I totally missed this

Hot stuff

Even though I mentioned the Mr. D episode in an earlier post, I only halfheartedly tried to look up to see if she was actually Scott's first partner (whose name I had forgotten) or a pretty ok sitcom actress - certainly better than either Virtue or Moir. I decided she must be an actress playing a sad sack/whipping post character on Mr. D, and moved on (is she that as well? I know nothing about Mr. D).

ETA am informed below that the childhood partner on Mr. D was played by an actress (and the character name is not Jackie Mascarin), so it's just extra fun for all.

I don't review the comments as much as I should (which I should change) as I'm trying to place hold this blog until ice dance wakes up to something other than Papadakis & Cizeron's march to 5 World titles and their already-awarded 2022 Olympic gold. Clearly, stuff slips through the cracks as the blog lens gets wider and more general instead of gathering up the details - to mix metaphors.

So I missed the fun in the blog comments (which are very funny, and my apologies for having not seen them when they first landed) and remained in the dark. I had no idea Mascarin was the actual ex partner and this was a new thing they were doing until I recently plugged Virtue and Moir into a search engine and landed in tumblr:

This account has Lots and LOTS OF FEELINGS ABOUT FANS!!
HAVING FEELINGS!!! STOP!!

I've edited out the account name for obvious reasons.

That sort of post makes me cringe, but obviously VM find this stuff entertaining.

Takeaways. They missed trolling? They're going for it in 2022? The latter terrifies me. But they're just not going away. Is their fame so ephemeral that if they dial this shit back their Q rating and earning power takes a dive? WTF are the elements in the algorithm that spat this thing out? Can't they hawk grocery delivery services, fawn over each other, smirk about partnerships, can't Tessa pull diner imagry she got from some movie* where the people are old, the lighting is misty, they share hot chocolate and get wistful about that time they were young and never got together and now never will but what a time it was - if they retired? Aren't those things retired Olympic champions can do? So why aren't they retiring? I could do mental backflips and think they're not retiring just so they can have an excuse to be cowards and not widen their own lens, but that's what I thought last time, and then they announced.

How come they mix it up with every new program (except their show programs) but don't mix this up? Wait, the parenthetical just answered the question.

In hindsight, the spot is a lot cuter without the 
multiple overlays of "See everything we just did there?!!!
In real life things are the opposite but then it flips back again
and then again!"

I'm kind of creeped out by this configuration. I know why - I think it's because most people had only known he had a previous partner when he and she were both eight and then it was radio silence (she wasn't even dragged in to weigh in in all the years Virtue and Moir competed and their "bio" was served up relentlessly. Nothing that got around, anyway.). Her showing up this late in the game in this capacity is kind of cooties-inducing no matter what retroactive narrative gets stitched together. Ew. But then again:

The W Network, 2014. Tessa & Scott.
Want some "Ew"? Check it out. Still available
on video-sharing and streaming
service websites. And reviewed on this blog.

Yes, with Tessa's 30th birthday just around the corner I was anticipating that the icky days were behind us, but that was just a dream. And then again, a sort of knee-jerk bad taste has often been their metier. Their first sham flaunted plenty of partner-swapping and a kind of smarmy unsavoriness (and also voyeurism), the second started off benignly enough but got ambitious and then offensive (review the reality show if the ways it did so are lost in the mists of time), the third was pretty benign with Tessa showing up routinely as the bookend on (our) left, and this one is like Huh? and Yucky had a baby.

***

So now of course I'm checking out the comments I've missed and right off I see a transcript of commentators trashing P/C's inflated points. Thank you for that. But, it's also scary, because if people are allowed to question the judging instead of talking about PC's ephemeral magic, the door might be creaking open (again) and I just don't want VM to skate through it. I was positive they had the green light last time, and look what nearly happened.

