shanshani

Surely the drama surrounding that is partly because of the particular preferences of the skaters and/or their teams. Yuna iirc didn't want Brian to work with Mao, but I don't think Yuzu is as opposed to Brian working with his rivals, cuz, I mean, Javi. I can't really see Yuzu objecting to Shoma, and I don't see Brian moving forward if he did.

'Ice Time learned two months ago about three-time Japan champion Uno possibly joining Tutberidze. Reports in the Russian media in recent weeks have also confirmed that Uno’s camp has talked with Tutberidze’s people.' apparently Shoma's camp really has been talking to Eteri's camp. ahhh what is happening Edit: lol should read thread, apparently this is old news. FS news moves faaast

I think Eteri's skaters' consistency comes from doing a bajillion runthroughs, which I'm not sure Shoma's body can take, given how much he was already struggling with his ankle last season. All that is fine when you're 14, but when you're older there's a balance you have to strike between practice and managing injury risk. I actually don't think Eteri would make him do more transitions. Based on Nathan's scores, that kind of thing is clearly not needed in men's and you're better off saving your energy for jumps. Eteri is the sharpest coach when it comes to maximizing points, so she'll probably take note of that. Does Morisi do a lot of transitions?

truly a great tragedy I'm just going to assume Shoma is going to Eteri until otherwise stated because it's the possibility I find the funniest.

I think that would cause enough drama to last us the whole off-season

The cauldron lighting is during the opening ceremony, isn’t it? So it would be in July.

Obvious answer here is to have Yuzu light the cauldron. Interestingly, that would make two figure skaters in a row who’ve done so (Yuna lit the cauldron at Pyeongchang).

Yeah, camera angles can make apparent jump heights very misleading. What you really want to watch for is air time--there's a direct relationship between that and height (height in meters = 1.225*(time in seconds)^2), but that's not very accurate either at 30fps as discussed earlier. I had someone tell me the Russian estimates for girls' quad/3a heights were "very accurate" one time, and iirc those graphics gave 1-2 cm ranges instead of the 6-8 cm differences you get from just counting or not counting a single frame at 30fps. Considering that some of the videos of the jumps they used were pulled off places like instagram, I highly doubt they were all shot at high frame rates. So that's what I was thinking of.

considering I logicked myself into saying Yuzu would go to IdF, I would remain untrolled. Muahahaha. I still want CoC. C'mon, Masquerade has to be a sign, right? RIGHT? Gotta hand it to him, Nathan has great hair. DEFY THOSE ASIANS HAVE STICK-STRAIGHT HAIR STEREOTYPES, NATE!

Thanks. I got 23 on this one, which should correspond to approximately 72cm (whereas 22 would be 66cm). Pretty big error bars, but it's not insane given the height of his 3A according to icescope anyway. 24 would be a little crazy (80cm haha, not plausible). This video frame analysis doesn't seem as accurate as some people claim, not at 30 fps anyway, plus you have to make a judgment call about what frame the skater leaves the ice and what frame the skater lands.

does anyone have the original video? this one is slowed down. I want to count frames and try to estimate how high he gets. I counted 23-24 real frames here which is like...an insane amount of air time corresponding to maybe 72-75 cm height. But I'm not sure if I counted accurately

