Ice Dance OGM Contenders 2018

Yassssss to Piper and Paul on the 2018 Olympic podium! I'm pretty sure that occurrence would break the entire internet, let alone Goldenskate.

And I'd be loving every second of it. Hehehe.

bramweld said:

It could just happen. Zhulin just finalized the SD for B/S, S/K's was done I believe before they went on vacation. B/S still haven't finished their FD. What? The Shibs have already shown theirs. V/M look to be on fire. Why did B/S go to team trophy?
They got some money but they lost time and performed poorly. Bobrova has been having a mini mental breakdown regarding SD music for at least two months, its finally been resolved. She seems a bit tense lately in her instagram posts, I call this the Katsalapov effect. Deputat hinted slyly on her instagram what she could do to him, haha. The Shibs just ignored him and went about working often outside of their rink. I really hope that things are going smoother than they appear. Ridiculous. S/B could actually just leap frog them both due to the absence of DRAMA. :hslap: Please Loboda and Drozd, bring it. And yes Elena, please pretty please get yourself a new partner. Gracias.

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Hmmm, could you share what Deputat hinted at? I would dig at Bobrova's past Insta posts, but I figured I'd save time and ask you directly. Also, I was worried at the beginning of the 2014-2015 season when S/K joined Canton and Marina did those interviews waxing poetic about the beautiful, blue-eyed S/K where she never said much of anything about the Shibs. Luckily, it seems that the Shibs have a great support group, had Massimo on their side, and decided to take their careers into their own hands and exert more control over their artistic choices which made a world of difference for them AND probably helped them ignore what could have been distractions at Canton.

As for surprises this season, I think we're going to have to see what's going on during the GP events to see if the dynamic changes. As of right now, it's hard to imagine the top two being anything but V/M and P/C, but stranger things have happened. I think it would be wild if the 2018 Olympics was a repeat of the 2010 Olympics, where the previous World bronze medalists won gold (who also placed 4th in the FD), 4th place World finishers placed second, the reigning World Champs won bronze, and the reigning World silver medalists placed 4th. If that were to happen, I can imagine all the hate towards "surprise" Olympic gold and silver medalists on the forums. That would also mean an all-North American podium, and I remember how nasty it got at 2011 Worlds (maybe not on Goldenskate but elsewhere) when that happened.

Mattieu said:

My sources say Dima and Nikita were always superficially friends, it is more Katya that has the problem with Nikita.
She is not happy he is there.

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The more competition the better, IMO. And I still hear that everything's fine there. :confused2:

VIETgrlTerifa said:

I think it would be wild if the 2018 Olympics was a repeat of the 2010 Olympics, where the previous World bronze medalists won gold (who also placed 4th in the FD), 4th place World finishers placed second, the reigning World Champs won bronze, and the reigning World silver medalists placed 4th. If that were to happen, I can imagine all the hate towards "surprise" Olympic gold and silver medalists on the forums. That would also mean an all-North American podium, and I remember how nasty it got at 2011 Worlds (maybe not on Goldenskate but elsewhere) when that happened.

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Surely you can think of a less labored scenario to get the Shibs on top of the Olympic podium...

olayolay said:

Surely you can think of a less labored scenario to get the Shibs on top of the Olympic podium...

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Sure, even though I question that this scenario is "labored". If I want the Shibs on top of the podium anyway, I just think history repeating itself would be sort of wild though I do want P/C on the podium personally.

VIETgrlTerifa said:

Sure, even though I question that this scenario is "labored". If I want the Shibs on top of the podium anyway, I just think history repeating itself would be sort of wild though I do want P/C on the podium personally.

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As much as I like W/P, you had them beating V/M in that scenario, which is pretty unlikely.

SnowWhite said:

As much as I like W/P, you had them beating V/M in that scenario, which is pretty unlikely.

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The unlikely part is why it would be "wild". It wouldn't be a wild scenario if it was likely. Please see the first half of my post where I stated it's hard to imagine the top two NOT being V/M and P/C. The whole paragraph was in the context of any surprises that can happen, which others were talking about. I stated it's hard to find any, but then a big surprise would be... my scenario. And of course I chose a fantastical one with the Shibs on top being a fan and all.

