Old Cat Lady

I see it now. Thanks For those of you who still want to buy it, here's a link to make it easier https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07W95FCWT/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_api_i_26TtDbVEH10XP?fbclid=IwAR2VFThu8-LTFJ_6YTp7Ej9AfACeBlQMebWkyPB-PO_gd6fcJb4eyAfTTu0&language=en_US The language selector is right next to the search bar. btw, anyone want to admit what their Yuzu budget is? or maybe what percentage of their income it is?

Trying to buy the Yuzu Blu Ray but google can't seem to translate the Japanese Amazon page... The main reason I want to buy it is because I want to support his official merch in hopes that it'll encourage doing shows outside of Japan so the rest of us have a shot at seeing him when he retires.

If you take Japan Open seriously - and it does have ISU judges and tech panel - Zagitova is more competitive than I originally thought. Her PCS rose since world's and, in spite of losing levels in 2 elements, which she doesn't usually do, there was only a 6.12 point difference in the free skate, which she almost makes up in the SP. Granted, Trusova had several messy landings and a lost level in her skate so she could shut the door completely by skating cleaner, but JPN Open shows that she needs to skate clean even with her giant tech gap. Zagitova World's SP score = 82.08 JPN Open actual score = 154.41 JPN Open FS projected score with lvl 4 everything = 155.92 Projected total score = 238 Trusova Ondrej Nepela projected SP score w/8.5 pcs = 76.71 JPN Open actual score = 160.53 JPN Open projected FS score if clean = 168.51 projected total = 245.22 *Note. Trusova's projections are based on a rise in her PCS as the season goes on. Her PCS actually went down from her score at Ondrej Nepela FS in spite of it being a fluff competition. With the ISU being criticized so much for not having a "woman" win (lol, that a 17 yr old is the "woman" amongst girls) and the desire to promote rivalry, I wonder if there will be a push to keep Trusova's PCS down (fairly, but that's a different discussion) Even if Kihira skated cleanly, Zagitova would have beaten her in spite of two 3 axels (proj score=152.58). If you replace her 2a with a 3lz and use her worlds FS PCS, I end up with a projected fs score of 156.17 eta: btw, Kihira's high SP score is from WTT = 83.97 83.97+156.17 = 240.14. I'm assuming she'll do a lutz instead of a 2axel when her injury is healed. However, WTT scores tend to be high.

Yes. And to be fair, the character's face and his mannerisms look more like Yuzu than Machida. Though the body and story line are more like Machida's. Don't know if the same gestures were in the manga, but considering that the anime came afterwards, perhaps the creators modeled at least some of the character's mannerisms after Yuzu since Yuzu's popularity was one of the things that propelled the anime's production. If nothing else, Raf is there to keep him grounded. I still get the impression that if he weren't Nathan's coach, he'd be more of a Yuzu fan than a Nathan fan and we have to remember, that Raf is a crafty strategist. He's not going to let media hype influence what he thinks is needed to win. kind of cracks me up that he's doing manner hands that hover right over the posterior. He seems to have developed a habit of dropping one of his hands pretty low which wouldn't happen if he just did a bear hug that would come naturally to a lot of Westerners.

The only video I saw was the Youtube video posted in the event thread, but I honestly think she's just getting better at holding the outside edge longer. The angle of the blade at the end of take-off is definitely inward due to the rocking motion at take-off, but because it happens so quickly, you can't be 100% sure if it went completely toward the inside at picking or if the momentum caused it to turn that way after. Depending on what their video looks like, I think this call is understandable. Of course, there was no slo-mo replay of the lutz

1.List the top 3 of each discipline. (optional - 4 in case someone withdraws) Bonus Questions 2. In ladies, will there be more clean (positive GOE) 3 axels or quads? 3. Who will have the highest PCS before factoring? 4. Who will receive the highest GOE on a single element (before factoring)? 5. In ice dance, will anyone who was not top 3 after the rhythm dance end up with a medal? 6. Which disciplines will have a new season’s best? Grand Prix Finals Qualification - to be scored after NHK. 1.Who will qualify for the finals. *Optional - list alternates in case of withdrawal (2 for each correct) 2.Who will be the top qualifier in each discipline? If there is a tie in points for placement, I will use highest total score as a tie breaker (2 for each correct) 3. Which disciplines will have a new world record by the end of the series?

Made a game for Skate America and GPF qualifications.

No, you have to skate in an event in France for that Made a new game for Skate America and the Grand Prix final.

