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Thanks to the Skating Scores twitter account, we can see the following:

Japan scored Vincent Zhou 1 pt higher than USA and scored Nathan Chen 9 pts higher than USA. Meanwhile USA has no qualms about underscoring Shoma Uno by 7 pts. Wtf Japan??? I don’t even know what to say.

It’s amazing when a fed chooses to sell out its own skaters at a home event. I don’t want to get into the merits of the scores because that’s already been discussed at length. I do want to say this:

I wish the sport were less corrupt but that’s not gonna happen overnight. Can’t Jfed protect its own skaters by playing the game that literally everyone else plays to help them get some points? USfed isn’t doing anything dramatic or unusual in pumping up scores, Jfed is by inflating foreign skaters and deflating their own. And by the way, I highly doubt they’re abstaining from inflating their own skater for ethical reasons. There’s something else shady going on here.

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Eteri Tutberidze’s Lies EXPOSED

Eteri Tutberidze followed up her students’ successful world championships by... using the death of her parents to attack Evgenia Medvedeva. Again.

But a fearless individual at her rink has decided to expose her. The tweet that collected the comment is here (it’s already been deleted):

https://twitter.com/jafar89702/status/1109892374723997697

Here is the translation:

desuhraayy @ tutberidze.eteri How are you not ashamed Eteri! If you want to speak, tell all the truth!!! All crystal knows how you talked about your student, said that she was a used material! That everything was already squeezed from her! You led her to an injury, and then tried to write her off! Karenina, Kukushka were to show the world that her era had ended. But it did not work out! You try to still into dirt everything you don’t like! You have broken the heart and betrayed your most close person! And now you reap what you sow. You behave very negatively, coach. You kill in children the desire to move, pushing them against each other. Even Zagitova confessed in front of the whole world yesterday that skating brings her stress and she is already tired. You better tell how only a couple of weeks ago you said that you were disappointed in the olyppic champion and tired to push her. Tell how you convinced her together with Fed… and how many times they visited us this year!!! Tell how many times Alina ran away from you in tears! It is so sad that she will quit so early because of your pressure. Stop acting as a victim, you are not like this. Tell the truth, coach! God is your judge!

This person backed up their opinions by confirming they’re at the rink under a different sport and cannot keep quiet about these lies.

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Eunsoo Lim -

The Skating Lesson is now accusing Eunsoo Lim’s agency of lying about the incident and the bullying to drum up publicity for an ice show.

We know what this really is.

They are afraid of angering Koreans who will attack them. They want to shift blame to her “agency” and literally think they made Eunsoo do all of this without her consent. Why would anyone risk all of this for an ice show? With literally no proof? And by the way, her agency is run by none other than Yuna Kim. This is an indirect way of calling Eunsoo a publicity monger and a liar.

Then they blocked me. I still have the tweets.

Funny how they blame her agency but also accuse Eunsoo of jealousy as a motive for lying.

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Believe in Eunsoo

By now plenty of us have heard about Eunsoo and the Korean Federation filing a complaint about a collision incident in practice that is allegedly rooted in months of bullying by Mariah Bell. Bullying that got so bad the rink in LA had to get involved.

In my opinion, Eunsoo is to be believed. First, I am inclined to believe a victim who was all of 15 years old versus a grown woman who is taking anything out on her. Even if Eunsoo acted up, it is the responsibility of the adult to handle it in a way that doesn’t amount to harassment.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about the already DISGUSTING reaction by the skating community around this incident. Here we have Adam Rippon tweeting up a storm about this defending Mariah and pretending like there’s nothing wrong (aka claiming Eunsoo is a liar).

Our “friends” at TSL have already retweeted it. The same TSL who just yesterday shut down real discussion about Eteri’s skaters’ health and scoring. And this is the same Adam Rippon who took days to “reconsider” his Coughlin comments while trying to pick up fake woke points in the meantime while “standing for women.”

