The Chaotic History of Menning

Nobunari Oda taking a tumble at the 2009 World Championships. Photo courtesy Silvie Touchette.

If you have spent any time engaging in online figure skating discussions over the past few years, you may have come across the term "Menning."

In today's figure skating pop culture, "Menning" refers to the tendency for men's events to produce chaotic and unpredictable results. It's the short program where no one seems to be able to stay on their feet. It's the free skate where there seem to be more Waxels than Axels. It's the skater who lands everything all season and then unravels at the biggest competition of the year. It’s the standings that look nothing like the expected podium after the short program. In short, when the men’s event refuses to behave logically, today's generation of fans shrugs and says: "That’s menning."

The lingo isn't meant as an insult so much as affectionate exasperation. Men's singles has long had a reputation for volatility. As they say, "ice is slippery", and with huge risk comes the greater potential for failure. While the discipline has produced extraordinary champions and historic programs, it has also produced a not insignificant number of dramatic defeats, surprise medallists, and head-scratching final standings.

In today's blog, I'll look at a few historical examples that helped cement the idea of "Menning" in skating culture. Then, because anecdotes are fun but data is better, I have compiled a chart tracking instances of "menning" since the introduction of the International Judging System (IJS). I've focused on the IJS era because it allows for more consistent technical comparisons and clearer statistical patterns. As for the 6.0 era? That would require rewatching approximately a million programs - and as a wise woman named Sweet Brown once said, "Ain't nobody got time for that." 

Let's look back at the history of how the men have, well... menned.

Jack Ferguson Page. Photo courtesy "Skating World" magazine.

In 1927, the World Figure Skating Championships were held in Davos, Switzerland. The entire competition was skated in a blinding blizzard. Eight men competed, and Manchester-born British skater Jack Ferguson Page was the only one of them who didn't fall in the compulsory figures and free skating. All of the other competitors fell at least once in the figures and once or twice in the free skating. The weather clearly played a factor, but interestingly enough, Page finished fourth in both phases of the competition and fourth overall. In the days before the "one judge per country" rule, a trio of Austrian skaters swept the podium, thanks to a bloc of three Austrian judges. The British judge reported the matter to the UK's National Skating Association and kicked up a fuss with the press. The media attention surrounding this incident, coupled with a similar one in that year's World Championships for women in Oslo, helped change the ISU's rules, but it didn't stop men from menning.

Newspaper clipping about the men's competition at the 1963 World Championships, courtesy "Buffalo Evening News" 

At the 1963 World Figure Skating Championships, the men's free skate devolved into a midnight survival test that perfectly exemplified "men menning." Skated in temperatures plunging to minus twenty Celsius, with the final group beginning shortly before midnight on splinter-hard, brittle ice, the event saw contender after contender falter. Spectators watched in disbelief as skater after skater struggled on jumps they could do every day in practice. The leader after the compulsory figures, Manfred Schnelldorfer of West Germany, "fell so badly backwards that he lost a lot of time to get up again," recalled his mother. "In those seconds, he wondered whether to give up. He did not want it anymore and had to leave some difficulties out. He jumped only simple jumps, no more doubles and dragged to the end. It was cruel." Czechoslovakia's Karol Divín, second in figures, skated cautiously. Donald McPherson and Alain Calmat both fell on triple loop attempts, but moved up to finish first and second overall. Backstage, no one could confidently predict the podium after a competition defined less by brilliance than by widespread falls, fatigue, and freezing temperatures.

Medallists at the 1982 World Figure Skating Championships. Photo courtesy "Canadian Skater" magazine.

Two decades later, at the 1982 World Championships in Copenhagen, skater after skater seemingly tumbled on cue during the short program. Half of the top ten skaters after the figures (Jean-Christophe Simond, David Santee, Igor Bobrin, Brian Pockar and Fumio Igarashi) fell on the required combination, which had to include a double flip that year. The standings were all over the place. Brian Orser, twelfth in figures, was third in the short program. David Santee, third in figures, was sixteenth in the short program. The unpredictable skating led to some unpredictable results. Fortuitously for Canada, when the marks were tabulated, Brian Pockar became the first Canadian man to win a medal at the World Championships since Toller Cranston in 1976, despite finishing outside of the top three in all three phases of the competition. 