*or Tessa pulled it from somebody's online fan fiction. She's wicked clever, right? Would not surprise as that's where the W Network's "Tessa and Scott" stole its entire script. I'm sure there's a Dr. Zhivago-esque scenario somewhere, only in London and it's a diner, and Old Scott sees Golden Ager Tessa across the street going into a shop, does a double take, rushes out, and gets hit by a car. Life is poignant. The diner schtick, for me, evokes Tessa's tweet of some time past sharing a wisdom-fueled flight she experienced with her seatmate, a man named John who was just the right amount of old (77). If his name had been Larry we'd have never heard about it.

I don't like you, Madison Hubbell

Happy Halloween

I don't know these people, but it's a bunch of
biathletes dressed up as figure skaters for Halloween.

Now that ice dancing has been cleared of many high level competitors, Hubbell & Donohoe have easily qualified for the Grand Prix final, where they will be defeated by Papadakis & Cizeron, who have yet to make their Grand Prix debut.

I still hold a grudge against Madison Hubbell from last year, where she employed her outspoken personality to perpetuate the kind of narrative bullshit that we can't get enough of in ice dance. To refresh:

Tessa and Scott are kind of that — for me, at least, they’re the quintessential Old Hollywood team. Like, they just…no matter what music you give them or what choreography, they find their place inside of it. I think that they knew their strengths and they knew their weaknesses and seeing them train, they don’t compare themselves, so it lets them be 100% committed to whatever it is they choose to do. And that’s where you see, for me… You know, they get the tens and they get all the +3s. And we see them compete, you know — they’ve had a lot of little bobbles, little mistakes this season in their performances. They don’t always skate perfect, but they make you believe that it’s perfect because they’re so committed to each other, to their performance, and they just get lost in their own little world.

Oh fuck you again, Hubbell.

The sour grapes in figure skating are enough to choke on. Dear God the resentment when somebody or a couple of somebodies are extraordinary AND consistently win. Hell, the resentment persists even when the best skaters with the best skate of the competition are blatantly prevented from winning. Can we please not get some gold hardware and serious respect for the amazing stuff thrown down by the lesser skaters and teams over here instead? Let's have some fairness!

I went looking for Hubbell's quote before starting this post and found it on a webpage -JudgingPrivilege wordpress - I hadn't read before. It reads like something a regular participant or two on this blog may have created. Here's Hubbell re Gabby and Guillaume:

For Gabriella and Guillaume, I think that they’ve always had, even when they were younger and less successful, they had a power, a glide and, you know, sometimes in practice… We actually trained for a little while with them in Detroit when they came, visited Pasquale [Camerlengo] in our first season together [2011-12], and they were a team that were a little bit of a mess, made a lot of mistakes, but those moments that they were really skating together, you could tell they had just this special chemistry, a glide…

Like, for me they are the kind of skating that I want to see in ice dance. It’s power but it’s also elegant. Their lines are just gorgeous and they’ve put a lot of work in the last four years of being here in Montreal on the precision and what it takes to not lose points and not make mistakes, and that’s really the only thing they needed to become the powerhouse that they are, because naturally they have just such beautiful lines. They’re artists in the way that they represent music and feeling and so I think that’s their quality.


I was going to call up some images of P&C's magnificent lines* but how often can you do that? It doesn't matter.

The Judging Privilege blog calls her out.

Excerpts:

When the quotes were condensed and tweeted by Figure Skaters Online, they got to the heart of the matter: Hubbell holds up Papadakis and Cizeron as a sort of Platonic ideal of ice dance, while Virtue and Moir make mistakes, but let you forget about them.

It is also a curious juxtaposition to create — Papadakis and Cizeron as a team who have ceased to make mistakes, Virtue and Moir as a team who do — when the French have logged disruptive falls at two of this season’s events.

Hubbell also stressed on the same call that they are keenly aware that none of the three top U.S. teams have any real edge over the other, nor can they overlook the threats of many other international teams ranked on par.

But something has made them feel similar caution is not in order where Virtue and Moir are concerned.

