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Replay Lounge 2026 Olympics | Ice Dance

Replay Lounge Dance
Another exquisite Free Dance in my opinion. And I've always liked this music and it's probably my favorite program from them so far.

“It felt devastating,” said a stoic Lagha when asked about their scores. :laugh:“No, I’m kidding. For us, it’s the biggest reward to hear the public clap when we finish. We want people to feel like it’s not a competition anymore.”

“We love this sport,” added Lajoie. “We do it because we love it. At the same time, the scores are not something we can control. That’s why we say the best reward is the crowd—and today we had the crowd. We can be proud of ourselves.”

 
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gsk8 said:
I really feel like this team is underrated. Maybe it's because they are a bit too quirky for a lot of people's taste? I'm also a HUGE Björk fan :)

“It went very well,” said Lopareva. “We skated both programs clean, so we’re very happy that at our first Olympics we were able to show what we’ve worked on and not let the stress get to us. We prepared mentally, and everything went according to the work we put in, so we’re really glad about that.”

The 2025 European silver medalists are looking forward to another Olympic cycle.

“We want to be stronger, better,” said Brissaud. “We just want to continue pushing our originality and our skills for the next Olympics. We’ve been fighting hard for medals and for what we want.”
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Their breakthough was last season with a programme I didn't much like (although skated well generally I just can't like technostuff) but I love this one. I am glad they are going to continue, I like their quirkiness. Their main issue is that they don't connect much, but even that is getting better.
 
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gsk8 said:
Another exquisite Free Dance in my opinion. And I've always liked this music and it's probably my favorite program from them so far.

“It felt devastating,” said a stoic Lagha when asked about their scores. :laugh:“No, I’m kidding. For us, it’s the biggest reward to hear the public clap when we finish. We want people to feel like it’s not a competition anymore.”

“We love this sport,” added Lajoie. “We do it because we love it. At the same time, the scores are not something we can control. That’s why we say the best reward is the crowd—and today we had the crowd. We can be proud of ourselves.”

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I thought the one they did in the TE was even better, but that might just be me being nitpicky. It's so beautiful. I was so pleased them going back to it. And they execute it even better now than originally (I think that was the 22/23 season?).
 
TontoK said:
I think an AI could be programmed relatively easily to identify under-rotations and edge calls.
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CanadianSkaterGuy said:
I think for something objective, like how many degrees was that skate turned when it landed on the ice, AI bias shouldn't come into play.
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This, however, is not AI. A stop watch is not AI. A protractor is not AI. AI means trying to train an artificial brain (a computer) to produce results that cannot be distinguished from those produced by natural human brains (the standard that we use to define "intelligence").
 
gsk8 said:
This lift is so creative. And the core strength! I hope they stick around.
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That [the strength lift of Smart and Dieck] is a perfect example of different strokes for different folks, in my opinion. One can't help but admire the strength and control of this lift -- and yet, it is esthetically pleasing to watch?
 
4everchan said:
We are talking about two different things here but its okay :) I think it's important that some people are made aware of both the selection of judges and also the scores treatment but as pointed out, your info is not up to date ;)
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So the conspiracy theorists are not confused by your comments: The high/low are thrown out and we still get mean scores of the remaining marks.

In the FD, USA judge was + 3.70 points above the panel mean on its own skaters, whereas France judge was only +2.70 points above the panel mean on its own skaters.

In the FD, the country France judge was farthest below the panel mean was Canada. Not USA.
in the RD, the country France judge was farthest below the panel mean was China. Not USA.

On a personal note, it would be nice if some stopped calling the French judge a SOB. The judge is a woman.
 
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fsfs1980 said:
I feel I should clarify that my idea for professional judges is not for all figure skating competitions. I'm just saying to have this set of judges for the Olympics and the ISU championships, i.e., Worlds, Europeans, and Four Continents. The Grand Prix, Senior B's, and the like would still be judged using the current method (mainly because of financial considerations).
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I’m also not sure you could find qualified judges who don’t have some allegiance to a federation. Presumably a paid judge would have been a volunteer judge on behalf of a federation, so I don’t see how there would ever be a clean break.
 
