Bourne & Kraatz (CAN) - 1998 World Figure Skating Championships, Free Dance

Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA - 1998 World Figure Skating Championships, Ice Dancing, Free Dance - Shae Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz of Canada placed 3rd in the Free Skate and ended up winning the Bronze Medal.

[@janyshendrickson3833]

Loved this FD! It was so original, unique, different than all the other competitors. Truly a complete joy to watch, especially in person. Thank you for posting this.

[@peterloedden9716]

A timeless Canadian classic!

[@vesibeleva1901]

One of my favourite ice dances ever!

[@zaggirl06]

Love this team. Riverdance was a masterpiece although I liked their High Society program better. I always felt they got the short end of the stick due to the block judging. Was so happy when they finally got their world title. Certainly opened the door for NA teams such as Virtue and Moir, Davis and White, and Belbin and Agosto to name but a few.

[@lucasblackburn3178]

Never gets old Brilliant!!

[@rossanacastagna1449]

Powerful and Magnificent! Wow! 😮😮😮👍👍👍

[@vickilindberg6336]

She is a tryely gifted dancer & coreographer.

[@rythymb1]

Cool love this couple. The best ever!!!!!!!

[@michellegruber4187]

Oh Yeesssss ! Yes indeed. They are very good, Perfect. I love them very much.

[@stevinasauer8648]

Love them. The best pair skaters ever.

[@cmarion1544]

They should have won!

[@michelestanley-parish3063]

Viktor or shae I was one of the med members in lake placid when you were practicing this dance. Please reach out to me. Sharon and Jim say hi

[@kimlightfoot]

It was on account of their loss after this perfect and flawless skate, I quit supporting and watching figure skating. They were robbed entirely

[@floben2039]

Always Bad musical tastings^^ perfect for holiday on ice

[@heartlessbuckets8347]

Thanks Seline Dion

[@metsdudenj]

What did you expect when there are 3 Russian judges????

[@verram98]

Ice dancing has always been pre judged... there’s a pecking order that judges go for and it’s hard to overtake the heir apparent to the gold medals.

[@MsRumex]

lol). It was hard but not impossible. Anisina and Peizerat did it) Bourne and Kraatz never ever were considered gold medals contender (Grishuk and Platov were just way stronger). But Bourne and Kraatz did have a great chance to get bronze. However french team just were better not only in compulsory dances, but they also had much stronger OD and FD. And so the French team overtook Bourne and Kraatz despite the fact that in this "pecking order " you mentioned, they were initially behind them.

[@lucasblackburn3178]

Robbed

[@Justforfun-ke7bg]

no. First of all this is not the most technically difficult FD and secondly, they also have 2 more stages of competition, and their OD was very- very-very weak (and finally american TV commentators did admit it).

[@gk891]

They skated this entire program side by side. A medal of any kind was very very generous, especially when you consider their crappy OD.

[@michelej4971]

This team got ripped off so many times over their careers by shady judges, it’s shameful!

[@alexsdb9712]

A beautiful, memorable BUT shady and dirty skating era, 70s-early 00s and perhaps continued on today.

[@mejust42day]

They have always been my favorites, no one can touch them in my book!

[@floben2039]

Disney couple. No émotions sorry, but funny

[@juliarayna8702]

Thanks for posting. Happy to see this on YT. I had this program on VHS back in the day and saw it hundreds of times. I was feeling nostalgic for this team and saw it again today after so many years and it still gave me goosebumps from start to finish.

[@debsong10]

One of my favorites. Makes me smile every time I see it. Love this program and love their skating.

[@cbeaulavie2004]

Powerful, wonderful... SO creative...They can be so proud...We miss them!

[@TinaR39]

All these years later, this is still a masterpiece. Such amazing attention to detail that if you took away the costumes and music, it would still be easily identifiable as Irish step dancing. Who knows how this would have fared under today's rules.

[@bofreyhumgart3179]

A good question. All I know is that I really refer the ice dancing of the past: Krantz and Bourne, he Duchesnays, Klimova and Ponomarkeno, Maya Usova and Alexander Zhulin, and of course the best of the best Janne Torville and Christopher Dean. It's like these days the emphasis is too much on tricks.

[@gk891]

I doubt it would fare very well since most of this dance is skated either hand to hand or side by side as opposed to face to face.

[@warren1564]

@@gk891 true, but neither would the others considering the requirements for dance have changed. They weren't even allowed to do pair spins back then.

[@gk891]

@@warren1564 Other teams at this competition skated programs with seamless content and interesting handholds like Anissina & Peizerat and Punsulan & Swallow. This team however skated far apart. You could've driven a moped between them.

[@warren1564]

Ok sure, but you do realize that this was a "riverdance" and that style of dance involves a lot of hand in hand and side by side right? They were simply skating the style of dance.... Regardless it's still a masterpiece in of itself... To each their own though, it was a different time in ice dance for sure.