Judging Privilege surmises this something was Hubbell & Donohue's cozy relationship with notably non-partisan US Judge Sharon Rogers and her frequent scoring of Virtue and Moir as on par with Hubbell & Donohoe.

So in these quotes from last season, Maddie is not being candid. She's politicking.

She will be much happier always coming in second to Papadakis & Cizeron than third behind Virtue & Moir and Papadakis & Cizeron. She can't possibly kid herself that they have a shot no matter how the skating goes down. They're already better than Papadakis & Cizeron and yet must pretend Papadakis & Cizeron's abilities are something to which they can only aspire.

Here's Hubbell & Donohue's free dance at Skate Canada. I don't think it represents their best. I thought there were a lot of little bobbles, as it were, too much sliding and scampering, and many small slips and moments out of sync. And they seemed somewhat gassed in the back half of the program.



I think Hubbell's attitude also resides in the Montreal situation. I suspect and continue to suspect that while H&D and P&C were actually coached by and part of the supposedly close-knit crew at Gadbois, Virtue and Moir were pretending for public consumption only - something with which Virtue and Moir are thoroughly experienced.  I suspect Virtue and Moir had their own coaching, own training ice somewhere else, their own choreography, and behaved as if they needed resources far beyond what was available at Gadbois - and indeed they did need resources far beyond what was available at Gadbois and they got them. As skaters they are far beyond Gadbois and everybody there.

I suspect that what Virtue & Moir did was considered elitism, which I've come to understand is a big no no in elite sports like ice dance. As is truly elite level performance. Be truly elite, you will piss people off.


*sarcasm.

Tension in Paradise

Belated remarks:

Papadakis & Cizeron haven't confirmed their music, but this interview in May* - written by someone in the style of a mythologizing syncophant - had lots of pre-emptive sour grapes:

Gabriella: Yeah, we like to skate very fast, sometimes not so much into the details, but more…)

Yeah, I feel you Gabriella. And actually, many of your fans believe ice dance should not be defined and quantified. I think a divinity is meant to descend and anoint Papadakis Cizeron with gold upon the conclusion of their free skate, a la Bernie Sanders' bird.

Both P&C and some of their fans were dragged mercilessly on the interview thread, deservedly, so that's some sort of progress. Maybe some day a plurality of fans on skating forums will decide that real skating skills and rhythm should determine a competition's outcome, versus program composition / music selection, and I'll faint dead away.

Gabriella: I’m not a big fan of Latin for skating. I love Latin dances, I love watching Latin dances, on the floor. But on the ice… I think it’s such a different dynamic in the body that cannot really be translated on the ice, so it’s always gonna look kind of… cheap…

Guillaume: Cliché…

Understood. They can't do it, so it's not worth doing. More ice dancers than this blog can name check have ably translated Latin dance to the ice.

Gabriella: Cheap and cliché, Latin dances on the ice. Plus, there are no much possible different choices for themes and musics. Latin music always kind of sounds the same for me, with the same kind of instruments, and rhythms and… Not like this season – you could’ve had the 20ties, the 30ties, the 40ties, the 60ties, rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, there was so many difference choices you could have! Latin music? Iiiih, not so many! [she makes a squeaking sound, and then starts laughing]. So it’s hard to be original on these things.

That's a whole lot of ignorance in one paragraph.

Guillaume: The thing about the free dance is that you get to really ice dance, and not dance on the ice. You know what I mean? And the short dance is more about dancing on the ice. All those ballroom positions don’t really fit to the ice, to the material that we have. I think it’s always gonna be a struggle, because we are ice dancers, we’re not ballroom dancers.

And for me the short dance kind of feels like Dancing with the stars. You pick skaters, and you try to make them ballroom dancers, but it’s never gonna… Like if you wanna see Latin dance, go watch a ballroom… ball, you know? [laughing] So I think it always kind of looks cheap.

