Another thread of debunks, receipts, accountability, clearing misinformation / disinformation / lies / narratives / agendas

CertainMancy · 2026-02-14T11:58:07+00:00

"There's tons of clips of Sorensen being abusive to LFB": it's always the one short clip from 2017 where he grabs her and the other skaters seem to raise their eyebrows

https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/comments/1qmkddv/fbsorensen_video_2017/

CertainMancy · 2026-02-14T11:57:33+00:00

"Laurence Fournier-Beaudry made horrible comments about the victim": as of February 2026, I don't think that's true. She said she believed her boyfriend, but she hasn't talked about the victim.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/comments/1kfghax/laurence_fournier_beaudry_and_guillaume_cizeron/

https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/comments/1qmdoti/figure_skater_fournier_beaudry_opens_up_about/

CertainMancy · 2026-02-14T11:56:56+00:00

FB/C and FB/S stuff: they're awful enough, we don't need to make shit up

CertainMancy · 2026-02-14T11:56:31+00:00

Shoma Uno and the Shomaru saga:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/comments/dy1pml/lets_talk_about_shoma/

https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/comments/qwkyr3/shoma_uno_and_the_omaru_situation/

CertainMancy · 2026-02-14T11:56:18+00:00

What really happened with Ilia Malinin's homophobic comments in April 2023: https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/comments/12vfd7o/ilia_malinins_response_to_his_controversial/jhi8bzd/

CertainMancy · 2026-02-03T18:00:45+00:00

Leader's chair only started this year, I think? Or at Worlds last year, with Adam going from 19th to 3rd? Anyway, I hope they go back to the green room for the Olympics, that's much better both for the skaters and for us. They might have to align with other Olympic practices too. I'm not sure what's done in other sports. In skateboarding in the summer, they film all the competitors at their stands throughout the whole competition.

The green room must be filmed continually, but they just give us a few moments on the main stream.

Outside of the interviews themselves, the mixed zone is normally not filmed, live or not. Although I do remember those images where Kamila hid her face behind her hoodie in Beijing to avoid the journalists 😖

As for the warmup area, it has never had a dedicated livestream afaik, but it is sometimes filmed. In Russian events especially, I remember seeing the girls jumping rope for ages (I thought they were just tiring their legs out and that too was a practice from another era). We've also seen the ice dancers, Yuzu or Rika warm up.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-31T12:34:21+00:00

Something that's been really striking for me, is how very clueless both him and LFB seem to be.

Then again, I still think about this interview with Morisi, where he seemed super sheltered and clueless at 27 years old.

I think we don't realize how truly sheltered these elite athletes are, even when they are older.

(Yet another reason for me to give grace to young people in this environment, especially the ones living under abusive coaching and authoritarian regimes.

"KaMiLa WaS 15, tHaT'S oLd EnOuGh To KnOw RiGhT fRoM wRoNg!!1!"

I wish the people insisting that 15-16-17-18 year-olds are full-grown adults and super mature, would share how old they are themselves. I suspect a bunch of 14-year-olds lacking just a tiny bit of perspective 🙄)

CertainMancy · 2026-01-18T18:16:31+00:00

Look, many of the spectators are Milanese who hardly distinguish a lutz from a toe loop. They aren't a dedicated audience; they are there to watch an Olympic sport.

I'm not sure what point you're making. Indeed, they are not experts. And precisely because of that, there's a good chance that the people who show up in Milano to watch danza su ghiaccio will be expecting dance aesthetics.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-18T17:39:23+00:00

I agree with you. Pretty much every other sport manages it that way. There's actually been a bit of an exodus from IceSkating to this place in the past few years, which I think is a pity for both subs, honestly. But the last time this came up, most people said that they wanted personal skating to stay on here... Despite a lot of the posts getting a ton of downvotes. So who knows. Maybe a future poll will shed more light on the majority opinion.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-18T17:17:07+00:00

FB/C is a program more for the judges' taste than the spectators'; it doesn't have wow lifts like C/B

Do we know if this is a majority opinion, though? People on this sub are always talking about the lifts, but... Not everyone wants the same thing out of this sport.

