Soft knees and bent knees are not synonymous. A "soft knee" is a responsive leg.

I googled "figure skating and soft knees" to get a better handle on why soft knees are important in quality figure skating. Other than when landing jumps. (Even then, getting your knee so bent your butt is practically on the ice, a la Megan Duhamel's quad throw landings, is not ideal.)* Ben Agosto spent his Grand Prix Final commentary time swooning over Papadakis & Cizeron's "soft knees."

Papadakis & Cizeron skate with their knees continually bent. Their movements are very bendy and fluttery. However, if one assumes a soft knee is an indicator of excellent stroking and superior skating skills, then why aren't P/C's soft knees getting the job done?

P&C's edges are shallow, they sometimes wobble and often lack unison. Despite meeting level requirements, their programs lack the complexity and difficulty of other ice dancers' programs. They can't extend their free legs to save their lives unless their working knees get low, and their lines seldom match. Their lifts, as with Davis White's lifts, have a widely distributed center of gravity and lots of redundancy. In sum, Papadakis & Cizeron's much praised soft knees appear to be considered an achievement unto themselves. But "soft knees" are only important insofar as they enable the powerful, stable stroking that should undergird the execution of elite choreography.

So, first, my google search produced a short post from a recreational figure skater who, when she began skating, used bent knees in hopes it wouldn't hurt as much when she fell. She had "soft knees" before she could really move on the ice. It looked nice, and she was praised, but she was not initially a strong skater.

Then I found this: The Ice Doesn't Care: Soft Knees.

Like this author, I know how important the leg is in horseback riding - for example, my legs naturally turn out a bit, and it is real work to keep my inner legs lying flat against the horse's side (people who are naturally bow-legged have a big advantage here). This blogger compares the soft knees important to staying in contact with your mount with the soft knees necessary to good figure skating. Applying these principles to Papadakis & Cizeron, we see the important stuff, the skating stuff, is missing.

The Ice Doesn't Care
Figure Skating for Adults.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Soft Knees
There's two things that horse back riding and skating have in common: soft knees and independence of upper and lower body.So, let's tackle 'soft knees' first.I did a lot of research on this, and all I could find were a couple of comments that 'soft knees means bent knees'.Mmmmm, no.Well, anyway, not to me.My experience has been in both riding and skating that a 'soft knee' is what I'll call a 'responsive leg'. The casual observer sees the knee bend and how it flexes. That's the obvious part. But really, I believe what's going on is much more complex.From my riding days, I learned that 'soft knees' involved the muscles of the lower back and abdomen, flexibility and strength in the hips and knees, and controlled movement of the ankle. All this has to be balanced and coordinated, otherwise you pull on the horse's mouth as your leg will get in the wrong position and throw off your balance.
Skating's very similar. You have to control the leg relative to the upper body, and to do that you need to get over the right part of the blade and that takes ever single joint below the waist. And as you move up and down, every single joint has to respond together. This is why I think defining 'soft knees' as 'bent knees' is inadequate. That's what the observer sees, but that's only the tip of the iceberg abot what's going on.
As I'm now in my 60's, I'm okay with the muscles of the back and core, the ankle bend and the hip flexion. However, my knee bend is CRAP!Still, I'd like to chime in with my amateur opinion, that 'soft knees' is something that ought to be banned from a coach's vocabulary. It's much more complex, especially in skating. I'm fortunate that my riding background is so extensive and strong, and Coach Cruella is good at getting everything coordinated both mentally and physically.

I propose that Papadakis/Cizeron have tight/weak hips, and lack strength and flexibility there and in their spines. Their bent knees are not coordinated with and moving responsively with the rest of their bodies (including, bizarrely, their ankles and feet).

*I have watched skating video of Russian 1999 World Champion Maria Butyrskaya, and her knees are as stiff and brittle as matchsticks. Observing her rigid progress across the ice, it's understandable that one would believe soft knees = bent knees. However, as the "Ice Doesn't Care" notes above, a so-called "soft knee" is just as much about the hips and the spine. We can see that Butyrskaya's hips are also tight, as is her back.