museksk8r said:
Wonderful post! The ISU really needs to invest in a graphic of how these levels and GOE change in real time upon review all the way to the point the skaters are in the kiss and cry receiving their scores and the commentators really need to point out these errors and changing of levels as the skaters await their score to explain these types of discrepancies. It makes me wish the US could have former ice dancers Susie Wynne or Renee Roca do commentary again. NBC did have Tracy Wilson, but for obvious reasons, they don’t want her pointing out any mistakes that may have been committed by C/B. The lack of transparency and lack of expertise in educating the audience about the rules and scoring in real time is a major problem with this sport and it’s a big reason why there is so much public mistrust in the judging. NBC sadly thinks we’d rather hear nonsensical fluff from Tara and Johnny.
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Yes, yes, yes. This is what I am saying. ISU is trying to fix everything except the basic problem: most people cannot understand the technical differences without illustration and explanation, and the broadcasts offer little. Ted Barton literally said, there is no way for us to tell, just watch the pretty dancing! Not blaming him, but blaming the system. Before trying to make the sport more tiktokable or even fairer, make it understandable to the masses.
 
Arigato said:
OLYG judges wouldn't know if they are 1) a scoring judge or 2) a discarded judge. Pretty tough for anyone to cheat when you have no way of knowing if your score even counts to begin with. Ay? So why remove a FR judge (who is a woman btw, not a guy).

Quick primer on how scoring works at OLYG and ISU Championships only:

1. Computer randomly selects 2 out of the 9 judges on the panel and removes their scores. Completely.
2. The panel now has 2 "discarded" judges and 7 "scoring" judges. No one knows which group they are in.
3. The highest and lowest marks for each element and program component are then removed to prevent bias.
4. The result is called the trimmed mean - the average of 5 remaining scores.

Let that sink in. This is why when I use skatingscores.com, I only use the "mean" and the number of points above or below the mean.

The key takeaway: even though many judge's scores go unused, all 9 scores remain visible.

The public isn't allowed to know which scores actually got used, but they are allowed to know the scores each judge gave.
The problem is, they don't know what they don't know. Translated: Hello, conspiracy theories. This is how they get born.
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Thank you! I did not know this.
 
skatesofgold said:
Yeah, tbh, I've been watching ice dance regularly since 2006, and I really can't tell the difference between ice dancers even when there's a significant difference in placement. I can see obvious mistakes, but ice dance is the one place where I don't understand the levels at all. I've also seen positive GOE given (including +4) even when there's a noticeable error if it's a favored couple. This is why I don't think I can watch competitive ice dance in good conscious anymore.
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I think that this is a fixable problem. For sure, there will always be debate in a judged sport. But the debate can become more specific and concrete. An example off the top of my head: there is a judge to award the "speed" requirement of GOE to each element--yeah or nay, perhaps a 0-poor, 1-fair, 2-excellent number. There is a judge like this for each aspect of GOE, and the protocols and commentators can see what each team is awarded. We can debate, Ok, Cizeron's twizzles had a hiccup, got a 0 for flow, but checkmarks for edge quality and speed. The commentators are seeing the live scores come in and point this out live on the broadcast as a slomo of the elements under review plays. At least we can then debate, should he have earned speed when the stumble slowed it down? Instead of a vague, he stumbled, that should of been penalized more. I know this scoring example isn't perfect because I just made it up on the spot, but I don't see ISU even thinking about moving in a more concrete direction. Instead, they are losing viewers like you. Again, I am not trying to downplay the difficulty of making a judged sport objective, and IJS is an improvement over the former system, but why don't they keep working on it? They are constantly updating the scoring, but not in helpful ways, imo.
 
skylark said:
Except to say I'd like them to use fewer words, I'm not going to criticize Johnny and Tara as commentators again.

They always find positive things to say about every skater and every team. Most importantly, they don't negatively single out the high scoring competitors against "their own" countrymen and women. They're fair and complimentary to all.

That's in contrast to what some Canadian commentators (Carol Lane especially) have been doing all this week. Sorry, but not sorry. I can't let that behavior ride without saying something.

I will also add that I love Canadian Tracy Wilson's commentary for ID, and I always have ever since I heard her commentary for the first time. I'll also add that I like Meagan Duhamel's commentary. I wish someone would use her again.
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Are we watching the same Johnny and Tara? I’m pretty sure I haven’t watched them in at least 10 years. Maybe they have improved.
 
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