Karen Magnussen passes the torch
Karen Magnussen feels like she knows Kaetlyn Osmond. Now they are members of the same club: Canadian women who have won world figure skating championships. There aren’t many of them, mind: Barbara Ann Scott (1947 and 1948), Petra Burka (1965) and Magnussen herself, in 1973. Yes, it’s been 45 years since Magnussen won that last […]
Continue readingInside the heart of Moore-Towers and Marinaro
It was telling: Kirsten Moore-Towers burst into an ugly cry against the chest of her partner, Michael Marinaro, as soon as they took their final pose after the short program at the world championships in Milan on Wednesday. Surely they were tears of joy? They had just nailed it, big time: triple twist, whopper of […]
Continue readingKaetlyn Osmond and the dark side of a swan.
No, Kaetlyn Osmond does not have an evil twin. But she can pretend. And when she does, as she does in her free program to the movie “Black Swan,” this season, she is convincing and powerful, a potent force on the ice. It does no good to watch her do this routine on Youtube. (But […]
Continue readingDaleman, pressing onwards to the free
Today, Gabby Daleman will find her rhythm. It’s what she does in times of peril. The national championship proved to be one of those times, when she endured strep throat, that was replaced by pneumonia by the time she whizzed through her free skate to the rapturous “Rhapsody in Blue.” Even so, she took her […]
Continue readingVirtue and Moir: on top of the world
To describe the genius of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir is to require an armful of exclamation points. As one fellow skater put it, they are “beyond.” Way back in 2010, when Virtue and Moir won their first Olympic gold medal in Vancouver in their early twenties, the 1980 Olympic champion Robin Cousins was already […]
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