SKATING WITH THE STARS: SOAP STYLE
By Alina Adams

Yup, another photo from my deep, dark, skating past... That's me on the left with Dick Button and 1980 Olympic champion Robin Cousins, at the 1998 Nagano Games.

Sean Young, a nominal soap star, at best (she played Meggie on Y&R), got voted off last night, upsetting a lot of people who really hoped she'd go the (crazy) distance.

Her ouster meant saying good-bye to Sean's partner, ice dancer Denis Petukhov (his last name means "rooster," in Russian - just a fun fact). What I found soapy about the whole thing is that Denis, along with his wife/skating partner, Melissa Gregory, has performed a unique trio routine in the past with Skating With The Stars judge, Johnny Weir.

Check it out below:



Meanwhile, an actual soap star, Rebecca Budig (Greenlee, AMC; Michelle, GL) is spending her second week atop the leader board.

When Rebecca joined the cast of Guiding Light in 1995 (as a recast Michelle following pre-teen Rachel Miner), the story was supposed to feature her and (then-Little) Bill Lewis, still played by a pre-teen Bryan Buffinton, trying to figure out how a friendship and burgeoning romance was supposed to work when one half had suddenly matured, seemingly overnight. (Well, it's a soap, so, yeah, literally, overnight).

Unfortunately, Budig proved too grown up looking for Buffinton, (no big surprise, there, she's seven years older!) and the story was scrapped to send Michelle in another (angelic) direction.

What does this have to do with skating? Well... Bryan's dad, Dick Buffinton, is a long-time ABC Sports producer and director, who covered many years of professional and eligible skating for the network. (In other fun facts, Rachel Miner's dad, Peter Miner, was a director at One Life to Live, and Rachel was one of the finalists to play Jessica Buchanan, before Erin Torpey won the role.)

What's Bryan Buffinton doing now? Find out, here!

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Alina Adams is the author of "Oakdale Confidential," "Jonathan's Story," "The Man From Oakdale," and the figure skating mystery series.