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do you think moulin rouge was best at the olympics? i dont know how to judge ice dance beyond vibes so i would never really know what makes performances better besides no obvious mistakes

I was trying to decide if you meant ‘was this their own best performance of MR, compared to their other performances’ or 'was MR the best performed program, compared to other team’s performances’.

If it’s the latter, then this blog’s whole basic theme gives me away as someone who would say 'yes’.

If it’s the former, it’s more complicated, LOL.

Obviously, MR was a program that changed extensively through the season, with the most striking change occurring between GPF and Nationals. But every outing of the program, as often is the case with VM programs, had at least some small changes from the previous version. Still, trying to judge the MR programs as a whole, is almost like looking at two completely separate visions and almost impossible to compare, as an apples to apples situation.

With that in mind, there were four performances of the first version of their MR - Autumn Classic International, Skate Canada International, NHK, and Grand Prix Final.  Out of those, my personal feeling was that I liked Skate Canada International the best.  I don’t know if the scores reflect that, LOL, but in terms of performance alone, it’s my favourite, in any case.

(I couldn’t resist and went back to look - while officially, their score went up at each competition, their NHK performance had a stronger base level - an extra step sequence at level 4 - but was judged more harshly on GOE, and consequently only squeaked by SCI and was lower than GPF.)

I felt like this Skate Canada version was still a program that was… ‘theirs’.  They’d performed it for an audience already, but this was their first major competition.  The scores were great, but they had yet to face the reality that PC would be scoring higher.  I felt like later at NHK and then at GPF in particular, they were still technically sound but perhaps pushing the performance side a little too hard.  I know that I drill the technical side of ice dance for its importance, because it is sport and needs to be rewarded on technical difficulty; but, it is still also a judged sport, and sometimes on aspects that can’t even be quantified by the way the ISU has spelled out.  And so, for me, Skate Canada still is the one I’d pick, overall.

I know that some people had trouble believing that MR, in it’s early versions, could win the Olympics; and with the changes that VM and their team made, it’s impossible to know what would have been if they hadn’t. I personally loved the early version, and have made no secret that I was shocked at Nationals when I stood in that practice arena and the music played and was suddenly in an completely different direction, LOL.  I was rather disappointed that they hadn’t seen the original through; and yet, it was obvious that the crescendo of the music was highly effective in creating a mood that could help sway audience and even judges in their favour.  

Which brings us to the second version of their program, which was performed 3 times in competition - Nationals, the Olympic Team Event, and the Individual event, though I think it’s safe to say that between the Olympics and the following tours, it is the version that is most likely to be remembered by all of us.  

And yet, if I were to choose either the Olympic individual event or the Nationals program, I would go with Nationals.  It’s not entirely a surprise; I almost always choose a Nationals program as my favourite version.  I think that at Nationals, it has usually had enough time that it is running pretty smoothly, in a technical sense, and yet, I still the emotional rawness that can come with an earlier program, and probably the comfort level of performing at a Nationals in which there is less pressure from a medals standpoint.  

The Olympic individual event was incredible, from both a technical standpoint and from a performance level, but yeah, it’s still Nationals for me.  (Is it just that I was there?  Hmm.)  But I will give the Olympic programs this - that crescendo and curve lift that just… electrified the audience?  Unmatched.

Tessa and Scott performing “Beautiful Maria” during a Show in 2005

As they stroked out to take their opening positions, Tessa said, “This is our time, we deserve this.”

“We’re here, kiddo,” Scott said.

“Showtime!” Tessa said, her standard response.

Canadian Nationals 2017, group gala performance.  Unfortunately, The Weeknd’s In the Night was copyrighted and when I elected to mute that portion of the video so it could be seen, it also muted Nelly Furtado’s Maneater.  (And yet In the Night randomly gets unmuted towards the end, LOL.)

over twenty years of skating together 

Like Rippon, Moir has sympathy for the circumstances surrounding Valieva but doesn’t believe that she should be excused without consequence. “I do feel for the 15-year-old,” he says, “but at the end of the day if she did cheat, it’s very simple to me—she shouldn’t be competing. I do put the blame for that on people around her, and not so much on her. But this is a big hit to the Olympic movement.”

Moir is concerned that the ruling will test the faith and trust that young athletes, and the public, have in the Olympics being the purest form of healthy competition. If a doped athlete is allowed to compete, he says, “I don’t understand why people would want to turn on the TV to watch. The only optimistic thing that I can come up with is that this sparks change.”

[…]

Both Rippon and Moir now coach skaters Valieva’s age. They hope to use this unfortunate spectacle as a teaching tool, if nothing else positive comes out of it. “We will talk about how yes, life isn’t fair all the time, but the most important thing is to keep your integrity, and play the game by the rules, and for what you believe in,” says Moir.