about talent, dance ability and whose program was more engaging - it's who accumulated the most points. You can't speed up muscle memory - it takes a season to make a program seamless. But what I'm reading is that an undertrained, sloppy(ish) in spots, a bit slow(er) and tireder in others Scott and Tessa should be able to defeat their maximum trained, maximum competed, maximum performing training mates. Scott must be lying when he says he knows he and Tessa must be at their best to beat Meryl and Charlie. At Worlds, Scott and Tessa were great but not their best - with more time they are capable of skating that free so as to make the Worlds outing look like a placeholding gala rehearsal. You know it's a compliment to say this wasn't their best, right? That they can be better, but Meryl and Charlie hit their ceiling?
Tessa and Scott will presumably compete a full season next season. If that's not enough, it should be Tessa's first pain free season in three years. The sky's their limit. Gratitude wouldn't be amiss.
Davis White got 110 but I think that happened because the judges threw every point they could possibly find at Tessa and Scott and then some - that's how much they loved VM. Since Davis White had tons of difficulty, speed, and greater polish and I think at least one higher element level, the judges had to dig around for more points for them. We want judging to be fair - and it's lots more fair under CoP. At least that's what Scott always says.
It's a bit rich to expect these two - on mostly talent + two months training (not to mention everything else that went down this year) should beat an extremely competitive, driven, athletic team trained by Scott and Tessa's own brilliant coaches. If they'd done so, hurrah, but as they didn't, copping an attitude is poor sportsmanship. As is being sour grapes about a couple of skaters who by all reports - including Scott and Tessa's - are good friends of your kids.
I would like to address a comment by Alma Moir:
Know what let's do as well? Rewind to 2002. Have Sale & Pelletier skate Bereshnaya & Sikharulidze's Olympic short and long. S&P can attempt Lady Caliph and Meditation from Thais. B&S will do S&P's short and that stop-and-pose-between-elements lp, Love Story. Alma (and Carol, and Sheri - and a young Scott - and others) kicked up a righteous fuss back then:
Per Moirville, Anton's slight stumble in the 2 axel meant S&P should have gotten gold outright. Level of difficulty, speed, power, unison, close together skating, complex holds and transitions, quality of execution, intricacy of choreography done brilliantly - screw it. S&P didn't stumble while miming throwing snowballs at each other in between setting up for elements. Where's the justice.
Didn't S&P ditch a much more complex program from that season's Canadians because they couldn't skate it clean, and default back to their old warhorse Love Story? S&P would have mopped the ice with their backsides attempting Meditation or Lady Caliph. As it was they fell at the end of their short.
And what OF Lady Caliph - probably the most perfect pairs short in Olympic history? Is there a reason the two North American judges placed S&P's short first against that? Nah - it's only the French judge who was "corrupt". I personally believe she was pressured to confess to something that did not happen. When Scott Hamilton screams that much on NBC to an audience of billions, and the figure-skating ignorant American media starts howling, officials will do anything to shut him up. Hamilton was in rare form in Salt Lake City - he thought Yagudin could end up third in the free skate after Yagudin skated Man In The Iron Mask. That's some solid skating commentary right there.
(A favorite observation on this pairs uproar, made back then by an American, went that contestant "A" sings "Happy Birthday" flawlessly and contestant "B" achieves a brilliant aria with one cracked note. Indubitably, our "Happy Birthday" warbler sang the best.)
Considering all the American media did to pressure Olympic officials into tossing a spare gold at S&P, you'd expect the Moir crowd to be less churlish about Davis White. If their last names were Davidovitch & Pasternak, then I concede - they couldn't possibly have won with legitimacy. We all know Russians can't figure skate.
So, I was surprised to see the "skate each other's programs" out of Alma, because I've gotten chuckles imagining S&P having a go at B&S's Salt Lake City programs.
Stay gracious, Ildertonians. Keep representing for the thousands of international fans you know can see Carol's wall. Set that example for kids, show respect for others to whom you are not related or who are not Canadian. Even if the "others" have parents who have always been loving towards your loved ones when their kids were the ones standing on the second tier of the podium.
"You can't go around acting nuts"
ReplyDeleteReally? What country do you live in? In North America we have a little thing called Freedom of Expression.
If you don't like someone's blog you always have the option of reading something else. Sorry, but you don't get to control what others think, even if you call them rude names.
for the first anon...you say oycanada can't spell yet "your a bully" should really have been You are - you're a bully...so that tells me that you do not have as much of a command on the English language as you would like to as well as - it makes me suspect you are Miss Dube her self which wouldn't surprise me since her boyfriend is currently touring across Canada with the woman all the fans want him to be dating...thus leaving you(if you are Jessica) to be sitting around twiddling your thumbs and numb checking out what the fans are saying about you here and other fan sites...sound about right?
ReplyDeletelol @ the blog author attempting to defend herself through an "anonymous" username. You are such a joke, girl! You are losing if you have to employ fake personas to convince others and yourself that you are right. This blog is pathetic and has zero credibility.
ReplyDeleteGiven that this last comment was also Anonymous, should I assume that it, too, was written by the blogger? Goodness, this person is busy. And apparently willing to argue against her- or himself...
ReplyDeleteI'm the third anon and because of all this "the blogger is talking to him/she self" b.s i made an account and am now "following" this blog...
ReplyDeleteonce again, i am NOT the blogger, nor have we ever met nor will we never! and i LOVE this blog and look forward to more posts :)
How could you feel free to read private pages of all Scotts, Jessicas and Tessa relatives?
ReplyDeleteThis message at Carol Moir wall, wich you post in this blog, were personal message to her friends, noy for you or or for american world champions.
When Belbin posted at her twitter - the second were beeter then the first at OG, last year WCH - this were OK? So let the along. Try to go out from the computer, find gf 9BF) bog at least and not bothering other people