About a year and a half ago, I fell completely in love with Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir – a team of Canadian ice dancers. In light of their gold medal victory, I feel completely justified as many of my friends have expressed their awe after watching them. Personally, I also find it hard NOT to love them – I mean, they’ve skated together since they were 7 and 9, it’s obvious that there’s a lot of love and joy in their skating, they’re skilled, beautiful to watch and after meeting them at Skate Canada, I can say that they are wonderfully congenial people. In any case, let’s recap what they did at the Olympics, how they won gold and what their win means in the grander scheme of things. (more…)

After going to Homesense Skate Canada International 2009 this weekend, I figured I should write something about the competition. However being a Grand Prix event in which most of the skaters are barely known, I thought that it would be more helpful if I wrote about the athletes most people would cheer for by default – in other words, the athletes from Canada. Being in Canada, the competition featured the country’s best figure skaters in all 4 disciplines: men, ladies, pairs and ice dance; as a result Skate Canada is perfect for seeing how each skater does against the international competition, as well as taking a glimpse of the results of the backstage politicking that, unfortunately, goes on in this subjective sport. As subjectivity is fundamental to figure skating, I cannot promise a completely objective post; instead, what I can offer is a less nationalistic alternative to the blind pro-Canada garbage that CBC tends to spout. (more…)

Image from CBC

After seeing ads all around the subway, I discovered that the CBC would be doing a new show about skating. I had no clue what it would be all about but I knew that figure skating somehow fit into the equation. Since seeing Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, my love for the sport had rekindled and I hoped that my schedule would allow for me to watch the program, which I did.

If you were wondering what the show is all about, it’s actually rather simple. Eight pairs, composed of a famous male hockey player and a female figure skater would skate in a figure skating competition. Each pair will do one routine per week and viewers will have to call to vote for their favourite couple; a format similar to So You Think You Can Dance. To help viewers with the technical aspect of the sport, a panel of judges (Sandra Bezic, Dick Button and a guest judge) will give their comments along with a score in the archaic 6.0 format where skaters are given points out of 6. The winning couple will win $100,000 for a charity of their choice (very Canadian, eh?) and the title of… Canada’s favourite skaters? (I just made that up.)

Although the competition sounds rather interesting, what really got my attention were the competitors. They are listed in their pairings as follows: (more…)