shanshani

Yeah, I'm on the Nathan-won-fairly side as well. Disagree with the margin, but at the end of the day Yuzu did completely botch and element, almost botched another, and had a bunch of tight landings. I'm only posting because I find the "Yuzu couldn't have won" narrative annoying because it's mathematically wrong and easily disprovable. Overall, winning was very unlikely because of the state of his ankle, not because Yuzu doesn't have the talent and scoring potential to go above three twenty something. 4 points in BV is not a big gap. I'm actually not that bitter. Maybe it's because I'm a happy look-on-the-bright-side type of person by nature, but my main takeaway from the competition is that Yuzu's ability to put out a good skate despite massive disadvantages in training time and injury status is amazing. Nathan was better in this competition, but Nathan was in top condition, or near it (not sure what impact his sickness may have had). Yuzu was very far from top condition. So what is there to be bitter about? (Well, other than judges judging incorrectly, but that always happens. And again, I don't think Nathan going over Yuzu is unfair here, only the margins and the practices of the judges in general like the fact that JUMP HEIGHT HAS ZERO CORRELATION WITH GOE.) My main concern is if Yuzu's ankle will hold up now that he's fired up about going toe-to-toe with Nathan. At the end of the day, I think it's a bigger obstacle than bad judging. Yuzu can win in spite of transitions/skating skills being undervalued and judges not caring about GOE bullets. Yuzu can't win if he has a chronic ankle injury and has to skate his competitions on painkillers.

The narrative that Yuzu wouldn't have won with two clean skates is plain incorrect. Just the two 4S landed at usual quality would have been enough to close the gap--he got 14 points on his 4S at both Rostelecom and Cup of Finland. He got 0 points and 6 points here. So just those two jumps by themselves is 22 points of difference, and he would have gotten higher PCS had he gotten them, which is enough to put him over. This is just math. The only counterargument is that Nathan would have added 4S if Yuzu had done a clean short, which, maybe, but there's a lot of what-ifs there. Yuzu can beat the score that Nathan actually got, that's for sure, though I think the ankle was unfortunately a big impediment for it actually happening at Worlds. cross forum sniping

The fact that he pulled off what he did in spite of the injury is amazing I wish I had half his grit and determination. (NOT THAT PEOPLE SHOULD BE EMULATING HIM. IT'S OKAY TO LET YOUR INJURIES HEAL, PEOPLE. *cough* Shoma *cough*)

Yuzu does seem to think Nathan is 'cool', whatever that means maybe he admires the personality Nathan projects? I agree that Yuzu does have to up his BV strategically, not just because of judging but because even if he can beat Nathan by being foot-perfect, being foot-perfect is a pretty high bar, even for Yuzu. It would be better psychologically to have room for a mistake. But there's the ankle--ugh I wish it could somehow get better by magic.

Sidestepping most of the scoring arguments here... I do want to emphasize the real xmonster's point that Yuzuru could absolutely have won if he had landed his 4Ss well. None of this 'Yuzu couldn't beat Nathan's skate nonsense', he absolutely could have. It would have required a level of cleanliness that was fairly unlikely given the state of his ankle and lost training time, but it's perfectly mathematically possible--and, I would argue, that even if Yuzu *had landed* both of those jumps well it still wouldn't have been Yuzuru at his best because a lot of the other jump landings were tight as well. Anyway, looking at it from a different perspective, the fact that Yuzu was taken out for the better of two seasons, came back not fully healed, and was still only beaten one skater who skated his best, is still an amazing accomplishment. Imagine if Shoma or Nathan or anyone else had been unable to skate for most of the past 2 seasons and skated this competition injured--would they be fairing nearly as well?

