Errors in Figure Skating Books (Yikes)

[KittyKins]

I found this site that lists errors from different figure skating books. The Complete Book of FS seems to be the worst as well as the 100 years of FS by Steve Milton. I've just spent over half an hour correcting all of them. Wow, you can't believe what you read!:( I have 3 of these books.

http://home.earthlink.net/~louis17/errors.html

[blondeangl]

wow thats a LOT of errors!! there are 18 errors in the 100 years of FS ... i have that book and i dont think i noticed a single one :roll:

[Tony Wheeler]

In addition to that, the book "Ice Stars" by Kevin Bursey had well over 50 errors. The book was an embarassment IMO.

[GreekGoddess85]

wow that sure is a lot of errors
wow I cannot believe those editors missed it

[Aussie Willy]

Well my first reaction is "someone has time to do this?" but I love being nit-picky too.

Well to add if you look at pages 209 and 211 of "The official book of figure skating" (after one of the corrections was for page 208) you will notice that Gritschuk is called Pasha, not Oksanna. But the pictures are of the 96 Worlds so I assume at that time she was still called Oksanna.

Well I thought it would be fun to get into the act.

I also have a skating video which was brought out around the 2000 Olympics which was basically about figure skating in the Olympics. The commentator talked about a salchow (in the context of Ulrich Salchow and the jump that was named after him), which they then showed Stojko and Urmanov doing a loop. Major mistake!

[A.H.Black]

Notice that it's Louis that's doing the corrections and you immediately understand why the corrections were done. No one is more detail oriented than Louis and (I assume) being correct would be very important to him.

That said, I found that even one of Louis' corrections could lead to confusion. He mentions that figures were eliminated in 1990. True. Someone might think that this was true for the whole year, though, and figures were part of the 1990 Worlds competition. They were eliminated later in the year. The winner of the last figure ever competed at Worlds was Holly Cook. I don't say this because I'm anywhere near as detail oriented as Louis; this is just one detail I happen to know.

[skatey]

Lol, I'm proud to say that I noticed a couple of those when I skimmed through books at bookstores/libraries. I remember throwing an absolute fit in Borders when I was younger because it was Stacey Pensgen, not Stacey Rensgen. Poor bookstore people got scared.

[essence_of_soy]

I guess finding factual errors in skating books is similar to a flawed,
yet otherwise beautiful skating performance. You concentrate on
the details instead of the overall effect.

Having said that, even the likes of Bev Smith is guilty of making factual errors.

My favourite error is Liz Manley awarding herself 1st place in the short
program at the 1987 worlds in her autobiography. (She actually
placed 2nd behind Katarina Witt).

I'll get back in my box now

Nick

[Raine]

I was surprised by an error in Toller Cranston's book which stated that Dorothy Hamill won her Olympic gold medal in a "simple green dress". 8O It was Peggy Fleming, not Dorothy, who won in a simple green dress.

Dorothy Hamill's dress was deep rose pink--she referred to it as American Beauty Rose. In fact, in her competitive days, Dorothy often wore shades of red and pink, considering red to be her lucky color.

Peggy's dress, of course was chartreuse, a reference to the French monastery that makes the liqueur. Chartreuse (lime green) was a very trendy color in the late 60's and part of the psychedelic palette. It definitely faded out by the early 70's.

It's nitpicking, I guess, but it surprises me that as an artist, Toller would make this kind of error. He places an enormous importance on costume color, and has said something to the effect that the color green doesn't win on the ice, so he would seem to have an added awareness of instances of green costuming.

But since this error got by a few people before publication, maybe it's not so obvious. ;)

Cheers,
Raine

[Keely]

Interesting.

Could someone with an extensive figure skating library recommend some enjoyable books that aren't riddled with errors? I wouldn't mind owning a nice tome or two.

[Aussie Willy]

Well I got a copy of this years World's program sent to me. It had a picture of Navka/Kostamarov instead of Totmianina/Marinan on the pairs page. Had to laugh.

