Figure Skating Pairs Ice Dance
The fix was in. In fact, this suspicion hovered over all events in Pairs Figure Skating even before competition began.
According to L’Équipe, which quoted an unnamed Russian coach, the United States intended to help Russia win the overall team event and the pairs competition. In return, Russia would make sure the Americans Charlie White and Meryl Davis won the Ice Dancing competition.
(New York Times, February 8, 2014)
And, lest you think L’Équipe is just some tabloid that peddles in rank speculation, I remind you that this is the same newspaper that was reporting on Lance Armstrong’s doping regime even before anyone else in the media dared to broach the subject.
Sure enough, just as the alleged fix called for, Russia won the Team Competition on February 9, the Russian pair of Tatyana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov won Pairs on February 12, and the American pair of Meryl Davis and Charlie White won Ice Dancing last night, giving the United States its first gold medal in this event in Olympic history.
Mind you, having watched the competition play out in all of these events, I never saw why any fix was necessary to guarantee gold for the Russians or the Americans. I fully appreciate, of course, that Canadians watching saw exactly why it was.
Here, for example, is the imperious way columnist Rosie DiManno propagated this conspiracy in the February 16 edition of the Toronto Star (i.e., before ice dancers competed in the long performances for gold on the 17th):
The villainy of Ice Dancing knows no bounds. If the fix is not in against [Canadian pair] Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, then I’m the Princess of Wales.
Of course, that DiManno is far from being any kind of princess does not mean that the fix was in against Virtue and Moir. Frankly, any complaint in this respect can only amount to sour grapes. Not least because, unlike judging Pairs with its tricky jumps, twists and twirls that clearly separate the wheat from the chaff, judging Ice Dancing is rather like judging beauty: it’s in the eye of the beholder.
Which is why the far more intriguing aspect of this competition was the incestuous nature of the relationship between the teams from Canada and the United States. After all, it’s curious enough that they both trained for these Games at the same skating center just outside Detroit, Michigan; but training with the same coach … who happens to be Russian?!
Hell, if the fix were truly in, you could be forgiven for thinking that the ice dancers themselves were wholly complicit. Especially when you consider that they merely switched positions from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, where Canadians Virtue and Moir won gold and Americans Davis and White, silver. Perhaps this is why the only Canadians not complaining about Team Canada getting robbed last night are the Canadian ice dancers themselves.
Meanwhile, notwithstanding the Tonya Harding precedent, if you think these skaters were too focused on training to pull off such a scheme, consider that Davis and White have been pulling the wool over the public’s eye about their relationship for years.
They’ve gone to great lengths to give the impression that the love affair they portray on ice exists off it too. Therefore, they were probably more relieved than annoyed by the constant media references in the run up to these Games to their relationship, which began with puppy love 17 years ago when she was 10 and he, 9.
Except that the plain-Jane, dark-haired Davis has had to contend with the hot, blonde-haired Taneth Belbin with whom her ice-dancing Romeo has been doing the horizontal mambo since 2009. Belbin (29) is a former Olympic ice dancer who won silver for the United States with her partner at the 2006 Turin Olympics.
When asked by Yahoo Sports recently about the fact that during the last Olympics his relationship with Belbin was kept on the ‘down low,’ White said: ‘It actually still is. So probably … we don’t really talk about it. As an ice dancer, we take our on-ice relationships so seriously, and that’s really the way we like to go about it. [Meryl and I] are just presenting ourselves as a team, and all the rest of that [with Taneth] can wait for later.’
(Yahoo Sports, February 10, 2014)
How very grown up, eh? Still, based on what I’ve seen of their interaction off the ice, I suspect Davis has been simmering with jealousy, if not nursing a broken heart, ever since White turned their relationship into an unrequited love triangle. Things that make you go, hmmm.
Women’s Giant Slalom
I fully intended to limit my commentaries during this second week of competition to Hockey and Women’s Figure Skating, which are arguably the two premier events at every Winter Olympics. But, given the way things played in Women’s Giant Slalom today, I couldn’t resist.
You probably know that Lindsey Vonn of the United States was being billed as the darling of these Games until a recurring injury prevented her from even participating. What you probably don’t know is that the jingoistic American media anointed first-time Olympian Mikaela Shiffrin of the United States as Vonn’s heir apparent. This, despite the participation of far more accomplished Alpine skiers like Maria Hoefl-Riesch of Germany, Anna Fenninger of Austria, and Tina Maze of Slovenia.
Well, Shiffrin made her big debut today and was properly left in the snow by Maze, who became the queen of the slopes, if not the darling of these Games, by adding gold in this event to her gold in Downhill. Not that she needed these Games to feel like royalty.
After all, I gather from my Slovenian readers (yes, I have a few) that they already considered the multitalented Maze the queen of pop. In which case, for them, her winning gold in Downhill and Giant Slalom at the Winter Olympics is rather like Rihanna winning gold in the 100m and 200m at the Summer Olympics.
I just hope Maze doesn’t mind sharing some of her Olympic glory when she gets back home with the Slovenian hockey team that performed their version of “the miracle on ice” by defeating Austria today to make it into the quarterfinals. It might be helpful to know in this context that the American hockey team performed their more famous “miracle on ice” at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics – not for winning gold, but for merely defeating the Soviet Union in their semifinal game. They then went on to defeat Finland in the final for the gold. But I digress.
Anna Fenninger of Austria added silver in this event to her gold in the Women’s Super-G (on Day 8); and Viktoria Robensburg of Germany, the defending Olympic champion in this event, won bronze.
Incidentally, Shiffrin has one more event, the Women’s Slalom, not only to live up to her billing as Vonn’s golden heir but also to salvage what little remains of Team USA’s reputation for having the best Alpine skiers in the world. For, of the 22 medals that have already been awarded in this sport, Team USA has won only 3 – none of them gold.
Men’s Speedskating 10,000 (long track)
After the Netherlands swept the Women’s 1500 (long track) on Day 9, I wrote that the Dutch speedskaters were just rubbing their superior performances in the faces of their competitors, especially the Americans. Well, what can I say now that they’ve followed up with another sweep in the Men’s 10,000 today? Don’t be surprised if they sweep all of the remaining Speedskating events?
They have already established themselves at these Games as the most dominant team in any sport in Olympic history – surpassing the 14 medals Austrian Alpine skiers won at the 2006 Torino Olympics with 19 (and counting) here, including four podium sweeps.
Perhaps the more interesting thing to note is that Jorrit Bergsma denied teammate Sven Kramer the redemption he so devoutly sought. Recall that, after easily winning this event at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Kramer got disqualified and lost gold for having committed a silly, incomprehensible lane violation. Bergsma won gold; Kramer settled for silver; and their teammate Bob De Jong completed their Dutch sweep with bronze.
But I am telling you, something is rotten in the state of … the Netherlands.
MEDAL COUNT
Netherlands: 20 United States: 20; Russia: 19