If you’re not into figure skating – and by “into”, I mean absolutely freakin’ obsessed with it – you’ve probably been as nonplussed as I am when you hear conversations between people who are.

Their exhaustive knowledge of the competitors, the techniques, the judging criteria, the events and the ongoing soap opera that is the figure skating world is matched only by their passion (and at times vehemence). Stick me in a brawl between rival street gangs any day before you force me into the middle of a disagreement over Victor Kraatz’s last performance.

But that level of passion suggests this is an area ripe for social media. And indeed there’s a great entry in that field: a new figure skating blog by none other than Capulet Communications’ Julie Szabo, freshly returned from Malta.

Julie has vied successfully to become the number one Google result for a search on the phrase “figure skating blog”, thanks partly to smashing blog posts but also to a concerted effort to link that phrase to her blog (see previous paragraph). Her ultimate goal: media accreditation to the 2010 Olympic Games.

That’s just under two years away, and it’ll be interesting to see how attuned their media officials have become to the Web 2.0 revolution by then. In the meantime, she’s clearly struck Google gold.