Did you see Stephen Mulhearn ask Natalia Bestemianova how 'our' celebrities compared with their Russian counterparts. Natalia should be a diplomat as there is no comparison. Have a look at this Youtube clip showing one of the couples. It is a great routine and incase you cant tell, the guy is the celebrity (Russias answer to Robbie Williams I believe). This is only from week 2 of the show and at the end of the clip you will see the scoreboard where the lowest mark is 21.5 with the highest being an incredible maximum 30.

Whereas here we seem to have a witchhunt because it is suggested that Claire Buckfield must have skated before, in Russia it must be the reverse, only 'celebrities' who can skate are welcome.

Week 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UdDtgx9VUU

Week 3

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG7fLXh8-m4

Week 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JtcIggU1Wg
Last edited by Drew Peacock : 28-01-2007 at 18:06

Ice skating is much more a passtime in Russia than the UK. I believe there are some skaters idolised there! I'm sure it would be hard for them to get a celebrity, whom had never skated before!

Thanks for those clips. Very good.

Steph

I am Russian, and most people in Russia will have skated at some point in their life, in some areas of the country its the only way for us Russian's to get around is on skates or skies. Most people in Russia will have tried figure skating, or at the very least hockey multiple times in their life, many people will do it week in week out for a leisure activity.

My god, what amazing skating. Thanks ever so much for sharing those links.

That's very interesting, thanks sergei.

Thanks for the links .
according to this clip this guy had no skating experience but he did some ballet in the past. And he actually came second in this competition. I can't say whether the winner had skated in the past as I have no idea who he is


It's not quite true for the whole Russia, Sergei. I grew up in the Caucasus and the nearest ice rink to me was about 300 miles away. Since the winter down there is very mild and we hardly had any show we didn't have anywhere to skate at all. It the North or Russia that had the abundance of ice rinks.
Aslo I think it's important to mention that there a huge difference between being able to skate around the rink with a crowd of dozens of people and being able to dance. Even in the North only 'the chosen ones' could go further than just skating around. The only place where you could learn how to dance on ice in those days (I am talking about the past because that's when those celebrities were born) was state funded sports schools and clubs. You could get there only through a tough competition and before certain age ( I think it was not older than 7) . Only few could actually get there.
So generally people in northen parts of Russia have more opportunity to skate but I am not sure it's enough to be good dancer. I think those 2 guys (who came 1st and 2nd) were simply very talented and naturally good dancers

The Ilia Averbukh produced show, the rival to DOI, called Russian Stars on Ice, was also an incredibly high standard. Compered by Plushy & Irina, they were really cute!

Wow, they're really good and extremely talented.

Thanks for posting those.

From I read and heard the level on this show was higher than on Russion version of DOI. They certainly had better pros there.

By the way, Have you seen this clip from the show with Plushenko interviwing Yagudin. It is hilarious, espesially Plushenko's offer to skate as a pair

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FIVNdImI3s
Last edited by babysquirrel : 02-02-2007 at 15:48

Isn't Yags going to marry his partner on that show?
Very glamorous, but she couldn't skate lol! People voted for Yags.

I loved how they had lots of great exhibitions on that show, Imperial ice Stars and Domnina & Shabalin.

Plus Plushy proved he is a TV natural, a great presenter.

Shame about whats apparently happening between Plushy and his wife Masha though.

I didn't hear about that. Tell me more... I heard that he couldn't get on with her at all. He couldn't stand her diva attitude. And she is so much older than him and as far as I know is married with children. I hope it's not true.



I haven't seen them Can you give me a link, please. I've only seen Yagudin, Averbukh and Sekcharulidze dancing to Blue Canary. I thought that was cute.



he has always being a great entertainer and crowd pleaser. . Though entertaining on ice id different to entertaining on TV and I think he did his job well (though again I haven't seen much)
By the way, I think the Kerrs mught make fantastic presenters for DOI. They always have a lot to say and are so enthusiastic all the time. What do you think?

What is happening between them?

There are dozens of clips on Youtube, if you perform a search on "Russian Stars on Ice" you will find them.

