British and Irish Figure skating 2022-2023

[Weetos]

I was having a nose around the results of some of the juniors this spring and saw that Lloyd Thomson, the advanced novice champion, attempted both a 3A and a 4S at Skate Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago. Good for him for trying it! I don't know exactly how old he is but he looked pretty young in December and probably with plenty of growing to do. I hope he gets an opportunity to get some international experience! (Also his short programme made me think he was a Yuzu fan. Which makes my biased self happy ).

There is also a new kid in junior ladies, Alice Smith, who it looks like was training in Russia but is now based in Cambridge. Darya Dalgich has moved up to juniors, so I hope they can push each other to keep improving!

Also very best wishes to Natasha McKay who has announced her retirement today! I hope whatever she wants to do next she has a wonderful time doing it.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

I was having a nose around the results of some of the juniors this spring and saw that Lloyd Thomson, the advanced novice champion, attempted both a 3A and a 4S at Skate Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago. Good for him for trying it! I don't know exactly how old he is but he looked pretty young in December and probably with plenty of growing to do. I hope he gets an opportunity to get some international experience! (Also his short programme made me think he was a Yuzu fan. Which makes my biased self happy ).

There is also a new kid in junior ladies, Alice Smith, who it looks like was training in Russia but is now based in Cambridge. Darya Dalgich has moved up to juniors, so I hope they can push each other to keep improving!

Also very best wishes to Natasha McKay who has announced her retirement today! I hope whatever she wants to do next she has a wonderful time doing it.

Useless piece of information - in real life, I know a Lloyd Thompson (with a "P") AND an Alice Smith.

Looking forward to seeing their namesakes in the years to come. I've seen Lloyd the skater before, but I don't think I've seen Alice the skater yet.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[Weetos]

I have been enjoying Lilah's daily updates from FaOI, looks like they are having a good time. Can't wait to see videos of their performance.

I don't know it just feels very positive at the moment having them doing so well and being part of a big ice show, and with more promising ice dance teams coming up the ranks. I'm just crossing my fingers things continue on an upward trend

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Just saw something on another forum, and thought I should post here.

As I have complained about quite a few times over the past season, the figure skating rights in the British Isles are switching next season from British Eurosport to Viaplay.

Well, until 23:59 BST on 20th June, Viaplay are doing an offer where you can get a 12 month subscription for £59. That's exactly the same price as we were paying for 12 months of Discovery+ this season. The difference is that with Discovery+, £59 was the normal price for an annual subscription. With Viaplay, the normal price for their annual subscription is £11.99 per month, which works out at £143.88 for the 12 months.

The warning is that at the end of the 12 months, it automatically converts to a monthly subscription, which is £14.99 per month. So, you need to remember to cancel it before that happens. You wouldn't want to be paying £15 a month for the off-season!

Considering that I am no longer paying for Eurosport Player due to Discovery+ now being included in our BT Sport package, I might be tempted to avail of this offer. I definitely wouldn't pay the full price for Viaplay.

But, at this stage, we don't know what the coverage of the skating is going to be like on Viaplay. How much of the events (if any) are going to be shown on the linear channels? Who is going to be commentating? We might end up with commentators who are useless!

If Viaplay are just going to take the World Feed coverage and commentary, we would be better off just using a VPN to watch the free coverage on the ISU YouTube channel!

If you are interested in other sports that Viaplay have the rights to, this would be a good time to take the plunge. If you are like me and are only interested in the figure skating, it would be better to sit back and carry on with the YouTube with VPN route, until we hear what others have to say about the Viaplay coverage. And then take the plunge if they do the offer again this time next year.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[DSQ]

Just saw something on another forum, and thought I should post here.

As I have complained about quite a few times over the past season, the figure skating rights in the British Isles are switching next season from British Eurosport to Viaplay.

Well, until 23:59 BST on 20th June, Viaplay are doing an offer where you can get a 12 month subscription for £59. That's exactly the same price as we were paying for 12 months of Discovery+ this season. The difference is that with Discovery+, £59 was the normal price for an annual subscription. With Viaplay, the normal price for their annual subscription is £11.99 per month, which works out at £143.88 for the 12 months.

The warning is that at the end of the 12 months, it automatically converts to a monthly subscription, which is £14.99 per month. So, you need to remember to cancel it before that happens. You wouldn't want to be paying £15 a month for the off-season!

Considering that I am no longer paying for Eurosport Player due to Discovery+ now being included in our BT Sport package, I might be tempted to avail of this offer. I definitely wouldn't pay the full price for Viaplay.

