The early 2000s is where I cut my teeth as an ice dance fan and learned the trade. The 2002 Olympics (and 2001 Worlds somewhat) was the first time I truly paid attention to ice dance. I never looked back even though in retrospect and watching previous eras, I'm not sure if this was a good era of ice dance in terms of programs and skill but it was tops in terms of nationalism and personality.
Looking back at it now, I think Anissina/Peizerat were the only post-Krylova/Ovysiannikov (where "eys" comes from but does anybody use that on FSU anymore?) team that would be worthy of note from their era when looking at the past ice dance greats of all time. They had chemistry, difficulty, and great concepts (most of the time, I mean that Martin Luther King FD was a clunker and they lucked out that no other team had what they had and also had bad FDs (for the most part)). Lobacheva/Averbukh's quick rise to gold medal contenders (losing the OGM by a 5-4 split) was such a farce that I'm still not quite over it even though it still worked out for A/P in the end thanks to some possible
.
Speaking of that, did that actually happen? Either way, I do believe some sort of deal happened (whether Marina herself was involved or not) that probably went out of the window somewhat after the Pairs scandal broke out. This was the first time I paid attention to controversial judge Alla Shekhovtsova (remember her as the judge who hugged Adelina Sotnikova at the 2014 Olympics) who probably felt free from the deal Didier made with the Russian Fed once the pairs scandal broke out, and voted for L/A in the FD despite any deals being made...she probably felt even more empowered to do so when the Polish judge in the Original Dance gave L/A the first place vote over A/P's masterpiece of a Flamenco and even gave L/A's OD a 6.0 to boot! Since she didn't do that, surely nobody would accuse her of any bias if she so happened to change her mind in the FD, right? She was just voting for the performance of that day. You all believe that, right?
Bourne/Kraatz were better skaters under Tarasova than they were under Dubova who they had been stagnating under for quite some time and was becoming more tone deaf to their need to improve, but their Michael Jackson FD though entertaining sort of showed their shortcomings as a team (like that slow butt straight-line (and I mean straight-line...like where were the curves?) footwork sequence during the "Smile" segment). That Spanish OD wasn't the disaster that their 1999-2000 Latin OD was, but it was not good. They were better the season prior.
Fusar-Poli/Margaglio...they taught me that skating with confidence and as clean as one can with "exciting" material can hide a lot in ice dance, at least at the time. And it helps to have some political backing. Their 2001 Worlds win lead Marina Anissina to get desperate enough to justifiably make some deals (if that did happen). They also taught me that when you have loser material and skate with a true lack of confidence and have a program that didn't take advantage of their strengths ("I Will Survive" was choreographically a fail even if I liked parts of it), then there's no where you can hide. It also hurts when there's stronger political winds blowing in someone else's favor.
Drobiazko/Vanagas should have been at least third in the FD IMO (not counting Denkova/Staviski because it's been so long since I've seen their 2002 Olympics FD) even though all their FD pattern was just a giant circle going round over and over. They were an admirable team and I can see why they had tons of staunch supporters by 2002.
I do think this era was defined by the overly dramatic programs, torn shreds meant to resemble skirts, and a time where teams were trying their hardest to circumvent the discernible beat rule where they were trying to go back to Klimova/Ponomarenko-like 1992 programs except none of them were K/P. They also had those codified rules that stopped them from having the freedom to truly create artistically and aesthetically-pleasing and coherent programs like that. It was so bad that after 2001 Worlds, the ISU tried to force the teams to skate to "uplifting" music aka actually dance to a rhythm and beat to incorporate dancing in ice dance aka dance to music intended for dancing and not like Vivaldi's Four Seasons mixed with some Euro Trash beat that was so popular in the 2000s...and they're still trying through COP. I remember in that Ice Assets book or whatever, Barbara Fusar-Poli complained that A/P and L/A didn't follow the rules with their drama-heavy programs.
The era that followed was full of highs (some routines) and lows (results) for me. I fell in love with Denkova/Staviski but man once IJS was implemented and watching them in retrospect, they really had a hard time adapting to itemized elements where twizzles and lifts became quantified and way more important. I remember re-watching 2005 Worlds some time ago and being amazed that, in the FD,
ONLY Belbin/Agosto and Delobel/Schoenfelder looked comfortable skating under IJS. Everyone else's execution of the elements were messy. DelSchoes Frida FD is so classic and I still rewatch it. That should have won the FD by some way.
