Manleywoman SkateCast

Allison Manley

The podcast for hardcore figure skating fans. In-depth ideas and analysis on the sport of figure skating from famous and influential people in the sport. read less
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Episode #74: Sylvia Fontana
Mar 9 2014
Episode #74: Sylvia Fontana
March 2014An interview with Sylvia Fontana, 5-time Italian Champion, 2-time Winter Olympian (for the 2002 Salt Lake City games and the 2006 Torino Games), show skater, coach, reality TV star, and founder of Karisma Sportswear with her husband american pair skater John Zimmerman. She talked about working with Carlo Fassi, why her cats didn't like her methods of warming up, and how she balances team coaching with her husband. 33 minutes, 29 seconds Thanks to Fiona Mcquarrie for transcribing these interview highlights: On her most embarrassing skating moment:  I want to say that it is probably the fact that I can’t hide my emotions very well. So even yesterday as Brandon [Foster] and Haven [Denney] were skating, it was just hard to maintain composure. After every one of my good performances, I would just start crying, and some of the audience or the people watching would wonder why without winning a gold medal I would break down in tears [laughs]. I’m not embarrassed but I definitely can’t hold my composure. On starting skating: My father was in construction, and that’s why I was born in New York, because he had a temporary job building a big sports center in New York City. Then when we moved to Italy he was building a sports center in Rome, and there was a mini-rink. And of all the sports in the center, I was attracted to that. I couldn’t go down stairs and they tell me I still wanted to see the people skate. And I see my little Sofia [her older daughter] just has the same focus when people skate, everything stops. Even better than Minnie Mouse [laughs]. I have US citizenship, and that made it easier when I had to choose a country to train in. No visas, nothing like that. Carlo Fassi at the time was training in Lake Arrowhead and therefore I selected the US for my site of training. In Rome it was really difficult to get a good systematic training schedule. So I moved to the US to improve my skills and really learn the triples. And when I met John [Zimmerman, her husband], he was funny, he was like...and I was, I am, I am a US citizen. But I didn’t speak English very well so he couldn’t understand how that could be possible [laughs]. On being an Italian skater and training in the US: At the time there was [backlash from the Italian federation] but now they’re more used to understanding that some of our infrastructure and coaching has gotten better throughout the years, but wasn’t up to par with what other countries had. And when I moved I was kind of like the first one to have done that. And Carolina [Kostner] had always trained outside of Italy, and now Valentina Marchei is in Detroit. There is always part, I think, of the Italian federation and the Italian coaching staff that looks at you a little bit with disappointment because you’re emigrating, but I think now that Italy is so competitive, they are understanding how one athlete is driven and how to support them in their decision. So it’s better now. But at the time it was a little challenging. I was going to Carlo at first, so it was really emigrating to skate with an Italian, so it was kind of okay [laughs]. And then unfortunately Carlo passed away, so that’s when I moved my coaching to Frank Carroll and Evelyn Kramer. On whether she could have skated for the US: I could have [laughs] but it’s much harder. Yesterday I saw the women’s short program and it’s such a deep field, it’s awesome. It’s beautiful to watch. For a very short moment John was without a partner and we had a mini-tryout, so we could have skated for the US in pairs, but I had just gotten all my triple jumps, and I skate lefty. And we never fight, but we had our first fight 30 minutes after skating together, and we didn’t think it was a good idea [laughs]. On being interested in ice dance: I was always a singles skater at heart. I love pairs, I love watching pairs, and now with John we’re coaching pair teams. And I’m learning so many more aspects of choreographing pairs and what to look in a pair team as far as choreography, I wouldn’t touch the technical part. I do think it’s very interesting to have two people on the ice creating a story, I love that aspect. But for me to skate — I enjoy skating with John and it’s very special to do all these shows, but even then sometimes, I’m like, you took off, wait for me [laughs]. I’m a singles skater that way. On working with Carlo Fassi: He had an aura about himself. He had a lot of charisma. He had that personality where it wasn’t so much what he would say to you, what correction he would give to you, but how. Just the tone of his voice, the command, it almost transferred so much confidence. He knew exactly how to make you better. And to me, that is how I remember him as a young woman growing up. He gave me a lot of confidence, and whenever I felt that he believed in me, it made me believe in myself that much more. And Christa Fassi, I just saw her at Italian nationals, and Christa is a very very good coach and still coaches full out, I have very fond memories of them. It was very hard [when Carlo passed away], I had just lost my father that year, and then Carlo, that was very