Book read.
I totally love it. I think a lot of female ice dancers, female figure skaters, women in general should thank Gabriella for writing it.
Because what she describes through her personal experience is a hitchcockian universe that slowly, step after step, draws her to the verge of madness and suicide, a place that makes her doubt her own memories, her own sanity, destroys any safe place she may have or want to build and ends up making her physically sick.
The little moments she describes of her experience with her partner, her coaches, the world of ice dance are like zooms that make the toxicity tangible. In a world that is all about self-professed good manners and professionalism, theatrics and appearances, you can see a lot of normality and then the needle of the Geiger counter goes close to or wildly beyond the « danger/ price tag you have to pay for success » limit, in an unsustainable, piling-up way.
The toxic obsession for control of women in their every step, at every stage of their career, in their body, in their mind, in their choices, by every layer of their professional environment is sick. And it creates an unsafe environment that poisons everything. And there is no one at any level of the professional scale that feel it’s their job and responsability to say « stop ».
As a spectator, I remember being worried twice about what was happening on the ice : with Oleg Schliakov in general (Berezhnaya could have died) and with Nikita Katsalapov when he dropped Sinitsina for everyone to see. But how many girls are at best « unsure » of whether their partner will actually do their job and catch them up when they are up in the air or in an imbalanced position, in training, in competition or in gala ? That you do not cross your male partner, that he has all the powers, that you shut up or else ? And how many coaches have turned a blind eye to such doubts, or nurtured them ? And what is the general culture in figure skating that enables this situation that even hits an olympic female champion in a self-proclaim « safe and aware » professional training center ? And how many people refuse to pay second thoughts because that’s how the system works ?
Those are undoubtly very incomfortable questions to ask a few weeks prior to the Games but Gabriella has every right to lay them on the table, especially as her coaches, partner, and skating environment were creating a narrative where she had disappeared into the night…
Those are also important for the current female skaters and for the next generations.
As a longtime observator, I will say something else. French ice dance and Lyon in particular have been known for the quality of its boys. Post Delobel-Schoenfelder, there was a junior girl I deemed exceptional (that would be Elodie Brouiller, Tiffany would be another but she was not a fruit of french ice dance) but she was dumped by her partner like a dirty sock (that would be B E N O I T). But the next generation, the one that comes after Théo Bigot, it will be about girls. There is a golden generation that ages between 8 an 15 yo that could IMO could make France contend for olympic gold for the next 25 years, something we have never had before and all internally developped. I think french ice dance owes them to study Gabriella’s book thoroughly to analyse everything that went wrong in Gabriella and Guillaume’s partnership to adapt and offer them a safer environment. I’m pretty sure that Arribert (in a « what are the holes I may have left » way) and Piton (in a « how to engineer olympic champions » ’ way ; Piton is the one I’ve seen switching from focusing on engineering THE boy from scratch – done - to engineering THE girl from scratch, her work with Dania being different, as an « import » from Belfort 5 years ago) will. I hope many other coaches too.
I don’t doubt for one second that this book will have long term consequences, even if right now, everyone « is hiding behind their little finger » as a french expression says, putting their head into the sand.