You do not have to believe me, and I don’t blame you if you don’t, but I, too have heard a little about the situation through some sources. I don’t know about who is to blame for the conflict but there’s definitely very real tension at that rink and any effort to wipe out that there’s a problem at ALL versus MEDIATING the problem is gaslighting and victim blaming and I am not at all here for it. Whatever caused these issues- isn’t it a bit suspicious that it all fell on the youngest girl at the rink? The one with the least amount of power to influence the narrative short of blowing the whistle? And the defense isn’t that this is something the rink needs to work out, but indirectly silencing Eunsoo’s complaint by suggesting she’s crazy for even thinking there’s a problem, when they all know... that isn’t true.

Think about it - who does Adam’s tweet actually defend? Raf. Not Eunsoo. No, the fish rots from the head down, folks. Don’t be fooled. Believe in Eunsoo.

I won’t even touch on the racial aspects of this right now. I’m sure they will reveal themselves with time. Needless to say all the people who have been withholding salt about Yuna all these years will also relish in this opportunity to take it out on Eunsoo. I hope she stays strong.

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Now that Worlds is upon us, let’s consider how to encourage conversation about the sport.

The Skating Lesson posted a photo of Eteri, Danny G, and Dudakov staring at Evgenia Medvedeva during a practice session. Clearly posted for the lolz and the likes.

An interesting conversation ensued in the comments above. I was having a good time following along until-

Suddenly they were all deleted.

Now I don’t know if this is instagram moderation or Dave Lease himself. But if it’s Dave, come on man. Why are you allowing people in the comments to hate randomly on all parties but deleting the ONE thread that actually discusses what’s going on?

Nothing will change at this point. The revolving door will continue if fans can’t even get into it on Instagram without being shut down due to getting too real.

Pathetic, really.

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It's really irritating that many fans consider only Russian, Japanese and select others, most of the time also from powerful federations, to be worth watching, implying that early groups are a waste of time. I was really angry when I saw this on Goldenskate this morning (I'm going to paste a quote in the next message).

½ “Donovan Carrillo definitely took a spot of a more talented athletes from somewhere else, was it fair to that guy? So we discriminate and leave this guy home just to give Donovans-Carrillos of the world their 8-9 minutes to shine and to do some flag waving? Not cool. We would survive if we’d never saw him, but at the same time the better athlete was deprived his chance at all and this athlete had probably a real talent and a big chance to medal […]”

2/2 “[…] he worked harder, longer and is probably more talented. But he never had a chance.”

Well anon, most people are sheeple. It is funny to me because I find the fandom is full of: 1) gloryhunters who only like who is on top at the moment; and 2) faux gloryhunters who pretend to like an underdog w/o acknowledging that this underdog has a 50% chance of winning so it’s not much of a sacrifice and you can look vindicated no matter what the outcome.

Figure skating is an international sport with federations. This means everyone gets a chance based on their flag. If it turned into a club sport, then yes, flags shouldn’t matter. But it is not, so this line of thinking is not applicable. 

One thing I really love about FS is the ability to see people from all over the world. Even if they struggle, even if their chances of getting a medal are minuscule, because someone who struggled but got some time to shine may inspire someone amazing down the line. 

Yao Bin, who coached Shen/Zhao and started a dynasty of Chinese pairs skaters, came from an even more dire situation than Donovan, and look where he is now. This is so important, we all start from somewhere. The expectation that every random newcomer has to be an ingenue is frankly creepy and dismisses how hard people work over time to achieve things that they do not have the resources to immediately obtain.

Here is an excerpt from Wiki about Yao Bin:

In the closed society of mid-20th century China, Luan and Yao had only photographs from which to learn their moves. They had a terrible experience at the 1980 World Championships in Dortmund, West Germany; Yao has said he remembers people in the audience laughing at their inferior skating (among those people was Irina Rodnina, who later recalled the skating was indeed very funny). They finished 15th, in last place. They competed at the World Championships twice more in 1981 and 1982, finishing last both times. They also placed 15th at the 1984 Winter Olympics. After these embarrassing experiences, Yao was determined to create a team of world-class figure skaters.

Among Yao’s current and former students are Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo,whom he coached to three Olympic medals (two bronzes, one gold) and seven World medals; Pang Qing & Tong Jian; Zhang Dan & Zhang Hao; Dong Huibo & Wu Yiming; Li Jiaqi & Xu Jiankun; Zhang Yue & Wang Lei; Wenjing Sui & Cong Han; Peng Cheng & Zhang Hao; Xiaoyu Yu & Yang Jin.

