This episode has been transcribed, edited and condensed for clarity by Niamh (@rivrdance), Karly (@cyberswansp) and Evie (@doubleflutz).
Becs: You're In The Loop! We're here to discuss the ups, downs and sideways of the sport of figure skating and maybe give you +5 GOE along the way. This week we have Kat (@kattwts) and Becs (@becsfer), here to do a mid-season check-up and discuss the continuing challenge of holding figure skating competitions during COVID-19. So, we will be focusing primarily on the challenges organisationally, and the actions taken by the ISU and feds, and the ramifications of it, throughout how they've chosen to hold competitions and what the rest of the season looks like, but we do want to start off a little talking about some of the implications on the sort of fan and viewer side, in terms of the audience of how the season has gone.
Kat: Right, especially since - Becs, I don't know about how you but I have really not watched a lot of figure skating at all this season.
Becs: I think this is the least figure skating I've watched in like a decade, almost. Granted there hasn't been as much, but even considering I didn't watch a single program until Cup of China, that's like a solid 8 months that I didn't watch figure skating. Let's be clear, Kat and I do not represent all figure skating fans by a long stretch, but we and a lot of people I know and have talked to are the sorts of people that go to as many competitions in person during normal seasons as we can. You know, I watched last Grand Prix season, bar maybe the odd Pairs program that was airing at 3 am, I think I watched pretty much every event of every single competition.
Kat: Right. In general, it's just - for me, personally - it's been very hard to reconcile seeing how the ISU and the federation have been shaking a lot of responsibilities of holding these events safely, with the athletes' best interests in mind and I feel that impacting my own personal investment in the sport, because ultimately if I can't trust them to take care of the athletes' then why should I care. I'm ultimately watching skating for the athletes and for them to stay safe and healthy, and if I don't believe that that's the case then I don't feel any interest in supporting the sport.
Becs: It's just kind of alarming, depressing state of events because on one hand, you want to continue to support athletes, but it has been very tricky this season, because there have been so many steps taken by the federations and the ISU that just are deeply concerning in terms of the priorities because they do have broadcasting obligations and they feel like they have to carry on, and it is very complex in terms of all of the nuances and factors but there are some concerns about the fact that through their choices, they are alienating a considerable number of fans who - figure skating is a sport that while their priorities should be the athletes and their future and development, there is this pretty strong connection with fans and an audience as more of a performance sport, and also it's a sport that has struggled a lot with its popularity in recent years, save for perhaps in Russia and in Japan, and occasionally China and in Korea, but in general.
Kat: Especially the waning interest in the US has been a big impact on the sport as a whole. Of course, none of this is easy. I just want to preface this entire episode by saying this is not an easy thing by any means to discuss. Obviously, there are some huge long term ramifications on the athletes to canceling the entire season, it sucks their livelihoods, but I think some of the carelessness and the callousness of the federations and the ISU make a lot of what's happening unacceptable from an audience view.
Becs: Anyway, we just wanted to preface and make it very frank that it's a mid-season check-in but we're not going to be gushing over new programs or yelling about edges and people not doing their patterns well because frankly, the only event I've watched in full was NHK Ladies'. To be frank, we did follow how all of these events were run and check in on them very, very closely because we were so concerned about them.
Kat: It's hard to wake up at like 7 o'clock in the morning for a competition you don't think should even be happening, so.
Becs: It really is. I would pop in, at the beginning of the season, to some Russian streams and got so uncomfortable at how the competitions were being handled that I just couldn't suppress the anger and frustration to continue watching, just wanted to get that out of the way and be frank about it, and also raise the topic and the ramifications of from also an audience perspective, the difficulties, and challenges of following a very beloved sport in this period.
Kat: I guess our overview of the Grand Prix series, again, is going to be a little different. We're just going to be talking a little bit about how the way different competitions were run. So, off the bat, I think we wanted to compare the way that Rostelecom, NHK and Cup of China were held because very different choices were made for those competitions, I think. I don't know about you but seeing how many people in the audience at Rostelecom made me super uncomfortable.
Becs: From what I can tell from every Russian competition in general that I looked at, social distancing in terms of seating or anything was never-ever, in any fashion whatsoever, so that was definitely a very concerning trend, both in Rostelecom and Russia's other domestic competitions, especially given Russia is probably after the US, one of the absolute most concerning countries in terms of their status, and at least Skate America - although I have a lot of concerns about their circle and bubble - did indeed have no audience. There were some slight issues in terms of skaters maybe socializing a little more off-camera in the audience than perhaps would have been advisable given their projected attempts at a bubble, but that said, we haven't heard necessarily a lot of ramifications coming out.
Kat: And I think one thing also to look at on the audience side is that [Cup of] China was also a very good example of having a country with currently some of the lower reported cases.
Becs: And there's even been other events in China that have been held with audiences, or recordings, but this, they didn't have an audience, they took the absolute safest method and this was also - in China, most of the national team trains together, they're in a similar location and still, they took probably some of the best precautions to hold a very safe event, in comparison to countries that are on the opposite side of the spectrum to transfer of COVID, such as the US and such as Russia, and even in Japan, where it's spiking.