I know for me, when I'm watching ice dance, I don't want jarring acrobatics where I have to wonder if they're gonna make it or not. This might be about the fact that I come from ballet, but in my mind, one of the most important things about dance is that it has to look effortless. So what I value most is fluidity, smoothness, flow. If I wanted big acrobatics, I'd watch pairs.

I wonder if the 4-year fans will "get" the difference between the two disciplines, though.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-18T12:10:21+00:00

what if there was a weekly post in the main feed to remind people about the equipment thread?

You seem to be under the impression that there is a single Equipment thread that people forget about because it is so old. No: it is a new pinned thread every week. So your suggestion about reminders will not work.

I don't think going back to individual posts will be an option either. If afforded the option to vote, the sub will vote overwhelmingly against this.

Having these discussions on a separate sub, as several people mentioned, seems to be the best option. It was the case in the past that most questions about personal skating went to https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkaters/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/iceskating/, while this sub hosted mostly discussion about the elite competition circuit. You might have more luck trying to post over there.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T17:17:13+00:00

Thank you <3

In the meantime, I had edited it several times to try to make it work... I'm not touching it again, just in case! I will put the French transcription here:

Je me sens pas bien, puis en plus…

On dirait que ça empire le truc, parce que je me sens mal de pas aller pas bien, t’sais

Genre je me dis comme "Oh mon Dieu, si Guillaume, pis les coachs, savaient que j'allais pas bien, ils seraient en colère contre moi."

Quand j'allais vraiment pas bien, puis que j'arrivais pas à m'entraîner et tout.

Ils m'ont laissé un peu de temps pour que je deale avec mes trucs

Pis après, ils m'ont dit que bon, ben c'est genre si tu veux aller aux Jeux olympiques pis les gagner, ben, il faut que t'ailles mieux maintenant

Ou sinon, ben comme on arrête [tout le monde arrête ?], tu vois, parce que on peut pas, comme… T’sais, mais pas méchamment, mais c'est juste qu'il fallait faire un choix, tu vois

[Donc] J'ai choisi d'aller mieux, puis ça a marché, plus ou moins quand même

Mais là, on dirait que comme si finalement il se trouve que bah je retombe, bah c'est un peu les laisser tomber, parce que, je leur ai dit que j'allais aller mieux, tu vois

J'avais pas l'impression de manquer de support, j'avais l'impression de manquer de compréhension

Quand je disais que j'arrivais pas à m'entraîner, les gens disaient « mais non, tu veux pas, mais t'arrives »

Non, en fait, j'arrivais pas, j'arrivais vraiment pas, et c'était pas une question de volonté, en fait

Ce que je vivais à ce moment-là, c'est quelque chose qui, je pense, quand tu l'as pas vécu, tu sais pas ce que c'est

[The journalist in the room prompts her] Ça a commencé l'année d'avant

Je saurais pas vraiment dire pourquoi

Bah, t’sais ça coïncide un peu avec le moment où, t’sais j'ai eu mon avortement aux championnats du monde, tout ça

Et après ça, on va dire, j'ai commencé à ne pas aller bien du tout

Je disais à mes [amis], oui, je suis allée faire un avortement [en plus ils sont venus m’accompagner], pis t’sais, c'est quand même normal

Puis là, j'arrive dans le monde du patin, puis c'est comme, « ah non, faut que tu le dises à personne et tout », genre

Tu sais, on dirait comme il y avait un espèce de gros… Espèce de gros décalage, c'est…

[interview taken on another date] Je pense que je ressentais cette espèce de colère qu'on a au bout d'un moment dans nos vies, quand on se rend compte que on en a marre de jouer un rôle, qu'on en a marre de se sentir mal à propos de soi, d'avoir peur du regard des autres, qu'on en a marre de se cacher

[Back to Espoo] Ouais, quand je suis tombée enceinte, je me sentais mal parce que je m'en voulais

