Brian Joubert goes to Platov in NJ

I don't know about the bad press or Kurt being concerned about it though.

A lot of Canadians know of Kurt Browning and Elvis Stojko, but average Canadians outside of skating world never heard of Jeff Buttle or Brian Joubert. Press coverage on Jeff's winning worlds was not bad, but nothing compared to Japanese media's obsession with Mao or Koreans' of Yu-na Kim, where every direction that they turn makes a news (i.e. Yu-na being baptized made a news, Yu-na recording a song with other pop artists to help Burmese cyclone victims also made a news).

I don't know, shrug

I don't know *anything* about this situation and the ins and outs of it, so I hesitate to speculate (b/c people seem to interpret my comments as actual knowledge, and I want to make it very clear I have no actual knowledge about this).

I will note that a recent pets magazine article about Kurt (and his support of the Pedigree Pet Adoption campaign) listed one of his upcoming projects as some sort of reality tv show starring a former hockey player in figure skates, which was the first I'd heard of such a beast, if the article is accurate. Who knows how many projects Kurt has boiling like that one - he knew about Peter Pan a year in advance but didn't mention anything about it until the Ross Petty people did, and that project required a month of rehearsals and a month and a half of something like 8 shows a week. The whole Pedigree thing has involved a number of media tours in various cities, appearances, and interviews on Pedigree's behalf. On the "family reasons" excuse, when Kurt took a break from SOI in 1999, he said it was for family reasons, people were skeptical, and his mother passed away the next year after fighting cancer. In the "Frosted Pink" broadcast last year, Kurt said his father was currently struggling with cancer. I *hope* everything's ok with Dewey, but maybe Kurt needs to spend time with him, who knows? Maybe that reality show, maybe something else, requires a greater commitment of Kurt's time than the usual shows. Who knows? I certainly don't.

snobben2345 said:

The "brightest crayon in the box" mark (perhaps a bit unfair, in hindsight) was made in this context. Kurt has people to manage hs image, career and his PR and he presumably acts on their advice

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I did want to comment on this. Kurt has an agent, sure, but he has always been adamantly against having a "Team Kurt." He doesn't have a PR person, and I don't think his agent closely manages his career either. I think the agent may help broker the endorsement deals and help get the negotiations and paperwork done, but my impression has been that Kurt actually does handle a lot of his business himself. He was actually agent-less for a while when his longtime agent left IMG, and even before that, his agent was a high level VP and I doubt handled Kurt's day to day business that often. Now mind you, I don't know for sure what Kurt's relationship to his agent is, but my impression has been that Kurt manages his own career and image, for the most part.

Again, I want to make it clear that I don't know what drove this decision on either Kurt's or Brian's part to not have Kurt choreograph for Brian this year. This is all my personal speculation. But it's not unrealistic that Kurt really didn't feel that he had the time to devote to Brian that maybe he felt Brian needed or deserved, and therefore chose not to work with him this year.

BTW Kurt says he'd love to work with more Canadian skaters on choreography, they just haven't asked him. The wealth of great Canadian choreographers probably has something to do with that =).