Lae: So this is going to be quite a long conversation, but I think a pretty necessary one, because we are going to be talking about cultural appropriation, cultural borrowing - The issue of culture, in other words, and figure skating.
Bonus: Banners, Flower Crowns and Figure Skating - Transcript
Lae: So, all we've touched on so far have talked about banners that have been professionally printed and designed digitally, but do we have any advice on making handmade banners, such as what materials to use or is printing kind of the go-to?
Gabb: I use printed just because I have a degree for it. It's easier for me, I know how to work with printers. But you can easily just make handheld banners yourself using paper.
Kat: [laughs] Lae sitting outside the rink at ACI drawing Yuzu and Wakaba banners!
Becs: The 4am Wakaba banner sketching session!
Lae: Yeah, from experience, you can just buy an A3 size piece of card and buy some gold stickers and a permanent marker. Honestly, it's just the thinking and it's the design that goes into it.
Kat: It's the thought that counts!
Episode 35: Photography and Figure Skating (feat. Interview with Joosep Martinson) - Transcript
Becs: Good costumes are such a draw in terms of just being like "Yes yes you are worthy!"
Gabb: Especially if they're sparkly!
Becs: Yes sparkles please!
Kat: Aka Ice Dance ladies.[Gabb: Yes!] 90% of the time deliver with their costumes.
Becs: Yes. One thing that is so beautiful about picking who you're going to photograph is ah Ice Dance ladies and ladies in general show up looking usually fabulous most practices even so...
Kat: And then you have the men with like 80% black costumes or monochrome.
Becs: Yeah it's tragic, it's a tragic contrast.
Tales of the Blade: 19th Century Rinks - Transcript
Evie: Well, you're not that far off, honestly. You're a couple steps to the left of what was actually used. Henry Kirk tried to emulate the feeling of ice using a mixture of materials and included in this mixture were salt, copper, aluminium and... hog's lard. Literal hog's lard - the fat from a hog - to make it slippery enough to skate on!
Niamh: Who's sitting in their kitchen one night thinking, "Oh, I know what I'll do, I'll make some fake ice using hog's lard!"
Evie: Obviously Henry Kirk thought that. So here's your ingredients: "30-50 feral hogs --" (hosts laugh)
Tales of the Blade: Ulrich Salchow - Transcript
Tilda: It seems that was just the way he was because he also offered one of his past medals to Dick Button. [Karly: My dude!] in 1947, and Dick Button at that point came second but Salchow felt that he should have won and a lot of people agreed because people were super salty about judging here. [Salchow] was like, you should have won here -- have this medal!
Karly: Ulrich seems like a pretty respectful dude. You know, giving away his gold medal to who he thinks rightfully should have won. That takes some stripe of character.
Tilda: Right but it's also very savage if you're not competing.
Karly: That is also savage. He's like, I beat you but I'll give it to you.
Tilda: Yeah, at this competition with Dick Button, he wasn't even competing. It was like this other dude who won. Gerschwiler won and then Ulrich was like, no.
Karly: [laughs] “You did not win. Uh-uh, not on my watch.”
Tilda: It was like really savage.
Tales of the Blade: Elaine Zayak - Transcript
Kite: So today is gonna be our second episode of Tales of the Blade, which is a new series where we're gonna dive into the history of figure skating. So the catch here is that one of the hosts is going to be teaching topic of the episode and the other host does not know anything about the topic that is about to be taught to them. So this week we are going to be talking about Elaine Zayak, who has the dubious honor of having one of the best known technical rules named after her. We do have to warn you before getting into this episode that there is going to be some mention of eating disorders, so if that is particularly upsetting to you then please refer to the time stamps for where to skip in the episode. So let's get right into it! Yogeeta can you tell me what the Zayak rule is?
Yogeeta: Oh god, I'm sure I could have told you this when it wasn’t relevant.
Episode 31: The Cost of Figure Skating (feat. Interview with Tim Koleto) - Transcript
Taeri: It seems like in every competition cycle there's a number of skaters, especially those from smaller federations, who talk about their financial struggles. There are just a lot of little things that factor into making the sport burdensome like travel, housing, and accommodation - not just for the skater but for their coaches and their families. We've looked into multiple ways that skaters fund their own careers and it honestly varies based on factors like a skaters federation, their world ranking, even their popularity to get booked for shows.
Bonus Episode: Figure Skating in Fiction - Transcript
Lae: It’s not a very big genre of movie and - apart from I, Tonya perhaps, they’re not Oscar winning productions by any means, but as figure skating fans we take what we can get and this is just a fun discussion revolving around the things that we do have. So slim pickings, but it’s fine.
Kat: Beggars can’t be choosers.
Episode 6: Figure Skating History - Transcript
Clara: So in the end, this has more or less morphed into something like a brief history of the last thirty years of figure skating, which is clearly more than anyone can cover in an hour, especially us, given how chatty we are liable to be. So take this as an upfront disclaimer, this is going to be a very whistle-stop tour and necessarily incomplete.
Episode 5: Figure Skating and Gender - Transcript
Lae: Well, we are going to focus the main segment of this episode on issues of gender bias in figure skating. And it’s a huge topic, so we’re not going to be able to cover everything but Evie’s here first of all to give you a historical perspective on figure skating in the early years.
Evie: Finally, finally my degree is coming in handy, I’m very excited about this -
Lae: Your time to shine!