It's only cheating if they're Russian, and looking at figure skating journalism

Christine Brennan, who after two decades still doesn't know all that much about figure skating at blade level, who looked away when Virtue and Moir won the ice dance competition on the ice, but the judges gave the gold to Davis and White instead, has no problem with that outcome.

She's mad because, in ladies, the judges gave ladies gold to the Russian instead of the Korean.

There is actually a case to be made for Adelina Slotnikova versus Yuna Kim (she has a triple loop, for one), and there is none for Davis White versus Virtue Moir.

So of course North America is taking up the Yuna's cause, because blaming Russia never gets old. All of North America will never get over the butt hurt that Russian skaters were the better skaters for a number of decades. Being better at an expensive sport that one must begin in early childhood tends to happen when the sport is underwritten by the state and the state proactively seeks out talent all over the country, and nurtures that talent, giving it every opportunity to succeed. That's how it tends to work everywhere with any sport. It's not something that should keep you up at night for Christ's sake. In those days Russia prioritized skating. N.A. did not.

What IS North America's issue with Russia in skating, an issue they don't seem to have with skaters from other countries?

The media has managed to unearth all kinds of things about the tech controller and the judges in the ladies free, but nobody thinks to explore the scoring patterns of competitions where VM lose to DW despite outskating DW. It's all a freaking mystery.

When Americans win, deals and cheating is okay.


Then we have this gem from Virtue and Moir's either duped, or co-hoaxing "biographer", Steve Milton, who has also written about figure skating for two decades without bothering to learn how to know what he's looking at when he's looking at it.
Steve Milton

It was only after December's Grand Prix Final that they, as Virtue put it, "took ourselves out of this world and took a bird's-eye view of what was happening." But they also had the back-of-mind sense that their style had fallen out of favour with the groupthink clown show that is the international ice dancing bureaucracy since, not only earlier in the fall as Moir conceded, but probably back to about New Year's 2013.

I appreciate "group think clown show." But this is not about a "style" falling out of favor, unless skating your ice dance program and dancing your ice dance program is a "style" that has been rejected in favor of doing neither, and it wouldn't be the first time a team or individual skater has attempted to pull that off. "My bad skating is my style!"

Try performing your best, or even close to it, in whatever work you do, when you feel that the only people who count are already convinced it will not be good enough.

That is not the point Steve. Plenty of people perform their best feeling it's already not good enough because it's NOT good enough. The point you fail to make is that Virtue and Moir are miles better, leagues superior to Davis White, showed it on the ice in the ice dance competition, and the judges gave Davis White the gold.

Doing your best has nothing to do with anything, unless your best is THE best, a point Milton never really manages to nail down with authority.

Fourteen months of swimming upstream, when they knew there were piranhas everywhere in the water. No wonder Virtue and Moir were so happy with what they delivered in the short and free dances, especially after the ragged edges in both during the previous week's team event.

Again, he's playing into the hands of anyone who thinks the results are justified, by reminding us that Virtue and Moir were imperfect in the team event, maintaining his apparent ignorance that Davis and White were also imperfect in the team event, but, unlike Virtue and Moir, weren't penalized for it, and while also seeming to argue that Virtue and Moir feel they deserved gold because it was such a relief they didn't fuck up the individual event. With friends like these.

How come even Milton can't take a bold look at Davis White? How come so far we only have Beverly Smith for that, and she didn't dare do it until the event was live streaming?

No. Their personal best has jackshit to do with it. The fact that they were BETTER than Davis and White by fathoms and miles and lightyears and, more importantly by every standard and criteria the sport itself purports to set, IS the point. Is he going to make it?

"Part of the reason we can sit up here so satisfied with our performances was that we've been fighting, fighting hard," Moir said Tuesday. "We could see it coming a little bit in the fall."