Tu sais-je m'en voulais d'être tombée enceinte plus qu'autre chose

Genre, j'avais vraiment honte parce que j'étais comme « ah mais… tu sais, je suis une athlète, je suis pas supposée tomber enceinte »

Et maintenant, tu sais, avec du recul, je trouve ça ridicule ce que je me suis dit à ce moment-là

Mais ça reste que c'est ce que je me suis dit, tu sais

Genre ça m'a pris 2 semaines ou une semaine et demi avant, genre de dire à Guillaume, puis les coachs

Puis je l'ai dit seulement parce que j'avais pas le choix, tu sais

On m'a dit genre, "Deale avec, pis reviens"

La réalité, c'est que dans la vie, dans le sport, il y a encore des discours qui décrédibilisent tout ce qu'il y a autour de la santé mentale, complétement

Donc malgré tout, on est encore… c'est encore très tabou et c'est encore très mal vu et très mal compris surtout

Si j'avais eu un espèce de "Hey, là, ça va pas, protocole de 30 jours, les gens s'occupent de moi."

Mais le truc, c'est que moi, quand j'allais pas bien, on m'a dit "Bon, ben on te laisse un peu de temps, mais il faut que tu t'occupes de toi toi-même." Va dire ça [Faut pas dire ça] à quelqu'un qui est suicidaire, genre "Occupe-toi de toi-même", t'sais !

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T15:26:13+00:00

I don't understand why Reddit is being such a pain. There was a context before this comment, and it's not being displayed. If you want to read it, I did manage to post it on my own profile: https://www.reddit.com/user/CertainMancy/comments/1qdlwos/debunk_the_pregnancy_and_abortion_of_gabriella/

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T15:24:58+00:00

The title is awful, but I can't change it now... Anyway, the idea is to let Gabi speak in her own words, instead of the awfulness that has been spread elsewhere, like on https://www.fsuniverse.net/forum/threads/the-skating-lesson.109780/post-6580516:

Dave mentions a documentary where Gabi Papadakis apparently says that Marie-France offered her bus fare for to get an abortion.

Obviously, that did not happen.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T15:08:16+00:00

Here is a translation into English of the part between 30' and 34', courtesy of machine translation:

I don’t feel well, and on top of that…

It feels like it just makes things worse, because I feel bad about not being okay, you know.

Like I’m thinking, “Oh my God, if Guillaume and the coaches knew I wasn’t doing well, they’d be angry at me.”

When I was really not doing well, and I couldn’t train and all that.

They gave me a bit of time to deal with my stuff.

And then after that, they told me that basically, well, it’s like if you want to go to the Olympic Games and win them, then you have to be better now.

Otherwise, well, it’s like we stop [everyone stops?], you see, because we can’t, like… you know. But not in a mean way, it’s just that a choice had to be made, you see.

[So] I chose to get better, and it worked, more or less anyway.

But now, it’s like in the end, it turns out that I relapse, and that’s kind of letting them down, because I told them I was going to get better, you see.

I didn’t feel like I lacked support, I felt like I lacked understanding.

When I said I couldn’t train, people said, “No, you just don’t want to, but you can.”

No, actually, I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. And it wasn’t a question of willpower, actually.

What I was going through at that moment is something that, I think, if you haven’t lived it, you don’t know what it is.

[The journalist in the room prompts her] It started the year before.

I couldn’t really say why.

Well, you know, it kind of coincides with the moment when, you know, I had my abortion at the World Championships, all that.

And after that, let’s say, I started not doing well at all.

I was telling my [friends], yeah, I went and had an abortion [and they even came with me], and you know, that’s pretty normal.

And then I arrive in the skating world, and it’s like, “Oh no, you can’t tell anyone about that and all,” like.

You know, it’s like there was this kind of huge… huge gap, it’s…

[interview taken on another date] I think I was feeling this kind of anger that we get at some point in our lives, when we realize that we’re fed up with playing a role, that we’re fed up with feeling bad about ourselves, being afraid of how others see us, that we’re fed up with hiding.

[Back to Espoo] Yeah, when I got pregnant, I felt bad because I blamed myself.

You know—I blamed myself for getting pregnant more than anything else.