difficult. On training with Frank Carroll, who at the time was coaching Michelle Kwan: It was awesome. I was very much looking up to Angela Nikodinov, Nicole Bobek, and Michelle — it was really the epicentre of the skating world at the time. I learned a lot from the coaches and from the skaters. Now in coaching I find myself relating stories of training times with Michelle, and how she would start off a long program and maybe missing her first jump but continuing the program as if that never happened, in practice as she would do it [in competition]. And just her work ethic, how she would warm up and cool off. She definitely was a huge role model for all of us training there. And it’s sad that some of the kids now, they are, oh, Michelle Kwan, I heard about her [laughs], and I always say, go and research on YouTube because she is an institution for our sport, she’s an icon. On missing the 1998 Olympic team: I had a very poor national championship. I skated very poorly. It’s so funny now watching an Olympic trial, it’s a different stage when you are competing at a nationals to qualify for the Olympics. I had qualified Italy to be in the Olympics at a competition in August, at the time it was the Vienna Cup, and I was the very favorite to go. And I just didn’t perform well at all, the nerves just got the best of me. And I contemplated quitting, because that’s another four years [to the next Olympics], and I had already gone to Worlds, so that’s another four years to invest into your craft, and I was already 21 so that’s not very young. And I’m very glad that I stayed in because I did two more Olympics [laughs]. It was not the right time, but at the time it was so devastating. And I see so many things going through skaters’ faces now, like, well, you can’t get up from this. But you do, and it makes you stronger. And everything in your career as a skater makes you stronger as a person later. On 2001 Worlds, where she placed 10th after being 19th the year before: I worked very very hard. I had my triples thanks to Carlo, Frank and Evelyn. Then I moved to Connecticut to be closer to John but also to be under the guidance of Galina [Zmievskaya]. Galina really put so much work into improving my skating and I really owe it to her and Nina [Petrenko] and Viktor [Petrenko] to have improved so much. And I was emotionally ready. As I was saying before, as an athlete I grew that mental toughness, and they were behind me to improve my skating to where I needed to be to be up to par with that top 10. It’s really tough to get in to the top 10 [laughs] but I felt - my skills, when being raised in Rome, technically I had so many things that weren’t perfect. And so we had to make do with some things. And Galina tried to improve my technique a little bit without completely starting over, because we didn’t have the time, and she was very successful at that, very smart. On placing 10th at the 2002 Olympics: I wasn’t thrilled because I think — I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, and I think I made two mistakes. One big mistake and one slight mistake, and I knew I could skate better, so that’s why I was unhappy with myself. I wasn’t that unhappy with the score, I wasn’t that type of skater that really focused on the score, but I was really crying only when I skated my best [laughs]. On competing in the 2006 Olympics in Torino: I saw the NBC commercial, I don’t remember how many days it was but it was like 154 days until the Olympics, and they were showing all parts of my country, with the Olympic circles. And something came onto me, I have to try. I was so far back and I was not in shape at all, I had never done triple flip or triple lutz in four years. And I was touring in Broadway on Ice with Brian Boitano and it was in theatres, with very small ice. So I asked Brian, so how was it to come back? And he said, very difficult, but it was a good challenge. So it was good that he was there. And I didn’t want to even admit in my brain that I had thought about coming back, because we had bought a house and I was in a different phase of my life. So I said, I’m just going to start training silently, on my own, and see where I go. And John was on tour in Stars on Ice. So my tour was done in March, so I said, in June, when John comes back, if I am in good shape, maybe I’ll verbalize it out loud [laughs]. And it was good. The drive that you have in training for the Olympics is amazing. And [with the new judging system in 2006] I had never trained some of the required positions in the spins. So when I trained from March to June, I turned on the heaters and did hot yoga in the house. The cats hated me going back to the Olympics, they were dying [laughs]. Obviously I didn’t place as well [as in the 2002 Olympics], I also had several injuries from being 29 and training all these new things. By the time I got to the Olympics I was injured a lot so I really couldn’t do triple flip and triple lutz, which I did at nationals to qualify. But that to me was the peak of my career. Even though I knew I didn’t have the goods and I couldn’t deliver the jumps at that point because of the injury, just to be able to put it together — those nine months leading to the Olympics, getting back into shape, qualifying at Italian nationals, and then skating in front of the home crowd and doing the best I could at that moment — that was it, that was worth it. Peter Tchernyshev did the choreography for the