Ice Dance tends to have the least amount of surprises at the Olympics especially at the top since there are fewer risky moves and no jumps so usually the top teams unless they make a huge mistake are usually going to be very hard to beat. G/P winning in 1994 was the only real surprise since people felt that 1998 was going to be their time but U/Z were a mess in the Olympic year and were vulnerable.

Did any skating fan think G/P could pull it off in 1994? I mean they won the FD at Euros right before. If they were put into a position where they could win the gold by winning the FD, then there was no reason to think they couldn't win the FD again.

VIETgrlTerifa said:

Did any skating fan think G/P could pull it off in 1994? I mean they won the FD at Euros right before. If they were put into a position where they could win the gold by winning the FD, then there was no reason to think they couldn't win the FD again.

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Well yes. They were widely believed to be held down when U/Z's "Blues for Klook" beat their "St. James Infirmary."

Jammers said:

Ice Dance tends to have the least amount of surprises at the Olympics especially at the top since there are fewer risky moves and no jumps so usually the top teams unless they make a huge mistake are usually going to be very hard to beat. G/P winning in 1994 was the only real surprise since people felt that 1998 was going to be their time but U/Z were a mess in the Olympic year and were vulnerable.

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Well it was the fd due to their relationship issues. But yes, what a mess

VIETgrlTerifa said:

Hmmm, could you share what Deputat hinted at? I would dig at Bobrova's past Insta posts, but I figured I'd save time and ask you directly. Also, I was worried at the beginning of the 2014-2015 season when S/K joined Canton and Marina did those interviews waxing poetic about the beautiful, blue-eyed S/K where she never said much of anything about the Shibs. Luckily, it seems that the Shibs have a great support group, had Massimo on their side, and decided to take their careers into their own hands and exert more control over their artistic choices which made a world of difference for them AND probably helped them ignore what could have been distractions at Canton.

As for surprises this season, I think we're going to have to see what's going on during the GP events to see if the dynamic changes. As of right now, it's hard to imagine the top two being anything but V/M and P/C, but stranger things have happened. I think it would be wild if the 2018 Olympics was a repeat of the 2010 Olympics, where the previous World bronze medalists won gold (who also placed 4th in the FD), 4th place World finishers placed second, the reigning World Champs won bronze, and the reigning World silver medalists placed 4th. If that were to happen, I can imagine all the hate towards "surprise" Olympic gold and silver medalists on the forums. That would also mean an all-North American podium, and I remember how nasty it got at 2011 Worlds (maybe not on Goldenskate but elsewhere) when that happened.

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I doubt we will see movement like we saw between 2009 and 2010 in Ice Dance simply because a new era in Ice Dance was taking place with teams like V/M and D/W who coming up fast and challenging the older teams. For instance the silver medalists at Worlds in 2009 B/A were already being challenged at home by D/W and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before they were going to be passed up by them which happened the very next season. In the end the two older teams at the top of the podium in 2009 could not hold off the more athletic younger teams just a year later who were both destined for greatness.

There were also some other quite unusual events which took place during that 2007-2010 quad which certainly helped clear a path. The World champions for the first two years both experienced unexpected events which either ended or hampered their careers, and 2x silver medalists at worlds retired mid-cycle.

- 2007 World champions Denkova/Staviski - Staviski drove his hummer into another car while intoxicated, killing a young man and putting his fiancé in a coma

- 2007 and 2008 Silver medalists - Dubreil/Lauzon - retired from competition at the end of the 2008 season

- 2008 World champions Delabel/Schoenfelder - she first dislocated a shoulder during an exhibition if I recall correctly, then got pregnant and had a child, taking them out of the 2009 pre-Olympic season and delaying their preparations for the Olympic season.

Yes of course shabalin with his knee injury far more serious than anyone thought skating with artificial knee in Vancouver!!

Tallorder said:

There were also some other quite unusual events which took place during that 2007-2010 quad which certainly helped clear a path. The World champions for the first two years both experienced unexpected events which either ended or hampered their careers, and 2x silver medalists at worlds retired mid-cycle.

- 2007 World champions Denkova/Staviski - Staviski drove his hummer into another car while intoxicated, killing a young man and putting his fiancé in a coma

- 2007 and 2008 Silver medalists - Dubreil/Lauzon - retired from competition at the end of the 2008 season

- 2008 World champions Delabel/Schoenfelder - she first dislocated a shoulder during an exhibition if I recall correctly, then got pregnant and had a child, taking them out of the 2009 pre-Olympic season and delaying their preparations for the Olympic season.