But, at this stage, we don't know what the coverage of the skating is going to be like on Viaplay. How much of the events (if any) are going to be shown on the linear channels? Who is going to be commentating? We might end up with commentators who are useless!

If Viaplay are just going to take the World Feed coverage and commentary, we would be better off just using a VPN to watch the free coverage on the ISU YouTube channel!

If you are interested in other sports that Viaplay have the rights to, this would be a good time to take the plunge. If you are like me and are only interested in the figure skating, it would be better to sit back and carry on with the YouTube with VPN route, until we hear what others have to say about the Viaplay coverage. And then take the plunge if they do the offer again this time next year.

CaroLiza_fan

£143?!? That’s criminal.

 

[Weetos]

Do you mean we will no longer be able to watch the youtube streams for free? Because I haven't needed a VPN this year and I've very much enjoyed watching everything on youtube!

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

£143?!? That’s criminal.

I totally agree. Especially when the service is so poor. Viaplay inherited the NASCAR rights when they took over Premier Sports and, judging by what I have read on that other forum, they have missed either the start or the end of nearly every race!

It seems that they have things fully automated, and have nobody keeping an eye on what is actually going on. So if there are delays or the race is brought forward due to a bad weather forecast, the broadcast still starts and ends at the scheduled time.

But, they have the rights to the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland football team matches, as well as La Liga and the United Rugby Championships, so they are probably using those to justify such high prices.

Do you mean we will no longer be able to watch the youtube streams for free? Because I haven't needed a VPN this year and I've very much enjoyed watching everything on youtube!

I am nearly sure that is what will happen. Viaplay are absolutely ruthless when it comes to protecting their rights. It was them that got nearly all the skating videos from the ISU sanctioned events taken off YouTube a few years ago, because they had the rights in Scandinavia and didn't want them infringed on.

I really hope the VPN method will continue to be able to be used. Because I can't justify paying that for just skating. (With all the price rises there have been to BT Sport over the past 10 years, I am now even struggling to justify having it for just MotoGP!)

CaroLiza_fan

 

[Weetos]

Ugh, that is silly money for me too. I guess maybe I will pay for one month of gps or a couple months of vpn... Otherwise it's going to be JGP only for me... at least the beeb will still hopefully do a bit of worlds?

Just cancelled my netflix, contemplating others, not the time I want to think about paying for something new :/

 

[TeamGubanova]

just use urban vpn to watch-> makes life sm easier

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Ugh, that is silly money for me too. I guess maybe I will pay for one month of gps or a couple months of vpn... Otherwise it's going to be JGP only for me... at least the beeb will still hopefully do a bit of worlds?

I'm afraid not. The original Viaplay announcement from way last year said that they would have "exclusive" rights to the skating. So, unless they do a sub-licensing deal with the BBC (and whether the BBC would be willing to pay for it given that figure skating is a really niche sport), it looks like we won't be seeing Worlds unless we have the VPN route.

Just cancelled my netflix, contemplating others, not the time I want to think about paying for something new :/

I'm the same. We have Sky+HD, and are currently on the Variety Pack (i.e. no premium sports or movie channels), and the HD Pack with legacy F1 entitlement. Apart from that, the only extra subscriptions we had were BT Sport (just in SD) and Eurosport Player.

As you know, Eurosport Player closed down a few months ago, and the content moved to Discovery+. And Discovery+ is now bundled in with BT Sport, which becomes TNT Sports in July. So, we now only have one extra subscription on top of Sky.

We only subscribe to BT Sport for the MotoGP (the coverage is usually on when we are eating Sunday Dinner, and the only way we can watch in the kitchen is on BT Sport through Sky. And anyway, their commentators are far better than the World Feed commentators we would get on the cheaper, but online only, MotoGP VideoPass). And at the moment, nobody seems to know how things will ultimately look when the process of merging BT Sport and British Eurosport is completed after the next Summer Olympics.

BT Sport's current contract for the MotoGP rights runs until the end of the 2024 season. And with all these changes, it's hard to know whether it will be renewed or not. After all, the reason BT Sport got MotoGP in the first place was because British Eurosport dropped it 10 years ago. For all we know, they might want to get rid of it again, and the MotoGP might end up switching to Viaplay (who have it in Scandinavia), or DAZN (who have it in Spain), or Sky (who have it in Italy).

Hopefully the management at Discovery will decide to not just keep the MotoGP, but to move it to Eurosport with all the other motorbike racing. That way, we would be able to get rid of BT Sport and drop down to the basic tier of Discovery+. Which, at current prices, would be a considerable saving of money.