Signs of the Apocalypse

At the beginning of November, I anticipated that very soon I'd be too (happily) distracted to focus even the teensiest bit on the figure skating Grand Prix and its Orwellian mind-fuckery. Because:

November 7, 2016

But instead:

April

And screwed you out of a gold medal in Sochi. But ok, hang Marina Zoueva out to dry instead. She controls the entire ISU. What could Dore have done to set up Sochi. Am crying over Dore's passing sort of the way I did when Anton Scalia died. (Yes, I've bought my ticket to hell myself for that.)

I hope Virtue and Moir locked things up solidly with Dr. Faust before announcing their comeback. Although you'd think they'd be tapped out of things to bargain with at this point.

I see where Charlie White already expressed awe over Papadakis Cizeron, so next season will be fun.

Good to see Volozozhar Trankov smiling
despite Worlds 2016. I still have
nightmares.

The Artist Known as Hanyu.
I get what he's doing, but in terms of packaging,
Method Skating doesn't do it for me.

He's a skating version of The Red Shoes.
Plot Summary _ The Red Shoes movie

I watched a couple of Skating Lesson interviews with David Wilson. For years, in my eyes, David Wilson was just the guy who got paid to "choreograph" the same program year after year for Dube Davison. Actually, I often wondered if his last Dube Davison paycheck was 2008's Blowers Daughter, and for the rest of DD's career Annie Barabie just picked different music to skate it to. And then I saw his choreography for Yuna Kim's shows, when she did shows, and thought - that sure beats working. Fly around the world and demonstrate to champion skaters how to point to the ceiling in between arm rolls. Subsequently, I've become more familiar with his body of work, and I understand strongly how versatile and musical he is. However, in his Skating Lesson conversation, he mentioned that when Yuna won Worlds in 2013, choreographed by her new training team (no Canadians) - her "face" was missing (IOW, she was deadpan, and not facially expressive).  I don't give a fuck if the face was missing. I hate the pretense that that should matter. If the damn face matters, put it in the rulebook. Otherwise, quit this shit.

Catching up with Jessica Dube:

There was a point after her stint on The Navigator of the Seas where it appeared Jessica had not been signed by another cruise ship, and was all set to work at a gym. Happily, Liberty of the Seas has secured her services, so she's off for another six months as pretty much the highest ranking figure skater ever on the cruise ship circuit - I think most of them never competed internationally, and the previously highest ranked skaters got on the podium once at Nationals.

Abandoned again.
My heart goes out to her disillusioned dog.
He's aged ten years - in people years.

After three fake girlfriends, finally a genuine love connection.

What they should have done from the beginning, and what they've been semi-flirting with since the arrival of Baby Moir V.3, is just be all goes without saying about it. Take the question out of the interviews, and that's it. Every single fan will go along. VM could have had it exactly their own way from day 1. They chose to troll. They chose to bait and switch. They chose to gaslight. Let's see how grown-up they are in 2016-2017.

First of two posts. The second post isn’t fully worked out, but I think is going to focus on last month's Angelika Krylova interview, with a particular emphasis on Meryl Davis’ superior talents in the realm of figure skating and ice dance, which Krylova had no problem whatsoever enumerating. I may also remark on Meryl Davis’s implied hot romance with Fedor Andreev, and how this doesn’t do her fans’ near-unquenchable need for validation any favors.

The just-concluded holiday season has been, for the blogger, about two weeks’ worth of holiday celebrations/busyness, and one week procrastination. I didn’t really want to know or think about if Virtue and Moir, a couple of mid/late twentysomethings, apparently retired ice-dancers, continued to feel the need to make a display of self-importance via shamming on social media during Christmas and New Year’s, so I avoided finding out. I also didn’t want to pollute the holidays with second-hand embarrassment, even though anybody following Virtue and Moir should be real comfortable with second-hand embarrassment by now.

Every day she's shoveling all right.

