Canada's Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier placed third in the figure skating team event ice dance-rhythm dance qualifiers on Monday in Milan.GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images
For three Winter Olympics, I was able to duck figure skating. I don’t mind embarrassing myself in print, but figure-skating people are famously vicious. I don’t need to start inviting a new stream of hate mail.
This time, I was promised that ice dancing was too good to miss. A sport run by the bedazzled mob, designed by the Bolshoi and scripted by Shonda Rhimes. An Olympic event so shamelessly crooked that even a rube like me would be able to see the fix.
I am escorted through this process by my Globe colleague Robyn Doolittle. She knows what’s what. This is someone with so much self-confidence that she orders cappuccinos late into the Italian night, and dares baristas to challenge her. She is wired and ready.
We go out to the Milano Ice Skating Arena. All of the arenas in Milan surprise, because not one of them is in a place where it should be, and they are all shockingly ugly. It looks like an eight-storey sub-basement that’s been popped inside out.
We’re here early for the first part of the ice dancing competition – the rhythm dance. This has apparently been the subject of some controversy in a way I find difficult to follow. Bottom line – it’s important that I see the practice, so that I know who not to trust.
Cathal Kelly: Where's Mark Carney? Sadly, not where he should be: the Olympics
It’s a confusion of people who compete for countries they may or may not have ever been to. All I retain from Robyn’s detailed description of the goings on is that they all hate each other. That could also just be me hoping it to be true.
We’re sitting there as the run-throughs begin, and I want to make a good impression.
“This pair looks strong” – that’s usually a decent cover when you have no idea what’s going on – “Do they have a chance?”
“No,” says Robyn. End of. I guess there would be no point explaining it to me.
France's Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron finished in first place in the team event ice dance-rhythm dance qualifiers on Monday.PIERO CRUCIATTI/AFP/Getty Images
“Who are they?”
“That’s the team that will beat our team, but shouldn’t.”
“Because of the fixing?”
Silence. She’s actually paying attention to the warm-ups and – here’s the strange part – fully comprehending what she’s seeing. As a general rule, this is frowned on in Olympic sportswriting.
Someone else wraps up. The one with the sparkles. Robyn makes a noise.
“Was that good?”
Same noise. “Not good?”
“Hate them.”
You’re not going to find this kind of passion on press row at a baseball game.
How the Ice Academy of Montreal became a global hub for Olympic figure skaters
All I’m trying to do here is concentrate on what’s important – that somehow, in ways I cannot understand, Canada is being targeted by malign actors. The judges file in and sit below us. I recognize them by their matching puffer vests and shifty eyes.
The competition starts. Is this good? I have no idea. I couldn’t do it. During one of the early performances, I look over at Robyn.
“That was all right, I think.”
“Bad,” Robyn says.
I make a note.
After each couple finishes, a man comes onto the ice in a white pleather suit, a white turtleneck and white skates. He’s carrying a steady-cam and filming the competitors off the ice. Are we meant to pretend this is normal?
“Yes,” says Robyn.
Make another note.
Robyn turns to me and says, “Okay, you can quote me on this.”
“But I’ve already been quo…”
Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States placed second in the rhythm dance qualifiers on Monday in Milan.Natacha Pisarenko/The Associated Press
“There are scores in ice dancing and all that blah blah blah, but do you know what ice dancing is about?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Vibes.”
She does that thing movie directors in TV shows do when they are making a point, casting her hand across the air in front of my face. “Vibes. Write that down.”
I make a note.
Later, she says, “Can you imagine being out there?” Not really. Aside from being eaten by a shark, skating around in my underwear in front of 5,000 strangers like these people do is the worst thing I can think of.
A French pair comes out and Robyn starts shaking me in her excitement – “Oh my God. Oh my God.” I get it – I get this way too when I see Anthony Stolarz.
My favourite part? That one of the guys was named Gleb Smolkin. If you named your kid Gleb Smolkin, a fortune teller must have promised you that he was going to be in the Olympics.
I’m beginning to get the appeal of this. It has a reassuring sameness. Small differences in performance, coupled with the opacity of the judging to the average viewer, encourage obscurantism. This is like any occult practice, but with more hair extensions.
Travel with me to the Olympic Winter Games
Three hours after it begins, we get to the main players. This is the short program. Do people bring sleeping bags to the long one?
Canada’s medal hopefuls, Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, go fifth-to-last. Their twizzles are excellent, which is something I’ve learned I should be saying to people when I’m at ice dance.
It looks great to me, but Robyn notices that Poirier’s He-Man style wristband falls off.
“I hope they don’t get a costume deduction.”
I nod solemnly. She never does tell me if they do.
The British pair that is locked in some sort of complicated combat for the soul of the rhythm dance with the Canadians is going third-to-last. Again, amazing.
“So?”
“The vibes are 10/10,” says Robyn. Oh boy.
However, once the scores drop, Gillies and Poirier end up in third.
“My figure skating group chat is popping off,” says Robyn. “The judges got it right.”
What? Then how am I supposed to write this?
Then right at the end, the American favourites – who I’m told are locks to win this – close things out. They are called Chock and Bates, which sounds like a cop whose partner is his dog.
Again, looks great to me, but the judges give them the shaft. Their coach throws a long eyebrow that I’m guessing in ice dance is like attacking someone with a skate guard. The French ‘Oh my God’ couple – the ones I knew all along would come out on top – sit in first.
What a nice change it is to cover a sport that always works out the way it should.
Figure skaters perform their jumps in the blink of an eye. The Globe’s Robyn Doolittle, herself a skater, gives some tips on how to identify the different moves when watching the Winter Olympics at home.