My latest IFS has Shen & Zhao on the cover, not Sasha. Although they sometimes do different covers for subscribers and the newstand.
Thanks, Jaana, for the AWWWWWW!!! photo of Liza! That tiny baby in those huge skates--generally baby pics are baby pics but that one was pretty good. And she is the spittin' image (or spit and image, depending on where you grew up). But then, young babies always tend to look like the father, at least for the first year or so. A little off topic, but a friend in anthropology told me it's an evolutionary thing from way back when, as in 50,000 plus years ago. It was a safety mechanism for both the father and mother. The baby looked like the father so the father could say (or grunt) to the mother, "Yep, that's my kid. Okay, I'll hunt for and take care of the baby and you." It allowed the mother to say (we never grunted, don't you know), "See, Mr. Alpha Male? I told you it was yours. Now go hunt and gather, and while you're at it, fix the leaky shelter too." There's more to it than that, but that's basically why babies, male or female, look like the father at birth.
As for IFS, I just tore up my most recent "HURRY, HURRY! You've got to subscribe again NOW or something TERRIBLE will happen!" and have no plans to resubscribe. Although I applaude IFS for its article on skating injuries and the hinged skate boot, they just don't keep up to date. I think they would do well to follow DANCEMAGAZINE'S format. They go glossy for articles they can do months in advance and leave about 50 pages of the mid-section on yellow newsprint so they can publish things at the last minute. In DANCEMAGAZINE, this means you can get an in-depth interview with someone, articles about topics of interest to dancers, and still get reviews of companies that are only a couple of weeks old. DM also has "bureau correspondents," which is a fancy way to say writers on staff in various areas of the country to cover events in their area. I think this too would be good for IFS. That way they could have their Germany correspondent or somebody from Euro sports (Europeans will know the system better than I) review Worlds as it was happening and also write a "what it all means" synopsis in the newsprint section that we could be reading right now.
But I don't think the top skaters in general have anything against IFS, although certain individual skaters may have their beefs with Mark Lund. Michelle has been on the cover many times. But it is INTERNATIONAL FIGURE SKATING, so it may be she's not on the cover as often as she makes news in the US. Also, they have to plan their covers months in advance, which doesn't help IFS be up-to-date. I tend to like the writing in BLADES ON ICE better anyway.
Rgirl
, they seem to have a problem with Lang & Tchernyshev. Yeah, I know they've broken up, but in IFS' report on Nationals dance competition, they don't even MENTION L&T's withdrawal. I'm glad I have other sources for information. To me that is ridiculously poor journalism, since the withdrawal of the 5-time National dance champions was a huge part of the Nationals story.