[Sydney]

I read Josée Chouinard's autobiography, and was surprised to see some errors in it about her own career. As I recall, it was written that at 1996 Nationals, she was 2nd after the short program. She was not. She was 1st (I remember, because there was a bit of controversy over that).

It also said that she dated Stéphane Ivars at one point. I'm guessing that was Stéphane Yvars, the figure skater, and I'm pretty sure I've always seen it spelled with a "Y" in front.

There were a few more errors, but I can't recall them all at the moment. I still enjoyed the book, but being a big Josée fan, I remembered a lot of details from her career and noticed the errors in the book.

[KittyKins]

Pretty scary when someone doesn't remember the details from their own career or the person they dated! I'm assuming the editor should have caught those errors. Still...!!:roll:

[jcspkbfan]

I think the mistakes in Josée's book may be attributed to her co-author (Lydia Prouse), not necessarily Josée herself. If Josée dictated her story into a tape recorder and Ms. Prouse wasn't familiar with French spellings, I could understand why some spelling mistakes like Ivars/Yvars would have snuck through. I remember seeing some similar minor mistakes in both of B&E's books (also co-written by Ms. Prouse), but can't remember any specific examples right now.

Of course, it's harder to explain how Josée could have forgotten she won the 1996 Canadians SP (unless that whole competition brought back so many painful memories, she blocked that fact out!) or why someone didn't do a fact check on that one.

This wasn't the only autobiography containing little errors like this: "My Sergei" contained a few as well. Katia said in the book she was 11 years old when she and Sergei began skating together; she was actually 10. The book also goofed on the music G&G used for their 1989 Worlds LP: it stated they skated to selections from Mozart; they actually used "Die Fledermauss." I remember Marina Zoueva pointed out both of these errors during an interview a couple of years ago; otherwise most readers probably wouldn't have picked up on them.

But in the case of "My Sergei," I remember E.M. Swift said he and Katia had only about five or six weeks to put the whole book together, so that would explain why a couple of minor errors would have snuck through in that case. I wonder if other skating autobiographies had to be written under such a tight deadline?

Unfortunately, another G&G book (which Katia had nothing to do with; I believe it was one of those "mini-books" SOI put out a couple of years ago) contained such glaring errors as goofing on the year they won their first Olympic gold (1984 instead of 1988) and the year Sergei died (1994 instead of 1995). I mean, you don't have to be a diehard G&G fan (or even skating fan) to notice those two mistakes! 8O

[tdnuva]

Those mistakes about "at which age I began skating" and so on I really can understand. For me (personal problem) it's really hard to remember when certain things happened. I can firmly say when I began and finished school - but that's about it. Most other dates I only can calculate in reference to those dates. ;-)

And perhaps the skaters don't think it's that important if it was before or after their 11th birthday...

The mistakes about competitions might evolve cause skaters obviously often just say "my program in 1989" and I always have a hard time to find out if they mean "the program I/we used in the big competitions in 1989" (which would mean it was season 1988/1989) or "the program we developed in 1989" (which would mean it was season 1989/1990).

Don't want to apologize for the mistakes, I only can rely that sometimes it's hard to avoid them. 8-)

[KittyKins]

Well, this is a very interesting topic. I didn't realize so many books had so many errors. Well, I should say, I'm sorry if I criticized Josee. That was not my intent, but I can see that it did come out that way. I guess I was being sarcastic which isn't so great. It's just so frustrating to be reading something and not be sure that what you are reading is correct. I agree that if she told someone what to write, things could have gotten confused. I'm sure if I had to remember events from my own life, I might make a couple of mistakes. It seems most of the errors are with numbers, what year, what place, etc. Well, it might be best not to base a quiz on one of those books, lol! :roll:

[speedy]

Unfortunately, this is not just a problem with skating books...it's common with many books and other media these days. I am amazed at the errors, bad grammar and misspellings I see in print and on TV news daily. I suppose it's just part of the "dumbing down" of modern life...pretty sad.

[Mel On Ice]

The Guiness Book of World Records was trying really hard to give Pasha Grischuk the title of "most decorated skater ever," while not including her partner Yvgeny and ignoring a lady called Sonia Henie and a certain pairs skater that won 3 Olympic gold medals with 2 different partners.

