 Today's newsletter covers an interesting change for the new figure skating season — the legalization of backflips. Plus, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder is charged with running a deadly drug trafficking ring.
Let's get started. | | | Figure skating returns with a new twist — backflips | | | The 2024-25 Grand Prix of Figure Skating tour opens on Friday night as Skate America gets underway in the Dallas area.
For those who don't know, the Grand Prix is the top series of competitions in the sport. From now through late November, a total of six meets will be held in different parts of the world. Skate Canada is next week in Halifax, followed by stops in France, Japan, Finland and China.
Skaters are allowed to compete at any two of these events. Once they're completed, the top six in each discipline — men's, women's, pairs and ice dance — are invited to the Grand Prix Final in France in early December. Apart from the world championships, which will take place in Boston in late March, the Grand Prix Final is the most prestigious global event of 2024-25. By the time the season is over, we should have a better handle on the top medal contenders for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
With Skate Canada coming up, most Canadian athletes are waiting until next week for their Grand Prix season debut. That's when we'll see the pairs team of Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps, who won Canada's first world title since 2018 last March in Montreal, and ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who took silver for their third worlds medal in four years. Kaiya Ruiter, who captured the national women's title last season at the age of 17, is also among the Canadians slated to compete in Halifax.
Canada has three entries this weekend at Skate America. Nineteen-year-old Wesley Chiu, who won his first national title last season but has yet to crack the top five in a Grand Prix, will compete in the men's event. Two Canadian tandems — Alicia Fabbri and Paul Ayer, and Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac — are in the ice dance.
Former Canadian ice dance champions Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen were initially scheduled to compete at Skate America, but that's not happening after Soerensen received a six-year suspension for "sexual maltreatment" following an investigation into an alleged sexual assault.
The international skater to watch, as usual, is American star Ilia Malinin. The 19-year-old Quad God soared to his first world title last season by mastering the quad axel — the most difficult jump in figure skating — after becoming the first person to land one in competition the year before.
Malinin is planning to introduce another new wrinkle at Skate America — a backflip. Thanks to an off-season rule change, skaters can now perform the move and other "somersault type jumps" without a penalty for the first time since 1976.
After adding a backflip to his free skate at a lower-level event in Italy last month, Malinin is now poised to become the first skater to perform one legally in a Grand Prix. And it sounds like that's just the start for him. "I'm thinking of ways to really level it up as well in the future, like adding a twist or some crazy other combination," said Malinin, who will also compete at Skate Canada next week along with three-peat women's world champion Kaori Sakamoto of Japan.
Bringing back backflips seems like a cool idea. My memory is a little foggy on this (and please correct me if I'm wrong) but I think Kurt Browning and Elvis Stojko were known to throw a backflip into their gala/exhibition skates back in the day, and I seem to remember everyone enjoying that.
More famously, after a poor opening round knocked her out of medal contention at the 1998 Olympics in Japan, French star Surya Bonaly put a backflip into her free skate — penalty be damned. She nailed it, and skating fans still talk about it.
Another high-profile backflip happened at last January's European championships. Unconcerned about the point deduction because he enjoyed a huge lead, French skater Adam Siao Him Fa added a backflip to his free skate en route to winning his second consecutive men's title. He did it again at the world championships in Montreal, where he vaulted from 19th after a terrible short skate to a third-place finish despite the illegal move.
But figure skating fans seem more divided on the backflip than you might expect. Some argue (pretty convincingly) that they're not as aesthetically pleasing as, say, a triple or quad axel. Others worry that they're too dangerous.
In any case, the return of backflips probably won't change the sport very much — at least not right away. They're not mandatory, and they're not even assigned a point value like other jumps. The only thing they can change is a skater's component (artistic) score.
As a result, only a small number of athletes are expected to attempt a backflip this season. But, if enough stars like Malinin and Siao Him Fa keep landing them, it's certainly possible that the trick could catch on. Here's more on the backflip and other things to watch on the Grand Prix tour.
