I, Tonya

'American Whackos on Ice'.

 

Looks entertaining

 

It was pretty good, her mother comes across as a complete piece of shit in it and judging by the way I’ve seen her act in interviews, my guess is that she really was/is awful.

I don’t really buy the story of how little Tonya knew, though. In the movie, it comes across as Tonya and Jeff Gillooly just think it’s going to be threatening letters to Nancy as a form of psychological warfare, and then Jeff’s idiot friend decided to set up a leg whacking. Tonya may have not know the exact precise details but I think she knew they were going to try to physically put her out of competition. The movie makes Tonya a little too sympathetic.

It’s kind of funny that Tonya, who was unfairly judged in competition for not being pretty/feminine enough, gets to be played by fucking Margot Robbie out of all people.

 

If the movie doesn't show when Tonya did porn I am not interested.

 

Her mother was genuinely awful for sure... I've never bought her story regarding the incident either... I think she played those guys for fools and jumped at the chance to throw them under the bus... "The Price of Gold" doc is very illuminating

 

Haven't seen this, but I've always found her story somewhat fascinating. The Figure Skating world, much like the Gymnastics world, and Toddler aged beauty Queens has always come off as genuinely creepy, disengenuous with itself, and just fucking weird.

Harding was a genuine athletic talent who had to take risks on the ice athletically in order to get noticed and often got penalized for it.

Kind of reminds me of years ago when I bothered to watch some figure skating competition, probably in the Olympics or maybe some Saturday afternoon contest. I remember a black girl skating for France (her name eludes me), who was built like Serena Williams, and doing jumps, leaps, flips.......going higher, jumping further, doing more turns in the air then all her competition by a mile, taking more risks.................I'm thinking, this chick has this competition wrapped the fuck up.

She's followed by a bunch of dainty little girls who skate perfectly flawless but completely safe and non-athletic routines who blow her away at the scorers table, and she doesn't even place. I thought immediately, why the fuck would I ever watch this sport again, that penalizes athleticism and risk taking?

 

Maybe that French girl was ignored based on her race? Figure skating is very elitist white sport.

 

Yeah, the movie and the ESPN 30 for 30 talk about how judges took into account “presentation” and the costumes they wore. Tonya was poor and couldn’t afford to wear the costumes to meet their stupid criteria.

 

It's possible but I think it had more to do with not presenting the dainty little girl or princess look, and creating rougher landings for yourself by actually trying to catch more air and try out technically more difficult stuff.

Looking pretty and making as little splash on the ice as possible counted far more towards the final score then degree of difficulty, unlike a sport like perhaps diving or freestyle snowboarding, where they will forgive a little extra splash at the bottom, if you did something unique or seemingly impossible while you are in the air.

 

But figure skating is not just about tricks. It is like dancing.

 

They have a separate category called "Ice Dancing". You want it to be a "Sport", then treat it like a "Sport".

 

I noticed the same thing with Olympic diving. I always thought it was about the shit you did in the air before you hit the water but apparently the biggest part of the scoring is based on how clean you enter the water. The fuck is that bollocks?

 

looks fun

 

You wanna watch women pretending to be men, watch the wnba.

 

Surya Bonaly

 

It is both... The more difficult the jump is the higher is the possible score. However if you totally wreck the end and make a bomb into the water the score will be less than a significantly easier jump with a perfect ending. Kinda like ski jumping with distance and landing.

 

A female ice skater demonstrating athletic prowess while skating is "pretending to be a man"?

 

I remember seeing her on TV ... just like nobes said, she did lots of really difficult stuff but would lose narrowly to a technically inferior waif with a better makeup artist

 

Yup, I think that's her.

 

LOL, I'm going to give Double L the benefit of the doubt and assume he was joking. Hard to tell with him sometimes.

Competition is competition. It's why we have weight classes in boxing.

I don't know, maybe Doubs is addicted to Ballroom Dancing competitions and Beauty Pageants. To each their own.

 

I actually looked that girl up. Only 3 or 4 people have been able to do that backflip on ice and they were all men who did it by landing on both feet. She’s the only female to do a skating backflip and the only person to do it split legged and land on one foot.

The reason she lost the competition was the backflip was an illegal move and she was penalized for it. Also she fell once and it is true that she didn’t skate as gracefully as the competition normally expects. I’d be the first to point out any racist slant here and I’m sure there was a touch of that going on as well, but at the same time she did have a flawed performance despite how super talented she was in other areas.