“I feel sick to my stomach. What I’m feeling is my whole dedication to my sport, to my community and to my country — I’m questioning it all,” says retired Canadian skater Scott Moir, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in ice dance. “I’m questioning why I walked into schools for the past 12 years of my life and told kids what pride I took in being an Olympian and what that means, and what power sports has in bringing the world together, for fair play and the Olympic morals that we all believe in.”
Like Rippon, Moir has sympathy for the circumstances surrounding Valieva but doesn’t believe that she should be excused without consequence. “I do feel for the 15-year-old,” he says, “but at the end of the day if she did cheat, it’s very simple to me—she shouldn’t be competing. I do put the blame for that on people around her, and not so much on her. But this is a big hit to the Olympic movement.”
Moir is concerned that the ruling will test the faith and trust that young athletes, and the public, have in the Olympics being the purest form of healthy competition. If a doped athlete is allowed to compete, he says, “I don’t understand why people would want to turn on the TV to watch. The only optimistic thing that I can come up with is that this sparks change.”
Both Rippon and Moir now coach skaters Valieva’s age. They hope to use this unfortunate spectacle as a teaching tool, if nothing else positive comes out of it. “We will talk about how yes, life isn’t fair all the time, but the most important thing is to keep your integrity, and play the game by the rules, and for what you believe in,” says Moir.
‘Beyonce covered Sex On Fire at glastonbury right?’ ‘She made the song a lot better. She made me masturbate to my own song.“ - Caleb Followill (from Kings of Leon)
The total of undocumented graves of children who died and were killed in Indian residential schools is now at 1323. UNDOCMENTED, there are already over 6000 on the record. There are still over 130 other schools to investigate still. And, just so Canadians understand...given the current numbers, 7323 children, if Canada was to lower it's flag to half-mast for one day for each child, as the numbers stand today the flag would not rise for over 20 years. Even if they were to lower it for one hour for every child, that would be 305 days. I hope this paints a very clear image. I am hurt, my community is hurting, our nations are mourning, and we have been in mourning for years. I pray this does not fall on deaf ears. Non-indigenous Canadians, you no longer have an excuse to claim ignorance. You can no longer say "I had no idea Canada did this." It did. And in many ways Canada continues this opression and genocide to this day.
Main thoughts from GP assignments - it’s all super political. The best examples are how federations assigned their teams to the home events - it usually goes to the reigning National champion but this time there’s a lot of shifting going around:
Most noticeable for me is James/Radford getting Skate Canada along with Moore-Towers/Marinaro - Not sure if J/R were eligible for two assignments or not but either way that’s a blow for MT/M
Valieva got CoR over Shcherbakova.
Mishina/Galliamov got CoR over Tarasova/Morozov.
H/D vs. C/B showdown in the first event of the season AND at a home event is a huge WTF for me tbh, it will likely backfire, most likely for H/D…
Other thoughts:
Sinitsina/Katsalapov have the upper hand over Papadakis/Cizeron and snatching the prestigious NHK Tropy assignment in a similar way to 2107/18 when TS got it over P/C…
Sui/Han currently with back to back assignments, they do get their choreography in Canada but not sure it’s a great idea for a team that is plagues with injuries.
Smart/Diaz also with two back to back events and taking a huge break between their last GP event and Euros which didn’t prove to be great for them before.
No Bychenko? not sure he made it in to the top 24 but still surprised by it.
Also funny how Nathan is like - I’ll do Canada and the US and then I’m out until GPF, that’s definitely a strategic move.
I’m like 99% sure disco brits are getting special treatment with the prestige assignment they got (and their current scoring…).
The Shoma vs. Yuzu showdown at NHK makes little sense for me but it cacn work tbh.
The Kaori vs. Rika showdown at NHK is even more bonkers tbh.
Also, NHK ladies field is INSANE - Rika, Kaori, Young You, Trusova, Usacheva, and Liu are all podium prospects.
In fact Skate Canada and Skate America also have really deep ladies fields.
Mariah Bell really got shitty back to back assignments, both in Europe…
Kostornaia with OK assignments, once against Valieva and once against Shcherbakova so hopefully she can kick ass.
Khuda/Bagin currently with no assignments - they can hope for an invite to CoR and other WD…
Stepanova/Bukin going against P/C twice, and once with H/D while the other with G/P - that might mean no GPF final for them.
Oh, and I really really hope we’ll see Scott both at SCI and GP France in the K&C with Carreira/Ponomarenko.
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