Failing that, Viaplay would be my second choice. Even with the current offer that started this discussion, Viaplay is not worth the money for just figure skating. But it might be worth it if they had other things I like as well. If Viaplay did get the MotoGP, this is another scenario that would mean we would be able to get rid of BT Sport and drop down to the basic tier of Discovery+. Plus, if subscriptions stay at their current prices (be they discounted or not), the total price for Viaplay and the basic Discovery would be significantly less than what we are currently paying for the BT Sport and Discovery+ bundle.

Our BT contract (broadband internet, landline telephone, and BT Sport) is due for renewal at the end of June, so I am hoping they will give us an 18 month contract, which will take us to the end of 2024. And hopefully by then it will be clearer who will be showing each of the sports that I like.

As it stands, I have no intention of subscribing to any additional services. Two is enough. Especially when the prices for them keep going up.

If the MotoGP joins the figure skating on Viaplay, we might go back to having three. But definitely not any more than three.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[Flying Feijoa]

I was having a nose around the results of some of the juniors this spring and saw that Lloyd Thomson, the advanced novice champion, attempted both a 3A and a 4S at Skate Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago. Good for him for trying it! I don't know exactly how old he is but he looked pretty young in December and probably with plenty of growing to do. I hope he gets an opportunity to get some international experience! (Also his short programme made me think he was a Yuzu fan. Which makes my biased self happy ).

There is also a new kid in junior ladies, Alice Smith, who it looks like was training in Russia but is now based in Cambridge. Darya Dalgich has moved up to juniors, so I hope they can push each other to keep improving!

Also very best wishes to Natasha McKay who has announced her retirement today! I hope whatever she wants to do next she has a wonderful time doing it.

Skate Edinburgh? What rink was the competition held at?
My impression through the grapevine is that there basically isn't any serious figure skating training going on in Edinburgh now, not since the pandemic anyway. Skaters in the capital have had to migrate to Sterling, Kirkcaldy or even Dundee.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Skate Edinburgh? What rink was the competition held at?
My impression through the grapevine is that there basically isn't any serious figure skating training going on in Edinburgh now, not since the pandemic anyway. Skaters in the capital have had to migrate to Sterling, Kirkcaldy or even Dundee.

I didn't know about that event! But, I just looked it up, and it was held in Kirkcaldy.

Here is the Entries / Results page:

https://johnds.org/sek23/

Good to see that there was a contingent of 5 Beginners skaters from the Dundonald club that went over (although, it might be 6 as there was one skater that had Dundee in the "Club" column, and Dundonald in the "Nation" column. So I don't know if she is our's or not! ). And delighted that two of them finished in 4th position in their respective competitions. That is a good sign for the future.

Hope this helps

CaroLiza_fan

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

@Andrea82 has just posted the link to the ISU Calendar PDF in a new thread over in The Edge.

https://www.isu.org/inside-isu/isu-communications/communications/31308-isu-communication-2565/file

And as soon as I looked at it, something jumped out at me.

The venue of the Tayside Trophy is down as a "To Be Announced"?!

Where else could the Tayside Trophy be other than Dundee?!

Unless, of course, there is a suitable ice rink in Perth, which is also on the River Tay, futher upstream from Dundee.

But, Dundee is the skating centre of Scotland. And it is the Dundee club that organises the event. I would be very surprised if it moved to somewhere else.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[Weetos]

It would be a bit strange! Now my mind has gone into wild speculation, like maybe they want to cancel it and spend their money on hosting Euros instead... (seriously though what is happening with Euros??)

So what has happened to the rink in Edinburgh? Why did all the skaters have to migrate?

 

[Flying Feijoa]

It would be a bit strange! Now my mind has gone into wild speculation, like maybe they want to cancel it and spend their money on hosting Euros instead... (seriously though what is happening with Euros??)

So what has happened to the rink in Edinburgh? Why did all the skaters have to migrate?

First the pandemic kept it shut, then for a long time after restrictions had ended the management at the time declined to reopen it citing financial issues, so skaters and coaches had to set up base at other rinks. Management changed sometime last year but when it finally reopened the ice schedule wasn't very favourable for figure skating training, and the skaters had gotten used to their new homes anyway so they stuck there (at least based on what I've heard from adult skater friends).

I'm not sure if all of them went as I moseyed through the link CaroLiza_fan sent and spotted a few MUR skaters. However club affiliation doesn't necessarily mean they train there, as I remember East Kilbride skaters coming over to Edinburgh to train when their rink closed for a couple of years.

I didn't know about that event! But, I just looked it up, and it was held in Kirkcaldy.

