Their "class of the field" skills are questionable, but they have a fiercely aggressive PR machine to maintain that aura of invincibility. Behind the scenes though one can also speculate that there are heavy politicking and shady relationships to not only prop up Meryl and Charlie but also deliberately put down their competition unfairly. Every article that writes about the rivalry between Davis and White, and Virtue and Moir, repeats that these two teams are so close in skills (not), so tight in their abilities to interpret dance (not), it is one of the greatest rivalries in figure skating history.
Yet how is it that one judge continuously give Meryl and Charlie's "close" rivals substantially lower marks?
This post describes in detail that every time a certain US judge sat on the panel Virtue and Moir competed in, they would receive one set of scores that is out of line with the rest of the panel.
US Judge Shawn Rettstatt
source: dubemoir.blogspot.com
Shawn Rettstatt is apparently in the pool to be drawn for the ice dance competition at the Olympics. There is no evidence that he is the one low balling Virtue and Moir thanks to the ISU policy on anonymous judging, but we are all keeping an eye on him.
Since we are speculating, here are some pictures (food for thought)
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| Jacqui White (Charlie's mom), facebook friends with Shawn Rettstatt |
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| Jacqui White, also friends with Mark Storton (Australian judge) |
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| Anyone recognize whom Jacqui (on the left) is posing with? |
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| What about here? |
Politics go a long way in a purely judged sport like figure skating.
On the right, the Moms are posing with USA ISU Technical Committee Member in Ice Dancing, Robert Horen. Yup. He sits on the ISU Technical Committee for Ice Dancing. The committee members hold the ISU Seminars educating judges on how to judge their particular discipline. Is anyone surprised?
ReplyDeleteWell well well, looks like L'Equipe has just confirmed it!!! Good job getting the FB screencap before she unfriends him!!!!
ReplyDeleteAnd there is no sense of impropriety in these FB friendships, parents, international judges, technical specialists all out there for the public to see, look, we're all one big happy bunch of friends!
ReplyDeleteEven if at the outside chance that there is no actual cheating going on, there is at the very least a huge conflict of interest going on here.
By all means, continue to question the ice dance situation. But as for the bottom left photo, the man in the middle is David W. Carmichael, who is a photographer at many senior level skating events.
ReplyDeletehttp://davecskatingphoto.com/