long program. He’s brilliant. And he was the best man at our wedding so I knew he would have the best interests [laughs]. He’s a great friend, and musical and talented. And I had moved to New Jersey, and Robin [Wagner, her coach] was appropriate for my age and what I was going for, my goals. Galina was amazing but I probably could not have handled Galina’s type of training at my age. I was training very hard on my own and tried to get back in shape, but Robin was a great support for me at that time. She was very smart and supportive and positive. She connected with me and understood what I needed at that time, and understanding that if there was an injury, how to manipulate around it. To a younger skater I could say, especially in an Olympic year, to take the defeat as a gift and not as a defeat, and say, what can I learn from this, and not to get you down. Your soul as a skater, as a performer, as a champion, has to be stronger than those little bumps in the road. And that’s what I learned from other skaters, like Michelle and Brian. I was very lucky to have met them and seen them and seen them train, and you learn that from life, it’s a great lesson. Don’t let your confidence and your dream and your drive be shattered by things like, that’s it, a door is closing. Something else will open if you keep at it. On being on the Italian version of the Skating with Celebrities TV show, and winning twice: It’s funny, but when I go back to Italy now that’s how they introduce me [laughs]. It was a very popular show, and it was fun to do. It was interesting that, it’s my curse, I ended up skating pairs [laughs]. It was just a challenging experience. You’re a little bit of both, you’re a coach and a skater. You have to teach them how to skate, you have to teach them how to perform and put together programs, but you’re also the partner and the skater and the performer. It was challenging, but it was fun, because you feel that you’re really bringing the sport that you love into the houses of people that never knew about skating before. So you see so many people falling in love with your sport, and that’s worth it. And so many little kids are starting to skate because skating is popular because of the show. I also did the judging for Dancing with the Stars in Italy for a little while, so I had the opportunity to venture into the TV world. I knew that wasn’t me. I liked more the contact with the sport. It’s a very lucrative job, but coaching is much more satisfying, and my clothing line Karisma. That part of it to me was more challenging than waiting for the next contract. I liked the show for what it was but I wouldn’t want to do TV for a living. We both like The Amazing Race because we are like that with each other, oh, let’s see who gets there first. We used to play tennis, and John looked like John McEnroe, with the same intensity, we are both very competitive people. So that type of television, that type of reality show, we would both love to do. On successfully coaching with her husband: I think it’s the respect we have for each other, and I truly believe he has so much to offer and vice versa. We trust each other in making good decisions, and we really like to hear what the other person thinks and believes. And then we come up with the best solutions for the skaters. We have the common respect for each other. We were both lucky that we had great American coaches and great Russian coaches. John trained under Peter Oppegard and Tamara Moskvina, and I had Carlo and Frank and then Galina. So we know a bit of both systems, and I feel that helps us. Not every skater is the same and not every skater needs the same thing, so our experience helps us. That’s why it’s really hard for me to watch because I know what they’re going through [laughs]. On her clothing line, Karisma: It’s a great challenge and it’s fun because it’s my baby, it really is. We started from zero, completely, and not knowing much about that type of business, but it’s very demanding. Always thinking and always growing. It’s the most popular clothing line in Russia for figure skating, and it’s sold right now in the US, in Asia, in Japan and Hong Kong, and in Russia and all the other European countries. It’s popular and it’s doing really well, but obviously having these two little devils [her daughters] kind of put a stop to growing it for a little bit. But we believe in the product so much, and as a skater I knew how important it was to look your best, and how you feel good when you have things that look good on you. We aspire to having it grow because we were front runners in finding the fabric, in finding the right machine. It wasn’t just an investment where we give money and forget about it. We put our heart into creating the right thing for the skaters, and hopefully it will develop into something more than just skating gear. But for now that’s what we know and that’s what we’re passionate about. We will never quit growing, and we’re proud of every little step. When we went to Moscow for worlds and saw how popular it was, and all the stores were approaching me to have the exclusive and bring me flowers, it was, wow [laughs]. We had a table, and of course having John and Peter at the table helped with all the women coming [laughs], but a flood of people were interested and we sold a lot of the product, and I did a lot of the vending personally. We are driven to make it grow and find ways to make it better.
