Another Prediction That Can’t Come True
Well another of my predictions has failed. Dommina and Shabalin are not going to win the World Championship in Ice Dance; they have withdrawn due to injury. Even the Russians haven’t figured out a way to cheat a victory in a contest they don’t enter. This makes the US team the favorites to win. The US has NEVER won a World Title in Ice Dance. Though I think Belbin and Agosto’s programs this year are their best ever, I am not sure I want them to win. I am just not prepared for pigs to fly.
US Men’s Champion Evan Lysacek is very fond of bragging about his “guts” and his “balls.” Nevertheless he banged his elbow in practice yesterday and he too has withdrawn from the World Championships. Perhaps he will now stop his incessant bragging about his courage; which was always absurd in a world in which men younger than he risk life and limb to make the world a safer place for him to fly about, losing skating competitions to the French and the Swiss. I don’t believe that every young man in the US has a duty to serve. (Indeed the other top American man skater, Johnny Weir can neither be asked nor told to serve.) The military is better off without many of the 20something American men. But if you choose not to serve in time of war, a little humility and gratitude to those who do is definitely the order of the day. Not constant arrogance because a quad jump is your definition of macho.
