ceci nest pas une pipe

To celebrate it I put together a little questionnaire - I hope you’ll have fun answering it. I’ll reblog your answers - maybe this way more people will find out about your blog and you’ll find more people to follow/chat to.

My name is…, I’m from…

I skate/don’t skate myself

I started following skating in…

What got me interested in skating is…

My all-time favorite skater(s) (if any)…

Every now and again I rewatch…

The first Olympics I watched were…

My current favorites are…

My favorite discipline to watch is…

What I like about skating the most:…

Most memorable moment for me as was…

My biggest skating wish (even if it never comes true)…

As a skating fan, I’d like to know more about…

Have you ever watched competitions/shows live?

Have you ever thought “I’ll probably quit watching when my favorites retire?”

Have you ever been so invested in skating event you cried of happiness or frustration? If yes, what event was it?

If you had the ability to change 1 result of 1 past competition, what would it be?

If you could time-travel, what competition would you like to watch live? 

Selena Dover (not my real name) from Australia.  

I skate/don’t skate myself

I’ve been skating for 7.5 years. Took it up as an adult. I compete as an adult and have competed four years in Oberstdorf and in other international competitions for Adults. In August I’m competing in the Gay Games in Paris! Feel free to ask me about taking up skating as an adult. I totally recommend it. 

I started following skating in…

I only seriously started following skating around about the Vancouver Olympics. 

What got me interested in skating is…

Mostly a combination of Johnny Weir and the fact that the internet made it easier to watch from Australia. 

My all-time favorite skater(s) (if any)…

Daisuke, Mao, Akiko, Stephane.

Every now and again I rewatch…

Stephane’s Poeta at Worlds in 2007, Sarah Meier winning Europeans, Akiko winning Japanese Nationals, Daisuke at Worlds 2012. 

The first Olympics I watched were…

1976 Innsbruck? I remember Dorothy Hammil. I think that was the one. 

My current favorites are…

Kegan Messing, Loena Hendrickx, Hawayek and Baker - it changes a lot. 

My favorite discipline to watch is…

I like them all but a big shout out to synchro which is death defying most of the time and doesn’t get enough appreciation for it. 

What I like about skating the most:…

It’s so much more difficult and complex than all the other sports. 

Most memorable moment for me as was…

I was up in the middle of the night watching Europeans online when Sarah Meier won. That was amazing. 

My biggest skating wish (even if it never comes true)…

I want to land a double! Also, at Beijing Olympics, Loena Hendrickx upstages all the Russian jumping beans and wins the gold. 

Have you ever watched competitions/shows live?

Skate Canada 2010, Kingston

World Champs 2012, Nice

European Champs 2013, Zagreb

European Champs 2014, Budapest

World Champs 2017, Helsinki

Also, Art on Ice in Helsinki, Stockholm Ice, Artistry on Ice in Shanghai- I think that’s it. I like to travel. 

Have you ever thought “I’ll probably quit watching when my favorites retire?”

No. 

Have you ever been so invested in skating event you cried of happiness or frustration? If yes, what event was it?

Mostly I cry over my own skating - both with frustration and with happiness. When I won my first (and only!) competition overseas I went full Oksana Baiul! 

If you had the ability to change 1 result of 1 past competition, what would it be?

I think I’d give Mao Asada a better short program at the 2014 Olympics. And maybe just a little extra rotation on some of her jumps in the free so she could claim her 8 triple program. 

If you could time-travel, what competition would you like to watch live?

I’d love to watch one of Sonja Henie’s early competitions. It must have been so crazy to watch her come out and perform rather than just skate.

Reverse lifts are allowed in ice dance, but not in pairs. Some dance teams like Anissina/Peizerat and Faiella/Scali have performed reverse lifts before. They are rarely seen because they’re difficult to do and usually get lower GOE than lifts where the man lifts the woman.

My apologies for asking, but do you happen to know where I can rewatch the men’s olympic figure skating aside from getting fragments from NBC with a vpn.. 

NBC and CBC both offer full replays of events. You need a VPN to access them if you don’t live in the US/Canada, but the videos should not be too hard to find if you look around the website.

Why do the ladies get a one day break in between their short programs and free skates while the men, pairs skaters, and ice dance teams have no break at the Olympics? Is this the same at every competition?

We don’t know why it was scheduled like that. The scheduling at skating competitions are all different, sometimes disciplines get a day between events, sometimes they don’t.