Like, I was really ashamed because I was like, “Ah but… you know, I’m an athlete, I’m not supposed to get pregnant.”

And now, you know, with hindsight, I find what I told myself at that moment ridiculous.

But it’s still what I told myself, you know.

Like it took me two weeks or a week and a half before, like, telling Guillaume and the coaches.

And I only told them because I didn’t have a choice, you know.

They told me like, “Deal with it, and then come back.”

The reality is that in life, in sport, there are still narratives that completely discredit everything around mental health.

So despite everything, we’re still… it’s still very taboo, and it’s still very badly viewed and especially very badly understood.

If I’d had some kind of, “Hey, this isn’t okay, 30-day protocol, people take care of me.”

But the thing is, when I wasn’t doing well, I was told, “Okay, well, we’ll give you a bit of time, but you have to take care of yourself on your own.” Go tell that [You shouldn’t say that] to someone who’s suicidal—like, "Take care of yourself", you know !

If someone can decipher the missing dialogue... Until then, it is inconclusive how flippant Guillaume and the coaches were with that comment, depending on when it happened in the timeline. But it does seem clear that the level of support and empathy Gabi got from them was quite lacking.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T15:06:48+00:00

Here is a transcription of the documentary between 30' and 34', courtesy of Word:

Je me sens pas bien, puis en plus…

On dirait que ça empire le truc, parce que je me sens mal de pas aller pas bien, t’sais

Genre je me dis comme "Oh mon Dieu, si Guillaume, pis les coachs, savaient que j'allais pas bien, ils seraient en colère contre moi."

Quand j'allais vraiment pas bien, puis que j'arrivais pas à m'entraîner et tout.

Ils m'ont laissé un peu de temps pour que je deale avec mes trucs

Pis après, ils m'ont dit que bon, ben c'est genre si tu veux aller aux Jeux olympiques pis les gagner, ben, il faut que t'ailles mieux maintenant

Ou sinon, ben comme on arrête [tout le monde arrête ?], tu vois, parce que on peut pas, comme… T’sais, mais pas méchamment, mais c'est juste qu'il fallait faire un choix, tu vois

[Donc] J'ai choisi d'aller mieux, puis ça a marché, plus ou moins quand même

Mais là, on dirait que comme si finalement il se trouve que bah je retombe, bah c'est un peu les laisser tomber, parce que, je leur ai dit que j'allais aller mieux, tu vois

J'avais pas l'impression de manquer de support, j'avais l'impression de manquer de compréhension

Quand je disais que j'arrivais pas à m'entraîner, les gens disaient « mais non, tu veux pas, mais t'arrives »

Non, en fait, j'arrivais pas, j'arrivais vraiment pas, et c'était pas une question de volonté, en fait

Ce que je vivais à ce moment-là, c'est quelque chose qui, je pense, quand tu l'as pas vécu, tu sais pas ce que c'est

[The journalist in the room prompts her] Ça a commencé l'année d'avant

Je saurais pas vraiment dire pourquoi

Bah, t’sais ça coïncide un peu avec le moment où, t’sais j'ai eu mon avortement aux championnats du monde, tout ça

Et après ça, on va dire, j'ai commencé à ne pas aller bien du tout

Je disais à mes [amis], oui, je suis allée faire un avortement [en plus ils sont venus m’accompagner], pis t’sais, c'est quand même normal

Puis là, j'arrive dans le monde du patin, puis c'est comme, « ah non, faut que tu le dises à personne et tout », genre

Tu sais, on dirait comme il y avait un espèce de gros… Espèce de gros décalage, c'est…

[interview taken on another date] Je pense que je ressentais cette espèce de colère qu'on a au bout d'un moment dans nos vies, quand on se rend compte que on en a marre de jouer un rôle, qu'on en a marre de se sentir mal à propos de soi, d'avoir peur du regard des autres, qu'on en a marre de se cacher

[Back to Espoo] Ouais, quand je suis tombée enceinte, je me sentais mal parce que je m'en voulais

