Congrats Meryl and Charlie!! 4 time Nationals Champions!!!
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IceNetwork live streaming schedule
Ice Network streaming schedule. Times are Eastern.
Jan. 27 5:30 p.m. - Senior short dance
Jan. 28 3:00 p.m. - Senior free dance (Group 1) 4:00 p.m. - Senior free dance (Groups 2-3)* (This portion of the event will be shown on your local NBC affiliate and be available on icenetwork.com on-demand.)
Ice Dance as the Main Event as Nationals
Ice dance main event at U.S. skating championships
By NANCY ARMOUR
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 2:04 p.m.
SAN JOSE — There was a time — not all that long ago, in fact — when ice dance was considered little more than an excuse to run to the concession stands or check out the vendors on the concourse at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
Look what a world title and a couple of Olympic silver medals will do.
With the women still struggling to find a star who can captivate the public like Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen once did, ice dance has emerged as the Americans' main event. Ice dancers have been responsible for nine of the 15 world and Olympic medals won by Americans since 2006, including a gold-bronze finish by Meryl Davis and Charlie White and Maia and Alex Shibutani at last year's worlds.
Davis and White's title was the first by an American dance team.
"It's been building for long time," White said. "It's just so nice to get the recognition. Obviously ice dancers have been putting in work for years and years, and now it's our time to shine. We don't want to let anyone down. We hope to make everyone take notice that, there's some good singles skating and some good pairs skating, but ice dance is still going to be the event to watch."
The senior competition begins Thursday at the HP Pavilion with short programs for both the women and pairs. The ice dance and men's competitions begin Friday.
Under figure skating's 6.0 judging system, cracking the top 10 was about the best a U.S. dance team could hope for. The sport was dominated by Eastern Europeans, and results were so predictable the joke was that medals had already been awarded before the competition even started. But the move to a computer-based judging system shook up the stodgy old order, and no one has benefited more than the Americans.
Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto were the first to crack the barrier, giving the United States its first dance medal in 20 years with their silver at the 2005 world championships. Their silver in Turin the following year was only the second Olympic medal for a U.S. dance team.
Young skaters took note of Belbin and Agosto's success, and the U.S. depth in dance now rivals that of any other discipline. Of the 14 dance teams competing at nationals, six have a skater who has been on the podium at worlds, junior worlds, the Grand Prix final or the junior Grand Prix final.
"We're the first world champions, but we've got layers," White said. "It's a deep field, and it's just really exciting for all of us."
Takes a little of the pressure off the singles and pairs skaters, too.
The U.S. women, long the gold standard in figure skating, are in an epic drought. They came home empty-handed from Vancouver, only the second time since 1952 they've failed to win at least one medal. That other oh-fer? It came in 1964, three years after the entire U.S. team was killed in a plane crash. They haven't won a medal at the world championships since 2006 and will have only two spots at worlds for the fourth year in a row.
The men are down to two spots at worlds, too, and it took a guy who hasn't skated in two years to create some buzz.
"Every sport has its ups and downs. The main reason U.S. figure skating is really struggling is because we don't have that one big star. We don't have a Michelle or Sasha," said Ashley Wagner, an alternate for this year's Grand Prix final after winning the bronze medal at Skate Canada. "We need to make the athletes more relatable to the public. People would be more interested in skating if they could put a personality behind the name. Everyone felt they knew Michelle. You could depend on her; you knew every time she went out there you were going to see something beautiful.
"We just need to get that combination of consistency and personality back."
Wagner would gladly be that person, and she and Mirai Nagasu are expected to provide the biggest challenge to defending champion Alissa Czisny.
Two-time U.S. champion Jeremy Abbott is the heavy favorite in the men's field, having rebounded from the poor showing at last year's nationals that cost him a spot on the world team. Pairs is anyone's guess after last year's champions, Caitlin Yankowskas and John Coughlin, split up a week after their promising finish at the world championships. Coughlin is now skating with Vancouver Olympian Caydee Denney.
Which brings it back to dance.
Davis and White are, no surprise, considered a lock to win their fourth straight U.S. title. They haven't lost a competition since finishing second at the 2010 world championships, and the only couple in the world that comes close to them is Canada's Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.
That doesn't mean Davis and White plan to coast, however.
Far from it. Their "Die Fledermaus" free dance has an elegance and sophistication they couldn't have pulled off a few years ago, and they have spent the last month fine-tuning the exquisite little details that have set them apart.