I don’t know what’s going to be sadder – when the latest crop of Virtue Moir fans, in, say, 2029, wonder if these two fortysomethings regret never having gotten it together, sharing fan fic about Tessa and Scott’s wistful conversations about what might have been, or Virtue and Moir still pretending to themselves, enabled by the sycophants who appear to surround every figure skater, that shamming is necessary.

Caveat, for what follows: this isn’t focused on skating women in social media to the exclusion of men. It’s just that in some respects, what I’m talking about next is kind of what a gossip columnist once said about the cast of Friends: as the show went on, the actresses on it got skinner and tanner, their hair got longer and straighter, and the dudes just got fatter and more slovenly. The particulars of Tessa’s social media image manipulations got me thinking along these lines.

When I look around at guys who were competing ten years ago, some of whom are now coaching, a number of them have gotten pretty comfortable wearing relaxed-fit pants and jackets. I look at women who were competing more recently, or are still competing, but have been at it a long time, and some of them, no matter how free-spirited they pretend to be, have become even more image-conscious.

So, speaking of second-hand embarrassment, Jessica Dube is now posing like this:

Split Post Part 2

The comments section in the post below this one is getting hefty again, so the post has been split to open a new comments section. There should be a new post at some point this week.

*********

P.S. - About twitter sightings and other social media fakery:

Who has Jessica Dube dated since her sham stint ended after Worlds 2012? She's not sharing on her facebook, when her facebook used to chronicle every step she took with Scott Moir. Even after it was restricted, her profile picture did the job. How come when she was "dating Scott Moir" she was spotted thither and yon according to fans, not just with Scott, but in full make out? Since her sham stint terminated, she's been on Battle of the Blades, a program that has more of an audience than any single program Jessica ever skated in her competitive career. She works at Journey to Excel, in the  high profile city of Toronto. She attended fashion week last year. Are we to presume Jessica Dube hasn't been on a date since she was replaced in the sham by Cassandra Hilborn? She's invisible now? Where are the lower ranked skaters who admire her, where are the people whose aunts know her sister and are at the same wedding as Jessica, what happened to various fans who claimed to recognize her in bars or restaurants or airports? Where were the sightings around the BOTB venue and the Journey to Excel facilities?

David Pelletier has a womanizing reputation thanks to getting with Jamie while still married to his first wife. Has he become a monk? He's been on BOTB as well, as a competitor (and won) and on the sidelines. He's on twitter. Did he have plastic surgery to change his appearance? Is there a vow of celibacy? How come he hasn't been "spotted" with anyone since Tessa moved on with Ryan Semple? For that matter, how come all of those people who "spotted" Tessa and Pelletier never had their phones or cameras with them, but the people who "spot" Tessa now so often do? Who is David dating?

Then there's Meryl Davis and Charlie White. They wore gold medals in Sochi and stood on top of the podium. They were stars of one of ABC's top-rated programs and Meryl Davis was announced as the winner. The program had fun keeping Davis fans guessing about her relationship with Maks (and boy did Maks bolt from that the second the show ended, even if it meant people had to think he was getting with JLo). Thanks to frequent close-ups of her in the audience and frequent shout-outs by Charlie, Tanith Belbin's profile rose as well. They're publicly engaged. Where are all the tweets telling us that Charlie and Tanith are right here in this restaurant? Meryl Davis and Charlie are such stars, the paps stalked them to the group vacation they took with the DWTs pros and papped Charlie/Tanith's engagement canoodling. Is Meryl in the same religious order as David Pelletier? She's never out with a guy. Nobody ever sees her with Fedor.

I think she's not seen with Fedor because fans don't WANT her to be with Fedor, so they don't make it up. And because thus far, her relationship with Fedor is by implication only, not ramped up like Tessa and Scott, so Meryl isn't causing it to be done (unlike how the pap stuff on the post-DWTs vacation was - a set up).

I just find it amazing that Tessa is spotted out and about so consistently with Ryan Semple, when she went years without ever being spotted by people on social media, not even when she "dated" Ryan Semple in the past. She gets a twitter account and - voila! She's spotted with him all the time, and it's documented with photos. Was she just not famous enough before she joined twitter?