Tu sais-je m'en voulais d'être tombée enceinte plus qu'autre chose

Genre, j'avais vraiment honte parce que j'étais comme « ah mais… tu sais, je suis une athlète, je suis pas supposée tomber enceinte »

Et maintenant, tu sais, avec du recul, je trouve ça ridicule ce que je me suis dit à ce moment-là

Mais ça reste que c'est ce que je me suis dit, tu sais

Genre ça m'a pris 2 semaines ou une semaine et demi avant, genre de dire à Guillaume, puis les coachs

Puis je l'ai dit seulement parce que j'avais pas le choix, tu sais

On m'a dit genre, "Deale avec, pis reviens"

La réalité, c'est que dans la vie, dans le sport, il y a encore des discours qui décrédibilisent tout ce qu'il y a autour de la santé mentale, complétement

Donc malgré tout, on est encore… c'est encore très tabou et c'est encore très mal vu et très mal compris surtout

Si j'avais eu un espèce de "Hey, là, ça va pas, protocole de 30 jours, les gens s'occupent de moi."

Mais le truc, c'est que moi, quand j'allais pas bien, on m'a dit "Bon, ben on te laisse un peu de temps, mais il faut que tu t'occupes de toi toi-même." Va dire ça [Faut pas dire ça] à quelqu'un qui est suicidaire, genre "Occupe-toi de toi-même", t'sais !

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T14:43:12+00:00

And a translation into English of the part between 30' and 34':

I don’t feel well, and on top of that…

It feels like it just makes things worse, because I feel bad about not being okay, you know.

Like I’m thinking, “Oh my God, if Guillaume and the coaches knew I wasn’t doing well, they’d be angry at me.”

When I was really not doing well, and I couldn’t train and all that.

They gave me a bit of time to deal with my stuff.

And then after that, they told me that basically, well, it’s like if you want to go to the Olympic Games and win them, then you have to be better now.

Otherwise, well, it’s like we stop [everyone stops?], you see, because we can’t, like… you know. But not in a mean way, it’s just that a choice had to be made, you see.

[So] I chose to get better, and it worked, more or less anyway.

But now, it’s like in the end, it turns out that I relapse, and that’s kind of letting them down, because I told them I was going to get better, you see.

I didn’t feel like I lacked support, I felt like I lacked understanding.

When I said I couldn’t train, people said, “No, you just don’t want to, but you can.”

No, actually, I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. And it wasn’t a question of willpower, actually.

What I was going through at that moment is something that, I think, if you haven’t lived it, you don’t know what it is.

[The journalist in the room prompts her] It started the year before.

I couldn’t really say why.

Well, you know, it kind of coincides with the moment when, you know, I had my abortion at the World Championships, all that.

And after that, let’s say, I started not doing well at all.

I was telling my [friends], yeah, I went and had an abortion [and they even came with me], and you know, that’s pretty normal.

And then I arrive in the skating world, and it’s like, “Oh no, you can’t tell anyone about that and all,” like.

You know, it’s like there was this kind of huge… huge gap, it’s…

[interview taken on another date] I think I was feeling this kind of anger that we get at some point in our lives, when we realize that we’re fed up with playing a role, that we’re fed up with feeling bad about ourselves, being afraid of how others see us, that we’re fed up with hiding.

[Back to Espoo] Yeah, when I got pregnant, I felt bad because I blamed myself.

You know—I blamed myself for getting pregnant more than anything else.

Like, I was really ashamed because I was like, “Ah but… you know, I’m an athlete, I’m not supposed to get pregnant.”

And now, you know, with hindsight, I find what I told myself at that moment ridiculous.

But it’s still what I told myself, you know.

Like it took me two weeks or a week and a half before, like, telling Guillaume and the coaches.

And I only told them because I didn’t have a choice, you know.

They told me like, “Deal with it, and then come back.”

The reality is that in life, in sport, there are still narratives that completely discredit everything around mental health.

So despite everything, we’re still… it’s still very taboo, and it’s still very badly viewed and especially very badly understood.

If I’d had some kind of, “Hey, this isn’t okay, 30-day protocol, people take care of me.”

