New Skating Book

Here's a new skating book that is comming out:

On Edge : Backroom Dealing, Cocktail Scheming, Triple Axels, and How Top Skaters Get Screwed by Jon Jackson
Book Description
During the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, figure skating nearly lost its edge. The Russian gold medal debacle in the Pair Event publicly revealed the hidden world of bribery and collusion that is standard operating procedure across the sport. In On Edge, former Olympic level judge and competitive figure skater, Jon Jackson, bares the facts of the figure skating world—the image-making and social climbing, the prescription drug abuse, the affairs, the delusions of grandeur, and power-hungry scheming. He takes readers on a journey spanning 20 years through the private hotel rooms and hospitality suites where the culture thrives and multiplies, culminating in the days, weeks, and months following the Salt Lake City gold medal scandal.
Rebelling against this culture of nightly cocktail parties, where judges predetermine the next day’s winners, Jackson co-created the World Skating Federation in hopes of freeing the industry from the stranglehold of the seemingly omnipotent US Figure Skating Association (USFSA). The fallout was immediate. Detailing his battle with the USFSA, Jackson reveals his reservations about the continued corruption and the new scoring system, setting the stage for an even more dramatic and controversial scandal waiting to happen at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy.

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Love the title

What a tease! The book's not being released until January 16th, 2006.

I am so there! Yes-it seems that this is one of the Olympic opportunity books (checking that release date). But-I am one of the weak consumers that they are seeking.

I love reading, too. I expected someone from the ill-fated WSF to come out with a book one of these years LOL. They say that shedding light on something hidden will diminish it, air it out, clean it up, etc....So far Speedy has maintained his iron-fisted control over the whole organization, but for how much longer? It's pitiful that not even a powerful federation like the USFSA or Skate Canada can start a successful rebellion. :no:
Well, I for one will read the book, couldn't resist!

Julie

Julie O said:

It's pitiful that not even a powerful federation like the USFSA or Skate Canada can start a successful rebellion. :no:
Well, I for one will read the book, couldn't resist!

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You have only to read the smug comments on FSU of a certain very entrenched USFS member (and former President) to understand why the USFS hasn't "rebelled." (And then there's the case of the USFS judge who also occasionally posts, and who seems to think CoP is the greatest skating-related innovation since the Zamboni. )

Does anyone know what pair is on the cover?


I find these tell-alls by former officials troubling because the only reason people buy them is for dirt on athletes. During their careers, people like Jackson and Sonia Bianchetti talked to skaters in confidence to help them improve, and then they end up writing a book disclosing everything. Seems distasteful, but I will read it.

Sounds like a good read. There have been so few skating books lately.

Jackson co-created the World Skating Federation in hopes of freeing the industry from the stranglehold of the seemingly omnipotent US Figure Skating Association (USFSA).

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To me, this is kind of a twist. I wonder if the writer of this blurb is accurately descibing Jackson's point of view in the book. In previous interviews the WSF was against the stranglehold that the ISU held on figure skating, not USFS. In fact, the WSF even sued the ISU in U.S. courts alleging an unfair monopoly. (The suit was thrown out when the court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the matter.)

It was the ISU, not USFS, that recently expelled Jackson and all his friends from the organization. My impression was that, at first, Jackson hoped to bring at least some factions within USFS over to his side.

Anyway, does Jackson believe that USFS is really "omnipotent" within the ISU?

Oh, my. There's not really a lot of gray area in the title, is there? It sounds so sensationalist that I went to Amazon immediately to see if this thread was a hoax.

The book is being released just weeks before the Winter Olympics. This is going to give the talking heads on NBC so much delightful ratings-grabbing dirt to discuss, even if the book turns out to be badly written, and especially if Scott Hamilton returns as one of those talking heads. And here I thought I had to go to Six Flags for that kind of roller coaster ride.

Anyhoo, I still haven't gotten around to reading Cracked Ice.

One thing I like about books is the different bits of information and angles they give us. I feel relatively well-informed about the 2002 scandal after reading Joy Goodwin's The Second Mark, but Cracked Ice and now this new one might change what I think I know, or even what I feel, about that situation, and about skating in general. I don't believe one book alone can be a source of real information, and I wish more people would read multiple news articles or books about a subject to get the bigger picture.

So, if nothing else, I hope this book gives us more of the bigger picture. If it turns out to be nothing more than fluffy shouting like Frozen Assets, I'll be disappointed.

Mathman said:

It was the ISU, not USFS, that recently expelled Jackson and all his friends from the organization. My impression was that, at first, Jackson hoped to bring at least some factions within USFS over to his side.

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The USFSA also went after both Jackson and Pfenning, as well as Ted Clarke, for their role in creating the WSF -- they spent $200,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to have them tossed out of the USFSA. You can read about it (including a full transcript of the grievance hearing) on the WSF web site.

http://www.worldskating.org/news/ethics-press-release-13oct2004.shtml

My own $.02 worth is that I think it really was the reaction of the USFSA that killed the WSF from the get-go. At the initial press conference where the WSF was announced, Jon reported that the USFSA's Executive Committee had voted earlier that day to endorse the WSF's principles, which was a fact. The USFSA was planning to release a press statement to that effect. But then Jon's remarks were misreported back to Phyllis Howard, who thought he had said that the USFSA had endorsed the WSF as an organization, so she panicked and instead of the planned statement she turned around and issued a statement that the USFSA had *not* voted to endorse the WSF, and that said nothing about what the Executive Committee *did* endorse. She also refused to release the minutes of the meeting with the official record of the vote until the following week. The end result is that everybody thought that Jon had lied at the press conference, and that badly damaged the WSF's credibility. If the USFSA had issued their planned statement, I think other federations would have been willing to jump on the bandwagon as well, but they were all following the USFSA's lead.