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Tales of the Blade: 19th Century Rinks - Transcript

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Evie: Well, you're not that far off, honestly. You're a couple steps to the left of what was actually used. Henry Kirk tried to emulate the feeling of ice using a mixture of materials and included in this mixture were salt, copper, aluminium and... hog's lard. Literal hog's lard - the fat from a hog - to make it slippery enough to skate on!

Niamh: Who's sitting in their kitchen one night thinking, "Oh, I know what I'll do, I'll make some fake ice using hog's lard!"

Evie: Obviously Henry Kirk thought that. So here's your ingredients: "30-50 feral hogs --" (hosts laugh)

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Tales of the Blade: Ulrich Salchow - Transcript

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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.

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Tales of the Blade: Elaine Zayak - Transcript

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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)

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Tales of the Blade: Madge Syers - Transcript

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Tilda: I'm still stuck on the suit thing. Did they really wear formal wear when they were competing?

Evie: I don't know if they wore formal wear but I guess they wore normal suits they would wear every day kind of thing.

Tilda: They didn't have Adidas back then? (Hosts laugh)

Evie: Ye olde Adidas!

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Episode 31: The Cost of Figure Skating (feat. Interview with Tim Koleto) - Transcript

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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.

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Episode 30: World Team Trophy 2019 - Transcript

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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.