Has Scott, the guy who partied so hard he was said to be a creepy, coked up hooligan this past spring, reformed so much he never goes out anymore? How can he go so long without being "spotted" #greatpeople, #goldmedalistsx2, #staycool. Or is he just so in love he and Kaitlyn never leave the hotel?

Tessa gets a twitter; suddenly it's Tessa who is being spotted left and right. Before she got twitter, she must have been invisible at every wedding, restaurant, bar, and next day event at both TIFF and fashion week. She gets twitter, suddenly every random on the street can spot her blocks away. Scott's facebook worked the same way. So did Jessica's.

I'm also curious about when Ryan Semple became more famous than Scott Moir. Someone tweeted that her sister was at a wedding, seated at the same table as Scott and Tessa. Why didn't the sister whip out her phone and commemorate the honor, since it was exciting enough to pass on to her sibling? How come this only happens when it's Scott/Kaitlyn or Tessa/Ryan? 

Here we go with posts sharing more great work from the cuteiceprincess tumblr and Lady B. I'm starting with the analysis below, but will continue with the Finn Step and other comparisons.

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.

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.

I love this first illustration from the cuteiceprincess tumblr because it highlights Meryl's characteristic rocking her torso up and down like Duncan the Drinking Bird.

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.

Well, they have a lot to be humble about

ETA: this is the most recent link to canadablue's video:

Canadablue's video comparison

Below is canadablue's comparison between Davis and White's lyrical-ish 2014 gala program to Rachmaninov and Virtue and Moir's exhibition version of Mahler, performed in 2010. The original canadablue video compares the DW Rachmaninov performance to three additional Virtue and Moir exhibitions, but the central points are on display in the video's initial look at Davis White in 2014 vis a vis Virtue and Moir in 2010. Those points are:

...to illustrate the difference in difficulty and quality, of both skating and dancing, and especially with regards to how the teams gain and maintain power. Skating to slow music does not necessitate skating slowly. A team's movements can be in time to the music while still allowing them to cross the ice with speed. (canadablue)

Davis and White's bastardized appropriation of what some argue is Virtue and Moir's style is annoying because it exemplifies the bastardization of the sport itself. Never mind the skating Virtue and Moir are executing  -  Davis White merely ape the style, imitate some performance aspects, and, when pasted atop mediocre skating presented with conscious pseudo-import, it's seen as the same thing. While no skater or skating team owns a particular genre, piece of music, or style, I believe in this instance that Davis White's gala exhibition is intended to run the table, mimicking Virtue and Moir, so as to assert that Virtue and Moir have nothing we don't. We're complete.

It's sad. This sport is spitting on itself by pretending this (Davis White) is as good as that (Virtue Moir). It's a further blurring of style and technique, refusing to acknowledge any distinction. Through Davis and White, ice dance encourages fans to see generic styling as indistinguishable from superior skating. Journalists of course follow along. Some even now assume there's actually an artistic mark**, and that the artistic mark comprises things like mood setting, impact, momentum, and other non-technical, non-executional, subjective intangibles.

I'm going to start with canadablue's Davis White vis a vis Virtue Moir Mahler exhibition clips, and later, make gifs.

What bothers me, really, is not Davis White seeming to put on their bastardized Virtue Moir; it's the on-purpose bullshit in their skating. It's how they gesture towards doing something, and, gesture made, drop it. That's enough for them to be declared better than teams that actually do it, and to defeat them.

While gliding in one phrase of their Rachmaninov program, Meryl  "extends"* her right leg to the side, below hip level, and with a sort of showy delicacy, brings it around the front. After she begins, Charlie - gliding in hand hold behind her, miles between his skates and hers - extends his own right leg to the same side as if to follow hers, bringing it around ... and then the entire attempt at matching lines just dribbles out. Deflates. Pfffft. Each of their legs just then dangle down, desultory, and they move into the next thing. The initial gesture is the whole thing.