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Yep. Dubreuil/Lauzon were 2006 and 2007 World silver medalists and retired from competitive skating after 2007 Worlds. Virtue/Moir were 2008 World silver medalists. 2008 World champs Delobel/Schoenfelder did compete in the 2008-2009 season and won the GPF. However, the shoulder injury during the GPF gala that you mentioned did take them out for the remainder of that season. She then got busy and got pregnant shortly after the injury.

The circumstances leading to a V/M and D/W rise in 2010 really were special. They both were young and essentially grew up under IJS and were fighting the old guard who had to adapt to IJS during the middle or near-end of their careers. Igor and Marina were representing a new style of ice dance and even the costumes became different and certainly look wildly different from the costumes we were seeing the previous two Olympic cycles. That Olympic cycle saw three different ice dance world champions, which is incredibly unusual (I don't think that happened before since ice dance became an Olympic sport) with one of them retiring and the other two not being in the best shape for Vancouver. This shows how volatile it all was. That said, I think people recognized early on that V/M were special and had a chance to be OGM contenders in 2010. There really was a lot of talk about them and their skating skills and ease of executing the elements were something incredible. B/A seemed like they were going to ride the wave of being USA number 1 after Torino, but D/W's youth, athleticism, and comfort with IJS became too much to ignore and B/A leaving Igor/Marina to go to Linichuk may have sounded like a good idea since they did coach DenStavs to two world titles, but the packaging played against their strengths and maybe highlighted some weaknesses, and they probably needed more than just two seasons for Linichuk to break down Tanith's basic skating and improve them.

VIETgrlTerifa said:

Yep. Dubreuil/Lauzon were 2006 and 2007 World silver medalists and retired from competitive skating after 2007 Worlds. Virtue/Moir were 2008 World silver medalists. 2008 World champs Delobel/Schoenfelder did compete in the 2008-2009 season and won the GPF. However, the shoulder injury during the GPF gala that you mentioned did take them out for the remainder of that season. She then got busy and got pregnant shortly after the injury.

The circumstances leading to a V/M and D/W rise in 2010 really were special. They both were young and essentially grew up under IJS and were fighting the old guard who had to adapt to IJS during the middle or near-end of their careers. Igor and Marina were representing a new style of ice dance and even the costumes became different and certainly look wildly different from the costumes we were seeing the previous two Olympic cycles. That Olympic cycle saw three different ice dance world champions, which is incredibly unusual (I don't think that happened before since ice dance became an Olympic sport) with one of them retiring and the other two not being in the best shape for Vancouver. This shows how volatile it all was. That said, I think people recognized early on that V/M were special and had a chance to be OGM contenders in 2010. There really was a lot of talk about them and their skating skills and ease of executing the elements were something incredible. B/A seemed like they were going to ride the wave of being USA number 1 after Torino, but D/W's youth, athleticism, and comfort with IJS became too much to ignore and B/A leaving Igor/Marina to go to Linichuk may have sounded like a good idea since they did coach DenStavs to two world titles, but the packaging played against their strengths and maybe highlighted some weaknesses, and they probably needed more than just two seasons for Linichuk to break down Tanith's basic skating and improve them.

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I got curious, so I went and looked it up.

1976-1979 - 3 (Pakhomova/Gorshkov, Moiseeva/Minenkov, Linichuk/Karponosov x2)
1980-1983 - 2 (Regőczy/Sallay, Torvill/Dean x3)
1984-1987 - 2 (Torvill/Dean, Bestemianova/Bukin x3)
1988-1991 - 3 (Bestemianova/Bukin, Klimova/Ponomarenko x2, the Duchesnays)
1992, 1993 was the period when the winter Olympics moved from being the same year as the summer ones
1994-1997 - 1 (Grishuk/Platov x4)
1998-2001 - 3 (Krylova/Ovsyannikov x2, Anissina/Peizerat, Fusar-Poli/Margaglio)
2002-2005 - 3 (Lobacheva/Averbukh, Bourne/Kratz, Navka/Kostomarov x2)
2006-2009 - 3 (Denkova/Staviski x2, Delobel/Schoenfelder, Domina/Shabalin) *All four Worlds won by a team called D/S
2010-2013 - 2 (V/M x2, D/W x2)
2014-2017 - 3 (C/L, P/C x2, V/M)

So surprisingly, it seems like 3 World champions per Olympic cycle has been pretty standard actually. 6/10 four years cycles had three, 3/10 had two, and 1 had one.
I also learned that Virtue and Moir were the second ID Olympic champs to not already have won Worlds. The first were Grishuk/Platov in 1994 (the weird off-cycle games).

