Xen

My thesis never made much of a difference in my current job...>_> I'm a bad influence.

Just ignore them. People need dreams too you know.

Personally, the SPs I liked from the ladies were far and few in between. If I had to chose, I'd go Satoko Miyahara, Kaori Sakamoto (I didn't notice it was backloaded the first time I saw it, it had enough content, and she really does fly across the ice), Osmond (though it's not my type of music, she did it well), and probably Loena. I didn't like Alina's SP the first time I saw it-the opening moves, minus the starting pose reminds me a bit too much of her FS. She has a bit of a tell with backloaded programs, and this is probably more a choreography issue, and that's the illusion spin step she does. It's always that location in her programs when she starts. I know step sequences are fairly similar these days due to requirements under IJS, but it does seem a bit boring. But if you check that section against her FS, it's pretty much the exact same steps. As for her being well-rounded, she's only turning 16 this year, so I think she can be a very well-rounded skater. She has potential. And for what she does, I'll repeat what I said in the Olys Ladie's thread. She does a very difficulty program with decent ease, and for that I congratulate her. Personally I like Alina as a skater, and as a person, but I do think she's not quite that complete yet. If judged fairly on all the ladies, she may still have won just based on her TES alone, which is much harder than what other ladies were doing. The other issue, people tend to highlight, is where do skaters go once they get such high scores. And to a degree, Alina has reached probably her "cap" this Olys. She doesn't have that many points left to earn when she gets better artistry and programs, and her programs don't have that much TES room either (short of her getting a 3A or a quad). So it's not going to be rosy for her, or Evgenia going forward, since the 3A and quad girls are coming.

...I'm not sure if it's something to be proud of, but okay.

And I in turn was enlightened by a rinkmate and the chinese fandom.

The 5 stars version? Forgot what they're called. I use RF3, and do single jumps (no axel yet). It's weight related too, so you might need the royals.

Well...am I the only one who found Alina's FS this year better performed last season while she was a junior? I think back then, it had more "light-heartedness." The nerves probably didn't help. This season, the FS was less the issue, the SP though always annoyed me, granted all the swans this year, minus Yuzu's EX, annoyed me. The part that gets me the most though, is why is it that some of these people who took ballet just...don't really transfer it on ice? My mom also did ballet before, and she wasn't impressed by Nathan (especially his musicality felt super flat to her). I didn't dare show her Alina.

In terms of stiffness ratings, Royals are stiffer. You might want to try both. The skate technician I work with didn't recommend I switch to Royals, because he said their heels are slightly higher than RF3's and standard Risport, and the boot opening is a bit lower, closer to ice dance boots. He also said it's better if you have narrower heels (vs medium heels for normal risport). So I'd try both and see which feels better. I personally found Risports easier for me to break in versus Edeas (those things hurt my arches and bunion area like crazy).

Hey there! Welcome! Post long, post often! There's a separate thread over in Knickknacks for the satellites who skate. =) Quite a few of us do! So welcome to the ranks! Now that you've revealed your ability to make music videos, I guess we have a new one to doe-eye/blackmail into doing music videos for the music suggestion thread? As for seeing Yuzu live, a lot of satellites meet-up to see him live. Just look for the event threads and see if there is a satellite meeting at competitions. =) @ThiriYuzu: both Gladi and Tadakixd are going to translate his japanese press conference. Just wait a bit for them.

To clarify, the last costume Johnny Weir designed for Yuzu was the Sochi LP (R&J 2.0) costume, also known as the boobskirt costume. Many of his recent ones, including the Seimei and Notte Stellata costumes, were from Satomi Ito. You can read it up here: https://wherespacepooh.tumblr.com/post/166967273964/the-birth-of-a-costume-hanyu-is-the-designer-i

You are correct. According to Wikipedia, Shizuka Arakawa only went 8th, 7th and 8th at Junior worlds. Sasha Cohen only won 6th, Tara Lipinski won 5th and 6th, though Michelle Kwan won 1st once. I don't have a problem with saying that they might not be gold medal favorites now, but I also don't think you can compare the competition that Yuna and Mao faced during their Junior years, to the one right now. Right now, some of the junior ladies can climb into Senior ladies and win with their technical content. =) Also, Yuzu only got 12th in his first Jr worlds, then he took first, and moved on to seniors. =)

Both are still juniors, and I would say that their competition now is even fiercer among the junior ranks now than before. The technical content of the junior ladies is very significant, think of the 3As and 4S jumps that Adelina, Zagitova didn't have to face. Also Yuna and Mao didn't have that much competiton, other than each other, in the junior ranks. Quick correction-Eunsoo and You Young did not *bomb* in the junior ranks. They had one or 2 errors, but not bomb. Remember that so far, we have only seen results of the JGPF, not worlds yet, and the ladies who went to JGPF pretty much all won at least 1 event in the JGP series. Both Eunsoo and You Young had the misfortune of going against very tough competition, pretty much against the ladies who placed in the top 3 at the JGPF. That's very tough luck, and any error, even small, would be problematic for them. What I was also trying to say is that ladies field, just by junior results alone, is not enough to say who will get on the podium. For ladies, more than for men's field, who manages to hold on to their skillsets after puberty, is key. That's because usually puberty works against ladies, and works for the men. And given the competition and depth of ladies in Russia right now, we need to pray that the junior ladies we like in Russia right now, will be on the 2022 team.