Kat: Yeah, even within the athletes, a lot of Chinese athletes haven't seen their families, or traveled to see their families in well over a year. It's all been closed training since some of the skaters were in Canada returning and they haven't had any contact with their families in order to maintain everyone's safety and health, and that's a tough sacrifice to make but it's for the greater good, and it's definitely something that should be commended. Of course, this is a personal responsibility kind of sacrifice that some athletes choose to make and didn't necessarily have to, considering how low the cases are, but ultimately it's better to air on the side of safety, in my opinion.
Becs: I think one thing that you can also compare a bit is at least at NHK, although there was an audience, they did require masks and attempt to put some efforts at social distancing, but the audience was - this was a 50% capacity stadium, it could have been a 25% capacity stadium, and then be done much, much more safely because if you look at the audience, people were excellent with mask usage, but still with people sitting together, you could see everyone was supposed to be at least a seat apart. I've been to Japanese stadiums, it's like two feet; being generous, it's like two feet-ish, it's not a large amount of space, even if there were two seats apart, it's still really not ideal, but at least it's better.
Kat: Like 3 seats apart, if we're going to make it true social distancing, if we're going to follow the whole 6 feet guideline.
Becs: From an optics point of view, it was just not ideal, and also just concerns of if you have that large of an audience, getting everyone in and out with proper social distancing, let's be honest, it's just not going to happen.
Kat: Exactly, waiting in lines for everything - the bathroom, food, getting in and out of the arena. These are all things that take time and space, so the more people you have, the less space you're going to have between people, especially - again, from the optics point of view, there was a report from earlier in the month that said that Osaka was nearing a red alert due to COVID, and so if you were just a citizen and you're watching the news and you see all of these people gathering still for figure skating in an area where COVID cases have been spiking, it does not look great.
Becs: It's pretty concerning, especially since Japan has been peaking and really on an upward trend, and with Nationals coming up, it's a little concerning. I will say that I'm at least glad they enforced mask-wearing very well, and the general sort of internal measures were kind of good, but not ideal.
Kat: Let's talk about the big red alert, which is Russia. There's just so much going on with Russian skating. Throughout the season, several skaters have come up positive with COVID. Naa, on Twitter, her user is @liftlooplunge, created this awesome graphic that lists out all of the Russian athletes that have contracted COVID, been exposed to COVID, been symptomatic and where they train, and who they were exposed to, we'll link it in the notes, but she did a great job in compiling all the data and it's quite a doozey, I've got to tell you. It's very concerning considering how many high profile names there are, and just how many people they're exposed to.
Becs: The spread throughout the training camps and the general sort of “Well, we've just got to train" and people start dropping like flies, and kind of rumors of entire camps getting it or getting exposed to it. The sheer amount of people who suddenly have, for this season, come down with pneumonia and fevers, even though it's not confirmed is very alarming.
Kat: Very, very alarming. Especially how young a lot of these athletes are. These are athletes, like being in top condition is their job. Being in top health is what produces their livelihood essentially, and I think that to be the federation that says we can sacrifice the health of our athletes for the sake of holding competitions is just unnaturally cruel, I think.
Becs: The thing is, all these people are training and getting exposed to it, which granted, Russian Nationals, we all know is the most terrifying competition of the season essentially, but they are taking part in this... like, the Russian Cup does not need to happen this year. This convoluted, 5 stage.. we've got the last stage of it, and none of the top athletes can even compete because they're all keeled over or recovering from the plague. It's horrifying, I'm sorry but it's horrifying, and some of these people - you had people like Evgenia [Medvedeva], she returned to training for like a week and caught it and then was in the hospital for a considerable time, suffered from, according to her, devastating lung damage, like, these are skaters who rely on so much on their lung capacity.
Kat: How many times have you seen a skater look winded after a Free Skate whilst they're in top condition.
Becs: Yes, the way COVID affects the lungs.
Kat: And even your heart.
Becs: Yeah, exactly. For top athletes, what concerns me so much with Russia's adamance about carrying on these competitions is the fact that we've seen a lot of research and concerning reports about how contracting this disease can essentially turn an elite athlete to a relatively mediocre athlete, in terms of their actual physical capabilities, no matter how hard they push themselves.
Kat: Yeah, their stamina and endurance.
Becs: Yes. And the fact that this either shows that Russia, you know, they have such a depth of talent that they don't genuinely care about the individual state or success or health of their top talent, because they are confident enough that even in a pre-Olympic season, they have so much talent on the back tap that they can just pull them forwards if they are the few who survived. And in their politicking, that they will be fine. But it's just so alarming.
Kat: Yeah. I think that I'm definitely super concerned about how a lot of these athletes are going to survive moving forward, because if you get COVID and you happen to be the unlucky one that gets the severe case like Zhenya, who was hospitalized and as we said before suffered severe lung damage, even if you do miraculously recover enough to get back onto the ice - I think she actually just started getting back on the ice recently - the lack of endurance and stamina will clearly impact your ability to perform and execute at a high level, and also make you more injury-prone, and it's not like Zhenya needs more injuries. And especially some of these pairs skaters and ice dancers as well... it's dangerous if you're not in your tip-top form, and not just for the athlete themselves, but also their partners. If you're a pairs skater, the man has to lift and twirl these girls in the air six feet off the ground, they kind of rely on their endurance as well to make sure that their partners are safe.
