Figure Skating Analysts, TV Commentators, Figure Skating Industry, You Have Failed Ice Dance.

Meryl Davis and Charlie White are the Olympic Champions. People all around are congratulating them for a job well done, a well deserved Gold. Yet, mainstream still considers Ice Dance a farce. This is not another article calling the sport fixed. You will not read the word "fixed" after this one. This is about ice dance as a sport, an OLYMPIC sport, being mocked by your sporting friends. It is you, skating analysts, tv commentators, those involved in the sport of figure skating past and present, failing to contribute to the legitimacy of ice dance.

The Ice Dance Olympic competition is over. Once again, Meryl haven't straightened her free leg once like the rest of her entire skating career. Once again, Charlie's feet wobbled during those lifts where he carried Meryl like a weight. They do not have soft knees, they do not skate with deep edges, they marginally use close dance holds, they reused the same elements for the past five years, and they are the Olympic Champions breaking two World Records in the short dance and free dance while doing it.

They won the event with the highest PCS across the board for both the SD and FD. For the life of me I just don't understand why nobody is questioning this reputation judging. Industry experts, TV commentators, past and present figure skaters and ice dancers, do you actually know the rules and the criteria? They have gotten the best PCS since 2012, and this is basically what it is saying. Read the sentence in bold out loud.

Skating Skills

Davis and White have the best edge control in the world with the best knee actions along with varying speed shown in multi-directional skating and in perfect unison.

There are already pictures and videos out there showing them skating on flats then lean into proper edges, that is not good edge control. They do not have the best knees of the field, they don't dig into the ice. Think about it, when you picture Meryl and Charlie skate you have this image of them going fast across the ice, the picture of deep sweeping edges would never come up. They don't even try to have some sort of unison with their free legs they are not even top 5 in the World.

Transitions/Linking Footwork

Davis and White have the most difficult transitions with the most variety of close and intricate dance hold in and out of their elements.

No. Their holds and stances are wider than others, mostly facing in one direction, and they use more hands to hands. Their transitions are mostly done on two feet and flat edges.

Performance/Execution

Davis and White have the best carriage, variety of movements, unison, balance, harmony, and involvement of the performance.

I doubt any of the judges actually look at what are the requirements under performance and execution.  Meryl and Charlie performed and executed their dance well and Marina choreographed it to their abilities, but they are not the best in terms of carriage (Charlie's hunched shoulders and their open dance holds), variety of movements (you rarely see any dynamic movements of their upper body aside from their arms), unison (already covered in a previous post), harmony (wut...?), and involvement (Meryl is involved but Charlie never really gets into any expression).

Choreography

Davis and White have the best arrangement of movements with purpose, unity, and utilization of space. They also have the best demonstration of pattern and stop requirements of the Finnstep.

Outside of their static movements and choreography, they mostly rely on their arms to add flavor.   It goes in hand with their performance and execution.  Marina choreographed it this way because that's pretty much what Meryl and Charlie's capabilities are.  They have no vertical body movements and outside of their elements they rely on gimmicks to convey a sense of story like the sexy touching and taking turns speed skate down the ice to loud music to show angst.

Interpretation/Timing

Davis and White have the best expression of Foxtrot and Quickstep, and perfect expression of balletic movement in the FD. They have the most variety of tempo, nuance and artistic interpretation of the music.

Foxtrot is suppose to be smooth, long and flowy with continuous movements. Davis and White's are hoppy and skippy, and their interpretation was basically a Waltz in 4/4 times. A lot has already been said about their quickstep and Finnstep. For their Free Dance, Davis and White relies on using grand and sweeping music to carry them because they can't pull subtlety at all. Think about it again. When you think back to Davis and White's repertoire, you probably have in mind the likes of Scheherazade, Die Fledermaus, and Samson and Delilah. Their Tango FD is probably low on your list. Do you even remember they did a Tango FD? Meryl and Charlie probably drilled every muscle into their memory including their expressions. Meryl does the facial Olympics every skate, and Charlie basically has only two expressions: excessive happiness and excessive angst. They pick an expression befitting to the dance and let the music to carry them all the way through. Then they get 10's for Interpretation.

