Datebook: Monday, October 29th ~ 2007

Okay, I have to admit it; I do not understand the world of figure skating.

There are times when I think I have “Ice Dementia” because I seem to understand what is happening and the direction we are heading, but then the next day I am in a vortex of confusion again.

I wish I could pinpoint where the slide begins, but I can’t.

For example, I spent several weekends in the summer traveling to one costume designer or another with my daughter. The final products were expensive and glitzy—the mandatory requirement for ice dance, but one of these creations was deemed incorrect and we went back to the drawing board to reconfigure. The problem we were told was the costumes needed to be “more”, they should strive to be “over the top” yet they needed to be “authentic” (for the folk-country of the Original Dance). Our new costumes are actually “less” in the amount of fabric used, they are pushing the pedal hard toward cresting the hill for being over the top, and I now think the reason that Michelle Kwan has been made an international ambassador of sorts, is to repair some of the fallout from how offensive some of our “authentic costumes” might be to the citizens of those selected “folk” countries. In hindsight, we should have picked music from Austria, because that can be the only authentic use of all of those bezillion crystals.

Anyway, I thought watching Skate America would clear it all up for me. Surely the senior level skaters had been taken in hand and given clear direction by the ISU. I don’t know, maybe there was a page break in the memo; they certainly got the “less is more”, and the concept of pushing the envelope toward “the top” but trust me, it is very doubtful there is anything “authentic” going into the arena in St. Paul this January unless lycra and nude netting is now trading as a universal currency.

The second thing I do not understand in figure skating-- and this is across all skating disciplines, is the use of Program Component Scores. I have seen this broached on discussion boards, but I have usually bypassed these topic lines as my doctor has advised me to “eliminate stress” from my life. Oh, the Technical Scores I can grasp and identify with clarity (even if I don’t always agree with the levels or non-levels given out by the technical panel) but the PCS are a bit of a mystery, much like what is really in those cans of Spam I see on the grocery shelf.

PCS scores remind me of when I went to the drugstore as a child and picked a balloon hanging from the ceiling to find-out the price of my hot fudge sundae—the price could be anywhere from one cent to fifty-nine cents (and by the way, even if this does sound ancient, it wasn’t THAT long ago!) .

We have gone to competitions where our skaters have missed elements or fallen in an element (I know, I keep a paper bag tucked in my purse for those occasions) and you know the Technical Scores are going to be lower. But then your friends sitting near you say, “Oh, don’t worry; they have such marvelous edges and lines that their second scores have to be much higher.”

And you wait, breathing into a brown lunch bag hoping the icenetwork camera isn’t focused on you, for those second scores to come up. And when they do, you often need to upgrade to a paper grocery bag.

Because sometimes they are not higher.

Sometimes the second scores are low also, even though they have skated beautifully to the music and their choreography IS stunning, but they aren’t getting the marks that show the 3 minutes and 26 seconds that they were not flat on the ice.

And you ask your friends, “Did they think that fall was part of the Choreography and they didn’t like it, is that why they have 4s—do they think they should have fallen better?”

And not knowing what else to say, your circle says, “Well, I guess they have to take off for the fall because it disrupts from the program.”

“I don’t think they can do that,” I respond. “I think that’s double indemnity, or double dipping, or something double.”

But on a day when ice dementia kicks in, my skaters have skated, or others as the case may be, and they have had a fall, or a trip, or a bobble, and it is just a blip on the screen. If it is a fall, it is a one point deduction and they can, here is the Twilight Zone part, actually put more points between them and their closest competitors.

“Is that really possible?” I ask myself (oh yes, talking to one’s self is clearly a sign of ice dementia).

And so I watched this weekend. During the final group of two, well maybe three of the events, there were some “problems”—you know, the missed-popped-splat trio. I scrutinized the faces of the waiting coaches, skaters, spectators—both fans and those that are “trained”, and I saw the same thing.

All eyes were on the Jumbo-Tron. Shallow breathing. No talking.

All eyes were waiting to see the scores because no one knew.

Whatever numbers came up became “how it is” or “the call”.

Hence, in ice-dementia the Jumbo-tron becomes the Wizard from Oz, or the popped balloon with the price written on a little folded slip of paper from my past.

At least then I got to eat a hot fudge sundae.

Mombo.