shanshani

It occurs to me that not only is Yuzu likely to break records for the highest GOE achieved on a single element, he is also the person best positioned to break records for the lowest GOE achieved on a single element...because the worst GOE you could possibly get is be from falling on a fully rotated 4A, but you have to actually be able to rotate the 4A to achieve that.

Figure I might as well post this here too. I've updated my scoring template with the Helsinki planned layouts, in case anyone was interested. The template currently contains Yuzu, Boyang, Mikhail, Alina, and Kaori's planned layouts and if you download it you can edit it to see how changes in scoring/layout affect the scores. Helsinki DIY protocol (google) Helsinki DIY protocol (if you don't have access to google)

whoever rotated those pics...that is not acceptable. stop trying to kill me

I think of all people to lose to, it's good that Evgenia lost to Liza. Liza shows that it's possible for a skater to have a bad couple of seasons and then come back with a vengeance, even in Russia. And that it's possible for older Russian skaters (well, however much "older" 21 is) to still be successful. Congratulations to both!

Haha, well I assume that'll be a while since my repetoir is currently limited to bad forward stroking, forward and backward swizzles, and bad snowplow stops. I have a tendecy to destroy footwear, so I will probably need new boots by the time I'm up to anything more than a waltz.

Jackson freestyle, with the default blade. I'm a bit worried that I'm slightly overbooted since I'm a total noob, but it doesn't sound like too much of a problem since I'm a normal size adult? I didn't want to keep buying new boots as I progressed up. Between flying to see competitions and paying for lessons, I don't want to be completely broke Speaking of lessons, the skate shop people asked me what my coach recommended >_< so I had to tell them I didn't have one yet. I did make inquiries at my local rink, and they said they'd get back to me soon. Maybe I should have waited...but ugh rentals suck so much. At one rink I went to, literally all the rentals had blades with lots of visible rust. It's a shame, because that rink had the most comfortable boots, but it sure made skating difficult.

I usually wear 6.5-7 US, so based on that 6.5 doesn't sound too small at all

Bought my first skates! The fitting was kind of confusing because they fitted me for size 7 but it felt too loose so I opted for size 6.5. I could still wiggle my toes and there was space left at the back, so I hope I made the right decision by going with the smaller size.

Went skating a couple more times. My sculling/lemons/swizzles/whatever they're called got better, yay! I can link several in a row now and they take less effort than before, woo. I can even do several in a row backwards if I get lucky. And I can stop without crashing to the wall now, even if its more like a snowplow-swizzle-stop rather than a legit snowplow. Week 1 of learning how to skate is going well. I should sign up for actual lessons though. Bad news is some lady yelled at me for not looking where I was going when skating backwards. Oops. I was so focused on not falling and figuring out how to even move my legs that I forgot, I guess. But you coulda been nicer about it, lady, since I'm obviously a total noob (seriously, my attempts at backward strokes that were not swizzles were dire) and was clinging to the wall moving so slowly my 80 year old grandma with a bad knee could've outrun me That was a bit of a bummer.

True, I guess I'm trading injuries for better cardiovascular health and core and leg strength. Oh well, public healthcare is good where I live now, but not good where I will most likely live when I get older, . It *is* lots of fun and gets me off the couch haha Ah, yes, thank you!

I already did a lot of layout calculations! Though tbh, at this point I'm just too uncertain about possible layouts to really spend much time on it. For instance, what even is Yuzu's planned FS layout? Is he going to jump the 3F or not? Nathan is slightly easier to speculate about, but even then I'm not sure. He seems to be playing it safe so far, but it also looks like he's given himself room to upgrade.

Haha, thanks. I figure I should take up figure skating because it's the only form of exercise I'm actually motivated to do. Thanks for helping me stay healthy, Yuzu! Second half of skating session went better. My main form of stopping is still crashing into the boards, but I worked my way up to laps around the rink without dying, so that's good. Sorta was able to manage some of those two foot figure 8 strokes (what are they called?), though they were pretty crummy. Had to stop because I was tired and my feet hurt way too much--the rental skates at the rink I went to are awful. I guess I should bite the financial bullet and buy myself my own pair of skates. Haha, that would be fun. I wanna hydroblade. Though I think I need to work on developing leg strength and general skating skills first

Tried skating for the first time a few months ago. Got pretty decent for only going three times and without having an instructor I think. I could skate for a decent time without support, glide a bit, do those two footed strokes where you make 8s forwards and even a little bit backwards, and even sort of do a hockey stop. Tried again today. Whelp, I'm a complete beginner again More clinging onto boards for dear life for me.