Becs: I mean, Russia has the deepest pairs field by far in the world, so if the pairs field - COVID completely rips through them - there's a lot of potential for fallout and severe ramifications down the line.
Kat: Yeah. Lots of injuries that I'm worried about.
Becs: The injuries, the health conditions, and it's also just so depressing because skaters are already just so prone to just the injuries of doing all the terrifying -
Kat: The crazy things.
Becs: - things that they do. Skaters are always constantly injured; we do not need to add chronic lung or heart issues to the factor.
Kat: And it's also worth noting that Moscow turned one of its ice rinks into a COVID hospital. On the day that Rostelecom started. In Moscow.
Becs: Russian Fed, despite this, has been seemingly quite - like, they made a concession for the fifth stage of the Russia Cup that they would not have an audience again, and that was their main concession to most of the national team not being able to compete anymore, who had done very well in the previous stages because they're all... ill.
Kat: It just really... makes you wonder about what the ultimate cost of this is going to be. I just can't see, I don't see any reason why these competitions should be held, especially knowing so many athletes are sick and have gotten sick. Oh, and are we gonna talk about how Rostelecom had a banquet?
Becs: Okay. Rostelecom was an alarming train wreck. The fact that they went ahead and held a banquet, and you saw skaters' social media updates of them chilling, and partying it up - just, why? This was the most unnecessary measure ever.
Kat: And, you know, some of the skaters that were seen at the banquet, they weren't wearing masks, they weren't social distancing, they were taking selfies together...
Becs: It looked like a normal banquet, apart from it all being Russian, it looked like your standard banquet. There was no difference that I could tell at all. I mean, I think Russia has claimed that they are doing testing before events, and Russia is not good with transparency, let's be clear.
Kat: I'll be honest. Japan, Russia, China - they're not known for transparency...
Becs: Nope.
Kat: So it's been really hard to find guidelines. I actually couldn't find any of the Cup of China guidelines, I'm just going based off of what I know about how the Chinese Federation has been conducting their training and what they did prior to Four Continents when China was at its worst during the pandemic.
Becs: This kind of highlights, again, the fact that we can't find out anything about the guidelines and stuff, this again highlights the sort of frustration with the ISU not stepping up as a governing body and clearly setting a standard for how these events should be conducted, where they foisted a lot of responsibility off on the individual feds and granted, the situation has varied somewhat from country to country, which I'm sure they were allowing for concessions and didn't want to do that, but in general, having a consistent standard to follow that is safe and well-designed and has the right priorities is the work that a governing body should be doing. And we pointed that out as a concern in our previous episode looking towards the Grand Prix, but I think seeing the fallout from it has really made it clear that this was a way in which the ISU in a sense sort of failed the skating community as a governing body by not taking that responsibility and setting that standard like most sports governing bodies have.
Kat: Just - the lack of transparency and the lack of foresight, I think, is the main concern for me with the ISU because looking forward now for the rest of the season - on the day that we're recording this we just got wind of the news that the European Championships were canceled and that the Grand Prix Final, which was scheduled to be in Beijing this weekend, that was postponed originally, also got canceled. [Becs: Yaaaay.] Which - yay. I'm sorry, but what were they going to do with the Grand Prix Final? Literally no one can travel, it's not even a real competition...
Becs: We had four bizarre, mostly domestic, faux nationals, everyone competed once - are they going to hold it in like, May? Everyone knew there was no way it could come off as a feasible competition. Ridiculous. So, yes - yay, thanks for canceling it, good job, glad you got your act together. So basically the only major - Junior Worlds has been canceled, Four Continents has obviously been canceled -
Kat: The entire Junior season was canceled, which is pretty devastating for the Juniors, but necessary. Now Worlds is the only competition - only major competition left for the season. And it's looking like the ISU is still holding to the "We are going to hold out hope that everything will be okay in three to four months" and I think this is what has led to this downward spiral this entire half of the year, which is the ISU just constantly pushing back and pushing back, and dilly-dallying on making a definitive decision about what they should be doing for the Grand Prix series, or the Challenger series, or the Grand Prix Final, because they just want to hold out hope that it can happen. And they just keep stringing athletes along and keeping the athletes in limbo - it's just such a cruel game that they're playing, I think.
Becs: I think another implication to look at is the fact that if the ISU definitively canceled Worlds now, probably Nationals in most countries - some countries have canceled their Nationals, I believe France did, although they're doing another qualifying event or something, so I'm not quite sure what the point of canceling it was - but it would at least incentivize probably a lot of countries to definitively cancel Nationals that should potentially not be happening, and help set a standard for safety in that regard, but obviously they're still continuing to -
Kat: Do this whole pray-that-everything-will-be-okay.
