Highway Robbery at Figure Skating Nationals ... Ice Those Judges! ... I'm Watching Now ...

 Magnificent unity through and through:Tarah Kayne and Danny O'Shea

 
Okay, let's give all things Ringling a rest. Make this a segue from Out of This World to In This world.  (Ringling, if you bladsters are wondering, was a circus)

I've been out of touch over ice for a while.  Yesterday, I nearly bumped into U.S. Figure Skating Nationals by channel surfing, sat down and watched a few of the pairs teams.  Some pretty nice.
Then came a couple, Kayne and O'Shea, who totally grabbed me.  They struck me as a little heavier than some others, but oh, how their bodies in motion matched, spatial relationships being symmetrically near-perfect, the fluid program a seamless work of art.

Great content, as well.  One or two minor flubs,  but nothing to doom their supremacy over a field I had so far seen,.

I had them easily in first place.

And then came a human interest story, a married pair returning after hardship.  They were Alexa and Chris Knieirim, an obvious crowd favorite:  Full disclosure: I knew nothing about any of these teams. I'm watching the whole thing COLD.

Alexa and Chris produced, I'll give them this, a spectacular fireworks lift off, the woman soaring high in the air.  But this is not supposed to be -- or is it? -- a stunt skating contest.  Reason I say that is because the rest of their routine was a rather messy affair, more like failed sparklers in fizzling disarray. Nothing to compare to Kayne and O'Shea.  In my mind, I gave Knierim and Knierim a second or third place.

Okay, are you ready?  Knierim and Knierim swept the field, easily outscoring Kayne and O'Shea.

ARE YOU KIDDING?  Talk about highway robbery in plain sight.  I can't recall witnessing such flagrantly biased (or fixed) judging at an ice meet, though I'm sure it has happened.  We all know about a fix between judges two judges a few years ago.  Big scandal.  

Not sure about the commentary voices. Seems one of them, once he would hear the scores given, would them come clean on what he really thought of a routine. Finger- in-the-wind scoring?

I am not going to knee-jerk a wish that Dick Button had been there instead.  But I just did.  Or anybody else with a sharper tongue.  How about, say, they get Tanya Harding or her mother to mouth off on the sidelines.

I watched casually then.  This afternoon, I'm going more serious.  The free dance will be on, and that's perhaps the most challenging event to score.  Much of it is, or once was, about subtleties.  I wonder how acrobatic it has become.

See me back later, for more icy impressions ...