And that's a whole lot of mumbo jumbo bullshit. That's freedom defined as liberation from any sort of technical standard, when anyone with a clue understands technique facilitates freedom. What does he think his particular skating discipline is about if not translating dance to the ice? Well, we all know. Skating whatever the fuck, however the fuck. He's absurd.

Anyway, it was the first time I have seen fans suggesting that P&C are full of themselves. In some respects, why shouldn't they be. They know it's not what their blades are doing that gets them on the podium, so they must have decided it's legit mystical, which is perfectly ok for a sanctioned Olympic sport.

There's a lot in the article about how movement in the ranks is more possible now, without ever mentioning the superior skating skills upon which rapid upward movement is meant to be based. It's all a big mystery, per P&C and the interviewer. The interviewer attempts to say they are admired by other skaters, but P&C mostly report how they've received messages from other skaters saying something like, "Shit, if you two can be world champions without anything in your skating or previous history suggesting it, it gives me and my partner hope! Maybe we, too, can be random but fortunate pawns in a double (Olympic) cycle, multiple-Fed-engineered, quid pro quo!"

Other stuff:

Remember this? Kind of a twist lift
at the end of Virtue & Moir's Olympic OD.
20 minutes before performing the OD 
at Worlds 2010, the vaporous figure 
skating grapevine somehow conveyed 
that this same maneuver might be illegal 
to perform at Worlds. Due to to it being 
possibly a kind of twist lift.

I remember Scott complaining about how he and Tessa try to push the envelope, but get pushback. I think he should have complained instead that he's in a recognized ISU discipline, yet a maneuver they executed at the Olympics mysteriously became possibly illegal for Worlds, but, you know, up to you. That's not how any legit sport functions.

Here it is, back. 
Say nothing else about Virtue and Moir, they like the long game. 
Astrologically speaking, they may be Taurus (Tessa)
and Virgo (Scott), but as a team it's pure Scorpio.

Iliushechina Moscovitch - quad sal at the Cricket Club.
Kirsten Moore-Towers is gnashing her teeth.

Moore-Towers wants to do a quad "yesterday." Maybe the above video was this team's only decent attempt in many tries, who knows, but it's a much better quality throw than Duhamel Radford's. They don't stop skating for half the rink before launch, it's an actual throw, not an assisted jump, and, while Lubov lands with a deep knee bend, it's not a crouch. Her carriage is open, and there's run of blade on her landing. Dylan's form at take-off is a mess - off the ice, lurching forward, and a mule kick, but the judges never seem to care what the guy does. Michael Marinaro certainly isn't going to show him up.

Even if Iliushechkina blows a jump, it didn't stop Sui Han from becoming world champions last season. Often as not, pairs results are determined by which error-strewn performance manages to grind out the most points.

Finally, Bryce Davison got married in June, an event I was skeptical would ever take place. Every photo I'd seen of the happy couple seemed awkward, IMO, and lacking conviction. There was a reserve, a stiffness. Then I read that his dearly beloved was a former skater, and I found this:

Michelle Moore prior to taking the ice for Canada in 2009.

That's one of the cutest things ever, and explains a lot.

BTW, her skating skills are excellent. Just not a strong jumper. Congratulations Bryce Davison.

P.S. Excerpt from Weaver & Poje's Beverly Smith interview:

They were gleeful when the International Skating Union announced that the rhythm in the short dance for Olympic season would be Latin. “We LOVE Latin,” Weaver said. “We love the dancing in the clubs. We loved our Latin program from 2011 to 2012. It’s one of our favourite genres and styles. So without repeating ourselves, we wanted to find a way to still be exciting and entertaining.”

*Excerpted on Goldenskate.com

Nebelhorn: Canadablue compares Chock & Bates to Weaver & Poje

cuteiceprincess's articles will be next. This post took much longer than I anticipated, and I completely blame Chock & Bates, as explained more fully later on in this post.

