 |
Sale & Pelletier at the end
of their Olympic Short Program in 2002 |
Remember when Skate Canada joined up with the USFSA, the always composed Scott Hamilton and the execrable Sandra Bezic to bully the OOC out of a "second gold medal" to hand off to these deservedly runner-up Olympic pairs skaters? (Only a year later even the bronze medalists, Shen & Zhao, would up their game and leave anything these two ever did behind in the dust). The actual winners, Sikharulidze and Berezhnaya, experienced a wobble in his double axel during the long, and the U.S. media, egged on by the two Feds, and the two hysterics in the broadcast booth, attempted to incite a riot in the arena. 8 years later at the 2010 World Championship, Scott Moir experienced a wobble in his twizzle pass and Virtue and Moir still won. Scott explained this is why you train, so even a wobble in an element still merits L4. He's wrong, the element was downgraded, but of course whether or not the score differential sufficiently reflected it, Virtue and Moir's superior skating skills, higher level of real difficulty and complexity of choreography did make that Worlds win a deserving one. I don't remember Scott ever saying the thoroughly second rate Davis White deserved the gold instead.*
12 years after Salt Lake City, in Sochi, Skate Canada ruthlessly threw the best ice dancers of all time under a bus so that the fucking Gadbois Center could get credit for training champion ice dancers in the next Olympic cycle. That's Skate Canada down to the ground. Blood on the ice for the sake of Sale & Pelletier, into the woodchipper with Virtue and Moir.
I miss the days when people in figure skating could bitch about the judging and about other figure skaters' overscoring or getting screwed, and I don't know if any of us are going to live to see those days return. That was some deal that was struck. There's got to be a Faustian component because it's a fucking eternity this has lasted. The only ice dancers it's permissible to bitch about are/were Virtue and Moir. Virtue and Moir can't bitch about anybody.
******
They still haven't retired.
I wonder who Scott will be dating in 2049.
 |
Fan 1: She still looks pretty glamorous.
Fan 2: Remember when people wanted them
together?
Fan 1: Some people thought they were.
Fan 2: How come?
Fan 1: Baited, trolled, gaslighted. With
a side of female empowerment.
Fan 2: I sure bought a lot of Noxema.
|
*Pelletier had an improper hold on Sale in a lift plus they skated at arms' length. Soon enough, someone conveniently produced a smoking gun of judging malfeasance that I'm pretty sure was actually bribed / coerced into existence. Nobody needed to strike a deal to score superior skaters over lesser ones.
P.S.
Tessa's been doing some promotional things with this bright and shining feminist. It's disturbing how some of Tessa's instagram production mimics this aesthetic. When you start thinking this looks good (and this is heavily app'ed) you need to come up for air.