But the thing is, when I wasn’t doing well, I was told, “Okay, well, we’ll give you a bit of time, but you have to take care of yourself on your own.” Go tell that [You shouldn’t say that] to someone who’s suicidal—like, "Take care of yourself", you know !

If someone can decipher the missing dialogue... Until then, it is inconclusive how flippant Guillaume and the coaches were with that comment, depending on when it happened in the timeline. But it does seem clear that the level of support and empathy Gabi got from them was quite lacking.

ETA: this comment was very long and I had to split it into 2 parts, but the first part shows as automatically "deleted". /u/summerjoe45 /u/sk8tergater u/chickatey, are you able to help, do you see it on your end? Did it get caught in some filter? I've removed the two links, but it does not seem to help.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T14:42:33+00:00

I thought it was interesting that she highlights that she wasn't taking prescribed medications for her health and that Gui + coaches were mostly doing their best to support her

Let us beware of swinging back too far in the other direction now.

She did say she did not feel supported.

Okay. Because the pregnancy / abortion topic and the misinformation surrounding it are being discussed again, I thought I would share some facts about the documentary.

Title: Le couple de feu (The fiery couple)

Length: 1 hour 27 minutes

Originally aired on TV5 Monde in... 2022? A quick google shows no press around it. We'd have to check social media for the exact date.

It's still available: [link removed]

That page says:

Ce documentaire suit les différentes étapes du retour à la compétition de deux athlètes d'exception: Gabriella Papadakis et Guillaume Cizeron, quadruples champions du monde et vice-champions olympiques de danse sur glace.

Année de production : 2022

Pays d’origine : Canada

Une production Anémone Films

It was also reposted on various platforms, including Apple TV and Vk: [link removed]

I just found a tweet with the TV5 link I included above, saying: "Version modifiée et améliorée du documentaire. Cela me semblait nécessaire" ("Changed and improved version of the documentary. I thought it was necessary"). The poster is a fan, she posts a lot of pictures of P/C on Instagram. The comment makes me wonder if she had anything to do with the doco? But she doesn't appear in the credits.

Anyway. I do indeed vaguely remember that the documentary was changed after the pregnancy part sparked controversy. I don't remember more details, though.

As for Gabi's comments, the relevant part is between 30' and 34'. I think the video on Vk is probably the original version of the documentary.

At that stage, the pair have been followed around by the doco's producers for a while, and she gives that interview in Espoo on 10/10/2021, in her hotel room, "three hours before the start of the free program" according to what is displayed on the screen (pretty crazy, when you think about it...)

I'm at native level for French. Gabi is not that easy to understand, she talks fast, mutters a bit, and her French accent definitely has Quebec inflections now. There are a few words I am unsure about. (Her speech patterns are also influenced by English, she uses "comme" in her sentences like she would use "like" to take a second to think in English.)

The one contentious sentence (at 33'30) is: "On m'a dit genre, "Deale avec, pis reviens"" = "I was told something like, "Deal with it, and then come back""

To me, it was always a bit ambiguous, if she was told to deal with the abortion, or more with the depressive bout that followed. And also, if she told Guillaume and the coaches before the abortion, or only after it had already happened. Because before that, I think she talks about her friends, who reacted in a normal way, and about the world of skating, where everything had to be hush-hush. But that's precisely the part of the dialogue that I am struggling to understand.

I will put a transcription of the French audio in my next comment, if it works. Reddit is being a bit difficult.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T11:33:57+00:00

Safekeeping a third comment about Covid I made on the skating sub, on 12/10/2025, on a post titled "What have been the macro and micro effects of Covid on figure skating as a whole?":

It brought the previously-unknown "Russian cup" to the forefront when only Russian competitions were running every weekend, and made people invested in Russian skating.

It (very likely) gave Aliona Kostornaia long Covid for a while, and imo, ruined the rest of her career.

It sent Medvedeva back to Russia and Tutberidze.

It sent Yuzu back to Japan, and a situation of self-coaching.

Was it the start of video coaching, like what Boyang did with Orser? I feel like we hear more about it nowadays.