How to watch the Grand Prix
Every stop on the tour will be streamed live on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem, starting Friday night with the Skate America pairs and women's short programs.
There's no CBC TV coverage of Skate America, but there will be some for Skate Canada next week. Here's the CBC Sports TV schedule and here's the sked for figure skating streams. | | |  | After mastering the tricky quad axel, American star Ilia Malinin could become the first skater to land a legal backflip on the Grand Prix tour. (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images) | | | Quickly… | | | Some other things to know:
1. A former Canadian Olympic snowboarder was charged with orchestrating a deadly drug trafficking ring.
Ryan Wedding, who finished 24th in the men's parallel giant slalom event at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, is accused by U.S. prosecutors of running a criminal enterprise, murder, conspiring to distribute cocaine and other crimes related to a drug ring that allegedly shipped large quantities of drugs from Colombia up through North America and killed several people.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 US reward for information leading to the arrest and extradition of Wedding, a 43-year-old Canadian citizen who was living in Mexico and is considered a fugitive. Wedding, who was listed at 6-foot-3 during his Olympic days, is known by the aliases “El Jefe,” “Giant” and “Public Enemy,” according to U.S. prosecutors.
The prosecutors say Wedding's group killed two people in Canada in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment and at least one other person. Wedding, who also faces years-old charges in Canada, previously served prison time in the U.S. before resuming drug trafficking after his release under the protection of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, according to the authorities.
"He chose to become a major drug trafficker and he chose to become a killer," U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada told reporters. Read more here.
2. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin both hit milestones last night.
Crosby became just the 10th player in NHL history to record 1,600 regular-season points while Malkin became the 48th to reach 500 goals during last night's 6-5 overtime win over Buffalo. The Pittsburgh teammates combined for seven points as Crosby set up Malkin's 500th goal early in the third period with a sweet no-look pass from behind the net, and Malkin assisted on Crosby's OT winner.
Malkin is just the second Russian to score 500 NHL goals — joining Alex Ovechkin, who on Tuesday became the sixth player to reach 700 goals and 700 assists.
In other hockey news, the OHL said it would cooperate with any police investigation into an alleged group sexual assault in 2014. In a CTV report that aired Wednesday, a woman said she was sexually assaulted by eight OHL players — some of whom went on to play in the NHL, according to the woman.
3. Shohei Ohtani's towering home run helped the Dodgers take the lead in the National League Championship Series.
Los Angeles was already up 4-0 last night in New York when the presumptive NL MVP launched a three-run, 410-foot moon shot into the upper deck in right, sending the Dodgers to an 8-0 win https://www.cbc.ca/sports/baseball/mlb/mlb-roundup-dodgers-mets-oct-16-1.7354370 over the Mets and a 2-1 lead in the series.
Ohtani now has two homers and eight RBIs in his first eight post-season games. Game 4 is tonight at 8 p.m. ET at Citi Field.
Game 3 of the ALCS starts at 5 p.m. ET, with the visiting Yankees looking to go up 3-0 on Cleveland.
4. New York is one win away from its first WNBA championship.
Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu drained a tie-breaking three-pointer from just inside the midcourt logo with one second left to give New York an 80-77 win in Minnesota last night and a 2-1 edge in the best-of-five WNBA Finals.
Ionescu finished with 13 points on an otherwise tough shooting night while her teammate Breanna Stewart scored a game-high 30. Canadian Bridget Carleton had 14 points for her first double-digit output of the series for Minnesota.
The Liberty, who have lost all five of their previous trips to the Finals, including last year, can win the championship on Friday night in Minnesota. | | | That's it for today. Talk to you tomorrow. | | | | Not subscribed? Sign up here to get the Buzzer delivered to your inbox. Got an idea, question, comment or other feedback on the newsletter? Drop us a line at thebuzzer@cbc.ca. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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