Who knows what the Donovans of the world will do next. I, for one, look forward to it.

And also, GS is full of creeps and increasingly bitter fans. It is no wonder, though, since they have now put their competition threads behind a paywall so you reap what you sow.

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I rly liked your posts about in the loop. I was so excited when they first announced the podcast thinking this would be the antidote to TSL, but they’re as prone to wild generalizations, baseless “analysis”, and bias as anyone else. Their ice dance analysis in particular is so so cringey!!!! Have you ever voiced your complaints to them?

Thanks anon. I have, and I was blocked by some of their more vocal and biased members on twitter as a result. Note - a few people does not speak for everyone. But a refusal to hear or engage with critique is a bit distressing. I don’t want to pat myself on the back for no reason, but I don’t exactly sound like a random troll in my posts. The only official response I have from them is to email them privately. However, I am not five years old - we all know pressure to change does not come from private conversations, nor do I have any desire to expose their private justifications via DM or email. Their content is for the public, it should be discussed in public.

The reason I haven’t responded to your question for a while is because of the whole drama that went down with TSL and the John Coughlin situation (which, if you recall, ended with Dave receiving death threats and removing TSL from social media for a while). It really reminded me of the stakes there are in discussing a sport that primarily focuses on very young athletes. Dave was instrumental in getting press coverage about this and presenting things in a professional manner. To be honest, I was pretty shocked he was able to do it, so kudos to him. And to his bravery.

This whole time, I was waiting for ITL’s response. I recently saw that ITL is releasing its own episode about this soon. I’m glad they’re doing it, but it is about a month too late to have any kind of impact on the situation. I think it’s safe to say that Coughlin’s family “won” the media narrative and the only people who can revive it now are those with a lot of power. Which ITL does not have. This is arguably the biggest story coming out of North American skating this year (and it seems 90% of their members are North American). I remain disappointed that only a few individual members of ITL even deigned to discuss the situation with any kind of nuance. I hope they learn in the future that you never, EVER regret taking a stand at the right moment. I am always criticizing Team Tutberidze (hate that name btw) and I will continue to do so, because I KNOW it is wrong. I just hope that ‘bigger’ outlets like ITL and TSL will make their stances clear in the future. 

Let’s face it, those in favor of Eteri and John Coughlin have NO issue making their opinions known. So why are we so hesitant?

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Eteri’s Birthday - Another Cake of Lies

I know it is not kind to make fun of someone’s body dysmorphia, but this woman is projecting all her own problems onto kids to the point of child abuse. So I think I can be excused just this once for the following:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME, WHOEVER WRITES WEIRD CAPTIONS FOR ALINA??? (I know it’s you, Eteri)

Using your own student to brag first and foremost about your beauty and femininity is a level of narcissism that shakes me to my core. Way to break your students for your own profit, wring them dry, and then use them to prop up your own delusions about what kind of person you are. 

Hey Eteri, you can do whatever you want to your own face, but stop warping young girls’ minds about what constitutes beauty, loving yourself, good coaching, and having, hmm, an independent thought? Let’s not forget she was chasing and screaming at a crying Alina around the ice just a few months ago.

I am thoroughly disturbed.

By the way, where is Alina? She hasn’t even been seen training for a while (and was off-ice for weeks) as others are busy getting ready for worlds. You know what this reminds me of? Evgenia’s random appearances around the rink but no on-ice training last year right up until they WD her from Worlds. Except I don’t think Alina will be so lucky as to spare herself from another meltdown in Saitama. There is NO SHAME in an OGM taking a tournament off to recover from injury - she has nothing to prove, and everything to lose. What is her management doing to her? We shall see..

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Stop the pedobait

Looks like our fav panderer Danny G posted a new snippet of his ex for Alena Kostornaya. With obligatory heavy-handed themes of child sexuality and suggestive biting and rawring. I’m not going to repost it here because this is completely inappropriate.

And yet few people seem to call it out. Hey, why not turn figure skating into a modeling contest full of starving girls, low wages, exploitative handlers, and potential sugar daddies as the ultimate exit opportunity?

Gross, as usual. Can’t wait for this tragedy of a team to go down in flames. And don’t even get me started on his asinine remarks about technique being set in childhood and picking skaters based on a devastatingly inept understanding of genetics.