Noooo NA fans have Worlds, for fans in Asia if Yuzu doesn't go to CoC or 4CC then there's only NHK and Jnats, both of which are nearly impossible for non-Japanese fans to get tickets to T_T screw superstition, please come to CoC Yuzu. it would improve China-Japan relations. do it for world peace I guess I don't hate the prospect of IdF for various personal reason though, plus the tickets might be less of a bloodbath. Thinking it over, you guys seem to have covered all the speculative bases. The core questions seems to be 1. Which stops fit Nathan's schedule the best 2. Yuzu or Shoma at NHK (probably not both--they didn't meet last year either even though they could have) 3. Relative importance of skaters' choice vs fed preference vs ISU moneymaking The only stop that's almost certainly a lock is Nate at SkAm. I think one factor you guys didn't discuss re: which other stop Nathan will pick is that there's far less jetlag involved in going to SCI than to other places, even if the travel times aren't that different. I don't know how good or bad at dealing with jetlag Nathan is, but I think it's at least as much of a factor as a couple extra hours of travel time. Therefore I think the odds of Nate at SCI are better than average, even if Kelowna isn't particularly easy for him to get to. I'm also on the skeptical side about Nathan picking NHK because of US Thanksgiving--it eats into exam time, JSF almost certainly doesn't want him, it's a pretty long journey, he'll have to face Shoma on hostile territory, and he might not want to compete so close to GPF either. So I think I'm leaning SkAm+SCI as most likely for him--in fact, since they are back to back, he could just go Las Vegas -> Kelowna and not deal with traveling back and forth from Yale. Yes, he misses more class and has to compete two weekends in a row, but on the other hand literally everything else is easier plus Nate has pretty solid stamina and I'm sure he could arrange accommodations at school. So that leaves the next question, Yuzu or Shoma at NHK? I think Yuzu is more likely. Because of World's placements, he gets to pick before Shoma whatever JSF's preferences are regarding the national champion, and I really doubt JSF is going to outright refuse Yuzu in order to have Shoma. There's also a non-zero chance that JSF decides to have both Yuzu and Shoma. Therefore I think that as long as Yuzu wants NHK he gets NHK, and I'm not convinced that Yuzu hates competing near GPF enough to outweigh his love of Japan/sense of responsibility to Japanese fans/feelings of guilt for missing so many competitions in Japan or whatever not to go. So for Yuzu's second spot, he would have to go with one out of Rostelecom/CoC/IdF, none of which he loves, I imagine, but probably not Rostelecom since it's so close to NHK which is close to GPF. So that leaves CoC and IdF (aka superstition versus ugly plastic stars). Not really sure which one he'd choose between those two. IdF is earlier so it gives him more time to adjust any problems with his programs, but there's less travel and jetlag involved if he doesn't go back to Canada between CoC and NHK...buuuut I'm not sure where he'd train/if he would even want to avoid going back to Canada between his two stops. Plus if he's relatively indifferent between the two, he might just let Vincent choose (not sure how this works behind the scenes), and I could think of reasons Vincent would pick CoC (namely he's fairly popular in China). Not sure what Vincent's schedule looks like though--is he starting college this year too? So I guess I think NHK+IdF is the most likely pick for Yuzu, but I could see NHK+CoC. That leaves Rostelecom+whichever Yuzu doesn't pick for Vincent. Therefore, my prediction: SkAm: Nathan SCI: Nathan IdF: Yuzu CoC: Vincent Rostelecom: Vincent NHK: Yuzu A lot of ifs though.

I don't really think they are. I think the ISU is just thoughtless and doesn't care to incentivize technical proficiency so long as it "looks good enough." The 4A value, is, imo, just laziness--the quad values are lazy in general, above the 4S they scream "we just wanted to make this easy to remember" instead of "we designed this in order reflect the physical demands of these jumps and/or the precedents set by other parts of our scoring system." 4Lo 10.5, 4F 11, 4Lz 11.5, 4A 12.5...if that's not prioritizing easy to remember numbers, I don't know what is. It's also totally divergent from 3Lo 4.9, 3F 5.3, 3Lz 5.9, 3A 8 in a way that makes zero sense. 3A is 2.1 points harder than 3Lz but 4A is only 1 pt harder than 4Lz? Especially with the prerotated jumps that pass as 4Lzs these days. 2S -> -5 is just because of short program requirements, I don't think Yuzu is particularly prone to popping jumps in the short, so it can't really be considered an anti-him rule. I do think that Yuzu hasn't ever really benefitted much from judging trends. When he first became a senior PCS could really, really save you (cough Patrick Chan cough) whereas now PCS is almost as irrelevant to placements among top men as spins. Recently, judges have decided they care about the number and kind of difficult jumps you can do above anything else, which Nathan has an edge in. So Yuzu's strength (relative to competitors) was tech in the PCS dominated era, and now Yuzu's relative strength is PCS in the jumping bean dominated era. I don't think this is a conspiracy against Yuzu though, so much as a combination of bad luck and judges engaging in trend-dominated groupthink, because these trends exist in ladies as well (though they aren't exactly the same--ladies had a period of being so impressed with Zhenya's consistency that they didn't care much about anything else, which didn't happen in men, though I guess men never had a Zhenya-like figure).

The idea is that because it's an investigation into the actions of a specific person that could end in penalties for the person, that person has the right to defend themselves, just like someone has the right to defend themselves in court if charged with a crime. However, in this case, the accused can't defend himself because he's deceased, so it would be unfair to continue (just as a criminal prosecution wouldn't continue if the defendant died). The irony here is that this reasoning is specifically supposed to protect the accused, yet many people who support the accused complained about SafeSport closing the investigation. I do wonder if there's a mechanism for Safesport to investigate abusive environments and not merely abusive persons. I think that you make a good point--it's not just that this one person was probably abusive, there must have been an environment that supported his abuse, and that environment could still exist and endanger other athletes (I mean, just regarding its existence...there were a number of high profile people who defended Coughlin in gross ways, which seems pretty telling.)