The reactions have been so disappointing. We have no idea what the situation is like in Lakewood and whether the agency tried to pursue other forms of recourse. It's entirely possible that Eunsoo was 1. involved in the decision to go public 2. felt like she had no other choice. Sometimes victims of abuse have to go public because they aren't able to fix the situation privately. Saying stuff like "this should never have been made public" is effectively telling victims to shut up and not make waves. Yes, going public has predictable bad consequences, but maybe going public is the only way to pressure the people involved to actually do something. Victims should not be pressured into staying silent to protect the reputation of abusers, but once more a large portion of the US figure skating community appears all too happy to silence potential victims. Of course, it's also possible this is a misunderstanding--I'm not saying that Eunsoo's agency is 100% right and that Mariah is 100% a bully. But the point is, "we don't know" means we don't know--that applies to everything, from whether Mariah intentionally hurt Eunsoo, to whether the agency has good reason to think that this was their best option, to whether Eunsoo was involved or not in her agency's decision. People are capable of all kinds irrational behavior, self-delusion, tunnel vision, and denialism, so there's a lot of things that could have happened, and we have no reason to think any particular interpretation of the situation is correct, nor would it be reasonable to conclude that x couldn't have happened because "that would be a stupid decision" or "y person couldn't possibly be like that." (I also don't understand how it's possible to be confident you have determined someone's intention from watching a video--it's easy to make something intentional look unintentional, and sometimes things that aren't intentional look like they are.) Finally, no one should be harassing anybody, even if Mariah was 100% a bully and hurt Eunsoo 100% on purpose, because the appropriate punishment for that is suspension from the sport and assault charges, not death threats from random people on the internet.

Haha, well I guess RBI to LFO isn't very difficult. I'm always so taken aback when people are randomly a huge jerk to me. Like, why? I don't think I've ever behaved that way to a random person (well, not outside the internet anyway ), certainly not on so little provocation (I literally just brushed him with my hand!). What makes people do it? Haha true, too bad he was such a jerk about it. Speaking of Seimei, my coach is asking me to start practicing crossrolls. Somehow picturing Yuzu doing them isn't helping me much

I hope this situation is investigated and appropriate action taken. Until then, persons not directly involved (that means Eunsoo and her representatives, Mariah and her representatives, and Raf) should refrain from pointing fingers or jumping to conclusions. Given that Eunsoo is a minor and possibly a victim of bullying, I think it’s especially important to refrain from making speculation or allegations towards her. I hope she can recover from her injury quickly and is insulated from the media firestorm. The pictures of her injury were heartbreaking Regardless of what happened, internet harassment is not an appropriate remedy.

Yeah judges seem to be very inconsistent about deducting for long preparation...and rewarding jump size...and entries...and timing with music.

I really do need to practice looking behind me, even when the rink is empty I have a terrible habit of looking at my feet when I feel unsteady, which is always like the first 30 min of the session. Today I was warming up with backwards half swizzles and accidentally bumped into a coach. The coach was a huge jerk about it though, he threatened to sue me if I knocked him over. Like lol you're a Worlds medalist, aren't you? You're not going to get knocked over by a beginner going 2mph. Sorry that I have some bad habits I need to fix, and I should have been watching where I was going, but that was uncalled for. So that kind of distracted me for the first hour of my session. But I did some successful choctaws (which are easier than mohawks for some reason??? my mohawks still suck lol. unless I literally don't know what a choctaw is. I stepped RBI to LFO, that's a choctaw, right?), RBOs, and overall felt super steady. Waiting for the ice to be zamboni-ed now--hopefully I can be more focused the second session. edit: lol someone is playing seimei music in the waiting area. I feel you, that's why I skate too

were you using the trimmed mean? I just used the straight mean of all the judges (as in, I didn't remove the highest and lowest GOE judges from my calculations)

I spent some time looking at GOE scoring in preparation for worlds, specifically Yuzu versus Nathan's raw GOE marks. Here's what I found: (this is all GP circuit-only data) Yuzuru Hanyu average raw GOE: 2.56 Nathan Chen average raw GOE: 1.98 Difference: 0.58 I went ahead and looked at what the average GOEs were if we excluded negative GOEs as well (so in other words, how do they score when they don't screw up) Yuzuru Hanyu average raw GOE (positive only): 3.44 Nathan Chen average raw GOE (positive only): 2.94 I also looked specifically at positive quad jumps and 3As, since the bulk of actual GOE points are earned on those elements. What I found was interesting: Yuzuru Hanyu average raw GOE (clean quads/3As): 3.54 Nathan Chen average raw GOE (clean quads/3As): 2.48 Difference: 1.06 That's a huge difference! (but imo completely right, Yuzu's jumps *are* at least 1 point better than Nathans ) But what if we look only at top scoring big jumps? Yuzu: 4T (GPRUS FS) - 4.44 4S (GPRUS SP) - 4.33 4S (GPFIN SP) - 4.33 3A (GPRUS SP) - 4.11 4S (GPRUS FS) - 3.78 average: 4.20 Nathan: 4F (GPF FS) - 3.89 4T (GPFRA FS) - 3.78 3A (GPUSA SP) - 3.67 4F (GPF SP) - 3.44 4T-3T (GPF FS) - 3.33 average: 3.62 difference: 0.58 More modest, but the difference is still clear. But moreover, this means my assumptions when I was analyzing a hypothetical Yuzu versus Nathan head-to-head are pretty good, and if anything underestimate Yuzu. The conclusions of that analysis were: 1. Yuzu wins handily over Nathan if Yuzu does the Helsinki layout and Nathan does the Nats layout and they're both clean 2. Yuzu squeaks a victory over Nathan (but imo it's pretty much a statistical dead heat) if Nathan adds 4S and they're both clean so nope, Johnny, clean Nathan is not unbeatable.