Results from the 1982 World Figure Skating Champions, courtesy "A Complete History of the World Figure Skating Championships"

Before we quantify menning in the IJS era, it's worth acknowledging a fundamental truth: technical progress in men's figure skating has never moved in a straight line. Yes, technical difficulty has constantly increased over time, but breakthroughs have rarely produced instant revolutions or inspired a "monkey see, monkey do" mentality of other skaters rushing out to put history-making jumps in their programs right away. 

When Donald Jackson landed the first triple Lutz at the 1962 World Figure Skating Championships, it did not trigger a stampede of triple Lutz attempts the following season. Skaters included the jumps they needed to in order to succeed under the judging system of their era - no more, no less. In fact, the next World Champion to include a triple Lutz in his winning program was Jan Hoffmann more than a decade later, at the 1974 World Figure Skating Championships. The same pattern appeared with Vern Taylor's historic triple Axel at the 1978 World Championships - it was not the culmination of years of failed attempts by the entire field, but an outlier moment that did not instantly redefine "the gold standard." 

Even in the modern era, Ilia Malinin's quadruple Axel stands as an example of how one skater's extraordinary ability isn't necessarily the setting of a new "goal post" that every skater needs to achieve to win. That said, as the standard of technical difficulty accelerates faster than consistency can keep up, the result is often volatility. 

In order to take a look at how the men have menned over the last twenty plus years, I had to come up with some way of quantifying "menning". The Skate Guard Blog Menning Index™ measures how chaotic and risk-heavy major competitions were by focusing primarily on quad attempts. It calculates how many quads are attempted versus how many are landed to determine a "chaos rate", then factors in total falls per segment as an amplifier of that risk, and finally adds a small adjustment for placement volatility. Quad efficiency drives 70% of the score since it is the main engine of modern men's technical risk, falls account for 25% because they indicate unpredictability, and result swings contribute 5% as confirmation of competitive turbulence, producing a 0–100 scale where lower numbers indicate a competition that was mostly smooth sailing and higher numbers suggest a competition that was unpredictable at best. By no means is this system foolproof - skaters could have landed every quad and missed every triple Axel, as an example. However, it does give a decent indication of which events went particularly awry.

I divided the scores into 3 categories:

🚗 Start The Car! - 0-35% - A competition with a high reward vs. risk ratio on quads and/or a lower percentage of falls

😐 Chaotic Neutral - 35-50% - A competition with a medium reward .vs. risk ratio on quads and/or a lower percentage of falls

🧴 Tequila and Holy Water Needed (shout out to The Runthrough Podcast!) - Break out the strong stuff and call a priest. If you're rewatching this competition, brace yourself for some serious menning!