****

In considering Chock & Bates, it seems to me that, along with, and because of, so much two footed skating, and faking-it-skating, they lack real performance energy.While few skaters will light up the building at a season's first competition, with Chock & Bates, there's little of the natural adrenalin we saw with the Shibs, or that builds in Weaver & Poje in those sections of their program where they find their rhythm and get their feet under them. Chock & Bates mime energy in the choreographic gestures they've been assigned, the arms, the faces, but from the hips down, they're flaccid. They're not building energy with their stroking; momentum is constantly thwarted. As with Davis White, Chock & Bates' programs are constucted to work around, rather than with, their medium (ice)

canadablue's Nebelhorn 2015 FD Comparison, W&P vis a vis Chock & Bates.

Cute Ice Princess Blog Looks at the Finnstep

It's just camera angles. From another camera
angle her left blade is actually OFF the ice.
Were it not for Meryl Davis fans, I would never
understand the importance of camera angles. From this angle,
it appears that the skater is on the ice. From that angle,
it looks like the skater is in the Kiss'n'Cry.

Thanks very much again to cuteiceprincess tumblr and to Lady B. And once again, Meryl Davis fans are invited to explain how Lady B has it all wrong.

Finnstep: DW's skating doesn't match their protocols

Okay, here we go. Let's remember that Lynn Rutherford justified VM's Finnstep levels in the Olympics by pointing out that VM had failed to get their levels in the past. That's it then. She's a figure skating "journalist", after all. Like every single mainstream figure skating journalist in existence*, her deal is, "I'm a figure skating journalist, but I'm not a technical specialist" which means "I write about figure skating but don't actually know what I'm talking about when it comes to what went on out there. I trust the judges when they produce results I support, and so should you even if you don't like the results. Should any observer deviate from the agreed upon official narrative (such as the inventor of the Finnstep disagreeing about how the Finnstep was scored), just disparage his credentials." This stuff about you need to be a technical specialist to write about the technical side (which is the damn win and lose side!) is hammered home to us fans, who are nevertheless supposed to invest ourselves in this "sport." Then there are the times a journalist gets worked up about an outcome, but, not having educated him/herself in the twenty years they've spent writing about the damn thing, makes a half-baked hash of it when attempting to challenge dubious results (looking at you, Steve Milton).

It's notable that people like Lynn Rutherford are interested enough in figure skating to work for publications dedicated to it, which means they write, tweet, attend competitions, etc., but they never manage to get interested enough to actually be able to tell what's going on for themselves. They like to tell us it's impossible to tell for yourself unless you're some sort of "specialist." Figure skating journalists have been using that one for years. Those who presumably do know technique, such as P.J. Kwong, don't talk about it when they discuss figure skating with fans and pretend to know nothing about it when a team like Davis White hijacks the Olympics from the rightful winners.

Yet mere fans, who have not spent years writing about skating, or rubbing elbows, are able to read and understand the rulebook, and evaluate a skater(s) performance vis a vis what's in the rulebook. Turns out this sport is observable. Turns out, the rules are comprehensible and applicable to real stuff. We can familiarize ourselves with the rules in whatever language we speak, and then see if the skating and the scores make sense per the rules.

The likes of Rutherford, and those in the comment booth pretend this is impossible to do. Per them, the only way to evaluate the legitimacy of a protocol is to see if the skater has been given similar protocols before. Cuteiceprincess tumblr, along with quite a few other fans (who are, of course, ignored because then the propoganda jig is up) disagrees. You can actually evaluate a protocol's legitimacy by looking at the skating. What a concept.

Here's Lady B:

The next image makes you see two keypoints that are needed to assign the level 4 to the first sequence of finnstep. To Tessa and Scott was awarded Level 3 and a Level 4 for Meryl and Charlie. Let us see for a moment

FIRST KEYPOINT: the woman must do twizzle and a half, and end on a right foot with an “outside back” edge.This edge must be CLEAR. And the foot with which he comes have to be ONE. We see clearly how Tessa comes with only one foot (the left is oriented forward as it should be to give the draw back on the right foot instead is on the outer edge) and a clear outer edge.
Meryl instead not only arrives on TWO FEET but even over a non-defined, completely flat (as is also visible in the gif).