That's them all over. They're pro forma ice dancers. They appear to initiate something to a phrase of the music, and, gesture made, I bet many people think they did something, such as achieved and sustained matching lines while gliding. Except they didn't. They "present" it as if something's happening, and it's not. That's pretty much all their choreography/skating is, while Virtue and Moir are actually doing it. The sport doesn't want us to appreciate the difference. Considering the enormous gulf between what Davis White do versus Virtue Moir, this is heartbreaking.

*Figure of speech. It's Meryl. She doesn't extend her legs.
**There's no need for any journalist to fact check what they say about figure skating when writing about the actual skating, because there's no accountability in journalism either. Nobody expects somebody writing about figure skating to actually understand the rules or know what's being scored.

Davis White Off-Balance, Out of Sync in Sochi

These gifs below are from neverendingdreamtumblr. Blogger doesn't permit the posting of gifs side by side; at least I've not been able to troubleshoot that process. So, below, the gifs are angled in a descending sequence instead. On the neverendingdreamtumblr, this gif set is titled: "Why Meryl Davis and Charlie White Shouldn't Have Won in Sochi". Below the gif set there is this caption: "Balance issues, lack of synchronicity and they had problems with their twizzles for all FOUR performances! Perfect GOEs…???"

But of course! What are you going to believe? The protocols, or your lying eyes? What report has more credibility - the skating itself, or the commenting on the skating?

So here we go.

I'm re-posting this from neverendingdreamtumblr, because it's important that video like this is seen by as many people as possible. I encourage everyone to visit neverendingdreamtumblr for these gifs, even though they're also posted here. That tumblr has the gifset neatly formatted in a grid, instead of inartfully angled, and the grid has more impact. The impact this mess deserves.

I'm also re-posting these gifs to push back against the notion promoted, even by Canadian skating interests, that it's impolite, hysterical, obsessive or disrespectful to notice cheating. P.J. Kwong, for example, seems to believe that challenging the results is disrespectful.

What does respect mean to P.J. Kwong? I believe it's disrespectful when a team goes out and skates according to the rules, and elevates the standards of execution set out therein, all the while demonstrating absolutely textbook+ skating according to the criteria that governs the scoring, and the rules are ignored. Instead, right in front of our faces, in defiance of what we've just seen, that team gets ripped off, point stripped, manipulated and low balled. Why? Because the sport can flaunt its lack of accountability.

It's also disrespectful to the skating public when a team produces bastardized bullshit while demonstrating skating technique explicitly discouraged in the guidelines, and is scored as if they skated exemplifying the rules, standards and criteria.

Gaslighting is always disrespectful, P.J.

It's always disrespectful when we're directed and coerced and badgered into accepting a lie as the truth. Everybody involved in telling the skating public to do that can fuck off, and that includes most of the Canadian commentariat. If they want to lie their faces off, that's up to them. But when it comes to pressuring fans to fall in line, who do they think they're talking to? A bunch of "fraus", that's who. "Frau" is biggest perjorative on the internet, and that label is implied in everything the skating commentariat says to and about its fans. It's implied in nearly everything sportswriters say about the fans. I believe the dismissive, trivializing tone used by skating site contributors such as Lynn Rutherford is intended to trigger appeasement and insecurity in the fans who are treated that way, who are embarrassed by the implied "frau" label. That patronizing tone is meant quell those who persevere with pointing out what happened in Sochi. So again, fuck that.

One of "Jess Dube"'s First Ten Facebook Friends

Barb MacDonald, Skate Canada, Director, Corporate Communications April 2010 to present.

Barb came on board a year before BMO took its money and ran. Barb's appointment did not unseat Debbi Wilkes, but perhaps freed up Wilkes for more face time on camera.

Barb says she's based in Ontario and is "Responsible for Internal/External Communications, Media Relations and media operations for Canada's national governing body for figure skating."

Barb has been a "senior communications consultant" since 1996, with a focus on right-wingish Christian ministries and affiliated fundraising.

Her professional bio from facebook:

An Accredited Business Communicator through the International Association of Business Communications. I specialize in providing both strategic and hands-on communications advice and services for a wide range of clients in the sport, business, not-for-profit and ministry sectors. Also serving as venue media manager for major sports events, running the complete spectrum of services to allow journalists and photographers to see the event, gather information, and file stories and photographs on the event.