Year	Event	Quads Tried  (SP)	Quads with 0/+ GOE (SP)	Quads Tried  (FS)	Quads with 0/+ GOE (FS)	Falls (SP)	Falls (FS)	# of SP Top 3 Who Didn't Medal	# of FS Top 3 Who Didn't Medal	Score	Menning Level
2005	Euros	5	2	7	5	9	7	1	0	43.8	Chaotic Neutral
2005	4CC	5	3	8	2	10	17	1	0	66.8	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2005	Worlds	10	3	12	9	14	16	1	1	59.3	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2006	Euros	5	2	8	3	14	20	0	0	68.1	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2006	4CC	4	2	1	1	8	13	0	1	46.8	Chaotic Neutral
2006	Olympics	6	3	14	5	8	18	1	1	66.2	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2006	Worlds	7	5	13	9	5	8	2	0	34.3	Start The Car!
2007	Euros	4	0	7	3	10	20	1	0	77.2	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2007	4CC	2	0	4	2	7	13	1	1	65.8	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2007	Worlds	4	1	11	4	14	13	1	0	70.4	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2008	Euros	4	1	9	2	12	19	0	1	80.1	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2008	4CC	3	2	6	3	6	14	0	0	47.8	Chaotic Neutral
2008	Worlds	5	3	12	5	12	12	1	1	59.6	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2009	Euros	3	3	6	3	9	5	1	1	37.5	Chaotic Neutral
2009	4CC	1	0	5	2	13	16	0	1	72.1	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2009	Worlds	4	1	8	6	12	8	0	0	45.8	Chaotic Neutral
2010	Euros	5	3	10	4	9	5	1	0	50.3	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2010	4CC	1	1	5	2	17	12	2	1	62.9	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2010	Olympics	4	1	11	3	4	13	0	1	66.8	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2010	Worlds	6	3	13	7	15	14	0	1	58.6	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2011	Euros	4	2	9	7	9	9	2	0	39	Chaotic Neutral
2011	4CC	2	0	7	1	5	11	0	1	76.8	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2011	Worlds	8	3	15	10	9	14	2	0	52.1	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2012	Euros	7	3	10	5	7	12	1	0	54.1	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2012	4CC	7	1	9	3	16	23	1	1	80	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2012	Worlds	11	5	22	10	11	10	1	0	56.9	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2013	Euros	9	5	11	9	9	6	1	0	34.8	Start The Car!
2013	4CC	10	5	16	9	4	13	1	1	49	Chaotic Neutral
2013	Worlds	13	7	23	10	7	13	1	1	56.1	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2014	Euros	12	4	18	7	12	13	1	0	66.4	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2014	4CC	7	2	11	3	8	8	1	0	65.1	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2014	Olympics	17	6	23	11	10	13	1	0	60.7	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2014	Worlds	17	8	19	11	11	6	0	0	47.2	Chaotic Neutral
2015	Euros	8	4	13	4	12	15	1	0	67.1	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2015	4CC	9	4	15	6	8	11	1	1	59.2	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2015	Worlds	17	3	21	10	8	15	0	0	65.2	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2016	Euros	10	5	16	9	15	9	1	2	56.1	Tequila and Holy Water
2016	4CC	13	4	20	11	13	20	1	0	64.4	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2016	Worlds	20	8	29	13	14	11	1	0	62.1	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2017	Euros	14	8	20	8	9	14	1	0	57.5	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2017	4CC	15	8	33	17	7	22	0	0	57.7	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2017	Worlds	27	17	47	30	10	14	1	0	46.8	Chaotic Neutral
2018	Euros	16	3	23	9	17	15	1	0	74.7	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2018	4CC	14	5	30	13	6	15	1	0	60.1	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2018	Olympics	27	16	45	28	12	18	0	1	53.5	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2018	Worlds	27	11	44	15	13	17	1	1	71.9	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2019	Euros	17	13	25	9	14	19	1	0	59.6	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2019	4CC	13	8	23	11	5	12	1	1	49.7	Chaotic Neutral
2019	Worlds	30	16	44	24	13	12	1	0	54.3	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2020	Euros	17	5	26	14	8	11	1	1	57.4	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2020	4CC	14	12	23	14	6	16	1	0	40.4	Chaotic Neutral
2020	Worlds	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Menning Occurred In Self-Isolation
2021	Euros	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Menning Occurred In Self-Isolation
2021	4CC	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Menning Occurred In Self-Isolation
2021	Worlds	19	15	44	27	13	14	0	1	47.1	Chaotic Neutral
2022	Euros	20	10	26	16	9	15	2	0	52.9	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2022	4CC	13	7	23	11	9	13	0	0	53.3	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2022	Olympics	32	21	49	33	5	13	0	1	39.6	Chaotic Neutral
2022	Worlds	22	17	44	23	5	16	1	1	47.6	Chaotic Neutral
2023	Euros	16	8	19	6	6	14	1	0	59.9	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2023	4CC	15	7	25	14	8	17	1	0	55.3	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2023	Worlds	30	13	47	24	11	9	0	0	53	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2024	Euros	14	5	23	14	11	13	1	0	55.3	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2024	4CC	17	12	29	17	10	15	0	0	46.7	Chaotic Neutral
2024	Worlds	30	16	45	32	8	11	1	0	42.3	Chaotic Neutral
2025	Euros	18	9	29	13	9	15	2	0	59.7	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2025	4CC	17	4	28	15	13	12	1	0	62.5	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2025	Worlds	28	13	47	27	14	11	0	1	54.8	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2026	Euros	18	8	29	14	7	16	2	0	58.9	Tequila and Holy Water Needed
2026	4CC	21	17	27	20	5	10	1	1	31	Start The Car!
2026	Olympics	34	21	59	31	5	14	3	1	51.7	Tequila and Holy Water Needed