Again, the gif.

This keypoint has been given the right to both Tessa and Meryl.

SECOND KEYPOINT: After another twizzle and half, the woman has to come with a light foot, right, forward, on a CLEARLY outside edge.
Now, let’s see how Meryl and Tessa are clearly arrived with a flat edge and not defined (not by chance that keypoint is the most difficult to reach). The blade is straight and there is a clear tilt in either of both Tessa and Meryl.

NEVERTHELESS, to Tessa is not given the keypoint, while Meryl yes.
Conclusion: Tessa, a keypoint only earned a level 3.
Meryl two keypoints not deserved, level 4.

What’s the story?
How is it that Tessa and Scott are counted at infinitesimal and Meryl and Charlie is not it?

I would like to remind you that the judges have MEGA replay of what happens during the keypoints and the keypoints that are fundamental to assign levels.

This thing happens all too often in the steps sequences, where Meryl and Charlie seem to automatically level 4 even if their blades are miles away, while Tessa and Scott struggling to get a level 3.
In any case, this is another chapter.

As usual, it seems to me that is rewarded the performance and not the difficulty and true technique. All the more reason why the Tessa and Scott shall be made a higher standard and will have to have everything perfect (all executed perfectly) to win, unfortunately.

As it turns out even when Virtue and Moir are not only better than Davis White, but as near to perfect as ice dancers can get, they're simply not allowed to win. We were all sold a bill of goods about the "storyline" of rival ice dance teams. There was no rivalry. VM were cast as foils meant to legitimize Davis White. Davis White are beating Virtue Moir! Ergo Davis White must be terrific! That's it. Virtue Moir spent the past quad propping up Davis White so Davis and White could appropriate what they did on the ice and pretend to best it. Virtue Moir were only fodder.

P.S. - Re-reading this analysis and looking at the screen caps, Meryl missed both key points in this performance, yet Davis and White got L4.

ETA: Figure skating is consciously, aggressively, perpetuating fraud not just on the ice but off the ice. It's connected. Both are tied to the current culture in the sport, with an accompanying condescension and sanctimony. Davis White are so deserving and it's disrespectful to question the outcome in Sochi. And hey, did we mention Virtue and Moir are GREAT people?

_____________________________
*As ever, excepting those figure skating journalists who write on their own web pages, or for skating-centric websites, but who do not influence how figure skating is discussed in mainstream media, on twitter, or in the comment booth.

Not bad, Rosie.

Rosie DiManno. Her new article on Virtue Moir doesn't suck.

pretty good there, Rosie.

Right off the bat describes Carmen as revolutionary, exquisitely beautiful, and technically demanding, but she's not soap-opera-ing it up; she's not padding this one with histrionics and cheesy asides. She only refers to Davis White as Virtue and Moir's perennial rivals. She also says Carmen never got the scores it deserved in international competition.

What I like about this article is it's direct. There's none of the consciousness of "oh, I'm writing for figure skating fans, so better lard this thing with sentimental shit about their personalities or looks." (That's how most writers distance themselves from this sport and its fans, by trivializing everything or making it melodramatic. God forbid they're caught writing like it's a sport. They want us to know the fans only care about personalities.) She hasn't included any asides about fans whatsoever. A little from Virtue and Moir about their Vancouver experience, what's different this time, how they feel about their new free dance, over and out. No back door shit either. Basically, this article comes off almost as if she's writing in her own, newfound figure skating voice, and not just regurgitating skater spin dressed up with her (formerly) signature purple prose. I actually have to give her more credit than that, since Tessa is going on a bit emotively about how starry-eyed a whirlwind Vancouver was, and Scott, I think, mentions how they chafed about at the emphasis on their inexperience, and she lets those remarks stand alone and drives on by. She didn't get sucked in and succumb to writing about them like it was a personality profile.

