In many ways, B&A as a team were caught between two different sports: Ice Dancing pre COP and Ice Dancing post COP.
B&A were put together as a team in the pre-COP age, when Tanith's height and long legs were a huge advantage, but also when posture, toe point, extension, and diva attitude were (IMO excessively) rewarded. Tanith was criticized in that era's esthetic for a limited range of expression (She had two: O face, and Let's Get Loud I'm having fun face) and posture and toe point issues, and what the Z&S skaters were always criticized for: having worse CD's than OD's or FD's.
Post COP, and especially after the extra lifts, and more/tougher criteria for +3 GOE and level 4, were added to the rules, B&A suffered. Tanith's height and leg length were harder on Ben's back, perhaps, too. Certainly, he developed back problems. They were unable to do the range of lifts that D&W and V&M were able to do. And although their CD's improved under Linichuk, their OD and FD dropped.
What Linichuk did for them was work on their preCOP problems, but those pluses were not significantly rewarded post COP, accounting mostly for some tenths in the PCS department.
Oddly, they probably should have stayed in this year, because the precision they acquired in the Golden Waltz would have been rewarded in the SD, I suspect. And they made a lovely waltz couple. And Linichuk gave P&G a really nice waltz-this is something she definitely knows how to do.
It is funny that it took abolishing the CD's to get Z&S teams to learn how to do at least 8 points of the Golden Waltz exactly as described
Your analysis on B&A pretty much spot on. I interviewed them prior to OWG and Belbin said the most difficult aspect of the new IJS dance rules was the emphasis on complicated lifts. This was something they really never developed during their earlier career - working instead on interesting footwork. Ben developed back problems as a result of working on new lifts so it seemed clear that 2010 would likely be their last competitive season.
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