Episode #73: Dick Button, Part 1
Feb 14 2014
Episode #73: Dick Button, Part 1
February 2014An interview with the legendary Dick Button. What hasn't he done? He's practically the father of our sport (if Jackson Haines were Grandfather). The two-time Olympic Gold medalist invented many of the jumps and spins we see today, and he invented figure skating commentary. He's a skater, producer, commentator, actor, truth-seeker, hall-of-famer, stirrer-upper, and figure skating's biggest fan. This first episode focuses on his new book Push Dick’s Button, a fantastic book that is a really wonderful conversation on skating. 55 minutes, 50 seconds. [display_podcast] AM: Allison ManleyDB: Dick Button AM:  Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Manleywoman Skatecast. I’m your host, Allison Manley, and this is Episode 73, an interview with Dick Button. That’s right!  You heard it, here it is! Any longtime fan of my podcast knows I have been chasing this interview for years. Years! And it only took writing a poem, some polite stalking, a pinch of begging, and quite a bit of persistence and tenacity — and let’s face it, it doesn’t hurt that he was trying to spread the word about his new book. All I know is that I’m thrilled to have been finally able to interview him. So, in case you don’t know his many accomplishments, I’m going to list them off first. Here is the general overview of what Dick Button has done for this sport. He was the first skater to have won the men’s novice, junior and senior titles in three consecutive years. He was the first skater to land a double axel. He was the first skater to land a triple jump, which was a triple loop, and the first male skater to perform a camel spin. And he was the inventor of the flying camel spin, also known as the Button camel. He’s the only American to win the European title. He’s the first American world champion, the first American to win the Olympic title in figure skating, the first and only American back-to-back champion. He is the first and only American skater to simultaneously hold all of the following titles: national, North American, European, World and Olympic. That’s five. He’s the youngest man to win the Olympic title in figure skating, at age 18, and it shocks me still that this record stands today. He is the winner of the Sullivan Award. In the 1960s he began doing television commentary, and has been gracing our television sets for decades since. He was inducted into the World Skating Hall of Fame in 1976, which was the initial class. He won an Emmy Award in 1981 for outstanding sports personality/analyst. He was a producer of skating shows including The Superstars, which was the first of the reality shows. He starred in movies and on television, and on the stage. The autobiography he wrote in 1955 is a fount of knowledge, and is incredibly well written. I highly recommend that you all find a copy and give it a read. And, of course, he is the author very recently of Push Dick’s Button, a fantastic book that is a really wonderful conversation on skating. Dick and I decided to do this interview in two parts. The first will be focused on his book and all the ideas within. The second part will focus more on his career and life in skating, and will follow at a later date to be determined.  Anyone who knows my podcast knows that I’ve been dying to capture his voice on tape for the fans. So, ladies and gentlemen, may I present — Dick Button. ----- AM:  All right, Dick Button, are you ready? DB: I am. AM: So, thank you so much for your book. It’s wonderful. I have to ask, why did you write it at this time? DB: And my question to you is, what do you mean by “at this time”? Are you saying that I’m a very old poop [laughs] and therefore don’t have any understanding of what the hell is going on in today’s world? Or are you asking it because it’s been a long time since I have written? I wrote a book in 1952 or 1954, when I was a very young person, and then I did one other paperback kind of book a couple of years later. I don't understand the question “at this time”?  I mean, that does that mean? Am I missing something? AM: I guess it is curious that it has been such a long time. I do actually have the book from the 1950s, and I think it’s interesting that the book that you chose to release now, rather than being a biography or an autobiography, is such a conversational book. So I suspect that you felt the need to have this conversation, so that’s why I’m asking. Is skating frustrating you to the point where you felt like you had to tell these opinions? DB: I’ll tell you what it really is. Number one, it was in the past exceedingly difficult for me to write. The advent of the computer and the lectures that I give on gardening introduced me to an entire new way to write. If you write on your computer, you can erase things, you can change things, you can move things around, and you don’t have to rewrite painfully every single word. So the system and the ability to write was exceedingly pleasant. Then I also have a very good friend who had gotten me a major contract ten years ago, that was with Simon and Schuster, and I had a great opportunity to write a very good book at a very high-priced contract. And that was at the same time that I had gone skating on New Year’s Eve, and fell and fractured my skull, and got concussions and lost the hearing in my left ear. And I also had