Becs: Right. So let's logistically look at the kind of considerations of - like reasonably, what does it look like, what are the concerns, what are the potential ways that they could pull it off, and the contributing factors that might encourage them or discourage them one way or the other. So obviously one of the biggest incentives is just - this is the pre-Olympic season, this is normally the Worlds where - this is the most important Olympics of every quad, essentially, because it decides Olympic spots. Which is a big reason probably, apart from just the general broadcasting incentives and the general keep-things-going, that they are having such a conflict about whether or not to hold it. On the bright side, Worlds is scheduled in March in Sweden, on the bright side, we do have more optimistic news regarding things such as vaccines than I would have forecasted three months ago, six months ago, but I think we still need to look at the logistics of how that would play into holding an event.
Kat: Right. And also who's going to be able to get them, the efficacy, and that also doesn't mean that we should start being lax about COVID, because I've read some reports that COVID vaccine may not even reduce transmission of the COVID virus, it only prevents severe symptoms from manifesting. You might still get an infection, but you won't get a severe infection. Which to be fair is what the flu vaccine does, but considering how virulent COVID is, it is still a huge, huge risk, even if you do get the vaccine, to become completely lax about the precautions regarding COVID.
Becs: Yeah, there's just so many factors where you can't just - a vaccine is not, as much as we wish it was, this magic cure-all that just fixes everything, and also another thing to consider is just logistics - young athletes are probably not going to be top of the priority list for distribution. You might be able to get government concessions or something because of their priorities of representing their countries, but in general, not necessarily going to be a super high priority, and you have dozens of countries with all varying logistics in terms of their access - holding Worlds, even with no audience, you still need a ton of volunteers, you need a lot of people to make it work, all the judges - logistically, if something's going to happen in March, you're probably not going to be able to get everyone in skating who is expected to participate vaccinated beforehand.
Kat: In general, I think the ISU has shown that they are unable to have foresight about how to run a competition, or at least create a contingency plan for a competition to be safely held either virtually or without an audience or with a bubble - again, sports have been going on during the pandemic. I don't know how every single sports federation, especially international sports federations, has been handling everything, but with enough planning, and if they're that motivated to make sure Worlds can happen, with enough planning - creating a bubble, allocating lots of funds to making sure all the athletes are tested and quarantined before they get to the venue before they get into the country - these are things that I think can happen. I don't think that we should have to sacrifice, necessarily, if there are enough precautions in place, but I don't think that the ISU is invested enough to make an alternate Worlds happen.
Becs: Yeah, I think this is sort of the dilemma, that they either do not have or are not willing to divest the resources to do a proper bubble. Also the problem with skating and training - you're not gonna find countries with a million ice rinks, where if you have everyone come in and quarantine - even if you did a situation where they came in and quarantined for two weeks, you're not going to have enough rinks and ice time for that many people to adequately train. I don't know that any country really has the infrastructure for that. So, say the ISU was invested enough to delay Worlds for two months, find an alternate location - we should talk about the logistics of even Sweden and the concerns around Sweden being the current host federation/country for Worlds, because in general, while Sweden is not known for doing a poor job hosting events in any way whatsoever, but Sweden itself has taken one of the most blasé herd immunity, sort of infamously, approaches to COVID, and while I'm sure if they hosted it they would follow some degree of international guidelines and safety, it's not necessarily a country that's been terribly conducive to great care - they anti-bubble, basically, in Sweden.
Kat: Yeah.
Becs: So... not super promising on that end. Even if you hold it without an audience, even if you try to get the majority of people vaccinated, and isolate as much as possible, it's still not without considerable risk considering the number of people who would have to travel to this event, no matter how rigorous your testing is.
Kat: And even if they held it without an audience, the sheer number of people that are traveling just from the athletes, that's a lot of people.
Becs: And I think some feds have also raised concerns about this - Canada literally stated that they might not even send their national team if Worlds happens. And Canada is one of the biggest countries in terms of skating.
Kat: And I feel like there should be more push back from the federations as well, to signal to the ISU that they are going to be taking the health of their athletes seriously. And it's kind of frankly alarming that more feds aren't? Again, it's not an easy decision, obviously, to just push back on the governing body. But we're in a public health crisis right now that's not getting better - in fact, it's getting worse. We've kind of already hit rock bottom, a little bit. I just don't see where it gets worse from here, which is kind of scary to say, but I honestly feel like we've basically hit rock bottom. I'm honestly surprised that there isn't more outcry.
Becs: Yeah, the fact that more feds are not pressuring - granted, not publicly. I'm sure there's plenty going on behind the scenes. But the fact that there is not more public outcry... And, obviously, skaters are put in a horrifically difficult situation where they can't really speak up.
Kat: I feel worse for the skaters. I think it just sucks being put into limbo constantly. I can't even imagine the wait for the Grand Prix assignments and whether [or not] the Grand Prix was going to be moving forward.
Becs: Looking at the internal side of NHK, we've talked a lot about the audience-facing precautions. I would commend NHK for mask usage, protecting the judges with plexiglass, and monitoring their athletes through health check-ins for 14 days prior to the event. We did talk to Tim Koleto, who was the Ice Dance champion along with his partner Misato Komatsubara, about their experiences at the event and preparing for the season as a whole. And here is that interview now.
-end segment-
START: Interview
Lae: So we have Tim Koleto here with us for this episode and Tim, congratulations. We were just talking about your Japanese citizenship and first NHK win. [Tim: Thank you] Were there connections between the two or did you feel like it gave you a bit of a boost?
