dancing on thin ice
So the Ice Dancing final was yesterday in Torino. As is usual, the Russians won the gold. However, for the first time in 30 years (specifically, since the first time Ice Dance was an olympic event, in 1976 when the USA won the bronze), a American team won an ice dancing medal! Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto won the silver in Ice Dancing, with Yelyena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov of Ukraine taking the bronze.
Ice dance was truly strange this olympics. It's hard to tell hwo the new judging system effects ice dance because, unlike singles or pair skating, ice dancing doesn't have big rotational jumps. I've been watching ice dance for years and I still don't understand how it all works. I do know that an ice dance consists approximately of these elements:
Twizzles: These are a sequence of turns executed by the couple seperately (not touching each other), sort of like doing a spin that moves over the ice.
Dance Lifts: Unlike pairs lifts, dancers don't have to rotate during a lift. However, a dance lift must not have the lifted skater higher than the lifting skater's body. (With the exception of Marina Anissina & Gwendal Peizerat's signature move, the man always does the lifting). These can take on all kinds of interesting positions. The classic is when the man grabs the woman by one leg and one arm and spins around with her. This is also the most dangerous lift, and a Canadian team got badly injured during the Original Dance doing one of these and had to withdraw.
Dance Spins: not unlike pairs spins. The couple spins on the ice, holding on to each other.
Step Sequences: these are the hardest thing to describe. Basically, the dancers do lots of quick turns and wiggle their feet around whilst holding on to each other in a sequence that looks a lot like ballroom dancing.
I like ice dancing because typically, different routines look utterly different. In singles skating, you can pretty much gaurantee that you will see something like 7 triple jumps and a quad (if men are skating), plus a flying camel or flying sit spin, a combination spin, and that's it. Ice dance in some ways has more creative possibilities, since dance moves aren't quite as standardized.
Ah yes, the soap opera. During the Original Dance, Maurizio Margaglio dropped his partner, Barbara Fusar-Poli. She glared at him afterwards, and was noted by the announcers as refusing to speak to her partner as they waited to perform in the free dance. She was visibly angry both backstage and when they went out on the ice. Afterwards, she was seen kissing and crying on Maurizio, which seemed to indicate that they'd resolved whatever the problem was. Later, however, Maurizio was seen sobbing while talking to someone, with Barbara standing impassively next to him drinking out of her water bottle. She's being called some nasty names, let me tell you.
I feel the need to explain some things...
Barbara started skating with Maurizio in the early 1990's... around 1993, I think. She was a senior and he was still in juniors. It took a while to get him up to senior level, but what choice do you really have? Ice dancing partners don't grow on trees. They competed at Nagano, and the Italian judge was implicated as being involved in the Bourne&Kraatz, Anissina&Peizerat, etc.etc. scandal in ice dancing that year. It was noted that the Italian judge seemed to prop up the Russian and French judges, and that those judges in turn gave FP&M their highest marks of the competition. While I seriosuly doubt that FP&M were directly (or even indirectly) involved in that fiasco, the mere concept probably didn't help them. In 2000, they managed to grab the World silver medal, in a year where, had the French team of Anissina&Peizerat had any other program than Carmina Burana, the Italians would have won. By this time, Barbara was 29, in a sport where 25 is considered old. If you don't at least start hitting it big by 25, you are unliekly to ever manage it. So, it was a long hard road just to get on teh podium. The Italians did beat the French in 2001, and went into the 2002 Olympics as the defending World Champions. Unfortunately, Maurizio slipped and fell at the end of their free dance, and they just managed to grab the bronze medal. I suspect that was humiliating for FP&M, since very few ice dancers ever fall in a major competition. The only reason they managed to hang onto the bronze at all was that the Canadian team (Bourne&Kraatz) had an even bigger fall just afterwards. Since FP&M planned to retire, it was probably a bitter pill for Barbara to swallow, having lost a chance at gold because her partner fell, at the end of her career.
They "sort of" retired. Barbara basically decided to turn pro, although she never lost her Olympic eligibility. Maurizio didn't want to turn pro, effectively ending Barbara's skating career, since it is very difficult to find a new partner once you turn pro, especially in Ice Dance. It probably hurt even more since Barbara had worked for so long to get Maurizio up to the top level, something few other dancers would have bothered with. She had a baby (having married a former Italian speed skater the year before). Maurizio tried skating with another partner, decided he couldn't, and he and Barbara went on skating tours.
Then, in a fairly last-minute decision, they decide to try for this Olympics. They win the Compulsory Dance, putting them in real position to get the gold medal, something she probably had never thought possible. Then he drops her AGAIN, in the Original Dance, putting them down to 8th, where a medal is a far far reach. The disappointment must have been horrible. Again her dreams of gold shattered because her partner screwed up.
