I'm new so be kind!!

I love dancng on ice normally but have been extremely dissapointed this year with the lack of actual dancing on ice, and have now got my stop watch ready for each female celeb so that I can see how much time is spent dancing and not been thrown about in the air or upside down

I don't have a favourite as I think they are all great!!

Who have been your favourites in previous series?

last series were

Suzanne
Claire


and I loved Todd Carty thought he was hilarious Bless him

To be honest I think it's happening in the sport generally!

e.g. I have ben a bit disappointed with the competitive ice dancing this year. I am heartily fed up of the amount of twizzling! I know it is now required in the rules but it seems to take up a huge part of the original dance in particular, although the best performances have made it look more of a seamless part of the routine.

That said I'd like to see it as a required element in DOI, maybe at the later stages anyway, along with a couple of other things like hydroblading which Donal made a speciality of his own last year.

I don't think we'd ever see twizzles in DOI they are extremely difficult and you can't get any help from the pro on them.
I was impressed to see that since leaving DOI Chris Fountain has learnt to do twizzles but his skating skills were pretty advanced compared to everyone else.

They could maybe do a mini twizzle - i.e. couple of rotations and not at competitive speed - those at more advanced level anyway?

I would dearly love one week that the "element" be that no lifts of any kind were allowed and that at least 40% of the performance must be out of hold. This would show exactly who can dance on ice and who is literally being carried through the show.

I totally agree there should def be a week withhold lifts etc

that should mix it up a bit

Totally agree with this, think as we get nearer the end we should definitely get the opportunity to see the male and female celebs actual skating ability. It's hard to see when some of the girls for example are lifted a lot and others (male and female) spend a lot of the time in hold. Sometimes those doing more technical skating aren't viewed as highly as those who go for the crowd-pleasing lifts.

I think the fact that the lifts are so crowd-pleasing though will mean that this is unlikely to happen!

missing post

I agree with this to a certain degree (I always thought that the lifts were actually favouring the girls). What I would like to see as well though, is people doing similar routines and all showing the same kind of skills (regardless of whether it is skating or lifting). That would be interesting as well.

In theory that would put the contestants on an even playing field - in practice it might not be as simple. By virtue of their training the boys have spent much more time training on the ice than the girls; because of this I think it might be unfair to expect males and females to perform to an equal standard.

Perhaps there is a case for asking all females to skate to the same routine and similarly with the males.

I think that's what I kind of meant (e.g. if one girl does a stag lift then the others should do it as well etc. and vice versa with the boys). I was always very suspicous of lifts, but this series I have really seen the difference between a girl that can execute a good lift (i.e. transitions, holding their own body etc.), and what happens when a girl can't do that (e.g. lack of core strength). I think generally the "easy lift" argument seems a bit unfair, altogether lifts seem difficult to me as well, particularly making them look good.

I'm not sure I'd enjoy the routines as much without any lifts, but I really like the idea of a week with a high percentage of skating out of hold.....ideally somewhere around week 5 each year so that we could see at a fairly early stage who really is rubbish at skating and who has got the hang of it.

I love the idea of a mini twizzle but even one rotation done properly is horribly difficult. I've been trying to break the one rotation barrier for years. It's harder than a double 3 turn as you have to be travelling but without an obvious turn so it's like a controlled travelling spin.

Even with the extra years experience I think maybe the only celeb who has achieved one is Chris and whether he can do it both directions I don't know.

I do love the show but it does seem to be just a series of tricks and lifts(which are impressive, don't get me wrong). Not much dancing though.

This week's element is the unassisted jump. This is usually one of my favourite required elements as it sorts the wheat from the chaff.

I was wondering when that would be. It will be interesting to see who can do the good jumps this year. They haven't had the spin week yet either and that's normally about week 5 I think.

It might. Unfortunately:


They will also all have different routines which can affect how much of their time they can devote to training for the jump.

Chris can do twizzles? I wondered why he was talking about them on his twitter in relation to DOI as its not something that has been used in the show before. That's really impressive.

Can't remember when I saw him do them. Did they have a load of previous contestants on in the opening show? - seems like a long time ago now!

They all did some sort of party trick as they came on and Chris did what certainly appeared to be some twizzles (only on one foot I think so maybe can't do them both ways but still impressive!)

Why `unfortunately` ?

They should make them do a solo.

I'm not sure about that to be honest. I can't remember that far back. Perhaps someone else can answer for us?

What I have always loved about Chris is his enthusiasm for the footwork. Even on the show he was always trying to push boundaries on what he could do. Perhaps he would have been better off on a celebrity figure skating show although his partnership work has improved from what I've seen on the tours.

I think it was his partner (Frankie) who put me off him in the end. I didn't mind that he'd done ice hockey so could skate but I did mind that Frankie kept trying to convince us all that it was no advantage over the others which was the biggest load of tosh ever. Still I did enjoy his Time Warp and Cry Me a River and enjoyed the rivalry with Suzanne as it meant they really pushed each other to achieve. Would have been my favourite series except for the Divine Donal last year which makes that my favourite