It's gonna be a dramallamadingdong night.
1. Have you heard about Dick Button throwing a very justified public tantrum about corruption in the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame? The story broke over the weekend, but I was too deep in my figure skating history happy place to post about it before. Have you read the full text of his letter to the nominating committee chair? He is in full Bitter Old Queen With a Harvard Degree mode. I want to be Dick Button when I grow up.
Sonja Bianchetti, the nominee who was illegally removed from the ballot, is a former longtime judge and official. She was involved in the phasing out of compulsory figures and wrote a whistle-blowing book about the 2002 Olympics. I do not know much about her beyond that, but she seems awesome, and exactly the kind of person the ISU would want to keep out of a hall of fame.
1b. You know what is literally impossible to get your hands on? Detailed scoring protocols from Olympics or World Championships from the '80s. You can find final rankings and ordinals. You cannot find the score breakdown by judge for each program (i.e. who gave each 5.9 and 5.8) or each judge's placement for a given skater. You can't even find a list of standings after the compulsories or short program - like, you can't see who ranked first in figures. You can't even find this information in the outdated reference books of Olympic statistics hidden in the back of a large academic library at a university with a lot of students who major in sports-related fields. The only way to find this stuff out would be to watch videos of old events and piece it together from screen grabs and commentary. It's almost as if they did not want us to have this information.
1c. Before we leave the doldrums and go back to my skating happy place - it is sad that Pechalat/Bourzat are probably sitting out Worlds after she fell on her face and broke her nose. With them on the DL, we're probably guaranteed another North American sweep in dance. Remember when it was 2002 and a North American team had never won Worlds?
2. Okay. Back to the happy place. Naturally, after I wrote the 20 Great Skaters Who Never Won an Olympic Medal posts, it's become clear that I missed someone. So I'm giving him an honorable mention write-up here. Unfortunately, there is no embeddable video of him available, so I've only got still photos. (I did get a downloadable file from the boards and therefore have watched his skating, but I do not have permission to upload it to YouTube.)
Emmerich Danzer (Austria), men's singles; 5th in 1964, 4th in 1968
(Photo via Austria Forum)
It wasn't so much a question of "How did I forget Danzer?" as "How did I not know about Danzer?" He's way before my time, obviously, and I just assumed from his three consecutive World titles (1966-68) that he must have won an Olympic medal at some point. Instead, it turns out he was the Kurt Browning of his era. The only major competition he didn't win between 1966 and 1968 was the Olympics: he made a huge error in his compulsory figures, and a gorgeous free skate wasn't enough to dig him out of the hole. Danzer was a well-rounded skater, with an arsenal of powerful double jumps (standard at the time) including a great double axel, and a fast, low sit spin. His footwork was so intricate it was practically solo ice dance. While the Austrian figure skating program has declined since Danzer's time, his attention to detail and lightness of movement are still visible in a lot of Central European figure skaters. And long before Johnny Weir or Kim Yu-Na came along, Danzer had a hit novelty single.
3. ice_baby_09 and I think we should have a low-keyed Worlds-themed skating RPF commentfic meme again this year. Who's in?
4. In conclusion, for those of you still hanging around in the hopes of Firefly-related content, two minutes of Jewel Staite and Sean Maher having a massive giggle fit. (The YouTube user's channel has a bunch more con videos, most of them nearly as hilarious.)
Sonja Bianchetti, the nominee who was illegally removed from the ballot, is a former longtime judge and official. She was involved in the phasing out of compulsory figures and wrote a whistle-blowing book about the 2002 Olympics. I do not know much about her beyond that, but she seems awesome, and exactly the kind of person the ISU would want to keep out of a hall of fame.
1b. You know what is literally impossible to get your hands on? Detailed scoring protocols from Olympics or World Championships from the '80s. You can find final rankings and ordinals. You cannot find the score breakdown by judge for each program (i.e. who gave each 5.9 and 5.8) or each judge's placement for a given skater. You can't even find a list of standings after the compulsories or short program - like, you can't see who ranked first in figures. You can't even find this information in the outdated reference books of Olympic statistics hidden in the back of a large academic library at a university with a lot of students who major in sports-related fields. The only way to find this stuff out would be to watch videos of old events and piece it together from screen grabs and commentary. It's almost as if they did not want us to have this information.
1c. Before we leave the doldrums and go back to my skating happy place - it is sad that Pechalat/Bourzat are probably sitting out Worlds after she fell on her face and broke her nose. With them on the DL, we're probably guaranteed another North American sweep in dance. Remember when it was 2002 and a North American team had never won Worlds?
2. Okay. Back to the happy place. Naturally, after I wrote the 20 Great Skaters Who Never Won an Olympic Medal posts, it's become clear that I missed someone. So I'm giving him an honorable mention write-up here. Unfortunately, there is no embeddable video of him available, so I've only got still photos. (I did get a downloadable file from the boards and therefore have watched his skating, but I do not have permission to upload it to YouTube.)
Emmerich Danzer (Austria), men's singles; 5th in 1964, 4th in 1968
(Photo via Austria Forum)
It wasn't so much a question of "How did I forget Danzer?" as "How did I not know about Danzer?" He's way before my time, obviously, and I just assumed from his three consecutive World titles (1966-68) that he must have won an Olympic medal at some point. Instead, it turns out he was the Kurt Browning of his era. The only major competition he didn't win between 1966 and 1968 was the Olympics: he made a huge error in his compulsory figures, and a gorgeous free skate wasn't enough to dig him out of the hole. Danzer was a well-rounded skater, with an arsenal of powerful double jumps (standard at the time) including a great double axel, and a fast, low sit spin. His footwork was so intricate it was practically solo ice dance. While the Austrian figure skating program has declined since Danzer's time, his attention to detail and lightness of movement are still visible in a lot of Central European figure skaters. And long before Johnny Weir or Kim Yu-Na came along, Danzer had a hit novelty single.
3. ice_baby_09 and I think we should have a low-keyed Worlds-themed skating RPF commentfic meme again this year. Who's in?
4. In conclusion, for those of you still hanging around in the hopes of Firefly-related content, two minutes of Jewel Staite and Sean Maher having a massive giggle fit. (The YouTube user's channel has a bunch more con videos, most of them nearly as hilarious.)
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