But the circumstances in 2010 were still special for all the other reasons you said.

And I agree about V/M too. I wasn't a fan of dance until 2010, but having gone back and watched many of their early performances, people were really excited about them. Especially when they won the FD in 2008. And then who knows how they would have placed in 2009 if Tessa hadn't needed surgery. They managed bronze having missed half the season, and their 208.8 from 2008 Worlds would have won in 2009 (I know it's hard to compare, etc, still interesting).

I don't count the Olympic year as the beginning of the Olympic cycle but the end of one, so under my thinking Worlds at the end of the Olympics would still be considered part of the cycle that includes the three previous seasons. I almost meant to to word it as three different World Champions going into the Olympics starting from the first full season AFTER the last Olympics, not starting with Worlds from the previous season. The reason I did that because we often see the field change considerably AFTER the entire Olympic season and things start anew...well as anew as it can be with some holddovers from the previous cycle.

Just going by the three Worlds preceding the Olympics, and NOT counting the 1992-1994 cycle, we had 11 Olympic cycles so far. In those...6 had two ice dance teams winning the 3 Worlds preceding the Olympics, 3 had one team winning all three preceding Worlds, and 2 with three different world champs for all three preceding Worlds (1999-2001) and (2007-2009). Both times dealt with a retirement of the ice dance team that won the first Worlds of that cycle shaking things up a bit. This might become more common with IJS as movement seems to be a lot more flexible than it was beforehand though P/C were looking to dominate this current cycle until V/M came back from their two season break. Who knows what would have happened it I/K stayed together with Morosov as it looks like they were being groomed to be the next "it" ice dance team. I think I/Z were too but then things didn't pan out. I grew up on ice dance from that 1999-2002 cycle so I can't believe I forgot about it.

Mattieu said:

Yea, why not, heck that would be amazing! :hap57:

Can you just imagine V/M and P/C on the podium looking up to a team they never saw coming?
The level A biatch faces would be awesome!

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Hopefully that team will be the Parsons. From Junior World gold medalists to Olympic Gold medalists! And the spotlight shifts to the WISA school!

VIETgrlTerifa said:

Yep. Dubreuil/Lauzon were 2006 and 2007 World silver medalists and retired from competitive skating after 2007 Worlds. Virtue/Moir were 2008 World silver medalists. 2008 World champs Delobel/Schoenfelder did compete in the 2008-2009 season and won the GPF. However, the shoulder injury during the GPF gala that you mentioned did take them out for the remainder of that season. She then got busy and got pregnant shortly after the injury.

The circumstances leading to a V/M and D/W rise in 2010 really were special. They both were young and essentially grew up under IJS and were fighting the old guard who had to adapt to IJS during the middle or near-end of their careers. Igor and Marina were representing a new style of ice dance and even the costumes became different and certainly look wildly different from the costumes we were seeing the previous two Olympic cycles. That Olympic cycle saw three different ice dance world champions, which is incredibly unusual (I don't think that happened before since ice dance became an Olympic sport) with one of them retiring and the other two not being in the best shape for Vancouver. This shows how volatile it all was. That said, I think people recognized early on that V/M were special and had a chance to be OGM contenders in 2010. There really was a lot of talk about them and their skating skills and ease of executing the elements were something incredible. B/A seemed like they were going to ride the wave of being USA number 1 after Torino, but D/W's youth, athleticism, and comfort with IJS became too much to ignore and B/A leaving Igor/Marina to go to Linichuk may have sounded like a good idea since they did coach DenStavs to two world titles, but the packaging played against their strengths and maybe highlighted some weaknesses, and they probably needed more than just two seasons for Linichuk to break down Tanith's basic skating and improve them.

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I think the bolded part is key. Yes, IJS was a new judging system and V/M had an advantage in understanding how to exploit that, but they were also recognized for having the skating skills emphasized under the old system, so it wasn't too hard to convince "old guard" judges to put them into first.

Considering latin is not really their sweet spot, P/C will have to distract the judges by wearing as little cloth as possible