xeyra

When I talked about top skaters in that sentence, I should have specified I mostly meant World/Olympic medalists who already have reputation going for them.

Yeah, you're right! That's what probably motivated most of the criticism. Much like Kolyada hitting PB PCS with 3 falls at CoR. On the other hand, PCS have inflated so much that eventually even your bad skates will have better PCS than your best skates 2-3 seasons ago.

So if he resumes training properly in December... he'll be ready by February if the same timing applies.....

But doesn't every top skater get big PCS even with mistakes?

He could be Harry Potter!

It's very in vogue now since she's beating everyone in PCS except a flawless Zhenya, despite her very low BV.

This strategy served him well when he went to train with Orser.

I wonder if Jackie lurks at GS and saw all the talk about Carolina being overscored in PCS in there.

Yeah. I agree. It happens a lot with Ice Dance too, which is even more manipulable (it's a word!) than other disciplines according to all I hear. This is what happens when you have a judged sport with subjective measures with underlying sort of objective but unclear criteria. Which gets more and more unclear with each iteration of the handbook. GOE, which should be the most objective of criteria, is equally mired in subjectivity (and politics), thus the great variety of scores between judges on one element.

Well, not all high quality crossovers are made equal and not all body movement during them can have the same quality and sense of purpose to the judges. And, well, reputation does play a role and Wakaba has less of one than Carolina. Alina's scores compared to Wakaba, though, are less easy to justify on reputation... so I assume TR and TES weight a lot there.

From what gkelly explains, it seems that quantitive measures of steps and crossovers and multidirectional skating don't have much bearing on those scores, since judges don't have time to count and have to estimate, mostly based on the criteria they find more important. So, as gkelly said, if one does a lot of high quality crossovers (high number as they may be), with good body movement, and link those to certain moves before jumps and keep all elements linked, in a good flow, throughout the program, then that could explain, for example, the kind of SS and TR scores someone like Shoma receives despite not having as much one foot skating as others.

@fireovertheice, I was reading that GS thread and found your question and realized you've been confusing Chen with Chan. Jackie Wong said Patrick Chan had high quality crossovers. He doesn't mention whether Nathan has them or not, his example was Patrick Chan.

Well, to be honest, quality crossovers ends up being more of a SS area, though, right? There was an example in that discussion, that compared the crossovers of Carolina Kostner and Ashley Wagner. Both have a great number of crossovers in their programs but Kostner's are higher quality, due to her better SS, so should she be better rewarded in TR, SS or both in comparison to Wagner?

Ah, but this is much easier to do since the background is a single block of color (white), though green or blue work much better for CGI. With the footage from his childhood, though, they had to extract him from a much busier background. And the final product looks great!

I mean, quality crossovers are very nice, yes, but an overabundance of them doesn't really meet the 'difficulty' and 'variety' aspects of TR...

I cannot actually look at that footage without getting the hibby jeebies. I may have watched The Exorcist when I was quite young so some things just traumatized me.

A resurfacing of better quality of this moment from Japan Open. D'awwww.

Magic of CGI!

I sincerely hope he manages to get all the gold medals he wishes for this season from now on so he doesn't look quite as forlorn as that ACI picture.

Hey, you gotta shave those armpits for all those transparent skating costumes. It's only the aesthetically pleasing thing to do!

I'm not sure it's likely for him to go to SkA with Nathan there, though it will depend on Worlds placements and how everyone will be seeded. If Yuzu and Nathan are on the podium at Worlds, they can't both do SkA.

Skate Canada is likely to be back on for Yuzu next season.

It's been a while since I've done a tl;dr but here it goes: I think this idea that he only needs 3 quads to win is a fallacy. Yes, if we look at Yuzu's best scores, his 330 achieved with 2+3 quads, with only the 'easy' 4T and 4S, still stands to this day. But how likely would Yuzu, with those same quads, be able to replicate the circumstances that would give him that so far unsurpassed 330? We look at Javi and Patrick and bless them, they're amazing, but they're also posterboys of how you need to be absolutely foot perfect in order to stay competitive with the higher BVs of other skaters who are also improving in GOEs and PCS. And how hard it is to be clean even with lower BV. Yuzu's greatest opponents right now aren't staying still either; they will be gaining momentum throughout the season and they're packing some BV ammunition. Shoma is very close to Yuzu's scores, closer than any other man right now, and his GOE/PCS potential is as great as Yuzu's. And unfortunately, there's also the factor of narratives surrounding perceived weakness in keeping up with the quad race as well as pressure to do so, especially from Japanese media and its quad obsession. Then we add the fact that going back to a 3-quad layout seems to be complete opposite to Yuzu's personality, bless his stubborn self. I feel like he's going to need at the very least 4 quads, with the 4Lo, with those 3 quads in the second half, in order to at least feel like he is challenging something even if he ends up not doing the 4Lz. My feeling is that Brian will be weary of the 4Lz and might caution Yuzu not to risk it. But it depends entirely on Yuzu, his feelings for the jump, its training and the weight of the ratio of risk/reward in using it in his layout, especially now he's been set back. Yuzu's layout for Olympics and whether it can or cannot include 4Lz is dependent on three things right now: conditioning, competition practice and psychological issues. Conditioning: His injury set him back on that. He needs 10 days rest then he's hoping to get back into competition shape in 3-4 weeks. But he won't be able to immediately start training quads at the beginning of his return to the ice, so exactly how much he'll make up for in terms of strength, stamina, conditioning, quad training and success rate we'll need to wait and see. However quick and successful his recovery goes, I am somewhat doubtful of him being ready for a 5-quad layout by Japan Nationals so I think he'll have to water it down for that competition. Also, my hope is that he is reigned in a bit (by himself or his team) because he's also been known to try to overtrain to make up for lost time. Competition experience: Yuzu himself said he needed to take every opportunity to test out the 4Lz, as the newest and more unstable jump in his layout this season, in competition. Unfortunately he has now lost his last opportunities to do so. The only competition I could see him using to test that jump out prior to the Olympics would be 4CC as his conditioning should be much better by then. Could we possibly see him there? If his name is assigned to that competition, then I feel like the 4Lz might return. Psychological issues: As Daisuke Takahashi said recently, there is also the factor of fear of injury again so close to the Olympics and how that'll affect his quad training. This is something he will have to deal with but I trust he'll get over it soon enough. Also, let's all remember that it wasn't the 4Lz's fault that Yuzu injured himself. It was bad luck it was on that particular jump but it could have been in any other quad.

I am preparing myself to be disappointed after all the hype so that I can be pleasantly surprised when it turns out to be good.

She's one of those hippie free spirits all into tantric and pot orgies.