Roxy has a very soft body and she needs to harden up to improve the look of her lifts. But she should get extra marks for skating on her own, which is something Zoe, Colleen and Melinda dont do. I think she has been undermarked every single week.

I thought Roxy was focusing too much on doing the flashy move, ie the headbanger, and so hadn't paid enough attention to the rest of her routine. Jason was right, her leg lines were dreadful, and much of the rest of it seemed more like a mid-week rehearsal than a polished performance.

I think when the judges were vaguely saying 'concentrate on the skating, not the flashy moves' they were talking about her, and perhaps Ellery too. I blame Frankie for that one, pushing him to do more and more dangerous stuff at the expense of concentrating on getting good at the more basic moves.

I'm wondering what solo skating everyone is seeing Roxy do. I counted a couple of basic forward crossovers and a couple of two footed simple forward glides. Add that to the 'headbanger that wasn't' and how could she have got any higher marks?

Even Zoe with all her lifts did some unassisted one foot back slaloms in her routine and had lifts that worked.

Her Sweet About Me and Genie In The Bottle routines both provided alot of solo skating (done well IMO)

I'm with you on this one.

Roxanne's 'solo skating' is being highly exaggerated and Zoe's unassisted moves are being overlooked.

It's not just about letting go of your partner, it's about the difficulty of the footwork when you do so. Roxanne didn't do anything amazing when left on her own.

Her headbanger wasn't OK, it was non-existent. You don't get points in a test for what you meant to do but didn't. Her routine wasn't as good as last week's so it deserved lower scores.

Whilst I agree that Zoe was ridiculously overmarked, Roxanne's skating wasn't worthy of higher scores.

She knows her limitations and was counting on the headbanger to get her marks and votes.

Her routine didn't flow smoothly at all. How can you call Melinda clunky by comparison? Melinda stumbled but her movement on the ice is far smoother than Roxanne. Melinda is a swan, Roxanne is a pigeon.

Donal deserved higher marks than Roxanne and higher than he got. He is the one who is improving, who is pushing himself and who is showing the complex moves. If only he could bring just a bit more rhythm to it.

As far as I'm concerned Roxanne deserved to be in the skate off.

I do have to say though, her "build up" to the headbanger, just lying there in the angle of a birthing seal, waiting for Daniel to lift her, was the funniest thing on DOI after Todd's stumble.

The sweet about me one she did skate a bit more on her own but it was still pretty basic and a bit clunky, either straight forward or back, with only two slightly more difficult turns (mohawk to two feet and step to forward repeated). Nothing that required her to hold an edge (the difficult bit).

In the same show Jessica was doing outside and inside 3 turns as well as mohawks, steps to forwards, jumps in, place and much quicker and more turns etc. as well as going in an out of hold and all done really smoothly. Donal had more complicated footwork too including toetaps, a minispin, barrel roll type things, back toetaps,one foot glide while moving rest of body, several 3 jumps, back crossovers etc.

This week Donal did forward toe taps, 3 turn, back crossovers into back slalom, back hydroglide while supporting Florentine and had good flow between moves. Just needs a bit more work on the musicality.

Well I would say the equivalent of non-existent is not happening, e.g. going into a lift and not being able to do it full stop, or simply falling over. Roxy got into it, but it didn't happen properly, and because of the outrageousness of the move, it showed more. I know they built it up a lot, but her VT focused on nothing but the headbanger, that might or might not have been her fault, but I'm sure it's not all they talked of when filmed. Would've been far better if no one had mentioned it at all, then the backlash wouldn't have been so bad. Aside from that I did enjoy her routine more than last week.



I really enjoy Melinda and I thought that lift where she was in a ball and swung about (sorry, don't know the technical name) was the most impressive to watch of the night. I would've given Melinda a 17.5 overall at LEAST and Roxy 18.5 or 19 personally. Then I would've put Zoe in roughly the same bracket. Jess was fine as she was. The Melinda stumble was quite bad though, and I don't recall much solo skating, and as for smoothness and grace, we'll have to agree to disagree, but I do see where you're coming from.


Donal is excellent and though I don't think he should've been higher, I'm not particularly bothered because he puts in a lot of effort and it really pays off. He's probably the most interesting to watch. Fall aside though, I'm sure I enjoyed his routine more last week.


Yes, I have to admit there was a certain beached whale quality to it that wasn't remotely flattering!

I really don't think anyone is saying Roxy is this amazing solo skater. Donal, Jess and Ray are all better at skating. But who else? Zoe is debatable, though I know when she gets it right she's undoubtedly better. But lately she hasn't done it at all and the last time she did she stumbled, badly. Zoe does have lovely posture though, more so than Roxanne, probably for obvious reasons.

Roxy has skated more, and yes it may be easy, but it's not laughably bad either, it looks pretty decent, and it's more than Linda and Emily did before her with Dan and probably on par with Gaynor Faye at the same stage. It's also more than any of the girls except Jess so far I'd say, easy or not.

I totally agree with OP. The under-marking of Roxeanne was unbelievable last night, and she's been marked down for a good two weeks now. It was a gutsy effort, lots of content and musicality, yet Zoe got, what, 5 and a half points more!!!!! What are they looking at or are they transparently electioneering Zoe.
I think Roxeanne is as talented on the ice as Jessica and better than Zoe. Zoe does nothing on the ice. She was held for the majority of her routine.
And while I like Melinda, no way was her routine as good as Roxeanne's.

i think she's always undermarked.
problem with that routine though was that it was really short for a start and also there wasn't much skating involved, it was all about the lifts. so i did think it was slightly disappointing but through no roxanne's.

Would agree with you there.

I think she comes across quite arrogant sometimes. She seems to be really annoyed with her low marks(which I can understand). But I think she assumes all the Emmerdale fans will save her

I don't think she's undermarked, I think she is aided a lot by her partner.
The judges saying that some people "don't need the headbanger" was telling.
Roxanne is not technically good. She's better than Coleen though

Thats the thing which I think is the problem with alot of the female skaters - they are working too hard on all the lifts and not giving enough time over the basic skating etc.

If alot of the females dropped the lifts, or limited the amount of lifts in a given routine then it may give them time to work on the more basic aspects of the routine.

Had Roxanne not done the headbanger but a more simplistic but WOW lift then maybe she would've been more fluid in her movements etc and given a much better performance than the half-arsed attempt that we got