a co-writer with me, and it didn’t work. We just didn’t work out. In other words, it was too much. I couldn’t handle it at that time. It took me about two or three years to really get my act together and to recoup from that fall. So the important thing was, this same lady, who is a great friend of mine and who got me that contract, her name is Pat Eisemann-Logan — I finally said to her, Pat, what can I do for you? And she said, I’ll tell you what you can do. I would like it if you would come and sit on the couch next to me and tell me what the heck is going on with what we are watching. So I sat down one day and I just wrote out a couple of things, a few chapters, and she said, yeah, that’s terrific. And I love it because, number one, it doesn’t have to be The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire of Skating. It is a simple conversation. Conversations are meant to be interrupted, to have answers, to have somebody kvetch about it. Conversations can range from any subject to any subject, and that’s why I like the idea of this. I did not want to do a history of skating, which others have done before this, and I did not wish to do a biography. I think there’s far too much more of great interest around the world of skating. I wanted to do what subjects came up to my mind, what it is to watch for at the Olympics, and most of the questions you’ve asked me about this are  all in that book. So it was a very pleasant experience for me, I enjoyed it no end, and I’m happy to have done it and done it the way I did. Although I will tell you that there are three books that you write and three skating programs that you skate and three pictures that you paint.  They are, number one, the book you plan, number two, the book you do, and number three, the book you wish you’d done [laughs]. So if you can put up with that, you’re a good gal. AM: It does seem to have worked out that this is the book you wish you had done. You seem very pleased with it. DB: Oh, yes, but there’s a lot of things that I . . .  listen, if I had started with all the things I made notes of, I would have had six more volumes [laughs]. I don’t think so. AM: Well, I do love the fact that even though it’s not biographical, that you have a lot of sprinklings of your history in there. I mean, I think that’s a great addition to the opinion pieces that are in there, because there’s definitely opinions in there as well. DB: Well, it’s a conversation. It covers whatever’s on your mind. The one chapter that many people have criticized, they say, we know what jumps are, you don’t have to put a chapter in there saying the different jumps. But my doctor said to me, "Dick, my daughter skates and we all really like watching the skating, but I can’t tell one jump from another, how can I do that?" And it annoyed him. So I put in this brief explanation, if you don’t know what a jump is, there’s three or four or five or six pages of it, and if you already know which jumps are which — skip over it! This is not the end of the world book. This is not the end of the world subject. It is a conversational piece. And I hope like the devil that people can figure out that they can learn something from it. Because I enjoyed very much doing it. AM: Well, great. And I do want to ask you some questions about it, obviously without giving away too much, because people should buy it and read it, of course [laughs]. DB: [laughs] Well, we don’t have long enough on this conversation, so go ahead and spring your questions. AM: Well, one of the things you are concerned about is losing the theatrical part of skating. And I wonder, from a competitive standpoint, how you think it can be preserved. There are a lot of people trying to preserve it outside of competition, but in the competitive arena, what are your thoughts on that? DB: Let me also start out by saying that competition, the Olympic Games which we’re about to start into in another day or two — they get the most audience. Figure skating and dancing, they’re kissing cousins, and figure skaters have the opportunity to become instantly famous and household names. Dancers don’t have that. So if a figure skater has that opportunity, and the Olympic competition is there, it’s marvelous that they take part and do it. However, figure skating is a complete sport. It’s a sport that has music, choreography, costuming, performance level, story level — it has so many different aspects that are intimately intertwined with each other. Figure skating is theatre, and I don’t care who tells me that it’s not. The head of the ISU, the head of the Olympic Committee, and a lot of guys get all honked about it and say it’s not a sport. Well, don’t watch it! If you think it’s not a sport, don’t watch it, and I couldn’t care less. However, the point is very simply that it is all of these things. It is theatre, it always has been theatre, and it will always continue to be theatre. And that is the very reason that makes it so popular at the Olympic Games. Now the reason I’m saying this is, there’s an old saying that Oleg Protopopov used to tell me all the time, and that was, “Deek! Deek! You cannot have artistry without technique. But neither can you have technique without artistry”. The old votes, the old judging system had two marks. They were for technical merit and for artistic impression. The new marks, in essence, if you really want to see what the