It's a wee bit strange they didn't call it Skate Fife instead The club in Edinburgh did previously host a regular annual competition by the (logical) name of Murrayfield Open.

 

[gleungc6]

As seen on IAM's instagram, new ice dance team for GB: Layla Karnes (previously repped the US) and Liam Carr (previously repped Canada). They will train at IAM Ontario with Moir, Hubbell, Diaz etc.

Instagram

www.instagram.com

Edit - not sure if the link works but it’s IAM’s latest Instagram post

 

[DSQ]

As seen on IAM's instagram, new ice dance team for GB: Layla Karnes (previously repped the US) and Liam Carr (previously repped Canada). They will train at IAM Ontario with Moir, Hubbell, Diaz etc.

Instagram

www.instagram.com

Edit - not sure if the link works but it’s IAM’s latest Instagram post

I just saw this too I take an interest in British Ice Dance but i can’t say I’ve heard of either of them. Don’t worry detective DSQ is here! Give me 12hrs and I’ll see what I can find.

As for Murryfield “ice” rink. I am furious to say the least. Especially when they try and claim it’s for environmental reasons. They better hope I don’t win the Euromillions let’s just say that.

 

[Weetos]

Sooo... if they both already have citizenship, and neither of them have competed for US/Canada internationally, does that mean they'd be able (performance dependent obviously) to take the 3rd spot for Euros next year...?

Searching through skating scores it looks like Layla's had a couple of different partners. Hope this works out for them! Always positive to have a bit more competition for team GB.

Edit: Apparently their RD is going to be a tribute to hedgehogs. I am... certainly intrigued

 

[Weathergal]

Sooo... if they both already have citizenship, and neither of them have competed for US/Canada internationally, does that mean they'd be able (performance dependent obviously) to take the 3rd spot for Euros next year...?

Searching through skating scores it looks like Layla's had a couple of different partners. Hope this works out for them! Always positive to have a bit more competition for team GB.

Edit: Apparently their RD is going to be a tribute to hedgehogs. I am... certainly intrigued

Fascinating -- as in Sonic the Hedgehog? Although I don't think that's an 80s thing. Hey props to them because I don't know them, but I'm already looking forward to their program. LOL

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Just letting you know that I have started a thread for the Irish Championships over in the competition forum:

https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/threads/95621

Unfortunately, there have been no late entries since the Provisional Entry List was released. So, only the Junior Ladies have more than one entry. Sophia Tkacheva (Co. Wexford) is joined by new girl Ciera Turner-Frick (Co. Cork). She finished 15th in the British Championships Qualifier as recently as 23rd March, representing Oxford! (Curiously, she was representing Ireland at the Skate London Spring Open the week before, finishing 8th! )

By the way, seeing Ciera's name started me wondering where her sister, Sinéad, disappeared to (she hasn't competed since 2015). And it looks like Sinéad has been competing in a different sport - rowing!

Another skater who has just made the switch from Great Britiain to Ireland is Saoirse O'Sullivan (Co. Tipperary), who is competing at Advanced Novice level. She finished 6th in the Skate London Spring Open on 15th March, representing Nottingham.

Elizabeth Golding, Robyn Foster, and the Condon sisters are not entered. I hope they are all OK.

Now that Conor Stakelum (Co. Dublin) and Sam McAllister (Co. Antrim) have both retired, Dillon Judge (Co. Down) has moved up from Juniors to Seniors. He is the only Men's skater competing at Nationals.

And, of course, we have the excitement of the arrival of Carolane Soucisse / Liam Firus (Co. Wexford) to the Irish team. This will be the first time Senior Ice Dance has been contested at the Irish Championships. And in Juniors, the Hegartys (Co. Dublin) are the sole entry.

The Irish Championships are being held in conjunction with the Dundee Open. Unfortunately, the events page on the British Fed's website doesn't have a link to the Entries / Results page for the Dundee Open up yet. And the Dundee Club's website is down at the moment. But, this is supposed to be the event's home page:

https://dundeeiceskatingclub.org/dundee-open-2023/

Over in the ISU competitions thread, @Diana Delafield very kindly offered to get her cousin to enquire if there was anything going on that could explain why there were no events beyond this week listed for Dundee in the BIS calendar, and the report came back that all their usual events were going ahead as normal. She also commented that maybe the website was due to be updated, but it just hadn't been done yet.

Well, I suspect that is what is exactly what is happening now with the Dundee Club's own website. That it is down because they are currently updating it for the Dundee Open. And I just picked the wrong time to check it!

Hope all goes well this weekend with both parts of the event.

ALL THE BEST EVERYBODY!!!

CaroLiza_fan