Public, idk if my rink even has freestyle sessions since public sessions run from 9:30 to 10PM almost every day except Sunday. I probably wasn't looking behind enough since I have a tendency to look more into the circle than behind, but even if I was I'm not sure I would have seen him because he came from outside my circle, right where my head would have been turned away. Mostly I'm just annoyed that someone would move and be on their phone at the same time and then get annoyed at someone else for the collision I hope it went well!

You can really tell the universe has no sense of equity when it gives the same person immense talent, drive, grit, intelligence, and charisma, and then good looks and perfect skin on top of all that. Well, I guess it did keep one thing away from him: the ability to find a suit that actually fits.

Stream of consciousness practice journal (lol): My 3-turns are getting pretty stable! They aren't good, since I sometimes skid/scrape/wind up on a flattish edge, but I'm basically managing to turn and hold a backwards glide out in both directions fairly consistently as long as I'm focused. Yayyy. My coach now wants me to practice 3-turn-backward crossover-step forward-3-turn sequences, so I'll take that as a sign I've got a passable enough version of the element down. (Also I'm pretty sure the step-forward would be a choctaw if I didn't completely lose momentum during the step, since it goes RBI to LFO but I can barely do a mohawk so I won't be too ambitious there.) Weirdly despite them being a relatively new element for me, 3-turns were basically the only thing I was managing to practice successfully during an absolutely horrible practice I had on Saturday. It was awful--the rink was so, so crowded, the ice was fully of deep gouges and there were random chunks of ice sticking out of the ground! I felt like I had regressed more than a month in that one session, and considering I've only been skating 4-5 months that's a ton. It felt like I was going to fall on everything. Except 3-turns. But anyway so forward mohawks are still Granted, I did one or two successfully, but usually either both my feet stay on the ice for too long when I step over (so basically a really ugly mini SE between the foot change), or I just don't wind up going backwards at all. Tried a couple of backward mohawks from crossovers, but couldn't maintain momentum through the step, although weirdly after I stepped over I regained speed very quickly/it felt like I was on the same circle. *shrug* Might be time to pull up some youtube videos. BUT WHO CARES ABOUT MOHAWKS! I FINALLY HAVE RBO AND LBO GLIDES! My coach told me to lift my free leg up behind me and for some reason this helped a ton (maybe because it helps counterbalance any tendency to lean forward). Seriously, my glide time increased by like a factor of 3. My right outside edge continues to be worse than my left, which kind of sucks because that's the edge I'm supposed to land jumps on, but I did do a few successfully so whatever. I'll just have to practice more. (Speaking of jumps, my coach mentioned jumping for the first time today! I mean, it's probably still going to be a while until I get to actually jump, but it's going to happen! ahhhh!) Random rink occurrences: I saw someone jumping waltzes whose forward crossovers looked worse than mine. So that a nice reminder that just because someone has learned x element and you haven't, doesn't mean they're necessarily better than you at other elements, and there's no need to rush to learn a bunch of new things since progress is measured by quality as much as quantity. And tbh when watching random people practice I'm more impressed by a beautiful waltz than an ugly double, even though the double is harder (and worth more points lol). I saw a random lady once who did a beautiful waltz, and I'm still more impressed by that than the meh double axel I saw a random girl do (though obviously the double axel is way harder). A guy who was ON HIS PHONE shooting a video of his kid skated right into my backward crossover circle, resulting in me running into him because I can't see what's going on to my outside behind me. Then he had the temerity to look annoyed at me! SKATING WHILE ON YOUR PHONE IS DANGEROUS, DON'T DO IT. And don't skate into the middle of people's practice circles! Fortunately neither of us were going very fast so no one was hurt, but I was pretty ticked off. I collided with another person that session too, but that was my fault. I randomly tripped on my toepick and fell and slid really hard, which resulted in me knocking into him. I don't remember if he got knocked over, but I felt pretty embarrassed because it was a really dumb fall Fortunately, the guy I ran into seemed fine, and I fell well so I didn't even get bruised. Actually I've been falling more lately after a long streak of no-fall sessions, I wonder why. It hasn't even been on new elements, just dumb stuff like catching a toepick or slipping off the back edge. I don't think I'm getting careless. Maybe muscle fatigue (my muscles seem weaker this week--I think I know why and it should go away soon, but there may be other reasons like the fact that I cut my food intake the past couple of weeks/I'm doing more squat-like exercises on and off-ice which might be wearing them out more).

