shanshani

major eyeroll this is even worse than Tom Z

That seems to me to be over interpreting what he's saying a bit. I took Stephane's point to be that if skaters really do start jumping quints the importance of skating skills, musical interpretation, etc. will fall even more by the wayside than it they have now, and so that's why he doesn't want to see it happen. I think Stephane realizes you need to land your jumps to be competitive.

There are benefits this year, namely that it’ll raise his world ranking and give him another opportunity to give any jumps he’s debuting more competition mileage before Worlds. Plus it’s unfinished business and he said he wanted to attend more competitions.

he does need it (or 4A...) if he eventually wants to do a 6 quad layout. but he's probably focused on stabilizing 4S right now

Injuries, lack of conditioning, psychological blocks sometimes with newer jumps it feels like even the weather can change whether your landing percent is 50% or 0%

5x GPF 4x WC 3x Olys 2x 4CC 1x Skate Canada

kudos to anyone who manages to guess the CoC men's podium correctly. should go buy a lottery ticket

I wonder what legal complaint there could possibly be, because I can't really think of any. It might be the ISU just threatening to deny him access to athletes Can anyone mirror the original video in high quality?

wow what a dumb decision. such petty tyranny

I think talking about 4 at this point is a little too much, isn't it? Odds of making it to Beijing look reasonable enough, especially with the rest of the field looking fairly weak outside of Nathan, but I honestly have a hard time imagining any skater's body holding up for 4 Olympic cycles. I guess Voronov is still skating and landing quads, but Voronov never competed at Yuzu's level.

Pretty sure I've seen events where they reviewed like, every element. But usually at lower level events where the skaters are weaker and they also don't have to deal with broadcasters whinging. Tbh I'd be happy to pay the ISU directly for a subscription to streamed events if it would allow them to actually take time to review/buy a second tech camera/whatever.

it's the TP that marks for review

you can actually split up Yuzu's programs by what kind of ~aura~ he has during them beautiful+cold+aloof: Chopin/H&L/Otonal wild: LGC/PW/R&J 1 sorcerer: Seimei etc etc It's in Chiddy's interests to give it to Yuzu. The better Yuzu does, the better Chiddy's loss to him looks. No shame in losing to the GOAT, but if he lost to some one hit wonder, that would be sad.

Hahaha. When I was Yuma’s age I would have probably been afraid to talk to Yuzu too, even though obviously Yuzu is a nice guy. He definitely has an aura lol. And one of the best death glares I’ve ever seen.

hope so too, but even then, it's not that hard to learn. if you really dedicated an hour or two to it, you could get it pretty easily. yeah, I think people are getting a little too harsh towards her. you could argue her comments are implicitly defending the status quo (“that's just how it is”) but I think the negativity is a little over the top. It seems that there's actually substantial agreement on the substance of what she and her critics are saying (that the judging is inconsistent, and that's unfortunate) but the blow-up is over how it's framed. but as it is now, I feel that the discussion is generating more heat than light

I mean, sure, elite sports are inherently a health risk, but that doesn't mean you can't alter how much of a health risk it is and rebalance the sport so that athletes are less likely to injure themselves. That's why certain elements are banned, after all. There's risk and then there's excessive risk, and I think we need to ask ourselves if the current scoring doesn't encourage the latter. As for why put the onus on quads, well it's the one thing the Yuzu, Shoma, Vincent, and Boyang situations have in common, is actually explicitly the problem in the Yuzu case, and it also ties in to the problems with the scoring system being way too tilted in favor of hard jumps in general. My point is that the scoring imbalance has a human cost not only in the careers of skaters whose strengths aren't landing hard jumps, but also in the health of all skaters. And sure, more quads will always be an option to get a competitive edge...but with altered scoring it won't be the only option. Skaters could choose to work on other things instead. Which means the scoring system won't force a race to land as many quads as possible. Might there still be skaters like Sasha Trusova who go for as many quads as possible because that's what they enjoy and are good at? Sure. But people could compete with her in ways that don't involve landing as many quads as she does, thereby reducing the overall risk level of the sport. Top skaters certainly have not maximized the parts of their programs that aren't quads. Nate's programs are still pretty empty, especially on transitions going into jumps. Sasha Trusova's programs are basically nothing but elements. Both of those skaters are top skaters who could stand to make improvements in areas that aren't BV. I would even argue that Origin is not really maximized artistically and shows signs of the in-betweens being compromised for the jumps. So even in the case of top skaters, going for more BV should not be the only option, even though it effectively is at this point in time.