This is correct. He jumped it quite a few times in practice, actually, so there's a decent chance we'll see it at some point in competition this season. If I remember correctly he jumped it in the same place he jumped his 3Lo, so it's possibly intended to be an alternative to that jump. edit: wait, he also jumped 3F2T. Probably not a 3Lo alternative then. I should go review the practice videos I took.

Looking through protocols for Ondrej Nepala, the Czech judge, Vera Kvarcakova, gave Mikhail Kolyada a 0.50 in interpretation in his SP! I'm pretty sure she must have just pressed the wrong button, but uh...shouldn't there be a little more protection against mistakes like this? Speaking of Nepala scores, I've only looked at Kolyada and Rika Kihira's scores so far, but the Russian judge, Olga Kozhemyakina, scored Kolyada 6.86 over the other judges and underscored Rika Kihara by 13.28 under the other judges.

The main thing was that I need to download the pdfs so I can work on the plane ride home. But yeah, I'll use skating scores otherwise. Fun fact: Doug Williams (J2, USA), scored Yuzu more than 16 points below the average of the other judges between the SP and the FS. He also scored him an average of 0.5 points lower than the other judges per PCS category, and an average of 0.8 points lower per element in GOE. Edit: He also whacked Junhwan pretty hard, scoring him an average of 11 points below the other judges. He also hates Julian Zhi Jie Yi for some reason, scoring him over 20 points below the other judges...and whereas he is basically in line with judges' averages on Jason Brown and Roman Sadovsky. Haven't looked at other skaters yet, but uh...this is a weird and disturbing pattern of massively underscoring Asian skaters. Hopefully it doesn't continue. -edit: Eh I'm going to reserve judgment on Odhran Allen for now. He may just be a harsh judge. Will update- Update: Odhran Allen is just a tough judge--while he did underscore Yuzu by a little more than he underscored other skaters on average (and underscored the Irish skaters less than he underscored other skaters on average), he underscored several skaters by 10+ points and almost all skaters relative to other judges. Williams', on the other hand, was quite close to other judges for most skaters, deviating by 10+ points in only the following cases: Yuzuru Hanyu (-16.27), Junhwan Cha (-11.34), Julian Zhi Jie Yi (-20.66), Yamato Rowe (-10.36) on the negative side (it's...sure a weird coincidence that they're all Asian), and Andrew Dodd (+12.55) and Jordan Dodd (+11.8) on the positive side. The rest of his score deviations were no larger than 6.5.

US Classic, why you gotta be different? Why can't you format your protocol pages like everyone else? Why are you making my life pointlessly difficult?

In light of dodgy scoring at ACI, I've decided to start compiling scores for all international competitions this season in order to see if I can detect judging bias. I did this before for the men's free for GP, 4CC, Euro, Worlds and Olys for the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 season, so I remember a lot of the judges' names--including ones who are awful, who I am pleased (/sarcasm) to see on judging panels once more this season.

Yuzu does have one of the most intense glares I've ever seen on anyone. I'm feeling pleased with myself for calling it early. BS Yuzu doesn't care about winning, people's personalities don't change like that

Yeah all except maybe one of his practice 4S3Ts were just gorgeous, +5 GOE jumps. I guess he was too tired or nervous or lost concentration or something. WTT seems like the logical time, but he probably wouldn't be very happy if he had to wait that long. Plus, it would only give him one chance to have it ratified this season, which means there's a considerable chance that he would have to wait until next season to get credit for it. So I'm guessing he'll want it earlier.

I attended official practices and counted them. He attempted 10 4Lo during official practices and succeeded (no fall or pop) on 5 of them. (This doesn't include the competition warm up 4Lo attempts though, but I don't think the success rate changes very much if you include them.) I'm sure a couple of the pops could have turned into saved jumps in a competition context, though. The 4Lo is definitely competition-ready but was obviously not as secure as his other quads (all of which were successfully landed in practice--though he did pop a salcow or two in warmups), and with his renewed focus on winning increasing his % success on the 4Lo seems more pressing than adding 4A.

Based on his condition at ACI, I think his training the next couple of months will focus more stamina and being able to complete his free more cleanly (and fixing those spins--his SP would have been clean without the spin errors ). Also, his 4Lo was only at about 50% success rate in practices (and success rate in practice > success rate in competition) so even his jump training will likely focus more on stabilizing 4Lo. Therefore I think 4A at GP events is unlikely. 4CC or WTT are more likely candidates.

They both look better in person because pictures don't convey how sparkly they are I do wish the Otonal costume were slightly longer though.

My ACI FS Practice, runthrough, and Victory Ceremony videos

Somehow standing next to the two of them made Yuzu look younger, not older. Maybe because they're taller than he is