@cinemacoconut: Actually in regards to Rika Kihira, there are jump analysis done for her 3A. http://perform-live.com/blog/video-analysis-of-figure-skating/180-rikia-kihira-a-new-japanese-prodigy-skater.html Also, the-real-xmonster has a really good post about axel takeoffs, comparing and contrasting different skaters. What is noticeable is how female skaters depend more on getting into rotation faster (faster snap into rotation) than the men, so actually it works against you to jump too high. http://the-real-xmonster.tumblr.com/post/170255891199/the-takeoff-axel And if you compare with the perform live blog above, large jumps depend more on distance+height than just height alone. If you check the rest of Perform Live's blog on figure skating, you'll notice several men, such as Nathan do get good height, but they don't get quite the distance of Yuzu or Boyang, hence why their jumps look smaller. Jumps isn't just about height. While the Russian ladies I think are really good artistically, puberty is a huge deal for female skaters. Currently I think Rika and Nana Aoki are probably almost done, so I think what Rika has now is more likely to stay. There's also Eusoon and You Young, and You Young has been training a 3A 3T combo too. I would not call the 2022 Podium just yet-it's a question for ladies, of whose techniques survive growth/puberty first. =(

Checked his height on ISU bio and he's still growing, definitely still growing. His legs proportions do not look his listed height, at least another 10-15 cms over the years incoming. But he does remind me more of a younger Javi. You know, I would really root for him to join BOrser camp. And I think he does have pretty decent musicality, pretty expressive Chaplin from 2016 JGPF, some of his presentation issues is more due to going through that awkward growing pains/flailing limbs period. Other junior men I'm looking at (other than Shun, Gogolev) is Andrew Torgashev (US), Artur Danielian (RUS- he has gorgeous landings, and not much in the flailing limbs department for a 13 year old boy).

This schedule doesn't make any sense, unless they anticipate most of east asia watching this at 7-9 pm? Because this works out to be about 4 am in the US. The pairs schedule is insane...they last until 11 pm for the short, and then have to start practicing at 8 am the next day (though later groups don't practice until 10 am).

I wonder what wild music ones he saw. There are a lot of beautiful fan music vids online, which speaking of which we should probably start looking at music for next season. Anyone want to start the guessing game? Or do we want to save that for the summer doldrums.

Just a quick note if people are not familiar with figure skating. For some jumps, such as salchows, there are several entry methods. First is the common 3 turn entry, the second one commonly learned is a right backwards 3-turn to mohawk to jump entry. For flips there is also an entry method that utilizes a mohawk to go to the right back inside edge. Especially in the case of salchows, the back 3 turn to mohawk to jump method, it seems people sometimes could confuse it with steps. However, especially for salchows with higher number of rotations, the back 3->mohawk entry is used more often in the men's. @fireovertheice: I'm guessing under ISU those steps for those 2 specific entry methods should not count as steps preceeding a jump, especially in the case of a salchow?

Thank you for giving us context. In which case, what she and Eteri said is truly a polite way to tell people to get their heads out of lala land and sniff reality. =) Let's let this drop, what Med said at the end essentially is "Don't count on it, won't happen."

I would actually kind of agree with the coach towards the end- Japanese ladies may have the best years to come. For a reason- many of their ladies are probably closer to being through puberty and done with the growth spurts. And many of them have actually only improved their jump quality recently, such as Rika's 3A, so most of what we currently see are things they might be able to maintain longer. I'm not sure if the Russian ladies can sustain their quads, think there was a russian blog that actually measured the jump height and rotation speed of junior ladies jumps. In that one I think the russian ladies had very fast in air rotation speed, on average faster than the japanese counterparts, but the japanese ladies had a lot of total height distributed through their jumps. In that sense, the japanese ladies depend less on rotation speed, which is something that will decrease as you grow older and larger.

Keiji and Mura are capable of placing higher up, it's just an issue of skating cleaner. Keiji skated better at 4CC, especially as Shoma is perfectly capable of getting the gold if he goes clean.

Pooh makes him feel crazy? o_O *stares at PM Pooh* I thought you were a calming influence before he skated? What happened?

He has high expectations. At least she kept it together and didn't just fall over and faint at his feet.

Or it may have been his before, but once he found out people knew, he switched to a different account.

So putting aside the translation issues, a part of me is super sad that his books are not available in other languages. I have Blue Flames II and can't wait to get my paws on the new one...which sadly I bought but have probably no chance of ever understanding. There has to be some publisher that would consider translating it right? Or if fans crowd translate it, would they consider publishing it and donating the proceeds to say, any charity or cause that Yuzu chooses?

Well, Yuzu is really ambitious, so....*starts saving up for GPF and the next Olys*