A couple of interesting takeaways here:

• While the men's free skate at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina stood out for its utter chaos, the success rate for quadruple jumps was actually quite high. 21 of the 34 quads attempted in the short program received a GOE of 0.00 or higher, and 31 of the 59 quads attempted in the free skate received the same. There were fewer falls in both the short program and free skate than there were at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.
• We should definitely get nervous whenever a skating competition is being held at the Taipei Arena. All four times the Four Continents Championships were held in Taipei, serious menning occurred.
• In terms of a low risk vs. reward ratio on quadruple jumps and a high number of falls, the most chaotic men's event at a senior ISU Championship or Olympics since the introduction of IJS was the 2012 Four Continents Championships in Colorado Springs. This event also had the most falls in the free skate of any of the competitions studied. The least chaotic, by the same metrics, were this year's Four Continents Championships in Beijing.

And so the story of menning in figure skating continues to unfold. By the time the dust settles at the 2026 World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, perhaps the judges, skaters, and statisticians will all agree on one thing: the ice is still slippery, jumps are still extremely hard, and pressure is absolutely a thing. Until then, we'll keep crossing our fingers that everyone stays upright.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Bluesky, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering one of eight fascinating books highlighting the history of figure skating: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html. 

The World Figure Skating Championships History Hub

As the world's best skaters take to the ice in Prague for the 2026 World Figure Skating Championships, there’s no better time to jump into the rich history of this incredible event. From unforgettable performances to groundbreaking moments that shaped the sport, the legacy of the World Championships spans more than a century - and it’s all in one place.

Skate Guard Blog's World Figure Skating Championships History Hub will be updated daily throughout the week, with new historical features, archival videos, and stories that connect the past to the present. You'll also find links to trusted sources covering this year’s competition in Prague, making it easy to follow along while exploring the sport’s deeper roots. Visit the hub here and be sure to bookmark the page and check back often for new content! ⛸️

Unison And Upper Cuts: The Lawrence Demmy Story

Lawrence Demmy, Jack Wake and Jean Westwood. Photo courtesy "Ice Skate" magazine.

The son of Gertrude (Marcovitch) and Albert Dembovsky, Lawrence Demmy was born November 7, 1931, in Manchester, England and grew up in the nearby town of Prestwich on Bishops Road in Sedgley Park. By day, his father worked as a manufacturer and salesman of Mackintoshes; by night he was the Jewish featherweight boxing champion of Northern England. The extended Demmy (Dembovsky) family of Manchester was all involved in the family raincoat business. Lawrence's uncle Gus was a well-known boxing promoter and bookie. Lawrence also dabbled in boxing while attending Stand Grammar School in Bury. His younger brother Franklyn was the school's senior sports champion.