Wait what, most judges can't tell the difference between a flip and a lutz? what, that better not be true. (btw, the easiest way to spot whether a jump is supposed to be a flip or a lutz is to look at the entrance. if the skater glides backwards for a bit before jumping, it's lutz, and if a skater turns into the jump, it's a flip. this way, even if the skater messes up the edge, you know which jump is intended.) elsewhere, I mentioned that I thought judges should be able to ID steps and turns in real time, bc it's hard to judge transitions and skating accurately if you can't. little did I know that there are apparently even judges who can't ID jumps in real time

Nope, instead it was just to make the discipline more palatable to increasingly irrelevant broadcast networks despite the fact that it (and other factors) have degraded the quality of the programs. So many men's programs feel like jump drills these days. I mean, maybe the ISU gets most of its funding from television rights, but it would sure be nice if they diversified their revenue stream. Plus, television rights might be easier to sell if the programs were more entertaining...and ladies programs will likely go the same way once more ladies figure out how to jump quads.

Sure, the problem may not necessarily be quads. But the fact that it occurs in other cases is not evidence that the hyper focus on quads does not pose a significant health problem, and isn't a primary factor in the case of Shoma and Boyang. In fact, I would say that these other cases, rather than showing that quads do not pose any additional health risk, rather show that this sport has a tendency to ignore athlete's health for the sake of competitiveness. Quads are one iteration of this issue, but it may not be the only one. Nate being the single example of a man who has survived the quad race unscathed (for now) is not encouraging. I would argue in Nate's case there are several factors protecting him that don't exist for many skaters. First, he's relatively young, so the wear and tear hasn't had as much time to set in. Second, he has good technique (but as easy as it is to say “oh well skaters should just learn good technique then” we know that that's not what actually happens and the ISU's scoring practices do not incentivize it). Third, he jumps small, which means he experiences less force when he lands compared to most skaters jumping equivalent difficulty jumps. But not everyone who jumps quads will be able to manage the rotation speed to jump as small as he does, nor will they stop trying to jump quads just because they have to jump higher and risk more injury. Right now, skaters have no choice: they have to jump more quads to be more competitive, no matter how shoddy their fundamental technique or whatever injury risk it poses to them. So that's what they're going to do. And I wasn't suggesting we should ban quads, nowhere did I argue that. In fact, what I would suggest is what Yuzu's Sponichi interview seems to recommend: rebalancing BV and PCS/GOE (or rather, correcting the scoring of the latter) so that skaters have other ways to pursue higher scores, and they aren't forced to upgrade tech (and certainly not as quickly as they do now) and can go the artistry/skating skills route instead. This is far safer for the athletes, would correct an imbalance that exists in the scoring anyway, and result in far more enjoyable programs. Frankly, I can't see how anyone could read that interview and not see that Yuzu is saying that the trend of hyper-focus on quads is bad for the health of athletes. Yuzu: (can't figure out how to quote on mobile, sorry): “This is something I personally feel, but I have an impression that there's been a gradual inclination towards high difficulty jumps. Because I have the impression that it's something inevitable, I've been practising with this in mind. WEll, it was like this with the Axel and also with the Lutz. It's a little...hm...if only by a little, I think maybe I was able to stem this trend with this competition. I think that's the part I'm happiest about. It's because I believe in my own approach that I feel I was able to slightly put a halt to that trend. I also think this affects all skaters' physical health.”

Sure, there are ebbs and flows in talent, but is it normal for two extremely talented skaters (Boyang and Shoma) to drop off so hard? Shoma's problems are not just his coaching situation, he was injury plagued at the end of last season. We don't actually know what Boyang's issues are because there's isn't that much news out of China, but he's also had his own struggle with injury and he has had like, one decent competition since the Olympics. Yuzu being out for the majority of 2 seasons was 100% due to the quad race--the only reason he hasn't dropped off is because he has ungodly levels of talent, grit, and determination. Misha may not be directly quad-related, but the need to land quads definitely exacerbates his situation. I'm not clear on the Vincent Zhou situation, but I saw reports that he also has a chronic back injury. I'm not trying to insult everyone below Yuzu and Nate and call them untalented. There's lots of lower tier skaters that I like and am pleased to see are doing well, like Jason Brown and Kevin Aymoz. But I think we should be asking questions, because the drop off in competitiveness is not just due to retirements, as is normal after the Olympics. It's also due to formerly highly competitive skaters crashing. I mean, Yuzu himself brought up the toll that the push for ever increasing technical difficulty has on skaters' health in the Sponichi interview. Re: Samarin, he has big jumps and decent speed, but I'd say he's really rough around the edges on everything else. His programs are really empty, he skates through the music for most of the program to a level beyond what perpetual complaint-magnet Nathan does, and I don't think his posture is good. Again my point is not to insult him. He is a hard worker like all skaters, and we all know that sacrificing choreography for jumps is smart strategy given the current state of judging. My point is to complain that once again, PCS does not reflect what's actually performed, and he's being buoyed by big-country scoring to a level of competitiveness beyond what his current level of ability warrants.

