ISU Figure Skating Awards 2023

[viennaskater]

Anyone watching?

 

[Jeanie19]

Anyone watching?

Is there a stream?

 

[viennaskater]

Yes on YouTube.

 

[ladyjane]

I just watched. It started off with a lot of talk (yawn) but after that, there was a lot to see! Nice to see quite a few show performances, from Jason Brown to Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron and everything in-between. Loena Hendrickx, Ilia Malinin, Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier, the lovely tiny queen (Satoko Miyahara), Dennis, Shea-Lynn Bourne. Some great dancing, acrobatics and live music with singers as well. It was the Art on ice programme (but we didn't see all of it).

Aljona Savchenko to grant an award, as well as Denise Bielman. The ISU president was also there and introduced the special achievement award. I must admit that Johnny Wier was dressed wonderfully in pink (I liked it, but some people will probably disagree).

Awards:
Life-time achievement: Katarina Witt
Special achievement: Ilia Malinin (being the first to land the quad axel)
Best Costume (Madison Chock and Evan Bates for their astronaut and alien last season, second time!)
Best newcomer: Isabeau Levito
Best choreographer: Shae-Lynn Bourne (2nd time)
Most valuable skater: Nathan Chen
Best coach: Patrice Lauzon
Most entertaining programme: short dance last season by Gabrielle Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron (2nd time).

I think that was them all. Lots of fluff therefore but nice to watch the skating.

 

[ladyjane]

And here's the video (sorry, I forgot at first):

 

[Caliban]

 

[Dreamer57]

I think the designer should be jointly credited for best costume. I'm a bit sad that Japan didn't win any award this time, maybe next year!
Katarina Witt is a worthy winner of the lifetime achievement!

The link-up with Art on Ice was wonderful. It has been nice seeing Ilia, Deniss and Loena in a gala setting.
Also lovely to see Deniss with spread-eagle turning into glorious cantilever!

 

[icybear]

Why does this sound like ISU gave Anna a script to read because the Russian fans have been bombarding their social media page about why their banned althletes didnt win.

 

[el henry]

I see these awards like the ESPYs (in Ari Zakarian's dreams!), fun fluff that isn't taken seriously, but any award is a good award.

Donovan's "Happy to Be Nominated" speech:

 

[Amei]

Why does this sound like ISU gave Anna a script to read because the Russian fans have been bombarding their social media page about why their banned althletes didnt win.

Shcherbakova and her team have always seemed to have a pretty good PR handle so this might be something from her/her team (note: not talking about her coaching team). However if it was something from the ISU, hopefully they paid her well or promised her something like international opportunities or something in return doing it.

 

[Amei]

Anyone watching?

Nope, this is 1 of the stupidest things the ISU started doing, not going to give this fiasco any views.

 

[TallyT]

Saw the list. TPTB do seem to be doing their best to alienate the Asian (not just Japanese, all non-Western) audience in any way they can think of...

 

[gsk8]

I'll post some quick shots/clips we got:

 

[gsk8]

 

[gsk8]

 

[gsk8]

 

[gsk8]

 

[gsk8]

Is he borrowing Tat's coat?

 

[gsk8]

 

[Magill]

Saw the list. TPTB do seem to be doing their best to alienate the Asian (not just Japanese, all non-Western) audience in any way they can think of...

Yet one might expect the awards to be somewhat related to what we see on ice. Not taking away from any individual awardee, I do not really have the feeling EU and North America in general and the US in particular are such dominant forces in figure skating these days to justify these slightly surprising statistics, lol
I mean, 100%? Really?
The point is it does not build prestige of these awards at all but rather, to the contrary, turns this whole thing into an embarrassing, if not discriminatory, joke.