icing on top of the cake is, the subterfuge of it all, is they have all the marks that you get on your point system first, and then they have the component scores. Have you ever read the component scores? AM: I have. DB: Then you know that they mix together choreography, step sequences, footwork, et cetera, et cetera, and they have something like 27 or 28 different criteria to figure and allot to a skater’s program within about two seconds. That’s almost an impossible thing. And also, you will never know what it’s about because it’s secret. All I’m saying is that yes, there are many other organizations — there’s Disney on Ice and Stars on Ice and individual singles skating here and there, and there’s ensemble skating with the Ice Theatre of New York, and there’s synchronized skating, and there’s all kind of things. But it’s the theatrical performance level that mesmerizes us. I mean, why did we look at Katarina Witt? Not only was she sensational looking, but she had personality and pizzazz. Let me ask you a question. Why is Evgeni Plushenko such a hot subject? I’ll tell you why. Because he has personality. He’s a great jumper, not a great spinner. But he has personality. He has pizzazz. And you can’t take your eyes off him, watching what he’s going to do. He will bamboozle you with his wrist movements . . . AM: He’ll make you think he’s skating with those wrist movements [laughs]. DB: Of course, I’ve seen him do that half a dozen times. He stops and does a bunch of fancy wrist movements around his belt line, and that’s supposed to be great theatrical skating or something. Let me tell you something. Who is it that you want to watch at this Olympic Games? Who is it they are looking forward to watching? AM: Jeremy Abbott and Jason Brown. DB: You mean you want to see the competition between them. AM: The competition between them, but I think both are so wonderful. They bring something so different. DB: Absolutely right. And so do half a dozen of these skaters. I think what you really want to see also is Davis and White and how they impact the show. And who do we remember out of the past? Come on, you remember the stars that had pizzazz, that had presence, that grabbed you. There’s a whole chapter in my book there about entrances and exits, and it’s all about the difference between an Irina Slutskaya entering the skating arena — the first thing she does is skate over to her coach, takes a swig of water, high fives her coach, and adjusts the pants on her dress. And the next thing she does is blow her nose. Now, come on, is that theatre? That’s not a humdinger of an entrance. The point is that, how does Katarina Witt do it? She doesn’t lose for one moment the presence, the theatre aspect of it. And the gal we remember most of those two has gotta be Katarina Witt. And that’s why there’s a chapter in the book called "Where Are You When We Need You, Katarina Witt?" And . . . what else can I tell you? [laughs] This is my favorite rant. AM: You’re passionate and I love it. I love every minute of it. DB: Well, come on, you know, it’s a fun activity. It’s a very complicated activity. It has so many elements to it that you simply cannot avoid any one of them. And the level of performance is one of those characteristics. AM: Yes. Well, you are a vocal critic of the judging system, but I am curious because you have said that there are parts of it that you think are worth preserving. What parts would that be? DB: Well, for example, I think you should always have a markdown if you fall. Right now what we are seeing is — how many people fell in the last [2014] National Championship, both men and women, in the different parts. How many people fall down? AM: Not a lot this year, actually. DB: Well, Ashley Wagner, she did. But you’re being rewarded if you do a quadruple jump and you fall down but you’re rotated almost enough to complete the thing in the air. This is all part of Ottavio Cinquanta’s desire to — if he had his way, he would not have any judges there at all, and it would all be based on points and timing. I would like the fact that there would be no reward at all for a fall. And a deduction if you fall down.  I write about this in my book, there was a communiqué from the ISU explaining what falls were. You don’t know what a fall is, I don’t know what a fall is, certainly. But this rule came out and then three months later, there was — I mean, the question was, what part of the body was the fall on, was it on your bottom, was it on your core, and if you were on your fanny, were you on one buttock or another buttock or were you on both buttocks [laughs]. And then along came three months later this explanation, this clarification, and then changes to the rule that explained what a fall was [laughs]. So you have to read all that to understand the sense of the nit-picking. Now listen, let me tell you something else, and I write about this in the book . I challenge you to count — take one of the ladies anywhere, not necessarily Ashley Wagner, but start with a young lady and start counting the number of times when they’re doing step sequences and all of those wonderful things, where they raise either one or the other or both arms over the level of their shoulders. And if you start counting, my bet is that you will get to 20 very, very quickly, and then you can stop. They’re like flailing windmills. That’s exactly the point. That does not