Psssst... Remember We Gotta Give Them the Gold

Meryl Davis and Charlie White will become Olympic Champions in Sochi.  Unless they fall flat on their faces the judges will give them ridiculously high scores and turn a blind eye even if they make visible mistakes.  In December Meryl and Charlie won their fifth consecutive Grand Prix Final title despite making obvious errors in the Finnsteps and getting credit for it, they even received top levels with great GOE on obvious errors.
...
He even almost bumped into Meryl.

Here is the link and an excerpt to an expert blog called Ice Dance Analysts that had a closer look on the Finnsteps.

http://icedanceanalysts.blogspot.tw/2014/01/more-on-finnstep-key-points-look-back.html

Davis/White received credit for this key point, but it looks like this was a close call as Davis’s exit edge for this choctaw was a little flat/barely an inside edge and thus not a clear inside edge (again, this is not the best angle). She quickly leans to produce the inside edge which is aided by the movement of the free leg back and to the right, but this is after the blade placement (and remember that the blade placement is very important in the assessment of key points).

Davis/White received credit for this key point, but Davis appears to place her blade on a flat rather than a clear outside edge for the exit edge of the choctaw. With another technical panel they might not have received credit for this key point. (Unfortunately White's blade is obscured by Davis's boot, but if one partner does not meet the criteria, the team does not receive credit for the key point).

This was their twizzle attempt in the SD

Charlie messed up on the entrance into the first set and went out of sync with Meryl.  He even almost bump into Meryl.

Slow motion of the first set

Screen cap, they were almost 180 degrees out of sync.  That's like, as out of sync as you can get.

For this element, Meryl and Charlie received a level 4 with three judges giving a grade of execution of +3.

After the SD, to paraphrase a previous article, every person, their moms and their cats thought they should not have been placed first.  Even Meryl herself agreed after their marks came up in the Kiss & Cry area.  

Here is the FD

Not as bad as the SD

But definitely flawed to receive awesome scores of the element

Again, very flawed execution in synchronization

Charlie also wobbled out of his exit and lost unison with Meryl

For their FD twizzles, they received level 4 again with two judges handing out +3s and the rest +2s in grade of execution.

When other couples make obvious errors, the judges no holds barred would mark them down.  With Meryl and Charlie, not gonna happen because we gotta give them the Gold.  Using the words of one of their fans when they thought the Russian dance couple Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Soloviev were over marked in Rostelcom Cup over Canadians Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje, how do couples wake up every morning and train when they know even if they did their very best and outskate their competitors, they will never be allowed to score over them even with visible flaws.

How indeed.

The Perfected Unison

Two of the things Ice Dancers are judged on are their timing and unison during a dance. This is what the ISU judges claim is the model of excellence..

Meryl still can't extend her free leg with a slight bend at her knees

Another example in another program

Unmatched free legs

Unmatched height

Great timing and unison 

Not even trying to extend her legs

Obvious free leg unison

Different height, different angles

Gold Medal standard

World Class

Meryl Davis, the Exemplary Female Ice Dancer

There are bad mid jump shots of the singles all the time.  But aside from the distorted facial features, you can still look at the mid air positions, the vertical rotational axis, the compactness of the body in the air, to get a sense of how well the jump is.

This is a closer look at Meryl Davis' postures and lines as a world champion ice dancer, which incidentally are one of the most important traits of a dancer of any kind.  Most of these pictures are taken from figure skating forums with fans of the Ice Dance discipline taking a closer look at the supposedly best female ice dancer today (at least according to the judges).

Let's focus on their perfect free dance of this Olympic Season, Scheherazade.  Text in italics are what other people on the internet are saying.

This look like a mid-fall photo, yet it is not.  Completely let go of her upper body and leg lines.

Charlie looks seems that he is lifting a sack of potatoes

Meryl had to rely on Charlie to hold her right leg down to maintain position

No extensions whatsoever.  It 's really ugly exit from a lift in this way

Another thing that I noticed from a few years is that I find Meryl worse is the fact that she skate always with her ​​legs open, always. Especially for a girl is ugly looking.