(I'm a bit "Eh?" about how Canadian figure skaters of different or no religious affiliation feel about a Director of Corporate Communications who leads with a fundie agenda (not politicizing - ask Barb - she's forthright about it)*. I wonder if corporations sharing Barb's affinities are the ones most inclined to sponsor figure skating. Oh well, I'm sure Skate Canada did its usual thorough research before bringing her in.)

 Late one evening, some months back, "Jessica Dube" restricted her original facebook and all of its albums, and that same evening opened a new facebook account called "Jess Dube". Barb MacDonald was immediately on the friends' short list. Very on-the-spot for such a busy woman. 

Now, people interpret Christian doctrine (alternatively - values) differently. But nowhere in the New Testament is an orchestrated, aggressive campaign of misrepresentation and outright lies condoned, not even when the intent is to guard your privacy while stimulating revenue. We know how much Jesus enthused over the virtues of raising money. Am I right? Is there an "improve thy bottom line" teaching in the New Testament? In the Old Testament are there Nostradamus-type dictates on how to act out a lie for the camera as long as the goal is not just a) redirecting the curious from your personal life, but - primarily - b) scamming the public because you aim to take their money?

I guess there's bonus value points when a strategy lets you have it both ways. How to reap the (perceived) advantage$ of accessibility while retaining the protections of privacy and secrecy?

Lying.

So you create a lie and cook up a proactive marketing scheme openly  instructing people to believe it while prying open their wallets.**

Does the Bible advocate a pattern of media interaction where you raise the topic of people who resist your lies, mock these hypothetical folk, patronize them, then piously empathize with their romantic delusions?

Okay, well, testaments old and new aside, let's consider that, even today, Jesus is said to speak personally through certain right-thinking people. Perhaps He's reassured the SC crowd in person and they've kept it to themselves. I'm gonna guess Jesus is all about situational ethics these days. It’s okay for GOOD people to do wrong things. And it feels like it would be a giant mess to backtrack now so may as well keep digging and save face. 

What genius looks like.

Lastly, what about style? Does Jesus/the Bible prefer the lie that is smart, quiet, tasteful, tactful, seamless, easy-going, adroit, smooth, with softly blurred edges and a steady, consistent message? Is that better than the lie that embarrasses everybody, debases somebody's core emotional integrity in every photo, is sordid on many levels, degrading, mortifying, trashy, creepy, mutually humiliating for subject and audience, sloppy, unsettling, weird, contradictory and grotesque  - while simultaneouly achieving a tone that's self-satisfied, arrogant, obnoxious and douchey? The Bible is mum on style matters, so I guess Skate Canada has been groping in the dark.

_________________________

*not mentioning the Jews or the gays (Donald Trump taught me to put the "the" in front of different cultures, ethnicities, religions and sexual orientations). Cause SC doesn't have no gays. When Alma Moir gave an interview some years back on how Kurt Browning had helped dispel the gay "myth" in figure skating, she cited Brian Boitano as her example of a figure skater who had, sadly, perpetuated skating's gay image. Now Brian Boitano a) has never come out, as far as I'm aware, and b) is American, but that was Alma's go-to example. Out the guy without a qualm, claim he hurt figure skating's image with the public, and tout Kurt Browning, who years later burned his home down with a leaf  blower.

These people.

** a/k/a  hubris (a sin).

Barb MacDonald didn't vacate One Way Ministries until some months after her appointment as Skate Canada's Director of Corporate Communications, and she began servicing Skate Canada long before her appointment to the Directorship.
http://1wayministries.org/

_______________________________

It's super creepy how SC corporate directors, whose core responsibilities are corporate marketing, sponsor relationship development -  and in Barb's case, some venue/media operational oversight -  are so freaking eager to be personally hands-on with their "stars." Isn't the above a task for a p.a. or PERSONAL (not corporate) PR rep? Debbie "Mac" can't escort VM?