Does it matter if Ice Dancers do the Rhuma portion starting from either side of the rink?

All teams must start on the same side: “The Referee may announce the approximate location at which the Pattern Dances must be started. All Pattern Dances shall be started so that the steps of the first side of the pattern are skated in front of the Judges unless otherwise specified by the Referee or directed by the Ice Dance Technical Committee in an ISU Communication. If the Referee changes the side to start, the change must be announced at the time of the first draw for starting order.” (source)

I was looking through old protocols and saw that KO got an edge call on her F & Lz in the FS at Skate Canada 2012. I know that ! wasn’t being used in the IJS that year, but are there any other skaters who have received wrong edge calls on both the flip & lutz in a program? The setups for a flip and lutz are very different, but if you did get wrong edge calls on both jumps consistently could you put the the opposite jump down on your planned content and claim it was just a creative entrance?

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) from Germany 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP

Maddalena Casulana (1544-1590) from Italy 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP

Francesca Caccini (1587-1641) from Italy  📚 Wikipedia   🎵 IMSLP She was friend with Artmisia Gentileschi

Barbara Strozzi (1619-1977) from Italy  📚 Wikipedia   🎵 IMSLP

Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729) from France 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP

Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1739-1807) from Germany 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP

Marianna Martines (1744-1812) from Austria 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP

Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831) from Poland 📚Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP

Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) from France 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP

Fanny Mendelssohn [Hensel after marriage] (1805-47) from Germany 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP Sister of Felix Mandelssohn

Clara Schumann [nee Wieck] (1819-1896) from Germany 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP Married to Robert Schumann

Elfrida Andrée (1841-1929) from Sweden 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP

Terea Carreño (1853-1917) from Venezuela 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP

Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944) from France 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP She was the first female composer to be awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1913.

Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) from England 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP Not only a suffreagette, but also a lesbian who was involved with Virginia Woolf and Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, among others

Adele aus der Ohe (1861-1937) from Germany 📚 Wikipedia    🎵IMSLP She studied with Franz Liszt. She was friends with and performed Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with him conducting. 

Amy Beach (1867-1944) from the USA 📚 Wikipedia    🎵IMSLP

Dora Pejačević (1885-1923) from Croatia 📚Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP

Rebacca Clarke (1886-1879) from England 📚Wikipedia   🎵IMSLP    🌀Rebecca Clarke.org (I have access to almost all her published works, let me know if you want me to email scans of something to you)

She studied with Lionel Tertis and briefly sang under Vaughan Williams. In 1919 her Viola Sonata tied in the Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music with Ernest Bloch’s Viola Sonata. She was also friends with Frank Bridge. In 1912 she was one of the 6 female musicians allowed into the Queen’s Hall Orchestra (later became the LSO)

Florence Price (1887-1953) from the USA 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP She began studying at the New England Conservatory after she graduated high school at 14. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered her Symphony No 1 in E minor on June 15, 1933, making Price’s piece the first composition by an African-American woman to be played by a major orchestra

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) from France 📚 Wikipedia   🎵 IMSLP She was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome when she was only 19, in 1912.

Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) from the USA 📚 Wikipedia    🎵 IMSLP Became the first women to be granted the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1930

Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) from England and Ireland 📚 Wikipedia    🌀Biography

Sofia Guabaidulina (1931-present) from Russia 📚 Wikipedia    🎼 YouTube

Joan Tower (1938-present) from the USA 📚 Wikipedia    🎼 YouTube She has 3 Grammy Awards and and she was a member of the Da Capo Chamber Players who won the Naumberg Award.

Kaija Saariaho (1952-present) from Finland 📚 Wikipedia    🎼 YouTube

Nicole Lizée (1973-present) from Canada 🌀 Nicole Lizee.com    🌀 CMC

Cheryl Frances-Hoad (1980-present) from England 📚 Wikipedia    🌀Cheryl FrancesHoad.co.uk

Dobrinka Tabakova (1980-present) from Bulgaria  📚 Wikipedia    🌀 Dobrinka.com

Caroline Shaw (1982-present) from the USA 📚Wikipedia    🌀Caroline Shaw.com (listen to Entre’act, I’ve played it, so GOOD!) She won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013, the youngest ever, at only 30.

Hannah Kendall (1984-present) from England & the Caribean  📚 Wikipedia    🌀Hannah Kendall.co.uk

Fjóla Evans from Iceland & Canada 📚Fjiola Evans.com    🎼 SoundCloud

Add any other women composers that you know of to this post!

