xeyra

The cynical part of me thinks that's the way he's justifying this to himself.

I think the choice of Chopin is obvious, in the end. Let's try and put it in bullet points. Not having a clean SP all of last season started to weigh on him to the point he was starting to have 'negative thoughts on the SP'; The all edge jumps in the SP experience didn't turn out so well, so in order to be able to maintain the 4Lo in the SP (as intended or as backup in case he can't get the 4Lz consistent enough in the SP), the combo of doom 4S-3T needs to be ditched; 4T-3T needs to be in the second half in order not to be a downgrade in BV, though; The current LGC music cut likely does not allow for that change. It wasn't created with the idea of two jumps in the second half; A new music choice for a SP, with a new layout and choreography, is likely something that might give him as much trouble as LGC did, regardless of whether he got rid of the 4S-3T. He may want to train the 4Lz to replace the 4Lo, for which might be best to have some familiarity with a layout and, as seen above, LGC was not really made with the idea of two jump passes in the second half; Chopin was, though. Chopin 1.0 had 4T and 3Lz-3T in the second half in its original layout. But he only ever did try that layout 3 times, if I'm not mistaken (CoC 2014, ACI 2015, SC 2015); He recycled his SP before for Sochi, in order to focus on his LP and tech and to retain a familiar SP that might give him an advantage. ERGO Go for Chopin.

He fell on the 4T at ACI so it has a 88.89% success rate (8/9, including both solo and combo 4Ts).

I've now opened the tables for edits (it was late, I uploaded it but forgot to open in Google Sheets), if anyone wants to fiddle with stuff, try some functions, add in some data, etc. For example, I'll be adding fields for the BV, scores and PCS on each of the 6 men's tabs as well. Might be interesting to see the variation between their highest and lowest scores. Feel free to add in the data if you want. And now that's done as well. An interesting observation: Nathan and Boyang's average BV in their FS was about 10-20 points higher than most other men's average BV. Highest BV was Nathan's at Worlds (112.87). Lowest was Patrick's at Finlandia Trophy (71.62).

Hmmm... the more he talks about the 4T the more I begin to think he'll indeed go for a 4Lz-less layout with two repeat quads and one 3A.

Next week I'll try to work on jump percentages unless someone wants to beat me to it.

Wait, does anyone even know for sure they broke up or is still just speculation based on Miki's not tweeting stuff?

If anyone's interested, I posted some 2016-2017 GOE average statistics over here, at the skating thread. Let me know if there's anything wrong, any data you suggest I add or modify, whatever. Now let me go cry in a corner. Paging @Murieleirum

So I've done a very rough set of average statistics of the Top 6 men in the 2016-2017 season. I've only included in the averages competitions that were ISU sanctioned (Challenger series, GP, Championships and WTT). I've gathered the GOE for every jump pass, spin and sequence, calculated some averages and came up with the numbers in the Excel file below. This is probably really convoluted and could have a lot more interesting info or be way clearer, but every guy managed to f*ck up their layouts a thousand times so I don't care, this is what you get. Disclaimer: I can't math for shit, so this is all excel's doing. Also didn't do any percentages. Sorry! GOE AVERAGES OF THE TOP 6 MEN 2016/2017 SEASON NOTES: There are 8 tabs: overall summary; GOE element average summary; skater's individual GOEs and averages per competitions; Whenever the first jump of a combo was popped, I added it to one of the general popped combo categories - this was a way of keeping my sanity; Any jump-REP was included in that jump's statistics (so if you jumped two 4Ts and one was a fall with REP, I counted both GOEs under 4T); The averages are calculated as thus: element average on the end column; GOE average of each competition (in pink); total GOE average of each element (in bold italics - basically I averaged the averages instead of adding them up); The totals are calculated as thus: total falls, total under-rotations/downgrades (in this I counted every marked < or << in a protocol, including on the half loops!), total edge calls (! or e) and total pops; The GOEs were added in regardless of whether the jump was downgraded or underrotated, or the level of spins or step sequences. OBSERVATIONS: Shoma is the only man with absolutely no pops in the ISU sanctioned events. He didn't even pop anything in his other (not counted) events. Nathan and Boyang were very close (then WTT happened). Basically, these guys have learned their lesson: rotate your quads!; Yuzuru is the real popstar of the bunch, as we all knew. However, he shares the honor of less number of falls with Javi and Boyang; Shoma has managed to fall a total of 12 times (8+4), if you count ALL his competitions, but he also had like 10 competitions to everyone's 5-7 (not counting Nationals); Nathan and Patrick also liked to fall a lot (11). Marina's boys solidarity; Javi needs to REALLY change his three jump combo from his 3F since he always gets an unclear (!) edge on it; Despite being the best popstar in the World (sorry Keiji), Yuzuru managed to nonetheless have the highest GOE total averages both in the SP and FS. He's an alien alright. All the GOE averages, when you look at it, weren't particularly high from anyone because of all the crap popped, fallen on, two-footed, stepped-out, etc. All the men were consistently a mess. Let me know if there's anything wrong, any data you suggest I add or modify, anything that needs clarifying, whatever. Edit: Detected a mistake (didn't count Javi's 4S pop in a SP) so corrected the link. Edit 2: I should have probably separated by GOE averages of jumps, spins and sequences, because of the differences in multiplier for each element. Fixed! Edit 3: Updated Nathan's SP averages due to error on the fields being counted for the data. It's now correct.

