shanshani

So are Alina and Satton, and even Kaori is a bit vulnerable to the TP because of her flutz, yet all of them have been chosen for Worlds. And at the end of the day, a UR that the tech panel might not even catch is better than falling (not to mention it isn't as though Zhenya has a chronic UR issue, unlike Vincent Zhou), and fair or not Zhenya has a PCS cushion that Tuktik does not (while I think Zhenya is overscored on PCS in general, I do think she does deservedly get more PCS than Liza). I also don't know how anyone could possibly think CoR Tosca isn't leagues better than, say, IdF OCS. I mean, IdF OCS had no interpretation, like, at all, whereas in my opinion CoR Tosca is more or less up to Zhenya's usual standard (minus pantomiming, which more or less automatically makes it better haha), with somewhat smoother skating than before but a step sequence which I've seen her do better in practice. I'm pretty sure you're in a very small minority on this one. You can argue about whether Zhenya's scores are fair, but if you're Rusfed and your job is to get Russia medals, the fact that Zhenya might UR sometimes is not going to weigh heavily in your considerations if you don't think the tech panel will catch it. Again, I'm not saying that Zhenya deserves it more than Liza. Merely that Rusfed is not necessarily being illogical in this decision.

There's no Russian or Japanese judges on the ladies panel IIRC. Though whatever makes judges score Russian skaters higher on PCS than Japanese skaters is sadly not limited to Russian judges.

Isn't it obvious? She only fell on 3S3Lo at Cup of Russia, a new element for her so understandably less stable, and her expression and commitment to her performance has improved drastically since stone-faced Orange Colored Sky at IdF. Plus, obvious mistakes do matter more than less obvious mistakes because you can get your URs/flutzes overlooked (as lots of skaters do, this is not an issue that pertains only to her), but you can't get falls overlooked (and falls are penalized more anyway).

To be honest, I think that while Rusfed's decision is cold to Liza, it's not necessarily illogical. Zhenya has a higher ceiling than Liza, and with their number one medal threat Alina having issues this season, they might prefer their medal chances with Zhenya to their medal chances with Liza. Zhenya appears to have an upward trajectory as of late, and Liza had her pneumonia issue, so it's unclear that one is more reliable than the other at this point in time, especially since they performed similarly at CoR. Liza definitely deserves it more, but if you treat it as a numbers game with the goal of maximizing medal chances, the choice is less clear and there's a decent case for going for Zhenya. Can't say they're handling PR well though.

Popping in to say that Russian ladies drama makes men's drama look tame. I think Liza should have gotten it, but I have faith in Zhenya. I think she's in a better mental place now after doing Rusnats and CoR. I don't actually think Russia's spots are in as much danger as a lot of the pearl clutching in some places implies. Sofia's been solid and shown the ability to perform under a lot of pressure. Even if Alina does badly, she's still getting good PCS so is unlikely to fall that far in the rankings. Evgenia seems on the mend. Really only one of Alina/Zhenya need to do okay to preserve the spots if Sofia continues her consistency streak, and I think it's excessively pessimistic to think that both of them will bomb badly enough to knock the Russian combined ranking below 13. It's possible, I guess, but honestly I don't think it's that likely. Really sucks for Liza though. Poor girl, none of this was her fault.

He has great facial expressions. Although I'm not sure the glare at the end of NHK fits the program

I have now done several successful forward outside 3 turns in both directions. I have done 0 successful moving two foot turns in any direction. Maybe I'll just do my 'two-foot turn' next coaching session with one foot slightly lifted off the ice and hope my coach doesn't notice also I wish my clockwise crossovers (forward and backward) would stop being garbage My ccw ones are fine

Yeah, the Men's FS (and gala) is at least at a decent time. All the others though Why is it that the competitions that are in the closest time zones to me are actually harder to watch live?

Interesting. Well if it takes USFed politicking to get some decent tech equipment and fair tech calls, I'm all for it. But in ladies, Alysa Liu is known for having a PR problem, isn't she? I guess she's very young so she could fix it.

got frustrated with failing two foot turns so I tried 3-turns instead. Success! I mean, I only succeeded 3 times out of however many I tried, but it was better than 0 times on two foot turns. also for some reason I'm way better gliding backwards out of crossovers/3 turns than I am with just picking up my foot while on two feet backwards by way better I mean I can actually do it

Yikes that article. I agree that there should be better cameras, but the implication that Vincent's URs were called incorrectly is *rolls eyes* I don't think Vincent would fare better under more camera angles and higher speeds.

Sure, he definitely has a lower success rate on it/it puts more strain on his body, so strategically if Nathan/Shoma mess up their shorts he might decide not to put it in. But I would be very, very surprised if he wasn't at least planning on jumping it in his FS.

A weird number of people seem convinced that Yuzu won’t add back his 4Lo and I’m scratching my head as to why. Yeah, sure, he got injured on it, but skaters don’t just stop jumping something because they got injured doing it. The circumstances around 4Lz were very different.