Tim: No, absolutely, the timing was very busy but it ended up being a really fantastic two weeks. I got the information on the Thursday before the NHK Trophy. So they actually have a national official newspaper and every day they have a section where they post the people who were given citizenship that day. And actually, just before practice that morning, I decided to go ahead and check it - typically I check it in the afternoon - and there I was!
Lae: Amazing!
Tim: Yeah, I'm still kind of digesting it because immediately we went into competition and right after the competition we had an Ice Dance camp as well. So it's been kind of a whirlwind couple of weeks.
Lae: Yeah, I can imagine. Was that Ice Dance camp in-person or over Zoom?
Tim: Yeah, it was in-person. They planned a space for us that was able to be isolated and we worked together with a few different coaches.
Lae: So all ready for Nationals coming up? Is that still the plan at the moment?
Tim: Yeah, just about ready. We have two weeks of training left so there's a lot of little details but not a lot of big changes going into it so we're excited to hopefully perform two more solid performances and close off the year well.
Lae: Amazing. Well, fingers crossed for that as well! So we were just discussing the situation around the GP series. Obviously, it's been a weird season for everyone and, even prior to the season starting, there was an adjustment that all the skaters had to make in terms of adjusting their training for remote working - for not being able to actually physically be in the rink. So I know that you and Misato probably need a little less adjustment than usual, maybe, because you have been training long distance in the past as well due to your citizenship situation. So can I ask a little bit about how that training worked out in the past and whether that's changed a bit in the COVID times?
Tim: So last year we went in the spring and early summer for three months to Montreal to choreograph both programs and get all ready to go and then we came back here in the summer to do our shows and start our training. But honestly, there wasn't a lot of infrastructure to do online lessons or perhaps a lot of incentive. It seems silly to say now but no one really thought that "Oh yeah, we could do live Zoom lessons on the ice." Like [previously] it was all either off-ice checking in or meetings or we met up with the coaches at Cup of China. But I think part of that was also due to Misato's concussion last year that kind of took us out for quite a few months. We did go back to Montreal for two weeks in the fall of last year but other than that we had kind of been on our own. It's odd to say but this year has been quite a bit easier for us for a number of reasons, first of all, because our coaches and our whole team got used to managing all of the different schedules - they're also working with the skaters in China and in Australia - and we have our schedule where we figure out what days work for everybody and we have the ice planned. We're really lucky to have found ice here in Japan that allows us to work at a time where we can deal with the time difference but, compared to last season, it's actually been quite a bit easier. We also integrated Cathy Reed into our coaching team, which has been a big help to us. She's been such a big source of information and experience. It's been, in a strange way, a little bit easier than the year before and, just piggybacking off of what you said, it seems strange to say but an advantage that we already had spent time away from our coaches and knew some of the challenges that come along with that.
Lae: Can you expand a little bit on those challenges?
Tim: This is our fifth year skating together, so we have a lot of experience together as well as dealing with injuries and things like that. But shifting out of the role of being an athlete into being a co-pilot and co-coach with each other is a really slippery slope. It's dangerous territory because there are times when you need somebody to say something and the person you trust the most is standing right next to you holding your hand but that person also has the ability to hurt your feelings the most. Because we're partners on and off the ice, there are boundaries that are different than just between a coach and a student. So we kind of had moments where we got into arguments or we went too far last year, and the injury made it more difficult or trying to manage that it doesn't feel safe but we have to try and starting skating again - all of those kinds of things were big challenges in the beginning. Now, like I said, we have more lessons with online time, we also do lessons in the house with ballet, ballroom dance, and pilates multiple times a week. So, in a long way to say, it's almost less that we've learned how to coach each other and more that we've learned that it's not possible for us to coach each other. And we found ways to fix that, by integrating Cathy and finding more lesson time with the coaches, that has really helped us grow a lot and it's helped us grow in our love and respect for each other because we recognize how difficult it is to feel like you're training alone. I mean, even though we had coaches here, the ice time is one hour and a half a day, or only a public session that could have either 50 people or 4 people. So the situation changes all the time and our coach has like 30 students, so on a mixed session where there's Singles and Ice Dance it's really hard to get attention for everybody. It's so easy to slip into that space, from helping each other into teaching each other, and I think the first year really taught us that that was not a space we can operate in a professional way - and I don't think anybody can. But for us, that was a really big learning experience on where are the boundaries between coach and student, and where is the boundary between helping each other and just pointing out faults and making things slow down. So that was a big part of the growth, just understanding what our roles are on the ice. You kind of can't completely understand until you make mistakes, pull back and realize what kind of system works best for you - and I'm sure there are other couples that can coach each other in a situation like this and be successful - but for us, we really found that the solution was integrating more of our coaching team as much as possible, stepping back and just being students.
Lae: And it sounds like, because of the pandemic, the infrastructure for having that coach support and outside source of supervision and people to support you in your training, people have been sort of forced to create that, right?
Tim: Totally. So the infrastructure was there and it gave us all kinds of ideas that we had never had maybe thought of in the past. Like last year we would have never thought about a lot of these Zoom lessons on the ice. For example, Cathy might be busy or doing choreography or traveling, but this year she was really present here and had time for us. So it ended up changing a lot of things for the better.
