In the "truer words" department:
"The mantle of being the first, we proudly wear,” [Charlie] White said. “I don’t want to take away from it, but we did it on the back of everyone else. It was a group project."
I'll be traveling during Worlds, and not sure how much wifi I'm going to have or when I'll be able to use it. I don't think it will be too bad, but I won't have my laptop with me, just a smaller and less powerful device.
My hope, and even expectation, for dance is:
Virtue Moir
Shibutanis
Papadakis Cizeron.
I can't really say I HOPE P/C are third, but I think that's the absolute best anyone who knows what Papadakis/Cizeron's skating is really worth can anticipate. There was an opportunity to start dropping them down during Europeans, but no other team took it.
I tried checking out the skating forums to catch up with anything I've been missing, but where dance is concerned it's all the same conflation of perceived (theatrical, non-skating expressive) performance value combined with "do I personally enjoy the choreography."
In pairs, just please no threepeat for Duhamel Radford. I am pretty hypocritical where they're concerned. I can convince myself that I appreciate what they've accomplished, but whenever there's a chance they'll be overthrown, I'm all about it and don't care much what team does it.
Rosie DiManno is still around. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth - her article is all about how ice dancing judging is corrupt. She excuses herself from knowing anything specific about scoring because she claims it's unfathomable to even insiders. Well that's true to a point - it's unfathomable to many insiders because many have never bothered learning a thing about skating, let alone ice dance. But still. Skating is not unfathomable, and even scoring is not unfathomable. Just corrupt. When it doesn't match what happened on the ice, what's going on is pretty clear.
Rosie DiManno never goes away
So apparently this was a ground-breaking year, choreographically, for Papadakis Cizeron, and next year they'll pull back into their comfort zone:
(Guillame Cizeron) "We have some ideas, but I think this year - even if we kept a side of ourselves that we had in the last 2 or 3 programs - it's also a program where we kind of come out of our comfort zone. That's why we are taking a risk this year. And I think maybe next year we'll go with something less risky, something that we feel will allow us to get the gold."Well alrighty then. Put it right out there. You believe the best way to beat the best ice dance team that's ever skated is to play it safe, be comfortable. Why not. it's been done before.
*The "back of everyone else" includes the knives in Virtue and Moir's.