I need more of this. What’s the height and distance on his 4T? 3A? What about Boyang’s 4Lz? Nate’s jumps? (I know they’ve used the ice scope thing on Shoma’s 3A, have they used it on his other jumps?) Why isn’t there a big set of data on all of the jumps this season ahhh

does your rink not have a pro shop/does it not sell replacement laces? my laces have bloodstains on them lol. I laced them without realizing my hand was bleeding

It's Chinese New Year today, so when I got to the rink, it was nearly empty. Honestly, I'm surprised it was even open. For the first hour and a half I shared the middle ice with one other skater. There were no areas cordoned off for classes. It was glorious. If I ever become super rich I'm getting myself a private ice rink. I was dead tired for half the session though. Think I was skating a decent bit faster than usual and also I'm sick. Still, it was a very productive session. Also the guy I was sharing with had monster stamina--he was jumping a decent amount, doing complexish footwork, and going pretty fast for almost the whole two hours. Whereas I had to sit down and recover after practicing some crossovers.

I’ve just accepted that I will never enjoy watching a competition skate live because I’m too nervous the whole time

It would be awesome if we could coordinate on travel somehow. It's so expensive anything to defray the costs. I imagine sharing AirBnBs will probably be most realistic. Is it hard to get tickets to Japanese Ice shows? Or is it just too far away? I was thinking of maybe trying for one since Japan is fairly close to me.

Aww, some people are just bad at reading social cues like me mild vent, unrelated

Last night I had a dream where Yuzu was helping me with my backwards crossovers. Went skating today...aaaand they weren't any better. Turns out dreamYuzu is not a particularly good coach I did improve my backward crossovers over the course of the practice session though, so yay! Finally getting some speed out of the CCW ones, and the CWs are finally starting to actually exist lol. Forward ones were kinda meh today, did them all successfully but many were kinda crappy. I think I just have to concentrate on shifting my weight correctly and I'll do it right--it's not at the point where I don't have to think about it, but if I do think about it they're decent enough. I can now do a very crappy...idk what to call them, I don't think they deserve the name spread eagle haha. But I've managed to get the basic idea at least, in both directions. I think my one foot slaloms are actually starting to be not completely incorrect. I think I was relying a little too much on hip/ankle movement to change edge and not enough on knee action before, because I wasn't using my knees that much. But I've been trying to use my knees more and more and today my thighs started to burn a bit, which I'm pretty sure is a sign that my knees are finally starting to do the right thing. I'm still not getting acceleration, but I guess that will happen once I figure out the knees more. (Also I'm pretty sure these are way above my level, but my coach made me do forward one foot wiggles and they were really fun and it seems like a natural progression from increasing the wiggle size.)

Theoretical calculations for clean Yuzu versus clean Nathan match up at Worlds, featuring Yuzu with the Helsinki layout and Nathan first with the US Nats layout and then with an upgraded layout including 4S Yuzu wins over both Nationals and upgraded Nathan under the assumption that Yuzu maintains a 5 point PCS edge and a 0.5 point GOE edge per element (though it's pretty close versus upgraded Nathan). I think I lowballed both of them on GOE and PCS for a clean skate based on how judges have been judging this season (but in Nathan's case, I seriously hope I didn't lowball him relative to judges, because those are some pretty generous scores imo), but it's the PCS and GOE margins that matter, not the actual scores. So I think barring seriously wonky judging, Nathan still needs Yuzu to make at least a small mistake to win (contra Johnny Weir), assuming he's completely clean (less likely if he adds 4S). But it's mostly going to come down to who is cleaner--Yuzu might have room for one mistake if Nathan sticks with his Nats layout.

wow this is a big departure from typical ISU practices. Usually the ISU goes out of its way to include judges from the countries of the top competitors, on the theory that national bias will cancel each other out. I guess they've decided to go the opposite way for this competition (which they should!). Guess they don't consider Boyang a top competitor though. Poor Boyang.

Haha, well forward crossovers are scarier than backwards crossovers. Even though I haven’t fallen on a forward crossover since I officially started learning them, I still have to give myself a bit of a pep talk before practicing them my cw ones got way better just because of the blade adjustment though, so that’s nice. Now that I think about it, I haven’t actually practiced backwards crossovers much at all. I had to take the week off because my boots were in the shop/I had knee pain anyway, and I didn’t practice much the previous week also because of the knee pain, and that basically covers the entire time period since my coach started me on them. Well hopefully I can practice more now since fixing the blade issue should help with the knee issue. Are you going to test? Is pre-bronze the test you do after going through the basic skills courses? I might move back to the US one day so I’m curious about how all that is structured.

I got my blades adjusted and omggg it's so much better. Why didn't I get this done sooner? I can glide for way longer now, everything is easier and just so much better. I got my t-stop on the first try today! Why do you learn it after snowplow? It seems way easier. I also learned...uh...idk how to describe it other than a mini-spread eagle. I'm rubbish at them (my on-ice turn out is...bad, which is why I think my coach is having me do them), but I did sort of do it successfully once or twice. My on-land turn out isn't that bad so hopefully I'll get better at them quickly. I wanna do a spread eagle! Cross over status: forward ccw: pretty good forward cw: okay backward ccw: getting there backward cw: I need to actually practice this