The Uncomfortable Truth in Ice Dance: 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.