Dr. Frog

Did The Atlantic lose their proofreader? 😳

Yeah. I note they also left off Kam & O'Shea -- guess even a gold medal in the team event doesn't get you into the gala if you don't skate well in the individual. 🤷

Seems a bit odd that they would pass over the #5 dance team in favor of #6 and #9 (of course it would have been different if either of the lower-ranked teams was a team event medalist). Did Z&K decline, or the other countries politicked harder? 🤔

Since it never went to trial, there is no actual legal evidence, sworn testimony, or witnesses corroborating the allegations, and for that reason I'm willing to admit that there is some possibility that this was an attempted publicity stunt. But I do think her story is probably true.

Yes, I believe that was what was going on here: the alleged victim was either threatened or realized that Trump was going to use the whole right-wing media universe to provoke threats against her and it would destroy her life.

The lawsuit wasn't buried, it was withdrawn by the woman who filed it. The legal document wasn't buried either; it's been circulating on the net for years (I first saw it in the spring of 2017, IIRC). The details are quite lurid.

....and the aftermath. Ilia's behavior was really classy here, taking the time to actually *talk* to Misha instead of just shaking hands and disappearing into the tunnel. And Urmanov must have been having flashbacks to his own Olympic victory, which nobody had expected.

Shaidorov when the standings came up after Malinin's skate. I hope he got to take that security panda 🐼 home with him, it was getting a lot of use here.

After Kagiyama's skate, Shaidorov realizes he's won at least the *silver* medal. He can't believe it!

⛸️ Some screen grabs from Friday....

Shaidorov realizes he's going to get a medal when he sees the standings after Adam SHF's poor skate.

7) I kept thinking about how Jason Brown might have placed in this field, if he might even had been on the podium with a clean program with only triples. Unfortunately, a clean program seemed beyond his reach this season, so that's all hypothetical. 😢 Not gonna argue with him being left at home.

6) I also thought Junhwan Cha was undermarked on the program components. I enjoyed both his programs, but, sadly, I think the sport has passed him by.

5) Torgashev was 8th in the SP and 9th in the FS but somehow ended up 12th overall. 🤔 His skating skills -- flow over the ice, effortless speed, etc -- are top-notch and the judges are not giving him enough credit for that. He needed better music and choreography, I think.

4) Kagiyama is an amazing skater but there's no way he can feel proud of his silver medal with that total mess of a free skate. On top of random falls just from trying high-risk jumps, I think the notorious pressure from their home country's media and fan base got to all 3 of the Japanese men.

3) Stephen Gogolev has to be the most wildly overperforming skater of the games so far. I am sure he never even *dreamed* of being in the top 5, much less second in the free skate!

2) It seems that Malinin's advantage of being the only skater doing multiple and harder quads has evaporated. E.g. if I counted right 7 other skaters got credit for a (not always successful) quad lutz on the protocol. Lots of guys attempted 3 different quads; Shaidorov and Gummenik 4.

1) I don't know why everyone is so shocked about Shaidorov winning; he's the reigning world silver medalist, after all. He didn't have a good fall season but we knew what he could do; he's got that huge backloaded quad sal combination, etc.

⛸️ A few random thoughts about the men, now that I've had a chance to sleep on it:

YouTube video by The Skating Session The Skating Session - S2E26 - 2026 OLYMPICS FREE DANCE Deep Dive & Aftermath

Here's the link. These guys are true geeks 🤓 about scoring and the rulebook but it's sure easier to just blame "The French Judge" than to do what they did here.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwJg...

Did you see the video Tony and Thomas put out yesterday? They both thought C&B should have won with the cleaner program, but when they went through element by element using the actual judging criteria, they ended up with FB&C winning by an even larger margin than they actually did.

Oh, FFS, Phil. The ISU judging system drops the high and low scores, this judge's out-of-line scores wouldn't have counted anyway. Folks are just stirring up trouble by spreading this "The French Judge V2" nonsense.

I can't imagine how awful it must be for high-level competitors who suffer career-ending injuries, or who just get old like me. Maybe they put that part of their life in a box in the back of their closet and never open it again, like I did with my old skates for so many years.

I remember the glide of the edge on fresh ice, timing the rise and fall on the knee to the lean of the body, the ripping sound when you generate power, using tension in the arms and shoulders to counter the rotation for turns. Those things once gave me JOY and I couldn't do any of it any more. 😢

A lot of my decline in interest as a spectator is tied to being unable to skate myself any more after I messed up my knee in 2013. I ended up giving away my skates a year or two ago; they no longer fit me anyway, but it seemed so final. I was never much of a skater, but....

Yeah, same here. Zero interest in going to competitions any more, either elite events or local club competitions, and dance is the only discipline I pay much attention to.

I guess some people actually do watch skating for the falls and seeing who's going to wipe out, but I'm thinking the ISU Congress is going to be pretty interesting this year with all the crazy ideas they have been putting out there to make the sport more watchable for the general public.

⛸️ Ice is slippery. 😲

Seriously, the men used to be my favorite discipline in the sport and I used to enjoy even the lowest-ranked competitors, but I just don't want to watch whole events any more because of all the falls. I'll pick and chose the better performances to watch afterwards.

Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik stun in 5th place finish Emilea Zinga and Vadym Kolesnik capped an incredible Olympic debut with a stunning 5th place finish in what has been a truly break-out season for the team.

⛸️ I told you guys last week that this young dance team deserved to become stars in Milan. 🤩

www.nbcolympics.com/videos/emile...

Her name is Emilea, not "Leah". She is an American (born in Michigan) with dual citizenship through her grandparents. Vadym is indeed an immigrant.

3 near falls? Where? I didn't even see one stumble! I thought they were great, deep knees, very fluid and great ice coverage.