Lawrence started skating at the age of fourteen when the Manchester Ice Palace in Cheetham Hill reopened after the Second World War. He wasn't the only skater in the family. His cousin Michael took up the sport as well and was an early partner of June Markham before she teamed up with Courtney Jones. Lawrence placed second in the Northern and Midlands Ice Dance Championship and finished sixth in his first British Championships in 1950 with Janet Hudson before teaming up with Jean Westwood in the autumn of that year. It was a partnership concocted by the Ice Palace's manager, Jack Wake, who himself was a British Open Professional Champion in ice dancing in thirties - and a match in heaven it was not. In a February 16, 1998 interview in the "Times Colonist", Jean admitted, "I hated Demmy. In my mind's eye, I would superimpose my boyfriend's face on his whenever I looked at Demmy in competition. For all the world, we looked as if we were passionately in love. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. But both of us wanted to be World Champions. We were of value to each other, of use to each other."

Jean Westwood and Lawrence Demmy. Photo courtesy "Skating" magazine.

If Jean and Lawrence's partnership wasn't all roses, you certainly couldn't have guessed it when you saw them skate. In their very first competition together, the International Ice Dancing Competition at the 1951 World Championships in Milan, they bested eleven other couples and earned first place. Upon returning home to England, they were met at the London Road Station at two o'clock in the morning by a crowd of family, friends and fellow skaters. Among the crowd were Ethel Muckelt and Kathleen Shaw, two of England's biggest skating stars of the roaring twenties.

Jean Westwood and Lawrence Demmy presenting an award to British skater Elaine Skevington. Photo courtesy "Ice & Roller Skate" magazine.

In the years that followed, Jean and Lawrence made history as the first ice dance winners at both the European and World Championships. They were European Champions twice, World Champions four times (five if you count 1951, which you should) and British Champions twice. Lawrence made history as the first ice dancer of Jewish heritage to win all three of these prestigious titles.

Jean and Lawrence's list of honours didn't stop there.    They were the first ice dancers ever to be recipients of the National Skating Association's prized Vandervell Trophy, British junior pairs champions, senior pairs medallists and winners of the Northern and Midlands Dance Championship, Open Dance Trophies of Liverpool, Manchester and Nottingham Skating Clubs, Wembley Open Fourteenstep Competition and Northern and Midlands Blues Competition, Northern and Midlands Pair Skating Competition. They worked with a who's who of top British instructors, including Miss Gladys Hogg, Len Liggett and Thelma Jenkinson. Lawrence passed his Gold Dance test with Miss Hogg; Jean took hers with Len Liggett because he insisted Lawrence "wasn't good enough. Lawrence, as World Champion, was not impressed," recalled Jean.

Jean and Lawrence's partnership ended in 1955. Lawrence was serving with the RAF at the time. He became engaged to his first wife, Patricia, and decided to focus on running his own businesses - a light engineering firm and a company that manufactured electrical components. Jean went overseas and became one of North America's most successful ice dance coaches. Lawrence remarried to Pamela Coverdale in 1960 and settled in North Humberside, East Yorkshire. The couple had three children.

Jean Westwood and Lawrence Demmy. Photo courtesy "Ice Skate" magazine.

Lawrence's contributions to ice dancing after retiring from competitive skating were quite remarkable in their scope. He established an open ice dance event in Manchester, the Lawrence Demmy Trophy, that was quite popular in the sixties. He was a judge and referee at countless British Championships and judged at the first international ice dancing competition for juniors in Oberstdorf, West Germany in 1961. His first ISU Championship as a judge was the 1964 European Championships in Grenoble. He ruffled some feathers as the only judge on the panel to place the top British couple, Linda Shearman and Michael Phillips, in first in the compulsories, but the following year joined the Ice Dance Technical Committee as a substitute. He became a Committee Member in 1967 (the first former World Champion to do so) and served on the Committee for over twenty years, fifteen years of which he was the Chairman. From 1984 to 1994, he served on the ISU Council and from 1993 to 1998 served as the ISU's Vice-President for Figure Skating. In 1994, he lost a bid for the ISU Presidency to Ottavio Cinquanta. In 1998, he was made an Honorary Vice-President of the ISU. He was the Assistant Referee of the very first Olympic ice dance competition in Innsbruck in 1976 and Referee of the dance events at the 1980 Games in Lake Placid, 1984 Games in Sarajevo and 1992 Games in Albertville. During his long tenure as an ISU Official, he was involved in many sweeping changes in ice dancing - from the introduction of the OSP to the introduction of small lifts and jumps to the increase in value of the free dance.

