It’s almost time for the 2019-20 figure skating season, which means it’s officially past In The Loop’s one year anniversary! In the interests of full transparency, we’d love to share a quick update with you about what we’re aiming for this year.
Tales of the Blade: Ulrich Salchow - Transcript
Tilda: It seems that was just the way he was because he also offered one of his past medals to Dick Button. [Karly: My dude!] in 1947, and Dick Button at that point came second but Salchow felt that he should have won and a lot of people agreed because people were super salty about judging here. [Salchow] was like, you should have won here -- have this medal!
Karly: Ulrich seems like a pretty respectful dude. You know, giving away his gold medal to who he thinks rightfully should have won. That takes some stripe of character.
Tilda: Right but it's also very savage if you're not competing.
Karly: That is also savage. He's like, I beat you but I'll give it to you.
Tilda: Yeah, at this competition with Dick Button, he wasn't even competing. It was like this other dude who won. Gerschwiler won and then Ulrich was like, no.
Karly: [laughs] “You did not win. Uh-uh, not on my watch.”
Tilda: It was like really savage.
Tales of the Blade: Elaine Zayak - Transcript
Kite: So today is gonna be our second episode of Tales of the Blade, which is a new series where we're gonna dive into the history of figure skating. So the catch here is that one of the hosts is going to be teaching topic of the episode and the other host does not know anything about the topic that is about to be taught to them. So this week we are going to be talking about Elaine Zayak, who has the dubious honor of having one of the best known technical rules named after her. We do have to warn you before getting into this episode that there is going to be some mention of eating disorders, so if that is particularly upsetting to you then please refer to the time stamps for where to skip in the episode. So let's get right into it! Yogeeta can you tell me what the Zayak rule is?
Yogeeta: Oh god, I'm sure I could have told you this when it wasn’t relevant.
Episode 32: Warhorses - Transcript
Niamh: Another example of this was the “Despacito” we had during the Olympics.
Gina: Oh, God.
Karly: I was watching the Ice Dance Short Dance with my sister and my sister loves Despacito so every time “Despacito” came on she got super hyped, and I was like “Oh my God, not Despacito again.”
Niamh: Oh no, my mum thought they had to do “Despacito,” like it was the compulsory song. (hosts laugh)
Karly: You’re all doing “Despacito.” Carmen who? I only know “Despacito,” the true warhorse. (laughter)
Tales of the Blade: Madge Syers - Transcript
Episode 31: The Cost of Figure Skating (feat. Interview with Tim Koleto) - Transcript
Taeri: It seems like in every competition cycle there's a number of skaters, especially those from smaller federations, who talk about their financial struggles. There are just a lot of little things that factor into making the sport burdensome like travel, housing, and accommodation - not just for the skater but for their coaches and their families. We've looked into multiple ways that skaters fund their own careers and it honestly varies based on factors like a skaters federation, their world ranking, even their popularity to get booked for shows.
ITL's Favorite Moments of the 18/19 Season
Episode 30: World Team Trophy 2019 - Transcript
Evie: It's quite disheartening that we have to go through this, especially when the IJS is, if you read it, a quite solid system if you base it just solely off what's written in the handbooks. If it's applied effectively, it would be a really solid judging system but it's not being used to its full advantage because judges aren't applying it fairly.
Yogeeta: The answer is clearly that we need robot tech callers and robot judges.
Niamh: That's at the next Congress.
Evie: Listen, they have to argue about whether music can be brought on a USB to a competition - I think we're a couple of centuries away from robots at this point. Let's be honest.
Interview: Brian Orser, Coach at Toronto Cricket Club
Nina: So what's the most rewarding part of being a coach?
Brian: Just seeing it all come to fruition. There are some days when Tracy [Wilson] and I are out there and we've got all of these amazing athletes and it's just like a well-greased machine. All the parts are all moving smoothly and there's a nice harmony with the session. Everybody's got good energy and they're doing their things and we just stand back and we just watch it. And we go "Wow! This is good skating. We're really lucky." But you can't become complacent because as soon as that happens, the wheels fall off, so you have to keep it well-greased. And then there are days where it doesn't [work] and sometimes we just have to accept that too.
Episode 29: World Figure Skating Championships 2019 - Transcript
Yogeeta: Peng and Jin's short is probably my favourite Short Program from the pairs from the entire season, and the fact that they were a fully rotated triple Sal away from getting bronze just causes my anxiety.
Kat: Listen, Sals are cursed for the Chinese pair girls.
Kite: They're cursed for everybody as we will talk about.
Yogeeta: Sals are snakes, we don't like them, they don't go here.
Kat: Yeah, I know. Although, I sacrificed something to the sal gods for Wenjing landing that Sal in the free, because I was like…
Yogeeta: Yeah, you sacrificed Yuzuru's Sal!
Kite: We really got to be more specific next time.