cuteiceprincess tumblr link:
Stuff every ice dance judging panel missed, year after year, but with all the good intentions in the world
Thanks very much again for the permission from the cuteiceprincess tumblr and thanks especially once again for Lady B's astute comparative analysis of technique and mechanics.
I'm going to say a few things first, and then Lady B's analysis will be clearly highlighted.
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| We see right here why Davis White crushed Virtue Moir in pcs. The sport is subjective. We all know what that means. Subjective means you can either ignore standards and criteria and judge however you want, or it means nobody really knows what the hell is going on out there because we're talking micro-seconds of time for each thing being judged, so not even judges are able to tell in real time if the skating matches the rulebook. Even when you can sort of tell, the rulebook is just one of the things used to score this sport. There's all this other stuff, such as is a team on the ice said to be always giving 110%, or is it just 100%? To some judges proper technique and deep edges are important. For others, a mere gesture in the direction of proper technique without actually executing said technique is what they're looking for. As Lady B says in her anaylsis, go ahead and "pose" technique instead of actually using it. Indeed, this past quad, it's what MOST judges preferred. |
She never re-orients her center of gravity using her core and power from her blades. It's always this jerry-rigged mess. The strange aspect of her hyper extended arms in the top right screen cap is that her chest is closed and her face is aimed face down at the ice. Good extension/alignment involves an open chest, everything expanding/initiating from the core, opening from your center. Meryl's shoulders and chest are as unengaged as always, she's just got a freakish hyper-extension going on, as with somebody double jointed. The compensation in this woman's "technique" is, as always, both bizarre and mystifying. I wonder if the hyper extension with her arms stems from all the back-hooking she does with her arms, jamming her arm behind her, hooking it over her partner's shoulder up to the armpit in order to anchor herself in many lifts, seeing as she can't balance herself.
After Dancing with the Stars, I said I should really refer to Davis White fans as Meryl Davis fans, since Dancing with the Stars certainly exposed that as true. So, when referencing supporters of the American team, I'll try to remember what to call them.
Meryl Davis fans are welcome to come on in and show why Davis and White are actually doing some great skating here, and why their technique is superior to Virtue and Moir's. In the past, I've seen some Meryl Davis fans link to gifs or screen caps that show, for example, VM on their toes, apparently in the belief that a phrase of movement specifically choreographed on toe picks to highlight latin hip action is just the same as running across the ice on your toe picks in between elements because your stroking is subpar. It would be nice if just once, one of their passionate fans demonstrated how Davis and White are stronger skaters than Virtue and Moir in a way that correlated to the rulebook that governs scoring, and if they used Davis and White as their example. There's been a ton of bizarre complaints that slow motion distorts technique (it doesn't) or deconstruction of technique is irrelevant to the whole (even though taking a program's execution apart piece by piece is precisely how this "sport" is scored). I'd love to hear the case from Meryl Davis fans why Davis & White's skating, technique and execution is superior to Virtue Moir's, using Davis & White themselves as Exhibit I. They were given a gold medal in Sochi - how difficult can the challenge be?
Even Charlie is a mess in the bottom right hand screen cap.
