They might as well cancel ice dance at Canadian nationals as there is no one left. Internationally it seems like only Chock & Bates are retiring, so it could well be a rerun of last year’s disaster of a season (the bright spot being Piper and Paul at the Olympics).

You’ve asked for the If Skatejoy Ran The ISU soapbox rant….

I would ban judges/technical panelist’s from paid/compensated skating or program consulting. Allowing officials to take bribes is never going to work out well.

Create an independent group of monitors watching for unusual judging - judging blocks, lowballing your country’s skater’s rival, national bias, etc. This is going to get much easier with AI.

Create more clearly defined levels. No more of this level 4 at one competition and base at the next without a discernible difference.

No more choreo elements that are all GOE. This should be what those component scores are about.

More clearly defined PCS categories. People shouldn’t be getting the same score in all three categories. That’s lazy judging.

The ISU should release more data on the scoring. Along the lines of what SkatingScores does on Twitter.

The ISU should make videos explaining the different steps and elements and how to tell what is what.

The Rhythm Dance should have patterns so teams can be compared. And there should be the switch if the lead partner, like there was in juniors last year.

Allowing same sex teams.

Encourage creativity and risk. Having every team choosing the same music and half the teams going back to old programs doesn’t push the sport forward. Teams should keep evolving.

Incentivize some commentators to talk less. Seriously! Some are truly terrible.

How’s that for some ideas?

Piper & Paul really were the class of the field. Sharp, fun, and serving.

Loperava & Brissuad were fantastic. This is such a fun program.

Christina & Anthony were so fast, close together, and in charge.

Lajoie & Lagha - I still don’t like this program, but they are fantastic skaters.

The place was LOUD for the Czech teams. Both held up well under that pressure.

Caroline and Michael were good, but felt a little flat after some of the others in that group.

Yoshida & Morita were fantastic and the jump in standing shows their improvement this year. They, Christina & Anthony, LaLa, and the team that shall not be named were the only teams with level 4 Pattern Step. Clearly IAMO is doing something right.

Heartbroken for the Finns.

It’s genuinely surprising to me that La/La, Cpom, and Gpa, even with recent setbacks have been pushed back behind this team.

I think from what I’ve seen the partnership dynamics also rub me the wrong way & I can see the same pattern play out as all of Igor’s teams have..

I do hope this season lights a fire under the other teams heading into the next quad.

I think Vadym is very talented. I think Emilia is not yet an ice dancer and Igor is doing his usual thing of developing the male partner and telling the female partner to sell it.

He’s been in a politicking campaign this year from the appearance of the video on the Olympic channel last summer. They are where they are because of Shawn Retstatt cooking the books for them and him holding back Carreira & Ponomarenko. He should be banned from sport.

They aren’t as good as any of the top US teams (I’d put them behind Bratti & Somerville).

I do think Emilia has star quality. I think that’s why she was picked as his partner. I also think she was picked because she’s subservient enough to deal with Vadym and always being in his shadow.

I keep waiting for this whole emperor’s new clothes situation to be judged accurately and people turn on them. I also think the four runthrough regime is poor coaching and we’re going to see overtraining injuries next year. I’m not sure why skaters still work with Igor.

We shall see what happens at Olympics and Worlds. LaLa shouldn’t even be in the same sentence as them.