Lyyli

I remember her performance but was wondering is there another piece or some other connections that I have not heard about.

I ´d like to know which pieces you mean that are somehow connected to Finland or Helsinki and in what way? Is he using something else too, not only music of Edvin Marton and Raul di Blasio? I have so far seen only their pieces mentioned as Yuzu´s choices.

Imo ID is a sport as well as other FS disciplines because ISU has developed a sport discipline form of it. I see it as a sport. Instead of jumps, lifts etc ID just has it´s own demanding elements, rules and requirements different from the other FS disciplines. The difficulties in judging concern all disciplines in FS more or less. This discussion brought to my mind a recent interview of Mikhail Kolyada whit a title: “Ideally, we all should strive to be like the ice dancers”. He thinks single skaters have a lot to learn from ice dancers. https://www.isu.org/figure-skating/figure-skating-news/interviews/11861-mikhail-kolyada?templateParam=15 . Single skaters are not automatically good ice dancers when they change to ID. I also remembered Tracy talking about this question in TSL interview a couple of years ago. She said it was finally Thorvill and Dean that made ID accepted as a sport. (In YT beginning around 12:35-) I have not heard that the ballet community has ever tried to develop ballet to be a sport discipline in the same way as ID community though there are some ballet competitions. I guess they could take it further towards sport, organize Worlds, Europeans etc but is there any will to do it, I don´t know. In Ballroom dancing there are Worlds, Europeans etc but I am not aware have they ever applied for the Olympics. They could for sure. Synchronized Skating has applied a couple of times but has not been accepted. They had high hopes for Peking but were turned down again. The IOC said that one reason for the denial is that there are not yet enough Syncro teams all over the world. And finally: Kolyada´s words about ID: "Figure skating is such a smooth sport, everything should look like a knife cutting through butter. You need to strive for being like the dancers. They are flying over the ice. Ideally we all should strive to be like they are. I watch the ice dancers, how they are doing all this, so softly how they stretch their legs and arms and it is all beautiful."

Extremely sad for Denis

Daisuke like any other once retired skater has the full right to try to make a comeback even to the highest international level. No matter his age or how he might change the men´s field in Japan. He will start from the beginning, competes first at regional competitions and tries to qualify for Japan Nats. For me it is far too early and unfair to talk about him getting scores by reputation at this point. I´ll see when he has competed and his scores are out. I think this is a brave decision from him. He knows it is not easy to reach the top and still he wants to get back competing at least for a year for personal reasons. What comes to this Anti-discussion, it is really confusing. Each skater has their own Antis, also Dai and Shoma.

In the press release Finnish Fed said also that during the years they have repeatedly expressed their will to host a GP event if some other Fed refused for some reason. I´ve heard about this before. I believe they would have accepted to host the event even without Yuzu but on the other hand they might have invited him if they were given a chance to do so within one week. And not only for the ticket sale, but because of him and his history in Finland. This will be his fourth competition here.

Finnish Fed said in their press release that ISU asked about their will to host the GP event only a week ago, after Korea refused. So I guess Helsinki got pretty much the skaters that were originally assigned to CoC. Boyang and Sui/Han are coming to Helsinki too. What come to Yuzu I wonder will he and his team try to search for a training base in Finland or Russia for the short time between the two competitions. Otherwise he would have to travel very much. The venue is unfortunately a lot smaller than at the Worlds2017. In Helsinki Ice Hall there are about 8200 seats. Hartwall Arena was not available for those days. As Helsinki is my hometown I am of course very happy about this decision!!!

UP6 was at least about restricting presidents of FSAs from working as judges, technical controllers etc so this means there will be no change on that.

The music for Shoma´s EX by Shae-Lynn is wild trance-music! No wonder he was out of breath after RT. New genre for him once again. Imo Mihoko has always made wise music choices for him. Shoma has had the chance to do many types of music in his career. He got lots of criticism because of last season´s music but considering his whole career for me they are understandable.

David Wilson working with Shoma, Yuna and Javi. What a group!

Jeff choreographed also the two latest free programs for Kaetlyn, Black Swan and La Boheme.

https://skatecanada.ca/2018/04/olympic-medallist-dylan-moscovitch-retiring-from-competitive-skating/