This is the part where I say Real Madrid for obvious reasons.

I hadn't seen those comments from Dmitri before. Really interesting to think that to some Yuzuru is both intimidating and fascinating, a goal to reach but also one that seems unachievable. But it's also kind of a little sad that people feel that intimidated by him they can't even look him in the eye lest they feel demoralized. Then again, Yuzu does sometimes come to the rink during competitions as if he's going to murder whoever breathes on him so can't really fault them. Also, at Miki championing Yuzu's right to be himself and react as he damn well pleases.

Thank you for clarifying!

Boyang said no to saving the planet and I'm kind of sad. Spiderman would have been such an interestingly entertaining program for the casual audiences at the Olympics.

I think it's sort of like what Yuzu has with ANA. From what I understood, you're basically an employee as in you receive a salary and are part of the company. Someone who knows better can help out?

After someone reaches a certain age you kind of just have to shake your head and instead of or at their comments. And I know I'm kind of being ageist here, for which I apologize, but all these older coaches are such amusing examples of this.

Javi is going to be in Nagoya on June 14th. Anyone in Japan wants a chance to have a M&G with him and Miki?

Isn't Gabriella basically asleep through most of it!?

Yes, it certainly is. But yeah, I now wonder what she would consider the minimum level of arrogance displayed by those skaters who've returned and don't listen to their Japanese coaches. Would, for example, someone wanting to choose their own music for programs and/or participate more in the decisions about their training/career count as disrespecting? Shoma is actually right now in the USA working on his Lutz edge. The short time he'll spend there will most likely not really help his overall technique on these jumps, which I sincerely blame on whoever taught him jumps as a wee child (Yamada?), but he is trying to work on his issues, gradually, including the wrong edge problem on the Lutz. Very likely so he can bring a 4Lz into play, of course, and then we can have more endless discussions about that.

This is why quotes out of context should probably not be taken entirely at face value. Thank you so much for your post. If she isn't particularly shading Yuzu, then, I wonder what she does think of Mao Asada or Daisuke Takahashi, who are, I think, two of the more famous (now r****d) skaters who did go to train in foreign soil and returned to Japan years after.

I know you're upset on Yuzu's behalf but I don't think it's quite necessary to bring up Yuzu's qualities by comparing him to someone else.

Isn't he very popular with mothers or won or ranked high in many polls about who'd you take home to meet your mother? I vaguely remember something like that.

I don't really know if I need a toothbrush to keep track of my brushing habits, though. That seems Big Brother-y of the toothbrush. I wanna go to bed without brushing sometimes, okay!?

Could be that and she could also be very salty. One doesn't preclude the other.

I think it was in regards to the un-japanese way of celebrating and being too emotional. Sorry, probably should have paraphrased the post on twitter a bit better. I'll go edit it a bit for clarity.

Way to be graphic in your product promotion, Yuzu!