Lae: Is there a sense that you'll carry over some of these new practices or is it like everyone's sort of biding their time and waiting for things to go back to normal?
Tim: You know that's an interesting question because, in the beginning, I think after Worlds, we spent two and a half months off the ice. All the rinks were closed and then we came back to Japan and then we had two weeks of quarantine in the house. So it ended up being almost three months that we didn't skate. In the meantime, we were doing pilates, ballet, ballroom dance, and also hip hop dancing all through quarantine. All the teams, we were doing Zoom lessons every day to stay motivated and have something to do and when we got back on the ice we realized what a great help and how many tools we were able to find off-ice in things that we considered to be extracurricular or just to help the on-ice stuff. It ended up affecting the on-ice skating when we came back in such a big way - like we felt our core strength was better, we felt we were more comfortable skating close together because of the ballroom work that we had done, we felt the shapes of our arms and legs improved a lot from doing more ballet and having more similar shapes drilled into us and doing a lot of repetition. I think that's something we will take in the future a lot more seriously, the amount of work that we were able to do off-ice - even choreography - is so much greater than I had thought previously.
Lae: Amazing. Well, hopefully, it sounds like there are some fruitful gains from that time. So moving on to the competitions that we have seen you guys compete in this season. Obviously, it's been a very different feeling to both the field that you're competing in and also who's been organizing the processes behind the scenes for competing. So would you be able to give us some insight into your experiences and the key differences you've noticed in the way that competitions you've participated in have been organized this year versus a normal year?
Tim: So typically we start off our seasons at the Dreams on Ice ice show and we have the option to do a competitive program or an exhibition program. It's just to get our feet wet for the season and it's usually in July. So that got delayed to September and they ended up putting it in a very competition-like setting. We had five-minute warm-up, we had our names called just like a competition, minimal spotlights, and a kiss and cry. So our federation really set up a situation, even though there was no public, for us to be able to practice competing again and that was really invaluable to the rest of the work we've done for this season. To just get back on the horse, as we say, because we hadn't competed since February in Korea - and even saying that now that we were competing in a space in February is so wild to me because it was already such a global issue at that point. It's pretty amazing that we were able to safely have Four Continents thinking about it now. From there, we had Carnival on Ice and we also decided to perform our competitive program there, our Rhythm Dance especially, because we felt it needed the mileage. [Carnival on Ice] had some socially distanced but a limited number of public [spectators] so then we got another taste of skating in front of people then. And then Sectionals, of course, was our first real competition but with no public. So I actually thought that when they initially said that there would be no public that it was going to feel really strange, but there's still a lot of coaches, skaters, some media, and organizers. So there were enough people there that it didn't make me feel completely alone, like I thought it would just be us and our coach and the judging panel, but it ended up being around 40-50 people at a time - of course, everyone masked, socially distanced and no shouting. It made a big difference and I think it's been a reason why there have been opinions, of course, about whether it's been safe to hold Grand Prix events but some of the things that made NHK operate smoothly, in my opinion, were that we were temperature checked 14 days prior to the competition and we had to check in with all of our symptoms every day. We even had an application for that to make sure that everybody was healthy going in. Everyone was very respectful about wearing a mask in the audience and staying in the socially distanced seats. There was no shouting or cheering, and those kinds of things make a difference, I think. Plexiglass in the kiss and cry isn't the most beautiful thing, but it makes a difference. Like I said, at our first experience at Dreams on Ice this year, they even had the kiss and cry with the plexiglass so it was definitely strange the first time but we've gotten used to it. At the end of the day, it still feels like a competition and you're so busy during the performance, whether there's 50 people or 1000 people, it kind of feels the same. You've got your job to do and, long story short, I felt very safe and very taken care of this season. As we're going into the winter, of course, we're all nervous as cases are going up in pretty much all of the Northern Hemisphere in second and third waves, so that's concerning. I just hope that as time goes on with the decision-making process that safety is taken into account first.
Lae: It sounds like a lot of the sense of safety hinges on the various steps being taken to prevent and precaution risks of infection. Would you say that the role of the organizers and the little checkpoints in the competitions are the things that make you safe? Or is it also the overall situation in, say, the region or seeing the cases go up - do you think the overall situation affects your sense of safety? Even if, for example, you still have the plexiglass and whatnot.
Tim: Absolutely it's both. It's a situation of the organizing committee and feeling safe in that sense but also, as you said, knowing the area you're going to, the hotel you're in and the areas that are quarantined, the quality of how well the bus and the eating areas are separated and cleaned - all of these kinds of things that go on the organizer’s side are important. But for sure, I'm concerned about later in the season in different areas of the world with how well things will be able to go, not just in skating but in all sports and all kinds of large events - especially as vaccine talks begin. You know, the third thing that made me feel safe, like I said, was the public being able to follow recommendations that I think are wise. And I think we've all learned a lot this year about how important community is in a lot of ways and how important it is that we all take equal effort to take care of each other. So it really does take people respecting the guidelines and respecting the space and I was so impressed because I thought that maybe in the height of competition that people would start to cheer but all of the skaters and all of the public were super respectful of the space and I was really impressed. Honestly, that made me feel really safe.