In my opinion this program takes Dancing on Ice to another level. For a start the setting is far superior with a larger ice rink. The professionals all seem to be either European or World or Olympic Champions or in some cases all three. The routines are longer and include props (one I saw even had a dog!). I suppose this is made possible by the excellence of the celebrity skaters. The judges are as famous as the skaters including the infamous Tarasova (no Holly Dolly is going to stop her when in full flow). They also use the traditional method of scoring with marks out of 6 and separate scores for technique and artistic impression. All in all it is a brilliant program which deserves a wider audience.

Yagudin/Pushkina
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca7iIH8_BYI

Zhulin/Dapkunaite
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om_tfMIrmCE

Bolshova/Tikhonov
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tplOsxs7dpU

There has been a lot of rumours about them breaking up, they spend a lot of time apart, she is often at home in St. Petersburg, and him in Moscow. They also got married very quickly against the judgement of his coach and I think both sets of parents. They have a son and apparently he doesn't see his son very often, it may all be rumours but it has been circulating for quite some time here, and they do say there is no smoke without fire. No one thought it would really last anyway, everything seemed to happen so very fast. Maybe its just a rough patch who knows, but there have been lots of stories about her filing for divorce then they said it was fine and then apparently she filed again so I'm not sure whats going on, but there are certainly problems there, thats for sure. there has also been rumours of his cheating with pairs OGM Tatiana Totmianina.

Nooooo! Cos it was reported a while ago that Tatiana Totmianina was getting engaged to her coach Oleg Vassilev! But I think that was proved to be false later.

Maybe the Yags rumour is false also, but I did hear he was getting married, and they said it was to his partner on the show....Drew, can you find any clips of the Russian Stars on Ice series that was the rival to the DOI one, that had all the younger recent Champions on it as the Pros?

Alot of fans around the world did download clips online from both shows, and watch them every week. Plus you're so right about the great set, the rink size, the scoring format, and being interrupted lol! All the Judges had their own mic and would talk for ages, that's why poor Natalia takes her time over giving an opinion, over here it's rushed, or Holly Day Dream just asks the polo necked man all the time and ignores Natalia completely!

There are some other clips here, the first few are from the Moscow Figure Skating Gala for New Years but after that there are some clips from the shows.

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=hookham

I don't think there was ever anything going on between Totmianina and Vassiliev, I think it was just a rumour that came from a translated interview. Im not certain about the Yagudin rumour either I know there were/are a lot of rumours of romance between him and his partner, but whether that mean their will be a marriage I don't know. I prefer the judge system in the Russian version, if it was used here people like Lee, according to Jason, might score very highly and lower in the presentation, and it'd let people know which side of their skating needs to be improved. Also I think they should be able to use the rest of the numbers too, not just 0.5 increase, but also be able to use 5,3 and so on, that way if a routine is very good but slightly less than someone you gave a 5.0 to you can give them a 4.9 or something. Might help to rank people, especially when it comes to giving 6.0's. If you give someone a 5.5 and you think the next id better they'd maybe give it a 6.0 when really it wasn't good enough for a 6.0 but was better than the 5.5, at least if they used all the number it could be given a 5.7 or whatever.
Last edited by sergeik : 05-02-2007 at 11:16

The russians seem to steal the show in whatever they do, esspecially gymnastics!!!

WOW! Amazing amount of videos there, thankyou sergei. I did see a download of the Ludmila Pakhamova Tribute Gala put on by her husband Gorschkov, and it was so sweet as Tamara Moskvina was Pair Skating with Anton Sikharulidze.


Thanks for clarifying that one, I thought it was a bit strange. I can't believe she hasn't noticed her gorgeous partner Maxim, but...she seems to ignore him?

The reports from America are that the Elena Berezhnaya-Steven Cousins rumour is definitely true though.


I think it was much better too, but they did have a tendency to award a row of 6.0s lol! Ofcourse some of the performances were quite wonderful!
Over here I don't think we ever saw a 6.0 at all, not even in the Final last year. The highest mark was a 5.5, but as that's been reached already this series, you never know. It is weird that they can't increse it by 0.1 but only by 0.5. And I agree, there should be a distinction between Technical and Presentation.

I was recently in russia and they are so big into their skating!!!!! Mind you i'm sorry but if i lived in moscow i so would be too
(personal preference i hated it!)