One of My Favorite Free Dance Programs of All Time

[CAS]

So it's clear to me that CAS's point of view that the Duchesnays were horrible ice dancers must have been fairly prevalent in ice dance circles in Canada, because The question is not how the Duchesnay's compared to the Russians, but how they compared to the Garossinos, who frankly, were not wonderful even a little bit.


Why I'm beating this dead horse over the head is that there seems to have been a disconnect between what the scoring rules really were for ice dance in 1988, as perceived by the Canadian ice dance establishment, and as they were perceived by pretty much every group of international judges who ever saw the Garossinos skate.

First. I never said they were horrible.
Second. Look at gkelly's link to see the Canadian judge in 1988 actually judged them quite fairly in terms of the other judges. It was the Russian, German, Austrian and Hungarian judges who were much harsher on them. Canadian judge had them ninth in the CD and sixth in both the OSP and FD. They averaged eight in each of the sections so I'd say she was on par with the International judges and in fact more generous than the majority in the later two events.

They left Canada. They may have overtaken the Garrosinos had they stayed but they got the offer from France and took it. But for them I think it was the right decision. They were not going to be better than Wilson and McCall so better going into it as France #1 than Canada #2 or #3. And I think they knew that which is why they went.

[colleen o'neill]

Ah, well...I just remember being very bored by the Garosinos. they were just sort of bland and..adequate , to me.. nothing really distinctive about them .

OTOH , if they were shown on Canadian TV, I must have seen the Duschenays , but the first time I really took note of them was that Tango OSP. ( And by really taking note I mean leaping out of my chair and screaming over the perfection of the parody ) I still love it ..and still particularly Paul. He remains one of my all time favourite male ice dancers.

There was a lot more "wait your turn" in all skating federations in those days , so I've always been glad things worked out as they did.

[KKonas]

The Garossinos were thought to have better compulsories at that time and movement in dance was glacial because there was a lot of "waiting your turn" as colleen o'neill said, but had the Duchesnay's stayed in Canada they would have probably bypassed the Garossinos eventually, but France was a good option for them at that time. Ann Shaw was on the Ice Dance Tech Committee for years and often held the ice dance meeting after Worlds when Gorshkov was the head of the committee since his English was so bad.

[Dragonlady]

I have always heard it said the the Duschenays were terrible skaters, compared to the rest of the field, and some who have said their winning Worlds was a totally political decision, and they were the most unworthy dance champions in history because of the weakness of their basic skating.

I loved them when they skated, and completely ignored these criticisms. I didn't have the technical knowledge of ice-dance that I to know if these criticisms were valid or not, I just knew these two were magic together.

[dorispulaski]

I'm thinking that the interesting thing is not how the Canadian judge judged the Duchesnays; it's how the rest of the judges judged the Garossinos.

And that's why I deliberately used the word "horrible;" because if the D's were worse than the Garossino's, who were really not good, the D's must have been spectacularly bad in the view of the PTB that advised them.

And I'm thinking that it was already clear in 1988 that the rest of the world was operating on a different standard for dance than Canada was. Dragonlady, I've heard the same thing, and it has always puzzled me.

I think it is true that it's the CD's that were bugging the Canadian dance folk. And again, I invite you to look at how everyone else judged the Garossino's-from gkelly's link (thank you gkelly).

The only judge who put the Garossinos ahead of the Duchesnays was the Canadian judge.

Garossinos:

COMPULSORY DANCES	URS	CAN	USA	FRG	ITA	AUT	GBR	HUN	FRA	Majority	Tot	Rk	FP	TFP
Dance 1 - Kilian Dance 2 - Paso Doble Dance 3 - Viennese Waltz	5.0	5.2	4.9	4.9	4.6	4.8	5.2	5.0	4.9			12	7.2	24.0
4.9	5.1	4.9	4.9	4.9	4.8	5.1	4.9	4.9
4.9	5.0	4.9	5.0	4.8	4.8	5.2	5.0	4.9
Points	14.8	15.3	14.7	14.8	14.3	14.4	15.5	14.9	14.7
Places	12	8	12	10	13	12	8	10	12