Open

Open

Open

Still open

This was interesting and thought maybe this was because this is an Arabic themed dance... So I did a little searching:

Looks like it's also a masquerade waltz thing

And a Gypsy thing...

Also was a thing in 2011

and a latin thing...

Carrying on with Schez...

This then is a very much ugly passage! There aren't lines, there aren't postures ... it's all wrong!

Legs are still open 

Legs stretched out for anything good 

Emulate her ladies, because she brings home the hardwares.

The Perfect Lifts

At the 2014 U.S. Nationals, Meryl and Charlie received a perfect score for their Free Dance.  After tossing out the lowest and highest scores from the judges, they received +3 GOE and 10.00 PCS across the board. Along with level 4 calls on every technical elements the FD score was 119.50, the perfect score.

Were they really that perfect?

Here is the curve lift entry that according to an article written earlier in the season, that they spent two years training for:

Meryl assumed a quasi shoot the duck position, then Charlie swung her onto his back.  At the lowest position for Meryl, her lack of core control is basically a great example of how NOT to do basic crunches. Charlie also had to hunch over with his shoulders dropping to accommodate but swinging her with brute force.  "Brute" and "dance" are two words that goes hand in hand.

During the curve lift, Meryl was doing her thing on Charlie's back going through various positions but she failed in showing proper leg extensions/lines and couldn't hold on to a position for a single second.  The worst part for this lift though, was how incredibly wobbly Charlie's blades were.  The men is supposed to trace a curve with his blades but the outcome was so jagged they were awarded +3 GOEs across the board.

Check out this straightline lift, which was the first part of their combination lift.

Once again Meryl demonstrated her lack of core strength and had to cling onto Charlie with both hands and glued her torso against him.  All she had to do left was to point her legs straight up and hold, but look how her legs wobble and oscillated at the top.  Good thing Marina designed this lift so Meryl's weak controls could be compensated by Charlie's blade movement.  Charlie's shaky feet were very obvious here.  If Meryl's axis of leg movement is orthogonal to Charlie,  they probably would've topple over.

As a comparison, this is Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat's stright line lift where Nathalie also assumed an upside down position.

She did not need to hold on to Fabian and glue her torso against him, and her legs were not crossed to maintain stability and they do not oscillate.  If Nathalie couldn't maintain her core with lower body stability and swings there was no way Fabian could stay in balance.  Note how stable Fabian's feet were.  There is very little margin of error for their lifts compare to Meryl and Charlie's, but unfortunately they will never score as high as Meryl and Charlie.

Back to the perfect lifters.

This was the exit of their combination lift.  Charlie's body hunched so much that he was practically looking down on the ice so Meryl could step back onto the ice.   The whole time Charlie was on two feet until Meryl got away and TADA it was an Arabian magic trick.  These excellent execution was perfect and scored perfect.

I realized the National Championships usually comes with National Inflation in score.  But no other teams were allowed to come even close to Davis and White.

Here is Shibutanis' curve lift (because the gif is longer I reduced the size to maintain an acceptable frame rate)

Maia got onto Alex and did her thing with Alex holding his waist straight and blades mostly secure.  This was just as well executed if not better than Meryl and Charlies, but they were awarded with mostly 2s and 3s in GOE which was still excellent. Their PCS though were substantially lower than Meryl and Charlie's because even at Nationals the US federation must maintain an image of invincibility when in reality, the teams should be a lot closer judging from their ice dancing skills and capabilities.

Finally, some pictures of Meryl and Charlie's lifts in the past that had gotten them the highest scores each season.

Their signature split rotational lift with nice pointed toes

Meryl practices the reverse planking

Once again clinging onto her dear life, wonder if she left a mark on Charlie's neck

After retirement Charlie can have the option of becoming a lumberjack

GOE: 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3