SLAM! Sports
SLAM! Skating
SLAM! Stojko
COLUMNS
REVIEW
INTERACTIVE
ALSO ON SLAM!
Judging still looms large for dancers
Across the room, a different picture was painted. One colored with an almost silent resignation, perhaps even despair.
No medals were handed out following yesterday's compulsory dance marathon -- two chapters of this story remain to be played out tomorrow and Friday. Upon first glance the color looks like it might just be silver for Canadian favorites Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz -- they're tied for second heading into tomorrow's original dance.
Could it be that the Dirty Dancing that was the Nagano Winter Olympics competition -- where Bourne and Kraatz were effectively squeezed off the podium -- is safely in the rearview mirror for the Canadians? That a much-hoped-for sea of change is about to hit this stodgy discipline where it counts most.
Not so fast.
The most anxious moments yesterday were played out during the draw for the judges' panel for the original dance -- an off-ice happening that, sadly, still means a lot more than what happens on the ice. And not since last week's $22-million Super 7 lottery has a random draw been cause for such drama. And these results, for Canadians at least, don't exactly augur well for getting Bourne and Kraatz into the silver-medal position.
Russia, France and Italy -- the three ringleaders of the 'block judging' movement that doomed Bourne and Kraatz' medal dreams in Nagano -- will all have a judge for the original dance portion of the event. Hungary, Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, Great Britain and the U.S. ... their names came out of the hat, too.
Canada? Not on this panel.
If Bourne and Kraatz are worried, they're not saying.
"That happens," said the ever-positive Bourne. "We can't change who gets picked (for a judging panel). It happened, it's life ... life goes on."
But the duo's coach, Natalia Dubova, a Russian expatriate who's been caught up in many of this sport's ugly backroom wars, knows trouble when she sees it.
"For us, because we don't have a judge, it's very bad," said Dubova.
As for the skaters being pleased with the nine faces they'll see tomorrow, she added, "They're very happy. They own the panel."
Now, to be fair, these aren't the same folks who played funny games with the marks in Nagano.
That panel was essentially set a year before the Olympics were held -- here at the worlds, the pool of potential judges is deeper, and a new panel is drawn before each dance.
It's the reason someone like Tracy Wilson, a former Olympic ice dance medallist who is working for CTV as a analyst this week, came to Minneapolis feeling optimistic that the mess in Nagano wouldn't resurface.
"I think we're going to see a different competition (at worlds)," said Wilson in an interview a few weeks before the event.
A far cry, Wilson thought, from Nagano, where she took one look at the judging panel and predicted exactly how the competition would finish.
"I knew coming in (to the Olympics) something like that would happen," she admitted. "But I never dreamed it would be that blatant."
Nothing that obvious is brewing this week, at least not yet. But still, one can't help but be cynical.
Sure, the names and faces have changed. But a lot of folks are convinced the game remains the same.
Said Dubova: "It doesn't matter (which judges a country sends to an event). They still represent their country. It's no secret ... they will do the best for their country."
Which is anything but good news for the people who matter the most -- the skaters.