Lae: It definitely sounds like the attitude that carries over - obviously, you can set guidelines, you can set all of these rules and precautions - but if you can see people not respecting that, that would also affect your sense of safety, right?
Tim: For sure, yeah. There's the area where the competition is being held, the ability of people to respect the rules and the space, and the organizer - I think it's all of it that contributes to the safety of the athletes and of the public and of the judges. Whether guidelines are able to completely prevent things is a completely different conversation but yeah, to answer your question, those three things together have made me feel pretty safe during this competition season so far.
Lae: That's great to hear. We obviously know, with NHK Trophy, the scale of the audience and of the event itself was a lot bigger than the regional and sectional competitions that you participated in earlier. One question is do you feel a difference in the sense of safety or in the organization when faced with a larger scale event and do you think it will be very much similar for Nationals coming up?
Tim: Yeah, I do feel, especially now going into winter, that the safety requirements have gotten more strict, which I think is correct. If I compare Sectionals to NHK, which were one month apart, things were definitely more tightly run, in my opinion, and everything was very well organized. I think as time goes on, we're all learning how to handle this in more intelligent ways, and perhaps, as another wave is coming or going, that's the biggest thing. To be able to pivot and learn from not only the last competition but whatever's going on in the rest of the sports world and try to make things happen in the safest way possible and if that's not possible, then don't try and make things happen.
Lae: Along that vein, the other area of focus has been on the accessibility of information and updates on the situation. Obviously, as fans, we're usually the last to know about whether or not an event is going ahead or not. As a skater, how is the communication behind the scenes? Do you know in advance whether or not an event might be canceled or are you waiting for the announcements? How does that sort of communication process work?
Tim: It's kind of depended a lot this year from competition to competition. Typically, we only know things when they become a press release - which might be surprising to a lot of people. We don't get a lot of information beforehand. With obvious things, like the World Championships last [season], for us, it was pretty clear two weeks out that it was not likely to happen. But you have to, as an athlete, prepare yourself for the competition or be ready in any case. So even though we knew the likelihood was pretty small, until we got the news, you almost have to lie to yourself that you have to be ready - which I think has contributed to a lot of fatigue this year. I really feel for the Junior skaters and I worry for the young kids because the Junior Grand Prix series was canceled and then the ability to do B competitions in Juniors has been very small, I think maybe less than 10 competitions - and then Junior Worlds also was canceled. So - I'm a little bit off-topic - most of the time, we receive the information at a very similar moment to the public. Occasionally, we'll know that the ISU is meeting on x date and they may make a decision but, yeah, we're sort of all in this together, so to speak.
Lae: At the mercy of the press releases, by the sounds of it.
Tim: Yeah, and for the most part, I have total sympathy because these decisions are super difficult to make and there's so much involved with sponsorships, travel, quarantine, and safety. You see certain sports being run in a bubble and you say "Okay, why can't we do that in figure skating?" But those kinds of things take time and they take a lot of people being able to be on the same page. I really, in a lot of words, I'm not impatient for them to make decisions because I would like it to be as safe and as correct as possible. You know, we just keep working and I think that part of what makes it easier for the Senior athletes is that the Olympics are coming in 14 or 15 months. So Worlds yes or Worlds no, there's still something coming that we all should be working towards. But I do worry about the Junior kids, that must be really tough for their motivation.
Lae: Speaking of motivation, you've alluded to how important it is to have something to work towards, do you think that's been the key contributor to the struggles a lot of skaters have been facing?
Tim: Absolutely, and I should start by saying that I just want to recognize how lucky we've been this season - like I've performed four times, sometimes with an audience and sometimes without, but that is extremely rare this year. Particularly in the situation where we were able to stay healthy, I consider that to be a very lucky situation and I'm very grateful that I've been able to keep some kind of rhythm because it is really hard to stay motivated. The summer was extremely difficult because everything was up in the air and you've got to start doing run-throughs and you've got to start preparing and we [thought that we're] probably going to the Rhythm Dance the same as last year - but there's just so much up in the air. I think having little checkpoints along the way is super important and I know that a lot of the top coaches and the top schools who haven't been able to compete have created ways to simulate that as much as possible. But it's very difficult and there have been waves of motivation where some days are easier than others and this is all very first world problems but, at the same time, it is our job, so we're trying to find ways to make it work. The other thing that was difficult motivation-wise, at least for us, we like once or twice a year to have some time off and we just didn't have any time off this year - because you never know when you're going to be stuck in quarantine again or when the ice rink is going to close. So we have skated all the time, through the whole year, and that's been a good learning experience - how that affects the body and when to pull back a little bit, even though we're still skating, and how to create a rhythm. All of that is important to the physical as well as the mental side of being motivated, and it has been a challenge, I think. But we've definitely been really lucky that we've had a consistent schedule.
Lae: Yeah, it definitely seems to be dependent on where you are [geographically] and the situation there as well. Which, again, brings up questions, if Worlds is going to happen, everyone won't be on the same playing field or have the same foundations for it. That brings us to the last thing on the horizon, after Nationals. In the current situation, other than working towards Nationals, how are you feeling about the possibility of Worlds? Will you be returning to Canada at any point after Nationals or do you intend to stay in Japan as much as possible?
