Defending ice dancing, the ISU and judging

[moongirlk]

I so love whatever moderator came up with the idea for OT chatter - 
how else would we get to discuss figure skating on an HP list?  YAY!

I have to leap to the defense of Ice Dancing as somebody (I honestly 
meant to remember who so I could go back and find the quote) said 
they thought it ought to be dropped from the olympics due to the 
judging problems and that it's barely a sport, or something to that 
effect.

I used to feel the same way.  Until I saw Torvil and Dean do their 
stuff at Albertville - I think it was Albertville - is that when they 
came out of retirement or whatever they call it?  I don't remember 
much about T&D from before, other than a vague impression that they 
wore a lot of purple, but when I watched them there I finally 
appreciated having one branch of the sport that didn't revolve around 
jumps.  Dude - have you ever seen their "Bolero" number?  Hubba hubba 
wow!  Now they're not the sexiest looking couple of people in the 
world, and off ice they seemed very sort of mundane, but when they 
did Bolero... dear heavens - it was sex on ice!  I've never seen a 
program, and hardly ever even a love scene in a movie, that was more 
convincingly sexually charged, and yet at the same time it was 
*definitely* a sport.  I've decided that the thing with ice dancing 
is that without the jumps, you have to be really really *good* at all 
of the foundational parts of skating, and you have to do tons more 
*other* hard stuff.  When there are 7 or more jumps in a program, the 
skater spends a good chunk of time doing simple crossovers building 
up speed and setting up for the jumps, plus takes "breathers", as the 
commentators call them, where they do nothing in particular, except 
maybe waving their arms around dramatically (which drives me nuts).  
Without the jumps, they have to pack every moment of the program with 
intricate footwork and edge-work and... well, other nifty stuff I 
don't know the names of.  

That's not to take away from singles and regular pairs, just to say 
that ice dance is way cool too, and not usually as scary since people 
don't fall down as much, which I honestly think ought to be a 
prerequisite for being in the olympics - don't do a jump unless you 
can land it in practice more than occasionally.  Sorry, that's really 
a peeve from the last Olympics, not this one.  At least not yet.  

As for the judging thing... I honestly think the cheating has been 
going on for decades, and that it's a well-know if not well-
publicized fact to insiders.  Did anyone else get the feeling that 
the ISU president still isn't taking the problem seriously?  In fact 
I feel sorry for the French judge - she's the only one who's admitted 
to doing anything wrong, but I'd pool my last galleon with Fred and 
George to bet that there are several others who are at least as 
guilty.  Seems like they just want to scapegoat her and sweep it all 
under the rug, but clearly the implication is that she was supposed 
to vote for the Russians *in return* for something, so she can't 
possibly have been the only one involved.  I'd be digging up judges 
from Estonia, Morrocco, Uzbekistan, Jamaica... anywhere to find a few 
that didn't have any skaters in the top 10 or so and get them to do 
the judging, then as soon as the Olympics were over I'd wipe out the 
judging sytem completely and start from scratch.  Maybe then a skater 
with a unique artistic style could catch a break, too.  Seems like 
current judges still think if there's no opera music or melodrama 
it's not sufficiently artistic.  Oh, pardon my rant.  Ahem.  I'd 
better shut up now.

Except to say that I was actually pretty happy with the men's results 
too, and was very touched by both Yagudin's performance and his open 
weeping afterward.  He's grown on me a lot over the last year or so.

kimberly
done ranting about skating for now, but still hoping they'll put 
sweet Scotty in charge of the ISU someday.