A Figure Skating Blog
If you’ve read this blog before you know I’m a fan of CBC’s “Battle of the Blades“. I like it in part because it heralds the start of a new skating season after a long summer break. I like it because tough hockey players say over and over again how hard figure skating is. And [...]
I’m eating my words from earlier in the season when a rough start at Skate Canada seemed to herald a lackluster 2010-2011 skating year. The standard of performance at last week’s World Figure Skating Championships in Moscow was elite. The number of clean programs and strong technical achievements made it a week to remember. Here [...]
On Monday I attended an Olympic figure skating practice at Pacific Coliseum. The men prepared for the short program event and the pairs got in their last practice before the free skate. When you’re at ice level, the athletes’ speed and power is spectacular! Here are some photos from the event:
I admit it, I’m a homer. I want Canadians to do well at Worlds in Sweden. But, even with lofty hopes for our team I wouldn’t have bet on a podium finish for Dube and Davison. Are they peaking too soon, with 2010 still two years off? I don’t think so. Yesterday’s bronze at the [...]
At Canadians last week I was lucky to be in the audience when Skate Canada honoured Jamie Sale and David Pelletier by inducting them into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame. The crowd was in tears watching the emotional Sale and Pelletier re-live their magnificent but controversial career on the big screen. They are spectacular [...]
Salt Lake City gave us the new scoring system–of which I fully approve–but, there’s still plenty of politics in figure skating. In the women’s short, Cynthia Phaneuf put down a lovely but imperfect program, downgrading her triple flip to a single. She still found herself sitting in fourth place at the end of the event, [...]
It was great to see Dube and Davidson put down two solid programs in the pairs competition at Canadians and get rewarded for it with the gold medal. Despite a tough field, the young team's solid technical work and artistry won over the faster, wilder, less consistent Marcoux and Buntin. These are the attributes I [...]
I’ve been a skating fan for a long time… 27 years. And I’ve watched hours and hours of skating competitions. There have been many incredible moments in the sport’s history, but my favourite is still Gordeeva and Grinkov’s long program from the Calgary Olympics in 1988. Just in case there are any new skating fans [...]