It doesn't excuse her behavior. But it does explain it.
Ice dance was truly strange this olympics. It's hard to tell hwo the new judging system effects ice dance because, unlike singles or pair skating, ice dancing doesn't have big rotational jumps. I've been watching ice dance for years and I still don't understand how it all works. I do know that an ice dance consists approximately of these elements:
Twizzles: These are a sequence of turns executed by the couple seperately (not touching each other), sort of like doing a spin that moves over the ice.
Dance Lifts: Unlike pairs lifts, dancers don't have to rotate during a lift. However, a dance lift must not have the lifted skater higher than the lifting skater's body. (With the exception of Marina Anissina & Gwendal Peizerat's signature move, the man always does the lifting). These can take on all kinds of interesting positions. The classic is when the man grabs the woman by one leg and one arm and spins around with her. This is also the most dangerous lift, and a Canadian team got badly injured during the Original Dance doing one of these and had to withdraw.
Dance Spins: not unlike pairs spins. The couple spins on the ice, holding on to each other.
Step Sequences: these are the hardest thing to describe. Basically, the dancers do lots of quick turns and wiggle their feet around whilst holding on to each other in a sequence that looks a lot like ballroom dancing.
I like ice dancing because typically, different routines look utterly different. In singles skating, you can pretty much gaurantee that you will see something like 7 triple jumps and a quad (if men are skating), plus a flying camel or flying sit spin, a combination spin, and that's it. Ice dance in some ways has more creative possibilities, since dance moves aren't quite as standardized.
Ah yes, the soap opera. During the Original Dance, Maurizio Margaglio dropped his partner, Barbara Fusar-Poli. She glared at him afterwards, and was noted by the announcers as refusing to speak to her partner as they waited to perform in the free dance. She was visibly angry both backstage and when they went out on the ice. Afterwards, she was seen kissing and crying on Maurizio, which seemed to indicate that they'd resolved whatever the problem was. Later, however, Maurizio was seen sobbing while talking to someone, with Barbara standing impassively next to him drinking out of her water bottle. She's being called some nasty names, let me tell you.
I feel the need to explain some things...
Barbara started skating with Maurizio in the early 1990's... around 1993, I think. She was a senior and he was still in juniors. It took a while to get him up to senior level, but what choice do you really have? Ice dancing partners don't grow on trees. They competed at Nagano, and the Italian judge was implicated as being involved in the Bourne&Kraatz, Anissina&Peizerat, etc.etc. scandal in ice dancing that year. It was noted that the Italian judge seemed to prop up the Russian and French judges, and that those judges in turn gave FP&M their highest marks of the competition. While I seriosuly doubt that FP&M were directly (or even indirectly) involved in that fiasco, the mere concept probably didn't help them. In 2000, they managed to grab the World silver medal, in a year where, had the French team of Anissina&Peizerat had any other program than Carmina Burana, the Italians would have won. By this time, Barbara was 29, in a sport where 25 is considered old. If you don't at least start hitting it big by 25, you are unliekly to ever manage it. So, it was a long hard road just to get on teh podium. The Italians did beat the French in 2001, and went into the 2002 Olympics as the defending World Champions. Unfortunately, Maurizio slipped and fell at the end of their free dance, and they just managed to grab the bronze medal. I suspect that was humiliating for FP&M, since very few ice dancers ever fall in a major competition. The only reason they managed to hang onto the bronze at all was that the Canadian team (Bourne&Kraatz) had an even bigger fall just afterwards. Since FP&M planned to retire, it was probably a bitter pill for Barbara to swallow, having lost a chance at gold because her partner fell, at the end of her career.
They "sort of" retired. Barbara basically decided to turn pro, although she never lost her Olympic eligibility. Maurizio didn't want to turn pro, effectively ending Barbara's skating career, since it is very difficult to find a new partner once you turn pro, especially in Ice Dance. It probably hurt even more since Barbara had worked for so long to get Maurizio up to the top level, something few other dancers would have bothered with. She had a baby (having married a former Italian speed skater the year before). Maurizio tried skating with another partner, decided he couldn't, and he and Barbara went on skating tours.
Then, in a fairly last-minute decision, they decide to try for this Olympics. They win the Compulsory Dance, putting them in real position to get the gold medal, something she probably had never thought possible. Then he drops her AGAIN, in the Original Dance, putting them down to 8th, where a medal is a far far reach. The disappointment must have been horrible. Again her dreams of gold shattered because her partner screwed up.
It doesn't excuse her behavior. But it does explain it.