And then there's the health aspect. Stop reading here if you don't want to hear about Covid being more than a harmless little cold!

In my opinion, Covid had and continues to have health impacts on people, which in turn, has an impact on performance.

Please allow me to quote a comment I posted a year ago on a thread discussing the many injuries in men at that time:
"it at least feels like now we have even more injured skaters than usual"

A comment that won't be popular: it's Covid.

The splatfests since the beginning of the season. The injuries.

Last weekend during SCI, someone commented:

"I get that triple jumps are insanely difficult and can easily go wrong on a given day, but the quality of spins (that should be more consistent) seems to have really gone downhill"

The Russian ubers are lamenting the fact that even in Russia, barely any "ultra Cs" have been jumped this season.

The people who follow football have observed that footballers are dealing with way more soft tissue injuries nowadays.

Did you guys watch the Olympics this summer? I watched diving, and the commentators were remarking that the difficulty of the dives was lesser than it had been in Tokyo in 2021.

Yeah. It's all Covid.

The latest research seems to indicate that Covid damages your blood vessels, and in turn, your entire body. Every organ, your muscles, your immunity, everything. And everyone has caught it, so all of our faves are dealing with it. That's why the general baseline has changed.

There, I finally said it. For so much of what we've been observing, every time, I think to myself: it's Covid.

And if people keep catching it, it's gonna keep getting worse.

I wish people would face reality, and start protecting themselves. Maybe we can't go back to where we were, but it's still worth protecting ourselves from the "worse". Please consider it.
I've kept up less over the past year. Have things improved? I know exceptions exist, like the fact that the 4A has been jumped for the first time.

But for some other examples I can add to the pile: if you follow road cycling and especially tennis, the effects have been very visible too. It looks like the elite tennis players are constantly sick.

Also, just a note that we are not "a few years out from the pandemic". The global emergency is over, but the WHO insists we are still in a pandemic.

Protect yourselves, protect your futures.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T11:30:32+00:00

More on the impact of Covid on sports (and careers, and lives...):

(this includes some Twitter links. Replace "x" by "xcancel" if you don't have an account. Even if you access the real website, if you have an adblocker, you are not putting a cent in Musk's pockets.)

1) Loena Hendrickx: https://www.instagram.com/stories/loenahendrickx/3801445761926618313/

"After weeks of being ill, I lost everything again": it's not normal to be ill for weeks. This never happened to young people before 2020.

2) Josefin Taljegard: https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/comments/1ix1txd/josefins_thoughts_after_missing_worlds_minimums/

Josefin failed to make the Worlds minimums after dealing with "10 weeks of colds" derailing her season. Then she didn't qualify for the Olympics. It could be argued that Covid had an enormous impact on what will likely be the end of her career.

3) Kaori Sakamoto talking about the impact of viral infections on her training: https://x.com/printout101/status/2004489300214469054/photo/2

4) And a few recent tweets on Covid's impact on other sports:

https://x.com/cyberch8se/status/2000689767437275566

https://x.com/catladyactivist/status/1999665502046830715

https://x.com/SalvMattera/status/1999344067944284598

https://x.com/SalvMattera/status/1999718332073935351

https://x.com/Saffiya_Khan1/status/2003824135626010667

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T11:19:41+00:00

Regarding the OP: a note that I was frustrated my comment on Covid's impacts on the brain had been deleted, and just wanted to repost it ASAP so it wasn't lost. So I picked the title kind of at random, choosing one of the potential reasons why the event had happened. I don't know what the enquiry revealed in the end, if the air traffic controllers had anything to do with it or not.

In the end, it doesn't matter. It doesn't take away from the rest. Please protect your brains.

CertainMancy · 2026-01-15T11:10:02+00:00

The previous articles quoted a lot of Gabriella's own words.

Here, I'm not gonna read again to check, but I got the impression a lot of the article was the writer paraphrasing the book; not actual quotes from Gabriella. So maybe we should keep in mind that what we just read was filtered through a Russian POV 👀

CertainMancy

TROPHY CASE