[@margaretwolfe1588]

My favorite pairs couple. No one can ever touch their creativity.

[@madisongrace4634]

My favorite ice dancers.

[@klynnmartin1544]

One of the best ever. thank you both

[@heathermaureen7731]

I just watched this and still got choked up with emotion. They are the best in the world.

[@stefaniefulford6797]

anyone know where i could fine the hotel california sequence?

[@Momaters]

not a fan of the costume (too literal in terms of colour) but oh my god, the step sequences, choreography, everything else are just gorgeous!

[@donnawoodford8018]

There are other videos of this same program showing them wearing other costumes. One has them wearing purple and another video shows them in burgundy.

[@gloria267]

My favourite of all time...EVER!!!!!

[@rowbom]

This was a nice comeback for them, after the Olympic disappointment. Also it was an exciting program, well executed with lots of amazing footwork and fast spinning.

[@ChristineTheHippie]

I don't think people understood the difficulty of River Dance, and I also think when it came to ice dancing. like Susie Wynne when it comes to calling Ice Dance. I wonder how she'd call the ice dance?

[@gk891]

What difficulty? This was skated entirely side by side.

[@esther6101]

¡Menuda secuencia de pasos

[@Zelinna12]

LMAO at that idiot commenting.....not as hard as Grischuk/Platov? what was he smoking, they were far better ice dancers than those 2 fools ever could hope to be....the fact G/P beat Torvill & Dean at the 1994 Olympics was the biggest joke ever...

[@douglasanderson3020]

I did not like G&P but I was glad they beat Torvill & Dean in 94 since they were reinstated pros and I was against all reinstated pros. I would have given Usova & Zhulin the gold instead of them though. If I were judging at those Olympics Gordeeva & Grinkov would not have won the pairs either since they were a reinstated team. I would have made sure no reinstated pros won in any event. I was glad to see them atleast lose in 3 of the 4 events, and not not even medal in both mens and ladies.

[@tally1604]

Nice program, the Irish music is sure firey. But as a skate it was very weak technically. Simple holds. A lot of side by side skating on two feet. The French were by far superior.

[@michr.6284]

I do not disagree AT ALL, but the Block judging was anything but impartial. The best thing in ice dance and pairs has been the end of the 6.0. Amazing how as soon as that ended you saw a literal plethora of countries vying for medals. The Canadians definitely had superior edges, even if you don't like their style, which I agree the lifts don't even come close to the French. However, as for side by side, it is dancing and step dancing IS side by side dancing.

[@gk891]

@@michr.6284 Which is why it should've been reconstructed and reimagined to an extent in order to make it an ice dance program and not a program taken verbatim and performed on top of an ice surface. Sure, it will take some creative imagination but the best can do it. Ice dancers are expected to be able to skate very close together from within closed handholds. This program demonstrated virtually none of that.

[@polarcricket]

whoa arent im surprised with there dancing few take a breath i could try how about you probaly knot people over a huge age

[@maureenwagg5305]

Ah...the bad old days of Russian cheating. Scoring reflected their predudice.

[@gk891]

Not really. Both their OD and FD were skated almost entirely hand to hand or side by side.

[@o.k.9862]

Romain and Marianne Haguenauer in 1997 and Moniotte & Lavanchy in 1998 did a better job in adapting riverdance to ice skating (with interesting handholds and edges). That's what Bourne and Kraatz should have done if they wanted to be competitive. But I don't think they were able to skate close together (at least they never did it)

[@jimmyseraphin7314]

The commentators are just ridiculous. This was not a difficult dance. Technicly it was clearly overmarked. Anissina peizerat programm was far away better. But unfortunatly we used to ear these kinds of stupids comments many times...the most ridiculous was when they said they were better than gritchuk platov hahahahah. Jokeeeee. This was a weak programm. Their programms for 2001 and 2003 were far away better.

[@gk891]

Indeed. This free dance was skated almost entirely side by side. It was a joke that they medalled at all. Especially since they had the worst OD out of all the couples in the top 10.

[@959623]

Don't you have a live, do yo think that if you keep going all over the internet to B/K Riverdance performances, saying crap that any one will believe you.just stop not to mention it was 20 years ago.They have all move on with their lives, you should too.

[@rowbom]

It seems that those who want to pick this program apart seem to clearly ignore how difficult the first section was, with all of that footwork. Since it was supposed to be a Riverdance theme then that is exactly how Riverdance should look on the ice.

[@gk891]

There was no difficulty in this dance. It was skated almost entirely side by side. And as Tracy Wilson would always harp on time and time again (except for teams that she personally liked), it's a lot easier to skate that way as opposed to skating face to face.

[@SDoesNotKnow]

You should listen to Judy Blumberg's commentary on B/K's OD at this competition. She was spot on in her criticism of them. I wonder if her being so critical was a reason why ABC didn't use her for the FD.