Christopher Dean, Jayne Torvill and Lawrence Demmy at the British Embassy in 1983. Photo courtesy "Ice & Roller Skate" magazine.

The anecdotes from Lawrence's decades-long career as an ISU Official run the gamut. For starters, in 1984, he proposed a Pacific Championship as an alternative to the European Championships. This concept would later be realized, over a decade later, when the first ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships were held in Halifax in 1999. He was one of the brave officials who approached Suzanne Bonaly in the nineties and told her, in no uncertain terms, that her daughter Surya was to stop doing backflips on official practice sessions because it was spooking her competitors. He was behind the suspension of Tatiana Danilenko, a Soviet judge who gave high marks to a Soviet skater who fell twice. He was vocally opposed to professionals reinstating to the amateur ranks to compete in the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer. As early as 1976, he was behind an ISU push for "modest and dignified costumes". For over ten years, Lawrence earned somewhat of a reputation for being the 'fashion police', for his role in drafting rule changes to push back against theatrical costuming. After the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary, he remarked, "It's becoming a glitter competition. It's a question of who can spend the most money and have the most dazzling outfit. There have been one or two skaters with bare midriffs, no sleeves, almost allowing for bikini tops, decorations and feathers in the hair. It's gone a bit over the top. We have to bring it back." 

What's interesting about Lawrence is that, despite drafting numerous rule changes to 'reel in ice dancing', he was also a big supporter of skaters that pushed the envelope. He praised couples like Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean (whom he advised), Lyudmila Pakhomova and Aleksandr Gorshkov, Natalia Linichuk and Gennadi Karponosov and Natalia Bestemianova and Andrei Bukin, and was a particular fan of 'Min and Mo' - Irina Moiseeva and Andrei Minenkov. He believed that the judging of the compulsory dances, OSP/original dance and free dance should be independent of one another. At a press conference at the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, he remarked, "We have to change the attitudes of the judges. They have to realize there are three distinct stages, and they have to judge them on style and merit. That's not what's happening and it's beginning to look ridiculous. We have to rectify that. We've got to continue to look for new concepts, as Torvill and Dean did. I had [the Duchesnays] second in the original set pattern and free dance and I just couldn't understand it. It's madness. I think their program was fabulous. The more unconventional it is, the better I like it. If we don't accept new concepts, the event is going to stagnate."

In 1992, Lawrence remarked at a press conference, "In my day, the competition was four compulsory dances, which were worth sixty per cent, and one free dance. It's fair to say you were inclined to work harder for the biggest reward. For many years, there [were] no lifts or jumps. It was purely dance steps. That's very restrictive. When I became chairman, I looked to improve the integrity of ice dance. For many years, it was the poor relative." 

Though he may have sought to improve the integrity of ice dancing, Lawrence's own integrity would be called into question more than once. When Lawrence suspended six out of nine judges from the dance event at the 1993 World Championships in Prague for inappropriate conduct, the suspensions didn't stick, because protocol wasn't evidently followed. At another event, when an official wanted to file an official complaint about the judging, Lawrence brushed them off and told them it was too late.

Lawrence was a polarizing figure among his peers at the ISU. He developed a close friendship with Courtney Jones, but in her 2004 book "Cracked Ice: Figure Skating's Inner World", Sonia Bianchetti Garbato expressed no love for him whatsoever: "He could change his opinion whenever it suited his personal interests, with no shame whatsoever... He fooled me for years. It took me a little longer to realize how dangerous this man was. He was so good at double-crossing and I was so trusting... [He] could not stand my popularity and did not miss the opportunity to attack me." When he ran against Ottavio Cinquanta for the ISU Presidency in 1994, Cinquanta, the sitting President Olaf Poulsen and Tjaša Andrée-Prosenc mounted a campaign against him. Some felt his loss was karma working its magic.