The "it" in question was that the athletic, physically torturous style of the Canadians was not going to prevail over the more classical and overtly European-rooted style and programs of Meryl Davis and Charlie White unless the Americans obviously messed up. And they are far too talented to do that. There's never been any question about the skill, speed and dedication of Davis and White and what they have contributed to changing a sport that had been mired in old-world, outdated values and transparently phoney exhibitionism.

This is his CASE for Virtue Moir? He's written about skating for two decades and just look at that paragraph above.

Fuck YES there is a question about what Davis White have contributed to changing the sport - they've changed it for the WORSE. They've managed to win ice dance gold without dancing and with minimal actual skating. What the fuck is a classical and overtly European rooted STYLE? And if this is all you know about ice dance, why the hell are you, Milton, a sportswriter, writing about a pageant/beauty contest?

But Virtue and Moir have done more, and have openly committed to do more.

NO, you bonehead, Olympic gold is not a lifetime achievement award and a recognition of commitment to further excellence. They DID more. With their blades. With their skating. With their program. The reason you jump around it is you have no fucking idea what it is they did, you ice dance expert, you.

When White and Davis beat the Canadians in all five of the components scores — the one area a judge's personal preference, or worse, can still influence — three straight times here, which had never happened even once before, is when the perceived favouritism became stupidly obvious. One of those five components is connecting steps, where Virtue and Moir exist on another plane.

Here, Milton has a vague idea that Virtue and Moir were actually better in a specific segment of their program, the connecting moves and transitions, although he can't quite explain why except that they're "taxing". But baby steps. Maybe in a couple of decades with more experience under his belt he'll cough up another paragraph that hovers close to a specific element Virtue and Moir did better only the scores for it were given to Meryl and Charlie.

The Canadian skaters are good people and knew what was about to be said about [Marina] at home: that she would be vilified for opening her sail to the prevailing winds; that she knew that if her other couple won the gold this time it would suggest it was the composer, not either of the singers, who was the real genius

Okay, I have no idea what he's saying here. "Other couple" meaning Davis White?

Wait - I just got it. Actually, that's pretty damn good, because it's true. Not as to Marina's motives, but that everybody knows damn well without her choreography Davis White wouldn't have had a prayer, so the glory is hers, not Davis White's. Pretty astute, because true.

"Tessa does a really good job of being blunt," Moir said. "We went to Marina on countless occasions and told her that we weren't happy. That there was no way we were going to be happy without the gold medal."

Tessa? Tessa VIRTUE? Shy little no self-esteem having can't speak up Tessa Virtue? BLUNT? I almost feel as if the reality show was trying to lead us astray!

It occurs to me that Scott didn't say what they were unhappy about. I think they were unhappy about constantly losing to Davis White. I think they ought to have brought this up with their Federation and inquired as to why their Federation was mute.

Still, they believed in Zueva and her choreography, hoping — naively, in hindsight — that their tendency to peak late in the season would hold them in good stead. They thought, right until the marks came up for the short dance, they could successfully challenge the judging group mindset — there was no formal fix but ultimately collective thinking boils down to the same thing — through the force of superior skating. Any other approach would have been untrue to themselves and their 17-year history together.

Moir believes that great artistry requires great athleticism and that's what the skaters, and their coach, thought their free dance promoted.

If they really thought they could turn it around with two great skates, naive isn't the word. But then again, if anybody thinks there was no formal fix, naive isn't the word either.

The reason Milton wrote such a tortuously opaque article that is a struggle to read from start to finish is that despite writing about figure skating for two decades, it apparently hasn't crossed his mind to educate himself about the sport, despite the fact that youtube exists, Figure Skating for Dummies exists, Frogs On Ice is still out there somewhere, and anybody who wants to tell this edge from that edge and this hold from that hold and know what steps look like can teach themselves. So here, he knows that Virtue and Moir were better because - obvious and intuitive, but he's groping in the dark, trying to glean from Scott's remarks at the press conference exactly what the specifics might be. And this is typical.