augur well, in my book. First of all, there’s just gotta be less talk about it. Why do you have to have something that is exactly two minutes with so many seconds on either end of it? That isn’t the way. You should have one program that is your technical program, and one program that is your creative or other program, but neither one should be acceptable or be able to be marked well unless it has the qualities of the other one. One should be of technical merit and one should be of — the old judging captions, artistic impression, they are in a sense that way now, they’re just called something different, it’s technical marks and the program components. AM: So I wonder, you do outline at the end of the book your wishes and suggestions for better scoring, and they do include that the two programs should be different and that there shouldn’t be a time limit. DB: Put it this way, there should be a time limit, but a generous one. I mean, during the World Professional Championships, we recorded the length of time of every skater, and only once did somebody ever go over, I think, maybe four and a half or five minutes.  So if you have three and a half minutes or four minutes, a generous thing — what difference does it make? Why do you just have to limit yourself? This is just the one program, not the technical program, the artistic impression program. AM: Well, I’m curious, what do the powers that be think about your ideas? Have you gotten any feedback? DB: No, I don’t have feedback, because they . . . Ottavio Cinquanta does not want any subjective judging there. Remember, he is a speed skater, and all he can see — number one, he has two goals to his agenda. And once you understand a man’s agenda, you will understand what he will do. His agenda is to have, number one, to never have another scandal like we had in Salt Lake at the pairs skating competition. And number two, he’s all for eliminating anything subjective about the sport. He would like it to be like speed skating. You get over the line first, you’ve won. Now that is not figure skating. And besides he’s said it too many times, and he’s the one who put the new rules system in. My chapters go into all of that and show the chicanery that was involved with it. And now because he [laughs] made a contractual offer and placed every officer in their position for an additional period of time, he will now remain as head of the ISU until the year 2016. It’s a chapter in the book as well. AM: You have always been an advocate for great spinning. You’ve talked about Dorothy Hamill, Lucinda Ruh, Ronnie Robertson, so I have to wonder, that in the new judging system, it has to be nice that at least you see the spins getting rewarded even if you don’t always love the positions. DB: Well, I find that the multiple levels — you know, everything that you look at, there’s a grade of execution, there’s a level of difficulty. If you add more moves and turns into your spin, you get more points. But nobody gets points for blurred spinning. Nobody gets points for the things that used to make the audience stand on their feet and cheer. Spinning is just as important as jumping, and it’s one of the two major technical elements in skating, the other being jumping and then of course there’s spinning. And when you see somebody moving from position to position and changing their edges, all that sort of thing, you’re not looking at the spin. At least have one spin that reflects the total true quality of a fast, delayed, long lived spin, where everything counters on the centering and everything counters on the blurring of it and on the finishing of it. Look, I don’t have to have everything that I like, it’s what other people like too, but I will tell you, there’s very little to cheer for when you get a 243.8 personal best score. That doesn’t give the average person an understanding of what the heck the score is all about, except that somebody else can get 283.9. And I trust that was more than the first number I gave [laughs]. AM: Well, I’ve actually always wanted that. I’ve always wanted there to be at least one spin that was skaters’ choice, if you will, that they could do just for choreographic effect. Just like they’ve finally done with the step sequences, where you can just do one that you don’t have to do without so many turns and flailing and windmilling, but it’s one that just works with the music. DB: Well, there’s very little — you can’t really create things that are unusual or unexpected or different and expect to get anywhere under the current judging system. AM: Well, you have of course mentioned before that the ISU needs to be split, that skating shouldn’t be run by a speed skater any longer. It’s going to be a while, of course, since Ottavio wrote his own contract . . . DB: Well, of course he did, and nobody stood up to him. Nobody was able to stand up to him because he has cultivated so many federations which are all speed skating federations which get their money from figure skating. So what do they care? Why would they care what the rules for figure skating are, any more than a figure skater would care less whether the speed skating race is another 50 meters or not?  