At With Leather we aren’t afraid to bypass an actual sports news story in favor of videos of kittens being adorable at sports (usually all from Buzzfeed), and today is no exception — please ignore those 100 allegations of whatever and enjoy watching these baby cats fawn over a Japanese figure skater. You don’t really need more information than that, and should already be enjoying it.

This is where I’d share a story about my cat doing something similar, but the only time Jumbo notices the television is when I’m trying to switch up Batman and Catwoman in Arkham City. Maybe I should watch more figure skating. Or get more cats.

The ISU World Figure Skating Championships took place in Moscow over the past weekend, but you already knew that because I assume we were all watching it with breathless anticipation. In all seriousness, I consider figure skating as much of a sport as tap dancing, but it is a competition and something fun caught my eye, so here is your one and only figure skating post at With Leather for this year. What’s that? We had one the other day? Fabulous!

Russian duo Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov won the silver medal for their performance, a tribute to Super Mario Brothers. Maxim portrayed a video game nerd bringing Tatiana’s Mario to life, and that may be the most inadvertently perverted sentence I’ve ever written. While I commend them for their creativity, I’m still pretty disappointed in the lack of Princess Peach. Then again, I wouldn’t expect figure skating to promote sexy women for the male audience.

Perhaps Tatiana and Maxim would have won the gold medal if their performance was anything like the majestic production that was Mario on Ice.

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Watch in stunned silence (because there isn’t any sound) as Canadian figure skater Eric Radford briefly makes figure skating exciting by having his nose broken and bloodied.

About eleven seconds in (thank God), he throws his partner into the air, and little Megan Duhamel comes crashing back down with a Mitsuharu Misawa-style roaring elbow to the face. And while it might sound weird considering he’s a figure skater, he didn’t blade: he bled hardway. If puroresu references aren’t your bag, she hit him with a Spin Attack. If that doesn’t work, I don’t know, she elbowed him in the nose by accident?

To his credit (or possibly to his discredit), Radford cowboy’d up and finished the routine, which earned him a score of 58.83 and a seventh-place finish in the short program. They will skate for the championship on Friday. YEAHHH GET HYPE.

[via Yahoo]

It has been 16 years since Tonya Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly conspired to break Nancy Kerrigan’s leg during a practice at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, and things have never been better for Harding. People Magazine is “reporting” that Harding has a baby boy due any day now, which is super wonderful for the 40-year old, whose recent career highlights have included a 3-3 professional boxing career record and multiple incidents of domestic violence.

RAIN DOWN THE HELL FIRES OF THIS SPAWN OF EVIL, PEOPLE!

The former figure skater, 40, is expecting her first child with husband Joseph Price, her attorney confirms to PEOPLE.

“Tonya is pregnant and very happily married,” Linda Lewis tells PEOPLE. “She wants her privacy, but she is very happy.”

Aw, that’s sweet. It’s fitting that her attorney broke the news and not an agent or a manager. Look, I know this isn’t really the most important news in the world, but I find it remarkable that the media still pays attention to this woman. She hasn’t done anything of worth for the past five years, which means she should at least run for public office.

Meanwhile, in a follow-up with Rolling Stone magazine, Justin Bieber said, “In this case, I’d be totally cool with it.”

American figure skater Evan Lysacek just won a gold medal in singles in Vancouver, but he’s had something a lot prettier hanging around his neck lately–Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin. Liukin follwed Lysacek to BC for the games, and the two have finally confirmed that they are a couple. Finally, I can now move on with my life.

“We became good friends and have become really close since then,” says Lysacek. The two attended the ESPYs together last July and the relationship picked up steam after that, they say.

In August, Lysacek went to Dallas to cheer on Liukin during her gymnastics comeback at the U.S. Nationals. “It was cool but nerve-racking watching her compete – to be on the balance beam like that? For me, it’s easier to do it then watch it,” says Lysacek, 24. –People.

I can’t imagine that dating an Olympic gymnast would be the worst thing in the world. No, that would have to be wearing a unitard with feathered sleeves. There’s no place to blow your nose! I guess you could actually use a tissue, you know, if you swing that way.

American figure skater Johnny Weir finished sixth in the men’s singles, which ended last night. A lot of people are wondering why Weir, whose flamboyant style was matched by his technically sound skating, seemed to get the short end of the judging. And support for Weir is coming from the oddest places…like the Christian Science Monitor.

Part of that, he acknowledged, was because “I did a lot of leave-outs,” lowering the difficulty of his routine.

Yet his execution kept him in medal contention. His technical score of 79.67 was 6.19 points higher than that of bronze medalist Daisuke Takahashi.

So how did Weir lose his chance at bronze? Simply put, the judges didn’t like his routine much. Weir scored 77.10 points in the more subjective program components. Takahashi scored 84.50 – 7.4 points higher.

Weir–who hosed down his dorm room in the Olympic Village with Pledge to prepare for his long program routine–might be a freak, but dammit, he’s America’s freak. I happened to watch his short program routine, which I found inspiring and technically sharp, and couldn’t understand why the judges (and even the announcers on NBC) seemed to be mistreating him. It’s disappointing that even in the 2010 Olympics that we expect our figure skaters to be so butch.

UPDATE From Rob Iracane:”Technically, the CSM isnt a religious newspaper. It is owned by a church, yes
but not one bit a religious paper. It’s run by the First Church of Christ Scientists in Boston. Far from jesus freaks.” Our mistake.