Rosie, good job.

Who would have thought Rosie-freaking-DiManno would be the Canadian figure skating beat reporter to set the bar? (I don't count Beverly Smith - who is always strong -  because figure skating is her metier, and she's not heard from enough.) Please maintain this self-discipline Rosie, and please please let the reason you were able to produce this piece be that you've bothered to learn a little bit about figure skating. The sport needs all the help it can get, and the fans need a break.

Megan Duhamel is giving back her TEB 2008 medal

https://www.facebook.com/notes/peter-murray/isu-circular-letter-no-612-interruption-of-skating-programs-urgent-need-to-amend/10151523504576186

Above is a link to the ISU circular letter addressing the urgent need to amend the rules about skaters stopping and restarting the program.

And Meagan Duhamel likes this:

Of course, Virtue and Moir. What an embarrassment. They stopped and restarted, just like you did in 2008, Meagan. They didn't win. The ISU has never given a shit when it was other skaters, right Meagan Duhamel?




Of course, one reason Tessa and Scott never had to stop their program because one of them cut a vein on the other is because Tessa and Scott actually can control their skates and their bodies. They don't go full bore on the ice despite skating like they've joined a demolition derby.

Meagan sliced Craig's hand (the program stopped), with enough blood so that her costume was bloody when they stopped. That doesn't happen a lot to other skaters. The blood flies when Meagan's on the ice, though.

Maybe the ISU should make a rule about not being able to participate in the Grand Prix series or other international competitions unless you're a good - and considerate enough - partner to keep your skate blades away from your partner's veins, arteries and other parts of their persons that have a lot of vascularity.

This issue is obviously freighted with other issues the skaters have that have nothing whatsoever to do with Virtue Moir stopping, but has to do with other stuff about Virtue Moir. They're hiding behind this issue because they don't want to address what's really bugging them and I don't just mean the sham, but you know, being special snowflakes in general.

With Duhamel, I wonder if it's being a pair girl who waited for years to afford a ticket for her dad to see her compete internationally, while meanwhile Jessica Dube gets both parents at TEB and her parents and a brother at Worlds in Nice through no financial effort of her own or her family's. Even if the freight was paid by the Virtue Moir families, that has got to rankle, particularly when one factors in the extra and gratuitous publicity Skate Canada gave Jessica even when her partnership with Bryce was at an end. If you see yourself as a hard luck case who scraped and scrambled and trained to get where you are, and you see someone else sailing through hardly trying in part because of favors they're doing another set of skaters, it could rankle. Even if, upon analysis, it's not a really fair or rational resentment.

What's embarrassing?  They weren't dinged enough to be off the podium? They won the fucking short dance. Duhamel/Buntin weren't dinged enough to be off the podium. Zhang & Zhang weren't dinged enough to move Shen & Zhao up to silver.  Does Meagan think splattering gore on the rink is not embarrassing, but a debilitating cramp is? What's her hierarchy of acceptable health or injury issues?

Not for nothing, I also think the ISU should make a rule about celebrating on the ice before the program is over - another habit of Duhamel's - but nobody seems to find that as embarrassing as finishing with a silver medal at a 4CCs where they won the short dance and are the defending champion.

Maybe Duhamel thinks that unless you make a big histrionic show of it, it's not fair.

I don't think Virtue Moir faked it in 2013, but I think they did in 2011. And I still want to know - what's it to YOU, Meagan Duhamel? Don't hide behind the embarrassment to our sport bullshit when the real embarrassment to ice dance is how it's scored.

What actually is your problem? What did they gain by faking it in 2013, if you think they faked it in 2013?

I think someone like Patrick Ryan, who obviously is unhappy VM weren't dinged off the podium, should count his blessings for the scores D/W receive and didn't earn according to the criteria in the CoP. The hypocrisy is incredible.