Duchesnays:

COMPULSORY DANCES	URS	CAN	USA	FRG	ITA	AUT	GBR	HUN	FRA	Majority	Tot	Rk	FP	TFP
Dance 1 - Kilian Dance 2 - Paso Doble Dance 3 - Viennese Waltz	5.1	5.2	5.2	4.9	5.2	4.9	5.4	5.1	5.4			8	4.8	16.0
5.2	4.9	5.2	5.0	5.3	4.9	5.1	5.0	5.2
5.1	5.1	5.2	5.1	5.3	4.9	5.1	5.1	5.2
Points	15.4	15.2	15.6	15.0	15.8	14.7	15.6	15.2	15.8
Places	9	9	7	9	7	10	7	9	7

[ImaginaryPogue]

Of course, if we're playing politics, you're comparing the Canadian number 2s with the French number 1s. Just sayin'

[dorispulaski]

No, I'm not playing politices; if the Duchesnays were as bad as the Canadians thought they were (worse than Garossinos, especially in the CD), almost all the other judges would have had them in 11th place or as low as 14th in the CD. The British judge would had them in 9th instead of 7th.

I really do wonder whether there was a split in what Canadians thought was important from what other countries thought, and I whether this was part of the reason that Canada didn't have any highly ranked teams after W&McC retired in 1988 until Bourne & Kraatz finally came to the fore in Canada in 1994:

Garossino 1989 9th in Paris
Mitchell & McDonald 11th in Pairs
Borlase & Smith 7th in Halifax in 1990
Petr & Janoschak 10th 1991
Borlase & Smith 16th 1991
Petr & Janoschak 12th 1992
Mann & Noria 16th 1992
Bourne & Kraatz 14th 1993

I do think that is part of the problem the US ladies have had; prior to IJS, the US establishment had absolutely no interest in girls with big jumps. They did not like speedy girl skaters. They placed no particular stress on whether girls flutzed, lipped or underrotated. What they seemed to value was physical beauty & flexibility & "ladylikeness" & a really good classic layback position. And the training kids got churned out kids with bad jump technique who grew up to get slammed by the IJS, and rightly so.

I'm wondering whether something similar was going on in Canada in dance in the 80's and early 90's.

In the US in that period, there was, for example, a huge value placed on doing FD's that were strictly ballroom, and which got slammed internationally. But they didn't learn. Year after year, ballroom was overvalued.

It used to frustrate me a lot.

But even the US judge thought the Garossinos were significantly worse than the Duchesnays.

So I find it interesting, and wonder what was driving that opinion.

[ImaginaryPogue]

Hmmm....

I'm asserting that outside of the USSR with it's dance tradition, the number twos were generally outranked by other nation's number ones.

As to your theory of the split in what was thought to be important, it's definitely worth remembering that Wilson/McCall are World and Olympic medalists, and the Duchesnays went to France during their reign. So whatever triggered it, and I would agree that not feeling respected by the Canadian figure skating community was part of it, I don't think it was differing perceptions in dance (would you argue that any of the teams you mentioned excelled 'in their own way' and were ignored the way you imply that the US dancers were).

[dorispulaski]

That's not quite what I'm saying; lets go to the US girls, since that's more recent: URs, flutzes, and lips are bad. US skate judging completely gave those problems little importance, both in training & in judging. The world judges were and are right to ding US skaters for doing those things. But it's been years, and it's like US skating was not getting the message.

Heck, they are still not getting the message. Consider the case of Samantha Cesario at Jr. Worlds. 4 URs in the LP.

And they sent Cesario over Wang & Miller, whose problems are not as severe as Cesario's. It is not like Cesario didn't skate the same way at US Nationals, but she didn't get dinged for all the UR's.

The reverse could be true. Suppose the entire judging system really didn't care whether you lipped or flutzed. If there were a a federation that persistently punished flutzes & lips, and disadvantaged a girl who would score better internationally than nationally, that would be an equally bad mistake by the Fed.