In non-Nathan-and-Yuzuru news, it seems like Samarin is shaping up the be Russia's #1 man this season, possibly even #3 in the field now that Shoma has cratered. I'm so not down with this development--ugh, I want Misha back. And his PCS are overscored as heck, 8.5 for his empty, just-skating-between-quads programs at IdF? When Kevin Aymoz got the same thing for his infinitely more musical and choreographically interesting program? If he does start landing them with more consistency you know they'll go up even more too. Also, the field is just decimated in general compared to how it was 2 or 3 years ago. Boyang and Shoma are having major difficulties, Misha has his health issues, and even Vincent Zhou is apparently chronically injured. Can we talk about quad-mania and health now? The casualties have started emerging.

Yeah, it's obvious that consistency in scoring across different competitions does matter, because scores from different competitions are used for world records, qualifying for grand prix events, and tie breakers for qualifying for GPF. If making it on the top 24 SB list automatically qualifies you for a grand prix spot, being number 25 because you had a tough technical panel and number 24 didn't sucks. Obviously there's always going to be some luck involved and people aren't robots, but it's better to reduce the variation as much as possible. In this case, the variation in tech panel strictness was particularly stark, because not only was Nate's arguable fall in the SP overlooked, so was Shoma's really obvious 3A UR/near downgrade, and I'm sure there were also other men's skaters whose tech errors were overlooked. But a few hours later, despite 2/3 of the panel literally being the same people, they were extremely strict on the ladies. Alina's Lutz was called e even though it would only have been called ! in most circumstances, and Alena got a < called even though at most her toepick had only just begun slightly brushing the ice at the quarter mark, which is only UR on the strictest possible interpretation of the rules (and who knows, maybe they decided they were overly strict and that's why they let her much more clearly UR 3A go in the free ). Most of the other ladies also got calls all over their protocols. The point is, the tech panel extended the ladies zero benefit of the doubt and essentially threw the book at them, whereas they let the men get away. Obviously the men and the ladies don't compete against each other, but still, what gives? Is it that hard to decide on a single standard of strictness, especially when 2/3 of the panel are the same people? Fine, Nathan's “fall” might be a grey zone, but so was Alina's lutz and Alena's UR and the tech panel called against the skaters there. (Also Shoma's 3A was not remotely a grey zone, tech panel was just asleep.) Either decide you're going to give skaters the benefit of the doubt or you aren't, don't go one way one time and the other another. Tech panel inconsistency is confusing to viewers, unfair to skaters, and makes the sport seem less legitimate. The rules should be clarified and an equal standard of strictness applied across competitions. Moreover, the tech panel should be supported by improvements in technology, such as multiple camera angles. I'm sure some of the inconsistency comes from the fact that they only get one replay angle. I'm also pretty sure the way the tech panel works is that they first decide whether to flag an element for review in real time, then later only review the elements that were flagged. Meaning if they blink, or some other lapse of attention occurs and they don't flag, they don't review. Which seems like another source of inconsistency--they should just review every jump element, tbh. It might extend competition times a little, but I personally have never thought the time between the skate and the scores is excessive--I like it because it gives people time to react and talk about the skate. Maybe there's an issue with selling rights to broadcasting networks, but I hope we're moving away from that tbh.

no, turns out they just worded their comment badly. they don't know and just wanted to discuss via PM yeah, but I'm sure that's only what he thinks for himself and his own approach to his career. he would never say that there's no point in someone else competing if they can't win

I mean Nathan did win Skate Canada and Yuzu skates for the USA now

Oh, sure, Nathan seems like a cool dude, warring over these unofficial fan titles is just a bit of fun I'm not attributing to Yuzu any actual desire to gloat over his victory, it was just an amusing mental image