Wikipedia 

Some pre-rotation is normal, but excessive pre-rotation is frowned on and the ISU has a rule against it - it’s just not applied very often. From the ISU Technical Panel Handbook:

“A clear forward (backward for Axel type jump) take-off will be considered as a downgraded jump. The toe loop is the most commonly cheated on take-off jump. The TP may only watch the replay in regular speed to determine the cheat and downgrade on the take off (more often in combinations or sequences).”

So according to this, if a jump takes off 180 degrees or more from where it’s supposed to take off, it should be downgraded. However, it’s often hard to tell if a jump is excessively pre-rotated without slow-mo videos, and the technical panel cannot use slow-motion to check the rotation on takeoff. They can only use slow-mo to check for underrotations on landings. (There’s also a little bit of leeway for underrotations on landings - skaters can UR up to one quarter of a rotation before the technical panel slaps them with a UR call.)

And so some readers (and some of you) will start to write. You’ll write the thing you want to read, because how hard can it be? You can do better than that story you read last night. And that other story you read was okay–except, you know what would have been really good? You know what would have been great? This. This is gonna be great.

I am not telling you to stop doing this. You’re cute, fandom! Keep being cute. Also, Maia Shibutani keeps doing photoshoots:

Nonetheless, a humble suggestion.

Maybe you could be bi for them.

Or bi in general. Or heteroflexible, or questioning. 

Again, this is not an attempt to police your language, or to tell you how to identify. It is an encouragement to post more pictures of female figure skaters that you find attractive, and to note that they look hot. Women in figure skating don’t have conventionally sexy bodies: they’re often very muscular, with small breasts, and powerful butts and thighs. They’re under a lot of pressure to look a certain way, and eating disorders are prevalent in the sport. So praising how figure skaters look - especially those with more athletic/muscular bodies, especially women of color in the sport - is good for their confidence, and good for our confidence as fans.

Bisexual visibility is important too.

And it’s kinder to bi folks in this fandom - as well as kinder to yourself, if you look at Vanessa James in a catsuit and suddenly need an ice bath - okay, let’s pause for that -

Ahem.

It’s kinder to bi folks in this fandom, and in general, to not make a joke of passing physical attraction to a gender you’re not usually attracted to. When you say “I’m gay for her,” what it sounds like is, “I’m straight. We’re all straight in this fandom. Actual gay people make me nervous. Tee hee!” When you say, “She gives me bi feelings,” it sounds like you’re planting your flag on that queer spectrum.

It’s fine if the place on that spectrum is “I mostly like boys, but Anna Pogorilaya in a bikini asdfsd;safkj!!!” It’s great, in fact. If more mostly-straight people talked that way about their sexuality, the world would be a more comfortable and welcoming place.

If the picture above is giving you the vapors, know that you are not the only queer girl/woman/femme in the skating community. 

American skater Michael Tongko-Burry won the Silver Men’s I Free Skating event of the 2017 International Adult Figure Skating Competition skating Yuri On Ice wearing Yuuri’s FS costume.

Yes, Marin is turning senior next season.

Are pairs and ice dance couples not allowed to skate with anyone else beside their partner outside of competitions. I always wonder why Charlie doesn’t skate with Tanith even though they don’t compete anymore. Or even if Yu and Jin can skate together again someday, even if it’s a show.

They could, but it takes time and practice to create programs with someone you don’t regularly skate with. Yu/Jin actually did skate together in (an awkward) group program after they split last year…

Hi, wanted to ask - are jump combos ending in 3Lz a thing? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone jump that before ?? Or is it not possible to execute a combo ending in a lutz?

It’s not possible unless the skater is capable of jumping in both directions (most aren’t). The landing edge of one jump in a combo is the takeoff edge of the next jump, and jumps normally land on a backwards outside edge, so later jumps in combos are usually toeloops or loops, which take off from a backwards outside edge. Half loops/eulers land on a backwards inside edge and allow the skater to do a salchow or flip at the end of a combo. The only way a skater could do a lutz at the end of a combo is if, for example, they rotate counterclockwise for the first jump, land on a right back outside edge, then take off from that edge for a clockwise lutz and finally land on their left foot.

Hi! I was wondering if you can tell me what classifies spins as levels 1, 2, 3, and 4? Is it speed, rotation, or edges? I am guessing it is a combination of all three but like what are the limits of each level? Thank you!