[charisma]

LOL one of my skating books (blanking on the title right now) has a gorgeous picture of a young Sarah Hughes (maybe in about 1999) and then the caption reads something along the lines of "One of the U.S's most promising skaters is the young Naomi Nari Nam." That one cracked me up.

[KittyKins]

Originally posted by speedy
Unfortunately, this is not just a problem with skating books...it's common with many books and other media these days. I am amazed at the errors, bad grammar and misspellings I see in print and on TV news daily. I suppose it's just part of the "dumbing down" of modern life...pretty sad.

Yeah, I just bought a bio. on JRR Tolkien for my Dad for Father's Day, and then I find out that his synopsis of The Lord of the Rings has a whole bunch of errors. I'm hoping his summary of Tolkien's life is much more accurate. I haven't heard otherwise, but who knows. Oh, BTW, it is the one called JRR Tolkien, the Man Who Created the Lord of the Rings by Coren.

[ceceB]

Originally posted by charisma
LOL one of my skating books (blanking on the title right now) has a gorgeous picture of a young Sarah Hughes (maybe in about 1999) and then the caption reads something along the lines of "One of the U.S's most promising skaters is the young Naomi Nari Nam." That one cracked me up.

Ah yes. I took that one out of the library recently and someone had taken a pen and crossed out NNN and written in Sarah Hughes.LOL I appreciated it, even if it is wrong to deface a book like that.:D

[Sydney]

Originally posted by KittyKins
Well, this is a very interesting topic. I didn't realize so many books had so many errors. Well, I should say, I'm sorry if I criticized Josee. That was not my intent, but I can see that it did come out that way. I guess I was being sarcastic which isn't so great. It's just so frustrating to be reading something and not be sure that what you are reading is correct.

Don't be sorry - I don't think anybody got offended. :)

I thought that Josée probably dictated a lot of the book as well, and that they were probably the ghostwriter's fault, not hers (especially the Stéphane Yvars error). But I didn't know what to think of the one regarding being 2nd after the short at 1996 Nationals. It just seemed that it was part of a larger context. She was saying how she started doubting herself at Nationals after seeing so many of the other ladies practicing well in practice, etc., and then says that she was 2nd after the short. The tone of it just struck me as, "See, I doubted myself so much, that I was 2nd after the short program." It just seemed like an obvious error, one that she definitely would have picked up after reading the book herself. There were other factual errors as well.

On a positive note, there's some interesting stuff in there about her growing up, the training she went through as a child, her reaction to the death of her father, her thoughts during the Olympics. There's also a little anecdote about kissing Kurt Browning as a teenager. 8O

[Sydney]

I was just flipping through Josée's book this weekend, and I found the passage I was talking about regarding 1996 Nationals on p. 132:

"On the day of the short program, I didn't skate too badly, but I missed the combination jump and came second behind Jennifer. Going into the long program, I was so upset. But nobody around me appeared to be concerned. I was in the dressing room with Mary Jane and I confided in her as to how I was feeling. She said, "I don't know why you're worrying. You are skating so well." I felt like screaming, "Hello! Doesn't anybody see what's going on here?" But there was no time to unravel the mess in my head, as we were being called to the ice for warm-up".


OMG that was depressing to type. I hate reliving 1996 Nationals. Anyways, there are 2 errors in there - the first being that Josée came in 2nd in the short (she was actually 1st) and the mispelling of Marijane Stong's first name. Also in the book, Steven Cousins is spelled "Stephen Cousins" and Stéphane Yvars is spelled "Stephan Eivars" (unless there really is a skater called "Stephan Eivars" out there).

[trains]

In "Figure Skating A Celebration, the Canadian author managed to entirely leave out Canadian world champion Karen Magnussen.

[Snowflake3939]

Yes, I was truly disappointed to find Karen Magnussen's named mentioned only once in that book and it was to say that Janet Lynn (with picture and her name mentioned about 6 or seven times) had come second behind Karen Magnussen). They even have a picture of Tatiana Navka in that book but none of Karen Magnussen, a world champion.