Thanks to Shazam, I've finally solved the mystery of the dodgy music. It's called "La Nuit est Sorciere", a 1950s ballet by Sidney Bechet (if you search for that on RU-vid, you'll find a clip which I can only describe as very... French).
I thought her jump technique was beyond polished & I really enjoy her skating actually. If I remember correctly her career ended in scandal over a shoplifting arrest or something. Is that correct?
That's what the rumour-mongers at Solihull Ice Rink said at the time, but I don't know whether there was any truth in that. She certainly never competed at the British again.
Rubbish! This was 1989 and the judges stupidly gave the British championship to someone without a clean triple in her programme. This was the first time in 10 years that the British Ladies champion won without a triple - the previous one was 1979 when Karena Richardson won her final British title. OK I know jumps are not everything but come on - no triple in 1989?
npe1 I, too, find it inexplicable that the judges placed Murdoch ahead of Conway in FS here. Murdoch fell once and had no triples, and her presentation was energetic but immature and unclean. Her spins were just okay and her jumps were tiny and lacking in flow. Conway fell once, too, but she was in a class of her own, with a BEAUTIFULLY-executed tripe, big and airy 2 Axels and the rest of the doubles. The speed, presentation and her spins were all superb, as well. I just don’t understand how the majority of the 9 judges found this performance to be superior to Conway’s, and the only reason I could think of would be that they had already written Conway off for having not made sufficient progress in the prior years and they, instead, wanted to push for Murdoch, whom they considered a rising star.
@@npe1 The previous time was the year before this (1988), when Joanne won with nothing harder than double axels. Jacqui Soames tried a salchow but massively underrotated it and crashed.
@@nondescriptnyc Completely agree. It was a close decision (4-3) as judges 1, 2 and 5 put Joanne first, but I think the feeling was that Joanne couldn't handle her nerves and they wanted to try someone else. It was a bad decision, as Emma's best was only good enough for 17th in the free skate at the 1990 Europeans and she didn't even make the cut at Worlds despite skating a clean short. Joanne could easily have made the top 10 at Europeans that year. But maybe she needed this experience at the British to fire her up for the next season, when she came on a bomb.