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Why did whoever is running Alina’s account repost this creepy suggestive fan art of her and Eteri? I can’t tell if this is naïveté or the lowest form of pandering. There’s plenty of disturbing shippers like this online (and I believe one of them even handed Eteri fanfic of her and Zhenya once back in the day).

Hoping they take this down soon.

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I'm really stunned by the fact that people actually defended not drinking water by an athlete when it was brought up in the Russian ladies thread on Goldenskate.

Anon, goldenskate just banned all talk about “coach bashing.”

I think we know which coach they’re trying to avoid critical conversation about.

Not to mention I’ve never even heard of people banning coach critiques in any sport. You have to take responsibility for your athletes at some point. Prime example is Jose Mourinho this season for Manchester United. Imagine if forums prohibited talk about that.

Goldenskate enables this behavior. Quite disturbing if you ask me. So I wouldn’t put too much trust in their forum members anon. Seems many sane ones have fled.

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gtfo danny g, save alina zagitova

Are you kidding me? After seeing poor Alina crying and crashing during her Euros free skate, all I want is for this girl to get some rest and food. 

Meanwhile, her LOVELY coach Danny G had this to say to the media:

“I want to appeal to both fans and all fans of figure skating. Still, this is a difficult period for us, not everything works out, but I just want to say that ...

You want our Olympic champion to continue to delight us with your skating for more than one year. Therefore, I do not understand some experts and experts who are too aggravated by the situation and, instead of simply supporting, fall into some unjustified criticism and, I would even say, into a little bit unjustified cruelty.

Let's just be kinder to all our athletes and we will succeed in everything”

Excuse me? Let’s not forget how this girl was screamed at and forced to do something like 50 jumps in 40 min while in TEARS before her free skate.

Who exactly is responsible for this? The fans, or YOU and ETERI, Danny G? Get a grip and BE KIND to your athletes. Such as maybe letting them eat more than fruit ice for dinner and not scream them into oblivion during a practice session. Stop projecting the blame onto us. And kindly go fuck yourself.

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absolutely not surprised to see charlie white join the ever-growing list of skaters who have spoken out about social issues and even sexual assault/abuse specifically in the past but have nothing to say and are hesitant to “jump to conclusions” just bc they fucking knew the accused

get wrecked charlie white!!!! im anticipating he’s going to tweet some bull shit statement after nationals is over with a pseudo apology that’s really just him trying to cover his ass and explain everything blah blah blah, but his silence along with deleting old tweets just goes to show he doesn’t give a fuck about victims if he knows the perpetrator

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tw: sexual abuse, tw: pedophilia

hey all, i’ve been talking about this on my side blog but i thought it was important that i shared.

about a week ago, US figure skater john coughlin committed suicide. predictably messages of love and support were tweeted and shared by the figure skating community. but a lot of them were completely dismissing the circumstances leading to his death.

from christine brennan’s USA today article:

“On Dec. 17, his eligibility to participate in his sport was restricted by SafeSport pending final resolution of a matter concerning him that was presented to the center. USA TODAY reported that news on Jan. 7. The next day, Coughlin resigned as U.S. brand manager for John Wilson Blades, a major skate blade company.

Then, on Thursday, SafeSport elevated his disciplinary record to “Interim Suspension.” USFS immediately followed with a temporary suspension of its own, prohibiting him from participating “in any capacity, in any activity or competition” authorized or organized by USFS or the U.S. Olympic Committee.”

for those that don’t know, SafeSport is an organization created in 2017 by USOC. here is what they do according to their website:

The U.S. Center for SafeSport is an independent nonprofit committed to ending all forms of abuse in sport. This includes bullying, harassment, hazing, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual misconduct and abuse. The Center is the first and only national organization of its kind. The Center provides services to sport entities on abuse prevention techniques, policies and programs and provides a safe, professional and confidential place for individuals to report sexual abuse within the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Movements.

giving more detail about the investigation, from another one of christine brennan’s articles:

“John Coughlin, the two-time U.S. pairs figure skating champion who took his life Friday, was facing three reports of sexual misconduct against him, two of them involving minors, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to talk publicly about the matter.“

MINORS. not only has he been accused of sexual abuse, but two MINORS have come forward. and yet SafeSport might not continue the investigation.

from yet ANOTHER one of christine brennan’s articles:

“Although John Coughlin, the two-time U.S. pairs figure skating champion who took his life Friday, is still officially suspended by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, it’s “unlikely” that SafeSport will continue to investigate the allegations against him, a spokesman for the Center said Sunday afternoon.

