Thursday, February 24, 2011

This and That


Caydee Denney and Jeremy Barrett announced the end of their partnership today.  Caydee plans to continue and will be a much-wanted partner, while Jeremy plans to go into coaching and show skating.

Gametime with Shayla Worley


UCLA update with Miss Val

Wonderful feature on 'dance major' Jonathan Cassar.  It is bullshit that his PCS were only 68.50, but the judges clearly held him down for not having a Triple Axel.  If PCS were accurate, he'd have scored much higher than Miner and Dornbush.  I'll be nice to our National Champion and not make a comparison.

One year later, Joannie Rochette reflects.

Joannie confirmed that she will compete at the 2011 Japan Open.  She has never been skating better than she is now.

Marlie have sealed their #1 ISU ranking.  They can lose Worlds and will still be the number one ranked ice dance team in the World.

Mao Asada and Miki Ando prepare for Worlds.

Gym Dog Practice Update
Kat Ding has the flu.  Shayla is limited to bars this week.  Ironically, this foot issue could be the thing that keeps Shayla in one piece for the post season.  This makes it more of a challenge for the Gym Dogs to finalize their lineups, but we can only hope that Jay will have learned that he needs to go with greatness when his team's future is on the line and not go with the 9.7s.

Jonathan Horton hopes to me more than 'just a trickster' in 2011.

12 comments:

  1. Too bad about Denney and Barrett. I know a lot of you find her annoying, but I like her for some strange reason. I think Rockne Brubaker should drop the child bride and pair up with Caydee. They both are hungry competitors.

    Also, Tonya Harding had a baby a few days ago. I didn't know she was married, much less pregnant. Congrats to her!

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  2. I fear for that child.

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  3. Not too surprised. Disappointing season. He's injured. He's been training away from his fiancee. He's older and probably isn't up to competitive skating for the next five years or so, which is probably what Caydee wants. Better to do this now so she has a chance to find a new partner for Sochi and beyond.

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  4. "Too bad about Denney and Barrett. I know a lot of you find her annoying, but I like her for some strange reason. I think Rockne Brubaker should drop the child bride and pair up with Caydee. They both are hungry competitors."

    Okay, I LOL'ed at this. Child bride? Hahahaha.

    I don't think Denney would be right for Brubaker at all. She is truck driver. He is polished. Then again, I find Brubaker's new partner eerily similar to Denney in terms of line, polish, and presentation (or lack thereof). So maybe it isn't such a far-fetched proposition. Ideally, I would combine the confident jumping of Rockne's new partner with the gorgeous skating of his old partner, and create the ideal partner for him. HA.

    As for Barrett, I think his expectations of himself got too high too fast. They switched coaches, hired a choreographer for the first time, and expected an instant quick fix. It wasn't going to happen. Their skating needed a lot of work, which required patience and not stressing out over their competition results. They should have been happy to place 3rd with a fall, but obviously saw it as a failure. A shame.

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  5. I just WTF out loud when I read the news about Denney and Barrett. I did not see that one coming at all. Did she dump him because he got hurt? I did not see this coming AT ALL. sure, they had a disappointing season, but it wasn't that bad. last year around this time we got the McLaughlin/Brubaker news. I guess american pairs really are doomed to short partnerships. I agree that Caydee and Rockne would be great together, she has spunk and fight and is still young (but looks a lot more mature than little Mary-Beth).

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  6. I miss seeing Brubaker skate with someone who looked his age who knew how to relate to him (where the hell did his old partner vanish to?!), but I don't see how Denney would look good with him... She may look mature, but she didn't exactly relate well to Barrett.

    Pair skating has to be the hardest discipline in skating. It's incredible how even pairs who you think will stay together for a while end up just not being able to. Denney & Barrett's fast success might have spoiled them into believing they wouldn't need to take serious time to polish up their look. Maybe Barrett just knew he wasn't going to lose that football player look without a Zimmerman miracle

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  7. Let's see if Caydee and Jeremy stay friendly or if they start writing hate comments to each other on their joint Twitter account.

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  8. It's hard I guess to find pairs partners close in age. It's somewhat surprizing but I do hope Caydee finds a good partner, and they have great success in the years to come.

    And congrats to Tonya Harding and her husband on their new baby. Best of luck there.

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  9. It's too bad that the US pairs tend to have such large differences in age. No wonder so many of them split up after a relatively short time - you have two partners with completely different goals, levels of maturity etc. I'm pleased that at least Evora and Ladwig (who are a bit closer in age) stayed together and eventually got good results.

    D/W will be the no. 1 ranked team, but if P/B medal in Tokyo, they will finish atop the season standings, which they currently lead on account of winning two senior Bs. Going to Nebelhorn and Finlandia proved to be a really smart move for them.

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  10. As usual, one of the US top pairs bites the dust after one average season, as if it's end of the world. Not many of our pairs have good perspective on things. But let's keep in mind that Denney & Barrett were a truck driver style pair, and maybe Barrett could not see him improving that style much in his upper 20s. They were a solid, competitive pair, but nothing special about then like there had been with the McLaughlin/Brubaker pairing.

    I'd like Brubaker better with Denney than Marley just for the simple reason that Denney actually looks like an adult, but wouldn't that be sad for Marley? Then again, will the way Brubaker seems to turn on his former partners (he has a grudge towards the Miller girl even though she couldn't help that she simply became way too tall for pair skating), I don't think he'd care too much about Marley's feelings being hurt post-breakup.

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  11. I've kind of liked Caydee despite her dated, tacky, "Dancing With the Stars" look. Jeremy always seemed to be a millstone around her neck.

    She has spunk, I hope she finds a good partner and also a good stylist.

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