Tim: We've already made plans to return to Canada in January, so we're looking forward to that. It will be quite a reunion. It's been 9 months already since we were last there - and we weren't there for very long. We came back from Four Continents and we were there until April. We're really looking forward to getting to spend some in person, even though it will be distanced, time with our coaches. We've already selected music for next season as well. Depending on how things are going, we want to get started as soon as possible for next season. But yeah, the plan is to return to Canada and get to work but there could be news about Worlds this month, or there could be news about Worlds in March, just before. So we'll see. My personal feelings, as I said, are thinking ahead to the Olympic year and making sure that the Rhythm Dance is really tight and ready to go in the case that there is Worlds because, for us, the Rhythm Dance is the strategy. We need to make the Free Dance [at Worlds] to qualify Japan for the Olympics. In the Team Event, they cut five couples after the Rhythm Dance, so it's likely that the Free Dance will be with the USA, Russia, France, Italy, and us - or China - somewhere in that mix of we may end up being fourth or fifth in the Free. The real work that we can do to help our team out in the team event is also in the Rhythm Dance, strategically, so we're going to be really focused on keeping that Rhythm Dance fast and tight, moving together, and raising the level of our step sequences. I think our focus, regardless, will begin to shift to the Olympic year.
Lae: Sounds like a solid plan and, hopefully, you get to test that out at Nationals and keep going onwards, whether or not Worlds will happen this season. Thank you so much for your time, we really appreciate it all of the insight that you've offered.
Tim: Thanks for having me, I really appreciate it.
-end interview-
Becs: Thank you to Tim for taking the time to speak with us for this episode and for giving us his insight on what it was like to compete in the Grand Prix this season. Listening to Tim's feedback was reassuring because he did mention that he did feel very well taken care of as a competitor and very confident and safe in how they ran it internally. So that was quite encouraging to hear from someone who is actually competing because it is the skaters we are concerned about as well as the volunteers and judges and everyone else involved. But it was encouraging to hear that feedback, given some of the opacity with the Japanese federation. So realistically, my feeling is that if you don't do either something relative to a constrained bubble or still considerable isolation, intense precautions, no audience, a vaccine, and a delay so that it can be distributed - Worlds should probably realistically not be happening. Federations realistically need to speak up more on the implications of it to persuade the ISU to actually stand up as a governing body properly. If they do hold it, should Olympic spots even be decided at this Worlds? Should they focus more on figuring out some sort of system early for next season [to decide spots]. If so many countries can't even compete properly or can't send their normal top athletes because of health issues to compete for spots at Worlds...
Kat: I mean, I have always thought that deciding Olympic spots from the prior years’ Worlds was a stupid choice. I can't be mad if they decide to change their Olympic spots assignment system.
Becs: You know what, if they cancel Worlds now, they have like six months to have coffee breaks and figure out a system for deciding it earlier next season. Regardless of how things play out, we are really earnestly anticipating the ISU's deliberations regarding the logistics of holding Worlds and we hope they will decide quickly.
Kat: Also cancel World Team Trophy. Let's be real, no one's going to be at World Team Trophy.
Becs: Honestly, if the Japanese federation wants to have a vague mock competition to give their athletes funding because [WTT] has one of the richest prize money pools for competitors. So if they want to turn this into a domestic event and give their skaters lots of funding, I'm not going to be opposed to that because it's been a really tough year for athletic funding so by all means have it be regional. You could do regional teams, or something, for fun.
Kat: Or do it [virtually]! They don't even have to be [together] in teams, they could all be in their rinks or something.
Becs: Right, this is just a fun competition anyway.
Kat: It's all for entertainment, it's fine.
Becs: Hopefully they will make decisions that truly prioritize the health and future of these athletes, especially given the shortness of skating careers and the sacrifices involved. So fingers crossed that things don't implode more. Thank you so much for listening. We hope to see you again for our next episode, whenever that is. Thank you to Lae so much for conducting the interview with Tim Koleto, and thank you to our transcribing and quality control team for working so hard to ensure quality. And Evie, our wonderful editor-in-chief, for handling the episode edits and Gabb for giving us our fabulous graphics, as always.
Kat: If you want to get in touch with us, feel free to contact us via our website inthelopodcast.com or on Twitter. You can find our episodes on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify. And if you enjoy the show and want to help support the team, please consider making a donation to us on our Ko-Fi page. And we'd love to give a huge thank you to all the listeners who have contributed to our team thus far.
Becs: You can find the links to all of our social media pages and our Ko-Fi on our website. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, please consider leaving a rating and a review if you've enjoyed the show. Also please take care and, if we don't produce an episode before then, have a wonderful holiday season! Stay safe!
Kat: Please stay safe! Social distance! Masks!
Becs: Yes, wear masks! Take precautions. Congrats for basically surviving 2020 at this point!
Kat: Yes, it's been a hell of a year.
Becs: It has. So round of applause.
Kat: But we do really want to thank all of our listeners who have stuck around with us in this crazy time. It's been a rough year for all of us but we are very grateful to you. This has been Kat,
Becs: and Becs. Bye!
Kat: Bye!