A poster on FSU said this

"D&W OTOH can do some fast tricks and have quite a lot of stamina. They never hold an edge long enough and she has never straightened her free leg in her career, so they cannot show any lines. Therefore they need programs in which they run around the ice like headless chickens, too fast for us to notice all that toe-pushing, free-foot dragging and the rest of the mess. At the end of the program we are completely breathless, don't know what has hit us and decide that it must have been quite something. JMHO of course."

There is no subtlety, no nuance, just two skaters (not dancers) trucking through elements to get points. And with their reputations, it seems the judges are marking them with a different set of starting base with their GOEs. As long as they did them they start with +2s. As an example, for their straight line lift this year I still fail to see how it is better than P/B and V/M (from Carmen). Yet they have received better marks and GOEs even with Meryl's leg oscillating and Charlie's skates wobbling to maintain balance just because it's Davis and White doing it.

Meryl and Charlie won everything since 2012 with top component marks but the criteria prescribed by the ISU just don't match. It is like if the Academy let Michael Bay's Transformers win Best Picture because explosions are cool and they forget about the bad acting, bad pacing, and bad cliches. This will never happen in the movie industry but the equivalent of ice dance played out for the past several years.

Most of the TV commentators refuse to critique Davis and White, always think they put no foot wrong and danced circles at the top of the podium for the past two years. Industry experts and figure skaters / ice dancers congratulating them on their well deserved World Record scores, and don't even bother looking at what those scores represent to tell us why they deserve them. Real ice dance fans on the internet lament on their lines and postures, and beg them to hold on to a position for longer than a second. And those on TV and Twitter tell the World they are the best dancers in the World because who cares right? It's all up to the judges and there is nothing we can do for a subjective sport.

How many times have we read from you, that at the end of the day, it just comes down to which couple skated cleaner with their elements done better.

No.

Meryl and Charlie have a solid PCS cushion regardless of what they do on the ice even when they were not the best in any of the PCS criteria listed above. Not to mention, they always receive credits even with poorly executed technical elements like those un-synced twizzles.

How many times have we read from you that at the end of the day, it just comes down to which style the sitting judging panel liked more.

No!!!

As a friend bluntly puts it,

"I think this is the lowest point ice dance has ever had. I keep thinking about Beverly Smith's line in her blog entry on the Sochi ice dance event about feeling like she'd gone back to that dark time when the medals were only for those with the power to arrange it and the results didn't reflect what happened on the ice. Four years ago, skating was patting itself on the back for having cleaned its act up, especially in ice dance, and now the worst judging scandal in history has happened, and it's just being ignored. People are spouting the judges just prefer a different style, ignoring that there is a rulebook that says certain technical attributes are to be valued. Incorrect skating technique is not a style choice. Ignoring clear technical errors is not a style choice; it's ignoring the damned rules! Coming down on a flat instead of an edge when you're supposed to be on an edge isn't a style choice. It's a mistake. Doing 5 revolutions when the rulebook says 6 are required for a feature to count for levels is not a style choice. Side-stepping, toe-picking and hopping is not a style choice when it comes to properly getting yourself down the ice. Rocking on your blades in a lift is not a style choice! Bad skating is not a style choice, it's bad skating."

And at the end of the day the world do read from you when it comes to ice dance, the commentators, skating analysts, figure skaters chatting it up on Twitter, are you patting each other's backs, that we should just accept what happened, and don't come to you for the details because you weren't judging. You are the ones that are suppose to understand the rules, understand why the scores were given with backup from the rulebook and question the iffy judging like every other sports. But all we heard were semantics like Davis and White were EXPLOSIVE! LIGHTNING FAST! A JOY TO WATCH! Meanwhile slow motion clips and screen-grabs surface on the internet wondering do you people even know what the rulebook says. That is what you are letting the world see how a sport is being won with zero analysis to the rulebook.

It may be fine when it is in the small isolated world of Figure Skating Grand Prix's, Nationals, and ISU Championships. But once every four years when you share the spotlight with the rest of the winter sports, more often than not you let this sport you obvious love mocked and ridiculed.

Once again the world is talking down ice dance like the ugly stepchild of the Olympics, because you contributed to the dump.