That’s up to the speed skaters to understand that. And the very fact that they — did you know that there are over 80 federations in the world of skating? AM: I didn’t know there were that many. DB: Over 80, and most of them all — the majority either are speed skating or joint speed skating and figure skating. And they get money from figure skating, the ISU pays them money from figure skating. And the end result is that of course they’re going to do what he wants. AM: Do you think there’s anyone out there right now who can challenge him, who can be the next great leader, to separate the two? DB: I think probably everybody is scared beyond belief. You see, the impact of the Olympic Games is always the most publicized event, but I can guarantee you, even the world championships which are taking place after the Olympic Games, they’re not going to be on live. They’re going to be in about two weeks in a summary program on NBC. Now maybe there’s some obscure cable system or Ice Network that will show them, but you have to buy that cable system. I’m sure there will be recordings of it. But [laughs] here’s a world championship that will be coming up a month later than the Olympic Games. Wouldn’t you think it should deserve — and it used to always be very much of a highlight. Now it’s sloughed off and it’s shown a week or two weeks later after the world championship is over. I don’t like that. AM: I don’t either. All right, well, let’s move on from the judging and talk about which skaters for you right now are really exciting. You’ve mentioned Davis and White. DB: Well, look, let me tell you something. My book covers a point about to wilt or not to wilt. When you have somebody who simply does not wilt, that in itself is exciting. And many a time, those people that can rise to the occasion, and suddenly pull together a program that is phenomenal — it’s what you want to see. I mean, I found myself rising out of my seat when Jason Brown performed, because he in a sense broke the rules. It will be very interesting to see how he fares in this international competition, when he has competition from not only Jeremy Abbott but from Chan, Plushenko, Denis Ten, Javier Fernandez, and the Japanese skaters. It’ll be very interesting to see how he compares in that to them. Remember, the national championship is one where it’s a single country. And there aren’t countries that are vying to improve their lot because that’s the way they get money from the ISU. It’s a different situation. I hope like the devil that he does brilliantly. I find him a fascinating skater and I was entranced by the choreography. And the choreography was done by Rohene Ward. I remember talking to him a couple of years ago, saying, you are going to keep on skating, aren’t you? And he said, no, I’m not. And I felt that was a great loss. I’m very happy now to see him back in force as a choreographer. AM: Yes. And I’m happy to see someone, that he has a student that can interpret that choreography so well. Because, you know, Rohene was a very unusual talent, and oddly enough Jason has a lot of the same qualities, with his extreme flexibility and his showmanship. DB: Wait a minute. Are you telling me that that flexibility can’t be gained by other people? They can, if they would understand what that is and follow that. AM: No, but I think Rohene was very unusual for a male skater to be able to use it to choreographic effect. DB: Why as a male skater? AM: Well, because most men, if they could do the splits like that, they certainly wouldn’t lower themselves on the ice and pull themselves back up and do a lot of — Johnny Weir could lift his leg all the way up before a lutz, too, just like Jason and Rohene can, but it is unusual. DB: Well, that’s because they don’t follow that either. If you look at the number of skaters among the ladies that – well, look, there’s a totally developable way. Guys can learn. You see it in gymnastics, for heaven’s sake, If they do it, why can’t figure skaters? Look, this is called the development of the — right now, I can guarantee you there’s very, very little of the component score voting for some of the stuff that Jason Brown did. He was marvelous in the fact that he did not open his program with the single most difficult jump that he could. I’m really fascinated to see how the international version of this will work out, the international competition coming up in the Olympic Games. AM: So you did mention that he is a bit of a rule breaker in that sense, and you have said in your book that rules are made to be broken. And you did use Torvill and Dean as a perfect example of that, of course, from 1984. Is there a rule that you see right now that you wish someone would break, or push a little more? DB: Yeah. If you look at the rules of the component scores, you will see that, number one, they include skating skills, transitions/linking footwork and movement, performance and execution, choreography, and composition. Now what is the difference between choreography and composition, and transitional and linking footwork and movement, et cetera? I mean, aren’t these the same things? AM: To me they are. To me it’s semantics. DB: That’s right. And isn’t it better to have a skater develop that through their own intelligence rather than having to control those step sequences through it? And the linking movement and the linking footwork? And the transitions and the linking movement? [laughs].There was a wonderful English lady who would always comment on English television, and she had a very high voice, and when it came out, linking movements, we were all happily amused [laughs].