I have to go back and watch those Killians again, and try to see what the international judges liked about the Duchesnays that the Canadian judges didn't like & what the Canadian judge preferred in the Garrossino's skating.

The fact that the G's were Canada #2 is sort of immaterial in this case. They didn't suddently score better internationally when they were Canada #1.

[ImaginaryPogue]

Fair enough. But I'd still reassert my second point.

[rallycairn]

That's what I was wondering, and I started to write that the Canadian Fed must've had their heads up their ... ahem, but anyway, it does seem possible that the Canadian Fed was fixated on some hypothetical purity in the compulsories or some particular qualities in the compulsories that they thought were preeminent or overweening requirements for a team to have, even if the rest of the world disagreed.

Not basing this impression on anything other than the info brought forward in this thread. Just that that was my first thought, that the boring G couple must have embodied some quality or qualities the Canadian establishment thought were quintessential in some way.

[dorispulaski]

rallycairn, yes, that's what I wonder now, and thought at the time. There was this Canadian commentator, telling me that the D's were worse than the G's in some difficult to cure way, and I'm going, and what way would that be, please? I'm darned if I know what it was. Maybe toepoint?

IP, I'm not ignoring your second point, but I'm not sure which point that was? Please restate?

I swear I remember hearing or reading some interview that the D's believed they would never get to Worlds as long as the G's were skating, because the G's stunk, and Canada would never have 3 spots; and implied when W&McC retired, the G's would still stink, and Canada would then have one spot, and they still would never get to Worlds.

The D's may have believed that all that was in play was "wait your turn" but also, from the first I heard of this, there were stories about the horrible skating of the Duchesnays that they refused to improve, so they left.

So I wondered which story was true. And if it was the second, what skating quality was it that Skate Canada was objecting to.

[ImaginaryPogue]

1. The Grossanos vs Duchesnays issue would've arisen during the reign of Wilson/McCall

2. Wilson/McCall were World and Olympic medalists.

3. So, given that SC certainly supported W/M, their views of ice dance as compared to the international community couldn't have been drastically different (otherwise W/M wouldn't have had the success they did).

4. Unless you're willing to argue that W/M should've had more success. I think Klimova/Ponamarenko >>>>> W/M though. B/B... maybe, maybe not, but if K/P couldn't beat them internationally, then no way should W/M do so.

[dorispulaski]

Not necessarily. W&MC could have had both the attributes SC valued & the attributes that the international judges valued as well.

An example: US figure skating inordinately values a lovely layback and a particular version of nice posture in spirals. It has never hurt a lady internationally to have those. If said lady can also do 7 fully rotated triple jumps on correct edges, with nice transitions, international judges will score her well too.

However, if US figure skating sends a lady with nice spirals & layback to Worlds, and she UR's all her jumps, and flutzes, she will not score well.

[VIETgrlTerifa]

I think Sandra Bezic said it best after the Duschenay's incredible masterpiece at 1990 Worlds. Klimova/Ponomarenko may have out-skated The Duschenays, but they did not out-perform them. I think the Duschenay's problem was that after 1990, they sort of plateaued creatively and didn't know how to top Missing. Although their 1991 Euros FD was conceptually interesting and different, the audience simply did not get into it as much. Also, a lot of their choreography became repetitive with Paul (the superior skater) using Isabelle as a prop for most of the dance.

To be honest, in Albertville, I think a strong case could be made to put the Duschenays in fourth. Granted, I think my view of the Duschenays is clouded by IJS or modern ice dance (late 1990s to now), but I don't understand how the Duschenays were ever close to Klimova/Ponomarenko in the scoring. To me, K/P were just on another world of near perfection in terms of skating skills, unison, and technical difficulty. But then I also think Klimova/Ponomarenko should have beaten Bestemianova/Bukin a few times as well. At least, we got to see K/P branch out with their brilliant free dance in 1992.