“I think it’s unlikely given the Center’s mission,” Dan Hill said in a telephone interview. “We are not a punitive body. When someone is suspended, it is to keep individuals safe. It’s all about the safety of the reporting party. In this instance, sadly, the safety issue isn’t there now.”

in addition to christine brennan’s stories, the skating lesson posted a video with her talking about the allegations. it has since been deleted because some people who believe john was innocent started sending death threats to dave lease, an interviewer for TSL, for reporting the truth. he also has since decided not to show up to nationals this weekend because he fears for his life.

the sending of death threats was encouraged by dalilah sappenfield, long-time coach of john coughlin. she posted what was probably the most vicitm-blaming post i’ve ever seen in my life on facebook (honestly be careful reading it, it made me sick to my stomach). you can find more people posting tribute posts to him here.

when people starting tweeting at figure skaters and supporters of john asking them to acknowledge the survivors, many of them turned hostile, like chris knierim, or some simply started deleting comments. here is where you find the complete list of garbage people in figure skating who have supported john. within the list, it’s divided into a number of categories that details how much support they gave towards john. also be warned: it’s long.

and at the US national championships, during the pairs short program, figure skaters (mostly students of dalilah) wore KC chiefs hats in “support” of john, knowing that one of his survivors was present at the competition.

not only were they wearing hats in support of an abuser, but dalilah sappenfield, the devil herself, was wearing an indigo ribbon in the kiss and cry.

The Indigo Ribbon Campaign raises awareness about crimes committed against Targeted Individuals of Organized Stalking and Electronic Harassment.

how fucking despicable. as a coach, dalilah is considered a MANDATORY REPORTER of any sort of abuse, and yet, she is acting like john is the victim here and is trying to gain sympathy for her piece of shit student.

if you have a twitter, please get involved in the conversation. people are flooding the tags #USChamps19 #SkaterSurvivors #ProtectOurJournalists and #USFSA, as well as directly tweeting @ USFigureSkating. so far, they’ve only issued brief and vague statements at a press conference, but we want to make sure they follow through on their word. other than those watered down statements, they’ve shown very little sympathy towards the survivors during champs, as shown by the behavior of skaters above.

we are also urging SafeSport to continue their investigation. the survivors deserve justice, even if john is dead. it’s truly despicable to watch an organization and a community completely ignore victims of sexual abuse, while propping up the literal pedophile who committed the acts. 

please don’t let this become a larry nassar situation. people BELIEVED him at first, only to find out there were hundreds of victims. this type of culture has been going on for far too long within figure skating. we need to end it.

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lmaoooo charlie white is really out here deleting old anti-sexual assault tweets??? is he pro-sexual assault now??? what an enormous piece of shit lmfao. SO EASY TO BE ANTI SEXUAL ASSAULT TIL UR FRIEND DOES IT HUH

half an hour ago:

now:

https://twitter.com/CharlieaWhite/status/836588156208185344

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wait i'm confused. why did charlie delete his old tweets?

because ppl on twitter were quoting and rt-ing him again, pointing out his hypocrisy and asking him to do better

so instead he just said fuck u n deleted them

edit:

altho he liked this so now he’s trying to front to maintain his woke status

trust no man lmao, they are all whole ass TRASH

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Another disgusting piece in People paid for by the Coughlin family (probably directly funded by those skaters in that GoFundMe).

This one states that he committed suicide due to a sense of “hopelessness” about the investigation. What kind of innocent man with no apparent underlying depression (which let’s be honest, his family is also probably covering up) would do this during a work investigation?

We CANNOT let him control the media narrative. Band together, show America, the world, USFS, and beyond that this is NOT acceptable.

The more I think about the more it seems this behavior goes MUCH deeper than Coughlin himself. If this is true, the investigation can continue. We must continue to pressure the media and federation.