By the 2006 Olympics, Navka/Kostomorov cleaned up their elements and that along by her gorgeous leg line and body type where the judges probably took marks off their closest competitor's shorter-limbed bodies were probably enough to justify them being the anointed gold medal winners when both B/K and L/A retired after 2003 Worlds - even though he's no great skater (totally eclipsed by the likes of Maxim Staviski who was an excellent dancer) and should shut up about Cizeron who has everything over him as a skater and a dancer.
Of the 2003-2006 era, the only teams I could say I loved were the two D/Ss...Denkova/Staviski and Delobel/Schoenfelder. I did re-watch Dubrieul/Lauzon and thought they were skating well enough for a medal. If we're honest, we could all probably see that they were technically better than B/K even back in the 1999-2002 Olympic cycle, but I could be wrong. Btw, wasn't there some heated discussion in the Ice Dance thread about where Marie-France got her idea to do "Cry Me a River" for one of her teams this season and whether she got it from a junior male skater last season? IMO, she and Patrice probably remembered that song when they competed against the Kerrs when they did a whole Justin Timberlake FD at 2005 Worlds which included that song.
I think Belbin/Agosto were helped by the fact that they did their IJS elements with confidence of young people, they had some charisma, and Denkova/Staviski had two blah programs following their brilliant Handel one, though D/S did win Worlds with one of them after Navka/Kostomorov were out of the way and it was safe to reward them again. That said, their rough execution of the elements at 2005 Worlds really helped the justify the season-and-a-half long politicking against them. B/A were somewhat lucky that happened and the judging system changed because it seemed like most of their programs was her skating on flats with Ben dragging her along the whole time while she and he sold face. Her lines were nothing to write home about either. Despite their crowd-leasing J.Lo Latin OD, I think that and their Flamenco Barbie FD showed they couldn't really dance either, but it's not as if their competitors were good actual dancers either. I still get nightmares at Navka's trying to bounce to that Austin Powers music change for their 2004 World Championship-winning FD thinking, is this the best ice dance has to offer in terms of their athletes' actual dance abilities? I obviously am not including the likes of Maxim Staviski in that statement.
Delobel/Schoenfelder taught me that I really love soft bent knees in ice dance which carried over to my love of the Shibs. DelSchoes were never rewarded properly in that era and just when things were going well with them, they had to get injured after 2008-2009 GPF and then her pregnancy meant they really were out of the running. Not that she should be sorry for having a child or anything.
I did not say much about 2005 Worlds and 2006 Olympic bronze medalists Grushina/Gonchorov and the less said the better. I guess I'll give them credit for having a solid and appropriate OD that played to their strengths at the 2006 Olympics and not falling like many of the other contenders.
This era also had incredibly busy looking programs where teams did skate to a rhythm and a beat but were prevented from actually dancing to them because there were just too many elements and requirements to reach levels the teams had to do under this code. I mean weren't there two twizzle sequences and two dance spins? Four leveled lifts? Level four required the woman to do Biellmans in both the lifts and the spins leading to nonsensical lift positions (like Navka's pained Carmen smile when she grabbed her blade for no reason during their curve lift) and very slow and painful looking spins where it seemed like these teams were spinning on molasses.
Talk about too much in too little time. None of the FDs at the 2006 Olympics were memorable except DelSchoes's clever masquerade mask glove program that had all that talking in different languages depending on the location of the competition, but even that wasn't as good as I remembered it. It was just good for the time.
I also remember truly liking Domnina/Shabalin at the 2006 Olympics but a fellow FSUer at the time rolled his eyes when I told him that because he was like watch this 10th place ranked team become gold medal contenders in 2010 just like Navka/Kostomorov, it's the same trek all Russian ice dance teams go through. Of course, he didn't predict Shabalin's severe injury, how much IJS would change ice dance and thus the rise of Marina/Igor with Virtue/Moir and Davis/White who grew up under IJS and did their elements way more comfortably and better than the 6.0 teams, and that they would move to Natalia Linichuk and how much that move would ruin Domnina/Shabalin's skating/packaging even though she seriously cleaned up Denkova/Staviski's skating and tried her best with Belbin/Agosto (while giving them some real loser programs).
) I was a huge A/P-fan since Euros the same year, when I was blown away by TMITIM, and was heartbroken when they were beaten by the drumming FD at Worlds. I didn’t like the drums much back then, but I loved Angelica and Oleg, she was so special. Now I’ve grown to like the African drum program a lot, a quite cool.
Hell, I preferred 99-2003 Navka & Partner (Interchangeable) to the messes that won them medals. Clearly, my opinion of that time is not impartial, at best.