Tbh I was using 'it's not like it's World's' to deal with my nervousness about the other competitions this season, but now it IS World's so idk how I'm going to cope.

180 degrees prerotation is allowed on the sal, so if you think about it it's not that much more than 4A...

I thought Matteo Rizzo was pretty good...obviously not Yuzu-level, but still quite musical and enjoyable to watch. Part of the problem is that not hitting your jumps, or even having subpar landings, does often break the connection with the music, even if they have good musicality and skating skills in general. A lot of lower level men just don't manage to hit their jumps because of the requirement to have quads to be competitive, and it messes with the artistic quality of the program. (And obviously there are those like Samarin who seemed to have focused all of their training on quads and little on performance quality.) But I think you also have to remember that these are lower level/developing skaters--it's a bit unfair to compare them to a mature Yuzuru Hanyu. Plus, I thought a number of the skaters at these two competitions were actually pretty impressive on the artistry front. I didn't watch the Junior men's FS, but I did watch the SP, and in my opinion a decent number of them skated quite beautifully there, especially considering they're juniors.

Oh yeah, actually when I'm actually doing the underpush my other foot doesn't come down until I'm more than halfway done with the underpush. Weirdly that was always pretty intuitive for me. Maybe because when I was first learning I was scared to put my front foot down so I always lingered on the outside edge for a while It's after the crossover that I have to put my other foot down because I'm going faast and it's scary. The crossover itself is actually fine and secure-feeling, at least on my good side. Hm maybe I'll try that power pull exercise. Sounds good for edge control, plus I'm sick of swing rolls. Successfully did more 3 turns today! Even managed one or two sort of passable ones in the other direction. And I also even managed a few crummy mohawks! Remembering to look in the direction of the second foot helped a lot. Finally this stupid element is starting to happen haha. Backwards glides from stroking are finally starting to happen as well. I feel like I've made so much progress in the past week

Yeah, I figure I should just hold each part of the sequence longer, which will help train control which is what I need anyway. The funny thing is I know how pump with both edges in the crossover—like I can stroke fairly powerfully with the outside edge (at least it feels pretty powerful to me haha)—but I don’t really have the control to manage the speed yet (plus it’s kind of exhausting and my stamina is still shot after my month long cold). I have to put both feet down and adjust afterwards, so I don’t really try it that often and am mostly just riding the edges right now rather than actively stroking. But it’s still too much acceleration! Plus my coach keeps telling me to do things more slowly with more control, so I’m trying to follow his wishes. But honestly this makes me want to try stroking the crossovers again next session. Even though it was terrifying and exhausting, it was also really fun and I felt super badass haha. How do you learn power pulls? My coach has me do these like, forward one foot wiggle things and I’ve been trying to slowly increase the lobe size, but it’s going veryyyy slowly, plus I am very bad at coordinating knee action with the lobes. Did you start from wiggles as well? At what point does it legitimately become a power pull?