In 1998, Lawrence lost his seat on the ISU Council when he was defeated by Japan Skating Federation President Katsuichiro Hisanaga. He retired in Spain for several years, before returning to England and settling in Hull, North Yorkshire. He passed away on December 9, 2016, at the age of eighty-five. For his contributions to the skating world, he (along with partner Jean Westwood) were the first ice dancing duo to be inducted to the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1977. He became a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1983.

Skate Guard is a blog dedicated to preserving the rich, colourful and fascinating history of figure skating. Over ten years, the blog has featured over a thousand free articles covering all aspects of the sport's history, as well as four compelling in-depth features. To read the latest articles, follow the blog on Facebook, Bluesky, Pinterest and YouTube. If you enjoy Skate Guard, please show your support for this archive by ordering one of eight fascinating books highlighting the history of figure skating: https://skateguard1.blogspot.com/p/buy-book.html. 

Book Review - Cut to Black: A Legendary Life in Sports (and Maybe a Few Beers)

Some Canadians might know Rod Black for his work as a commentator for hockey, football, baseball or golf... but to many of us, he will always be best remembered as the voice of Canadian figure skating. 

In figure skating's glory days in the 1990s, Black and Barbara Underhill narrated so many incredible moments in the sport that none of us will ever forget. 

Black's upcoming memoir, "Cut to Black: A Legendary Life in Sports (and Maybe a Few Beers)" introduces us to the man behind the microphone. 

Did you know that one of Rod Black's first gigs CTV Sports was hosting the Tournament of Roses Parade down in the States on New Year's Day with Tracy Wilson? In his youth, he was so captivated by sports broadcasts that he would imitate Johnny Esaw’s voice. He once played a round of golf with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Earlier in life, he worked as a “skate boy” and DJ at the Saints Regent Roller Skating Centre in Winnipeg, boogieing like Disco Stu on roller skates to "Staying Alive". At the roller rink, they called him "Hot Rod."

If you're a sports lover - and you really should be if you're reading this book - you'll recognize plenty of names mentioned, including Mark Tewksbury, Ben Johnson and Silken Laumann. Figure skating is not as heavily featured in the book as other sports, but fans will appreciate some of the tidbits featured throughout - like the revelation that it was Black’s hot mic that captured Nancy Kerrigan famously complaining about the delay before the women’s medal ceremony at the 1994 Winter Olympics.

Black also sets the record straight about an interview with Kurt Browning at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. He received a great deal of hate mail for interviewing the Canadian favourite after a rough program and supposedly “making him cry.” In reality, the interview was filmed about 30 minutes after Browning skated and later edited to appear as though it happened immediately afterward. Speaking of the men’s event in Lillehammer, Black also shares some intriguing backstage chatter about the judging. If gossip's your bag, you might find it interesting.

Remember the toe-tapping judges that were caught on camera at the 1999 World Figure Skating Championships? It was Rod Black who told a CTV camera operator to film them. He showed the footage to someone very famous in the figure skating community, who shrugged it off and told him it "was nothing". The Russian and Ukrainian judges in question, Sviatoslav Babenko and Alfred Korytek, both ultimately received suspensions from the International Skating Union. 

Rod Black proves to be as engaging a storyteller on the page as he was behind the microphone as a skating commentator. Again, figure skating isn’t the central focus of the memoir, but it’s an entertaining read nonetheless, peppered with just enough skating anecdotes to keep fans interested.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada and Netgalley for the advance review copy of the book.

"Cut to Black: A Legendary Life in Sports (and Maybe a Few Beers)" is available for pre-order from Indigo.

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