I'm ok with URs being less heavily penalized if they call them more consistently (big if lol). It's kind of ridiculous how much a skater's score can change not because of their own performance but because of their luck with the tech panels. Honestly calling URs shouldn't even be up to human beings, I'm sure engineers could come up with perfectly serviceable technology that could automatically do it. But I doubt the ISU is interested in funding such a thing.

I'm thiiiiis close to being able to do backwards crossrolls. I'll probably have them down by the end of the week. My forward ones have gotten a lot better too, although they're still kind of asymmetrical because my rfo still low key sucks for some reason (not sure the techs 100% fixed my blade alignment issue tbh). but anyway Seimei choreo here I coooome My coach finally taught me two foot spins. I suck at them haha. My weight is largely supposed to be over my left foot, right? I feel like I'm putting my weight on my right. I've actually progressed a lot in the past couple of weeks (after a month of slowish progress cuz of limited ice time and irregular lessons), but my persistent inability to even try an inside 3 turn off the wall is bringing me down. It's some kind of psychological block. Maybe if I just do other stuff for a while it'll go away. Just have to think about how much better my backwards edges have gotten instead of how I still can't do this nightmare element. I can hold back outside edges for a very long time, do a baby backward one foot slalom, and my backward inside edges are also improving quickly. who cares about inside 3 turns

Other than both being thin East Asian men of medium height, Yuzu and Nathan look nothing alike. How weird. Maybe it was the practice gear

I remember there being a table like this for men's competition jumps. Does anyone have it?

whaaat why didn't I see this when I flew a couple of weeks ago hm, well in hong kong there's the TST metro ad, the Yuzu cut out in front of the Kose store at the Causeway Bay metro station (I assume there will be a lot of wild Yuzus in Kose stores), and now the airport

I rarely wear make up buuuuuuut May 16 is close to my birthday and there's a Kose store at my usual metro stop with a Yuzu cut out in front tempting

Thanks guys for creating and moderating this forum! I just walked past a cardboard cutout of Yuzu in his Otonal costume

Ugh I hate how blunt my blades are and I hate how the skate shop still hasn't sharpened them. I looked at my RFO 3 turn tracing and the gouges are like...hilariously wide. And it feels more like my right outside edge is grinding against the ice than gliding. The only edge that feels safe is my left outside edge. But I have class today so I guess I'm still gonna skate on these things. Lol I can literally make my inside edges slip without scraping. fml edit: well I guess the upshot of today is that I learned that I can do back outside mohawks...better than my forward inside mohawks. why am I so bad at these. they're like the first step you learn but my back inside mohawks, back outside mohawks, and BI-FO choctaws are all better. Also inside 3 turns are the devil. My coach taught them to me today but I definitely did not learn them. I guess I just have to suck it up and fall a few times. Maybe they'll be better when my edges aren't so worn down

Yup. And then you have to repeat the process again for all the edges *glares at backwards edges, which I have practiced so much* My skating rink called me and told me they wouldn’t be able to get my skates sharpened until May 4th. Gonna go visit some other rinks and inquire about skate sharpening services—that is way too long to be skating on blunt blades.

I think people exaggerate how easy it is to tell what Asian country someone is from. I've had plenty of people in Asian countries mistake me for Korean despite the fact that I am mixed Northern/Southern Chinese. Furthermore, I think hairstyles and fashion are more indicative than facial structure. Sometimes someone has a really distinctively x face (for instance, I think Boyang is very northern Chinese looking, though tbh I think there's also a lot of overlap between Korean and North Chinese), but for a lot of people I don't think you can really tell a lot of the time, at least if you're just looking at their facial structure. It's easy to say stuff like "so-and-so has a really Japanese nose, it's so easy to tell" when you know their ethnicity but I think a lot of that is confirmation bias. As for Yuzu's popularity in China, I think nationality just doesn't matter as much to Chinese people as it does to, say, Koreans. It's pretty common for people to be fans of people from other countries--for instance, kpop fandoms are pretty big in China too, and even when there are Chinese members of a kpop group, they're not necessarily more popular than the Korean members. And honestly, if you literally engineered someone to fit Chinese cultural ideals, I'm not sure you could do better than Yuzu

last time I tried to get them sharpened the skate shop just handed the skates back to me after a week and told me it didn't need it, so I've been feeling kind of sheepish about going back without my coach's say sowhen I asked two weeks ago he told me they were fine and beginners don't need to sharpen as often as more advanced skaters, but they really don't feel fine any more. Plus I don't think he's noticed my habit of doing t-stops from high speeds, which I imagine is part of why my right outside edge in particular feels like it's starting to go. I guess I'll suck it up, bring them in today or tomorrow and make sure the shop actually sharpens them this time.