I officially learned 3 turns yesterday! Turns out when I was doing them before, I was waiting too long to turn, which put me on the wrong part of the blade. My coach told me to do them quicker and they're much more successful now. I even did a few pretty good ones, where I had a pretty strong backwards glide that I actually held for a couple of seconds. Yay! My coach was very impressed with me haha except I'd already been practicing them for a couple of weeks in order to avoid practicing two foot turns, which I still hate even though I've improved on them. For some reason they're much scarier than 3-turns. My coach also seemed impressed with my backwards crossovers, especially my ability to hold the edge going out for a decent amount of time for my level. Considering that's the element I practice most consistently, that's reassuring. I was actually feeling kinda crummy going into that class, so that was a needed confidence boost. But uh, does anyone have any tips for going...slower...on alternating forward crossovers? I always speed up too much so I keep having to stop and start over after like, 4 or so. I think I get into a cycle where the faster I go, the more I feel like I have to dig into my outside edge in order to maintain stability, but then that just causes me to go even faster. But other than that I'm stroking as lightly as I can Other progress/lack of progress (lol I'm starting to realize I basically use this place as a practice journal). Mohawks still aren't happening, not without completely losing momentum anyway. I maybe kind of did a backwards to forwards one. Now that I think about it, starting with back to forwards inside mohawks might be the key. I could do a crossover, hold the BI edge, and step into the mohawk. Hmm, maybe I'll try that out. My coach seems to be prepping me for spinning, which I'm super excited about (hence the spinner practice). I did a few mini-spins (like, around half a revolution) that were mostly about finding the spin rocker and I notice it getting easier, so yay! Especially since my blades are supposed to be hard to spin on. I think I'll be able to get two foot spins fairly easily too, since I can already sort of do a really slow one. Working on backwards two foot slaloms. My backwards alternating half-swizzles are decent enough but it's sure hard to get my knees and feet to move at the same time for these. They're pretty fun though. Finally sort of able to get a little bit of a one foot glide out of backwards stroking/backwards two foot glides. It's so hard to shift my weight onto one foot, especially away from the boards. It's kind of weird how much more difficult this is than backwards glides out of crossovers. I also really need to work on RBO and LBO glides--I did a baby RBO glide near the boards, but it's so much effort. I'm starting to become convinced you use a different set of muscles for backwards glides than forwards glides--I swear my legs have been more sore since I've started to seriously work on this.

I think so. 30 something coaches voted, and I know Eteri and Mishin were among them. I think there's a list somewhere of everyone who was on the council.

I fell trying to spin on my off ice spinner today ouch, falling on land hurts. I should probably go more slowly since I'm totally new at this. It's fun feeling the speed up when you pull your arms in though. I'm a skating noob but I've noticed this too. Still not as good at forward crossovers (at least in some ways) as I was at one session a few weeks ago. My success rate on 3-turns is also not as high as it was a few sessions back...why.

Meanwhile, me practicing ice skating: "Ugh swing rolls are so boring, I don't want to practice them." "Backwards 1 ft glides are so uncomfortable, I'm going to quit after 1 minute" "Do I have to do these on ice one leg squat things?" "I don't understand how mohawks work. They must be fake." "Why do I have to learn two foot turns? What if I just skip them." "9 am is too early to wake up for ice skating, I'm going to go back to sleep."

I think people can be a little too hasty to attribute decisions they don't agree with to backroom deals/conspiracy. At the end of the day, no one here knows what's actually going on in any behind-the-scenes FS decision, and it's entirely possible that the people involved might just have a different set of information than is publicly available or just a different perspective. That's not to say that there's no corruption in this sport, but any individual decision we may disagree with has a number of possible causes. For instance, bad tech panel calls could easily be the result of the camera angle the tech panel has access too, or the fact that the tech panel isn't given the time to review everything carefully so if it kinda looks ok to the naked eye they give it a pass, not because the TP is necessarily trying to hold up a skater or knock a skater down. We can't say with any degree of confidence what the actual reason is, so I think we should be more careful before going around slinging accusations. No one knows for sure why Rusfed went with Zhenya over Liza except the people actually involved in the voting. Maybe they thought their medals odds were higher with her. Maybe they're emotionally attached to her and their decision was based on feeling. Maybe they just decided to go with the winner of RCF after all. Maybe they think she still has higher long term potential because she's younger and Liza has indicated she may retire soon (goodness knows they never pick Voronov for anything because of his age, despite the fact that he performed the best out of all the Russian men on the GP circuit). Maybe they liked the potential of a redemption story arc. Obviously some of these reasons are better or worse than others, but the point is, no one knows for sure, and in the absence of knowledge we should try to avoid being vitriolic. Same thing goes for why Brian said the decision was "fair." Obviously, he's going to say things that paint his skaters in a good light, but it's also entirely possible he genuinely thinks that. Maybe his understanding of the situation was simply "winner of RCF gets to go to Worlds." Sometimes people just have different opinions, and I dislike the tendency to think that the only explanation for someone disagreeing with you is because they're being dishonest or otherwise not acting in good faith. This is a very common tendency on the internet, and I think it's a large part of the reason the internet can be so toxic.