Chumps Camp

HPC 2012

There it is.

The reason Barb has scrums, and has the "reporters" crowd the personal space of the subject, is to get the reporters/subject together in shots like this and convince us how impressive and high level everything is.

There's no legitimate reason for scrum staging at a regional training camp where the lapdog media has to get credentialed before getting access.* They're not ambushing anybody, this stuff is scheduled. Who the fuck schedules and insists the media arrange themselves in a scrum.  That's a contradiction in terms. Barb does. It's her one idea. She's fixated. I'm sure the media would rather have a few chairs and so would the skater, but then the logo board would need to be lower and wider and it's all about the SC logo.  And the twitpics would be less important-looking.

Let's clarify scrums via looking at wikipedia:

A media scrum is an impromptu press conference, often held immediately outside an event such as a legislative session or meeting.^[1][2] Scrums play a central role in Canadian politics^[3] and also occur in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The same term is now also used for similar gatherings of journalists in the United States.^[4]

Other definitions include mob and ambush. Here we have a bunch of flunkies doing what Barb told em to do (or one of Barb's flunkies directed these flunkies).  Those reporters are so intent on getting the truth about Patrick Chan's new short program we can hardly see the marionnette strings in their backs.

So, the fact that Barb insists on fake scrums at High Performance Camp is super lame and an embarrassment. I can hear the other skating federations snickering, especially members of the federation due south and the guys and gals at icenetwork.com.  What a classy operation Skate Canada, the biggest federation in the world (I think that's among Debbi Wilkes' boasts during her tenure) has become, mimicking The Learning Channel's Toddlers & Tiaras erzatz low-budget reality show nonsense.

Key elements are "impromptu" and "outside." The scheduled press opportunity above is staged for maximum ridiculousness in scrum form, even though Patrick Chan is not only inside the venue, but positioned in front of Skate Canada's logo board, and the media is not a mob, but a a few invited, credentialed members of the media who had to show their fucking credentials before they got into the building. 

Dube and Wolfe aren't at HPC. Who dumped whom? Who is injured? 

I wonder if blogspot has a poll feature. If it does, maybe I should set one up for that subject.

 I'm not expecting an announcement until SC decides on the spin and then delivers it. An improvement over Jessica and Bryce telling the world the real reasons they split and SC spending the following season re-writing it to flatter/victimize Jessica.  They will want to get the SC version out first this time. (If it's not something like tendonitis or sudden onset long program flu.)

It's very hard to tell from Jessica's various social media presences if she's actually in competitive shape, because she never looks in competitive shape, so who can tell. All throughout the Olympic season she looked in worse shape than she'd looked the previous season. That said, she doesn't look in competitive shape.

Oh update - PJ Kwong tweets this:

Just confirmed w/SC 'ppl who come to the HPC are expected to be at a certain point for readiness and they weren't there yet" re dube!wolfe *

I am SHOCKED. All of those pinterest words to live by about fitness, you get out what you put in, I don't dream, I work were just pre-emptive spin (sort of like when Jessica made like the Happiest Girl In The World prior to letting it be known she'd cut Bryce loose.).

As anyone might have predicted. Paul and Piper have been assigned the role of Skate Canada's Alex Shibutani imitations, with Skate Canada's propensity to completely miss the point on display.  To wit, Paul and Piper are mostly waxing excited and hyper about all things Skate Canada.

How much does Skate Canada suck when it uses skaters to promote the organization instead of the organization to promote skaters?
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*Let's face it, the media isn't falling over itself to go to Mississauga and those that do either drew the short straw or are fans/groupies as well as journalists. They're on SC territory so you can't scrum INSIDE the venue. Scrums happen in no man's land and not for figure skating. So, in keeping with SC's primary public relations policy of "let's pretend the opposite is true" Barb tries to stage the impression of fevered and pressured media interest in their figure skating team. And while scrums aren't unknown in other sports, the media interest in the sports that have scrums is genuine and deployed for genuinely high interest events.

**If we're meant to believe that's the reason and not either uncertain partnership status or injury, let's consider what "not there yet" would have to mean.  Jessica and Sebastien got the three twist in the latter part of the season last year and did a serviceable job of execution. Jessica's programs with Sebastien are basically the programs she skated with Bryce, slightly dumbed down (her programs with Bryce were always pretty bare bones, but at their best a foundation of speed and power, plus hitting more elements than their Canadian competitors kept them in the mix). So what's not ready?