"One of our main goals this year is just be proud of what we're putting on the ice. Every second, every moment, every element we're executing," Davis said. "I think Charlie and I really take pride in the fact we would really like to evolve and continue to grow. As long as we're on the competitive circuit, we don't plan on settling on what we have going for us."
pre-Nationals IceNetwork article
Davis, White unruffled by Grand Prix Final kerfuffle
No changes to short or free dance; training still on even keel in Canton
By Lynn Rutherford, special to icenetwork.com(01/13/2012) - As they head into the 2012 U.S. Figure Skating Championship in San Jose later this month, Meryl Davis and Charlie White are sticking with their tried-and-true approach: daily run-throughs, with the focus on improving their connection on the ice.
"There's really no trick," White said on a teleconference with reporters Tuesday. "Repetition makes everything come easy and natural. A lot of what we do isn't easy, but we have to make it look easy."
The world champions have won their last nine events and are odds-on favorites to take their fourth consecutive U.S. ice dance title. While no one's looking past the U.S. Championships, thoughts naturally shift to upcoming matchups with their training partners, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.
The Americans have won their last three meetings against the Canadian Olympic champions, including the 2011 ISU Four Continents Championships, where Virtue and Moir withdrew during the free dance. But last month's Grand Prix Final in Quebec was unique: Not only was the scoring flawed -- had a combination lift in the free dance been correctly valued, the Canadians would have ranked first in that section by 0.45 points -- but cracks in the Canton teams' friendly rivalry showed.
"It's a [...]-off," Moir said after the free dance press conference. "That's as blunt as I can be. We felt like we laid down a good skate, and in our opinion it was a good enough skate to win ... It's tough to get beat artistically [on program components] when we felt like we're the best artistic dance team in the last five years."
Among those less than pleased with Moir's remarks was Igor Shpilband, who with Marina Zoueva coaches both teams in Canton, Mich.
"We are always trying to make the skaters not focus on the judging and what's happening with scores," Shpilband said. "In my experience in teaching, I have seen a lot of things that, in my opinion, judges were fair or not fair. It's the nature of the sport; it's a subjective sport. We always try to make skaters focus on what they could have done better, to make sure [a loss is] not going to happen next time."
Despite the increasingly close nature of the rivalry, White counts their status as training partners a plus.
"Scott has a little bit of a history of off-the-cuff remarks, and we were able to make light of it and it wasn't a big deal," he said. "To put everything you have out there and feel like there was nothing else you can do, of course you want to win. Do I think he wishes he hadn't said that? I do think that. But I think we have a great understanding.
"Perhaps if we trained at different rinks and we didn't know each other, it would be a bigger deal. But because we're really close, I could understand what he said ... It's a little unfair of the media to just get that peek at that moment and kind of judge everything off of that. But I think going forward, I don't think [those kind of remarks are] going to be happening."
Shpilband, too, thinks it will be smooth sailing going forward.
"We just try to give them equally what they need, to give the best to each team," he said. "They feel that we are not holding anything back and we are doing everything equal, for all of them. In my opinion, that helps. They are all just great kids and they are getting along well, which helps, too."
Teleconference summary
Thanks to Jo Ann Schneider Farris for the pre-Nationals teleconference summary. FULL summary HERE.
What are your feelings as the 2012 U.S. Nationals Figure Skating Championships approaches?:
We are feeling great! We've had a wonderful season so far. We've been working on both improving technical elements and also on our presentation. We also have been working on connecting with one another and with the audience. We are doing little things like looking at one another longer throughout the program. We want the audience to be drawn in when we do our free dance.Way back in 2000 you were competing in novice dance at Nationals. Did you have any idea what you w
ere getting into then?:
Charlie was 11 then, and Meryl was 12. We were very young and had no idea of what we were getting ourselves into.
It's almost better to not know. We were talented little skaters then, but we couldn't do emotions when we ice danced. We were both still doing freestyle, and dance was not a huge priority then. We didn't think ice dance was a big deal then, but we happend to excel at ice dancing and realized there was some potential in it. We were having a good time then. It was the days of the old 6.0 judging system. We didn't always do what the judges wanted.
One thing we do remmeber is that we started having fun with each other on the ice beginning in 2000. That was the first year we started to have a friendship that has continued until this day.
