Wednesday, January 9, 2002
Judging by this ...
Sale, Pelletier in fine hands in Salt Lake
By TERRY JONES -- Edmonton Sun
HAMILTON -- Orchid? Or Love Story?
Love Story? Or Orchid?
To be honest, this is not the kind of controversy any self-respecting, hockey-writing, football-following sports columnist wants to debate.
But it has been the great debate with the sequined set all season.
And a story is a story.
And the story is ... Love Story!
World pairs figure skating champions Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Edmonton's Royal Glenora Club will skate Love Story at the Olympics after skating Orchid for Canadians here this week. They'll then go back to Orchid for their defence of their World Figure Skating title in March in Japan.
The controversy started at the first event of the season, Skate America in Colorado Springs, when they unwrapped the Orchid program for the first time.
It was good. Very good. But the Orchid program (he's, ahem, the stem and she's the, uh, flower) wasn't viewed as 6.0 great like Love Story by any judges or by the media.
"You are getting a scoop,'' said Pelletier, who will get into the thought process of their decision at the event-launch press conference of the Canadian Figure Skating Championships here this morning.
"We'll skate Orchid here at Canadians. We think it deserves more time to try it. It's 90% we'll go to Love Story at the Olympics. And then we'll go back to Orchid at Worlds in Japan. That's the plan.''
That's one story here.
BIGGER STORY WITH JUDGES
Maybe a bigger one is that Canadian dance duo Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz appear to be in definite danger of being hosed again by the judges at the Olympics.
After an undefeated season, including winning a gold medal at the ISU Grand Prix Finals, the Canadians who were the centre of a judges scandal featuring clandestine phone calls and judges getting caught by TV cameras playing footsie, Bourne & Kraatz may be out of Olympic gold medal contention, maybe even podium position, before they officially make the Canadian Olympic Team here this week.
The Olympic judges draw, normally held on-site a couple of days before the event at the Olympics, was held early this year to reduce the number of judges getting free trips to Salt Lake City.
Bourne and Kraatz get no Canadian judge. No American judge. No Great Britain judge ...
"It was all done by the rules,'' said Skate Canada director-general David Dore. "It was an open draw.
"We can't complain about what happened in dance when we like what happened in pairs.''
This one is a good news, bad news story.
The good news is that Sale & Pelletier have done just fine when it comes to avoiding a good old-fashioned Russian-bloc blockade at the judges table.
"The truth is, compared to dance, we feel like we've totally been lucky when it comes to the judges draw,'' said Pelletier.
They have a Canadian judge in Benoit Lavoie of Quebec City on the panel as well as judges from France, Japan and Germany who aren't likely to get into the fix mix.
"I hope it doesn't matter,'' said coach Jan Ullmark of Edmonton's Royal Glenora Club.
"The only event I've looked at like that is dance. I've always looked at it in singles and pairs that it's whether you do it or not more than anything the judges do.''
While judging controversies, other than in dance, have been fewer and farther apart at Worlds in recent years, things tend to revert to the bad old days at the Olympics.
In pairs, for example, there's a definite reluctance in the eastern European skating culture to concede that the event isn't the exclusive property of the Russians, who have won gold at the Olympics every year since Canada's Barbara Wagner and Robert Paul won gold in Squaw Valley in 1960.
JUDGES WERE A FACTOR
Ullmark says judges are a factor in Sale and Pelletier going with Love Story at the Olympics.
"The judges, the fans and the media all love Love Story,'' he said of the pair's signature routine which thrust them into prominence two years ago but which didn't put them onto an international podium. Sale fell on two jumps at Worlds in Nice, France, two years ago when the pair ended up fourth.
Ullmark said right now they are more secure with Love Story.
"The Olympics is such a huge event with so much more pressure, so much more media, so many more distractions, and Orchid is definitely more challenging for them.''
The two did not skate it well at the ISU Grand Prix Final.
"They skated it well at Skate America and Skate Canada. The only poor performance was at the Grand Prix," said Ullmark.
"They want to skate it again here just to be sure.
"Orchid is not totally out of the picture. If they skate it great here, we'll talk about it. Nothing is concrete. But I'd agree with David. It's about 90 per cent Love Story for the Olympics.''
2002 Games Columnists
