yuzuangel

Next up, the sixth and last event before the Grand Prix Final: Skate America! Country Entries Canada Piper Gilles / Paul Poirier China Shiyue Wang / Xinyu Liu Israel Isabella Tobias / Ilia Tkachenko Italy Anna Cappellini / Luca Lanotte Japan Kana Muramoto / Chris Reed Russia Victoria Sinitsina / Nikita Katsalapov Tiffani Zahorski / Jonathan Guerreiro United States Kaitlin Hawayek / Jean-Luc Baker Maia Shibutani / Alex Shibutani Rachel Parsons / Michael Parsons

Yeah, definitely seems like ladies event has more politics involved. In hindsight I'm not that surprised, since the BV for most of the ladies are pretty close together...it comes down to GOE/PCS for them.

Yeah, I was surprised too. But it seems that way, at least in GOE.

I collected some of the scoring data on this site. The results aren't exactly shocking, but you guys might find them interesting... So basically "differential" is defined as how much extra GOE/PCS per element (jump, spin, stsq, chsq for GOE, and each of the PCS categories for PCS) a judge would give to a skater. I describe it in more detail here: https://bunniko.blogspot.com/2017/11/figure-skating-scores-judging-and.html Some things I found interesting (although perhaps not so surprising): 1. Feds with one skater to push tend to go all out on that skater, i.e. Spain and Italy. 2. The women seem have more variance in scores than men. 3. Japan definitely seems to push their skaters the least compared to the other top federations.

Wow, only seems like yesterday when she was just 16 and winning her first Worlds. Happy Birthday, Evgenia!

welll, i gotta say, it's old news but i'm surprised she's writing (wrote?) a book, lol.

Oh, got it. Thanks

Is it just me or does ISU make it VERY obscure who each of the judges are despite it now being NOT anonymous judging? Like I can't find a list of the jugdes names' for ACI, does anyone have that? and even when they have names, it takes another step of googling to see where they're from?

Oh, my mistake, I misread the tiebreaking criteria. It's combined score rather than highest score, so yes Polina needs 209+. Which is possible, for sure, but not guaranteed. Ashley, however, as long as she doesn't win the competition, will have a tough time beating Wakaba in a tiebreaker, since her score was 183.94 at Skate Canada. So it won't be hard to beat Ashley in a tiebreaker if she places 2nd. So basically it hinges on someone who isn't Polina or Ashley winning, and Polina not scoring above 209. The only skaters who can realistically win are Karen, Gabby, and Satton. Gabby is inconsistent but can do it...Karen has a good record skating in front of a home crowd at Nationals, so it might be possible for her to do it again, and she'll get a push because it's SA. Satton...well. But it's a slim chance.

Wakaba still has a chance ... if one of Karen, Gabby, or Satton wins Skate America ... And she has the highest combined total of her, Polina, and Ashley Wagner (the latter of whom won't be hard to beat, but Polina can't score above 212).

Get well soon, Gracie.

Haha I don't get the deal with applying to colleges...it's what most 17 year olds do and he's like, for sure going to get into all of them I'm guessing, which takes the pressure off a little Also there have been skaters who've taken college classes part time or have skated while studying full time so...it doesn't really mean anything. He can also always postpone matriculation.

The most serious time I sprained my ankle, it was doing trampoline tricks...and it didn't heal for a year I also sprained it a lot playing tennis but those were more mild sprains, I think. I was also a teenager so my body healed faster, I definitely do not think I will heal that fast anymore...but Yuzu is young though and has the best nutrition and care

aerodynamics?

I think the way he writes it is neater

Haha I like the way he writes kanji...it seems very...masculine to me

that's frustrating. I want to say that there's a way to improve at skating without a coach but unfortunately I really don't think so if you want to do jumps and spins and stuff. It's really the most frustrating thing about this sport and it sucks, a lot. But I do think going, skating, getting used to the speed and your skates will be beneficial as well, and maybe you can take videos and post them and someone who knows how to skate can give you pointers online too?

Sorry, some were mentioning quints. So I thought we were talking about our fantasies

All your stories about skating make me want to go skate It's been almost a year since I started skating more seriously, and if I look at it that way, I can definitely see improvement, even though it doesn't feel like it on a day by day basis I can still only do four jumps -- waltz jump, toe loop, salchow, and loop -- and I haven't even attempted the flip or lutz yet! But I think I'm at a point where the jumps/spins I'm attempting are already a lot harder than my current skating skills level so I need to work on those first. So when I started, I could do two foot spins (about 6 revolutions), waltz "jumps", "toe loops", and "salchows". I put them in quotes because my waltz jumps were both incorrect and smaller than hops (my friend was like "nice footwork sequence!"), my toe loops were actually toe waltz jumps, and I don't remember what my salchows were like because I just started on them. I couldn't do clockwise backward crossovers or correct forward crossovers. A toe waltz jump is when you tap directly behind you, foot not turned out and tap not back and across the takeoff foot. So basically, WRONG. I had a coach who I probably took lessons with less than 10 times total, and in hindsight he was pretty bad, but he tricked me because he constantly talked about how great of a coach he was. Curses! He didn't correct my bad technique even just doing waltz jumps and singles, and it took me many months to fix them, whereas for a jump like the salchow that I had only just started, I was able to get that almost immediately after I started practicing it with my current coach. So, I have to say, having a good coach who doesn't brush everything off with "That's correct, you'll get it soon -- just practice!" is important. Some things obviously just require practice but there's no way you're doing (insert ANY move here) correctly the first time, so if he's not correcting your body alignment, knee action, timing, setup, air position, landing, etc. multiple times, then he's probably just not noticing them. Or maybe I'm just bitter because it took me at least three months or more reworking the waltz jump and toe loop, when it took me maybe a month to get the sal and one month to get the loop, both new jumps. At one point I literally only worked on my toe loop for a long time. I think in another year's time a realistic goal for me would be to get all of my singles except the axel and the basic spins (upright/scratch spin, sit spin, camel). I would be perfectly fine with that. I can do the sit spin now (again, after losing it for a few weeks). That was a struggle but nothing compares to the struggle of centering the upright spin.... I'd also like to get maybe one backspin but I haven't started that. It feels like starting from complete scratch (no pun intended...*groan*). And of course, I need to work on basic skating skills. While a bit dull sometimes, there's nothing like gliding on a backwards edge on newly sharpened skates and just chilling. Sometimes I wonder at night how one can do any of these crazy things balancing on a thin, thin blade on ice. I still have no idea how it works!

now i'm wonder what yuzu could do if someone built him an ice rink on the moon? with lower gravitational forces he could maybe do a 10A.........