Doesn’t look like Joey is doing the game this year. Hopefully she’s still around and ok. eta: There was a request to keep it all in one thread so I changed the title and all the prediction games will be in this thread to make it easier for everyone to keep track. For the first event, since there's so much to keep track of, I just did a simple reply format so that people can change their answers until the deadline. There's a countdown on the Skate America site so I'm going with that as the deadline https://www.2019skateamerica.com/page/show/1760277-home After this, I'm going to try Google forms to reduce thread clutter and so I don't need to feel embarrassed by how bad my predictions are Rules 1.If you make any changes to your predictions, please edit your original reply rather than posting an additional one. 2.I suggest predicting a top 4. If someone withdraws, I’ll bump everyone you predicted below that person up a spot. 3.All predictions due by the warm up of the first event. First day of Skate America is Oct. 18 Scoring 1 point if your skater ends up within 1 place of your prediction. 3 points for every correct placement 2 points for every correct answer to bonus question Entries for Skate America are here: http://www.isuresults.com/events/fsevent03111918.htm 1.List the top 3 of each discipline. (+ extra in case someone withdraws) Bonus Questions 2. In ladies, will there be more clean (positive GOE) 3 axels or quads? 3. Who will have the highest PCS before factoring? 4. Who will receive the highest GOE on a single element (before factoring)? 5. In ice dance, will anyone who was not top 3 after the rhythm dance end up with a medal? 6. Which disciplines will have a new season’s best? Grand Prix Finals Qualification - to be scored after NHK https://www.isu.org/figure-skating/events/grand-prix-of-figure-skating 1.Who will qualify for the finals. *Optional - list alternates in case of withdrawal (If someone withdraws before the final but after all the series events, I'll take the list of people who outright qualified) 2.Who will be the top qualifier in each discipline? If there is a tie in points for placement, I will use highest total score as a tie breaker. 3. Which disciplines will have a new world record by the end of the series?

1. The pink version of this wins hands down. 2. This bluish version. 3. Dory 4. Xylitol - if you ripped the orange thing off, you had a nicely fitted body suit and I love him in white. The costume was actually quite fetching from the back side. How did they manage to mess up every aspect of these pictures when their subject is so photogenic? I'm starting to wonder if this was meant tongue in cheek - you'd have to be doing this on purpose to do it this badly, right? Terrible colors - check. Baggy enough to hide his trademark body proportions - check. Make his face look even creepier than that wax figure - check. At least with Dory and Xylitol, you still had a beautiful face and proper fit to look at it. The worst thing about this ad is what they did to his face. Looks like they dunked his head in bronzer and then still CGI'd it.

Was shopping on Amazon and saw this saying on a T-shirt and thought I'd make my own versions to wear. Thought I'd throw them on the ice as well. Hopefully whatever charity they donate everything to will have Fanyus there. Though I do wonder about using the images - I believe that as long as I'm not using them to make money it's legal and all that.

Do we know what kind of flowers these are? They don't look like balloon flowers. I'd like to make some hair pins that match. I wonder if I should just use roses. If anyone has a super close up of the costume, I would appreciate it. I'm surprised at how much silver is on it considering it's Yuzu. I could swear I noticed the gold stand out more when I saw it. Are the butterflies purple? I might have to use silver. eta: I'm thinking orchids and black butterflies - read a tweet about it. Not sure if it's accurate but the flowers don't really look like roses either. eta 2: these are balloon/bellflowers

Looked at available tickets for Skate America just out of curiosity. It looks like the majority are still available for men and pairs packages in spite of having possibly the deepest men's field and being in a great tourist city. https://www1.ticketmaster.com/pairs-and-mens-discipline-package/event/17005686936D1E8B I wonder if they're going to discount tickets before the event.

Considering that they were declaring Yuzu the winner before Javi or Shoma even skated makes me think that they were assuming that even a clean Javi/Shoma wouldn't have been able to beat that.

I can *kind of* see where the 4t in combo could be mistaken for under rotated because the toe looked so close to the ice at the quarter mark. I don't think it hit because the ice spray came after the blade turned beyond the quarter, but faster replay or worse angle, I can understand the mistake. But on the other 2 jumps, it looks almost completely backward on the landing! This seems a legendarily bad call. I imagine what happened is that the most experienced person on the panel bullied the call. Since Sasha Martinez is such a newbie, she probably just deferred to the guy who has so much more experience. At least I *hope* that's what happened. I'd much rather believe only 1 of the 3 was corrupt and the other was just not confident enough to assert an opinion. Of course, the latter isn't much better and that completely defeats the purpose of having 3 people on the panel. I wonder if we'll be seeing these in reply to the next ISU tweet. Now that you mention it this way, you're probably right about forward take off vs. prerotation but then the ISU needs to do a better job explaining things. Letting the ambiguity continue is essentially cheating the group of skaters who were trained by coaches who are interpreting the rules to mean that you need to rotate in the air. If the take-off is defined by the weight transfer, then I think Zhou should still qualify as doing forward take offs on his toe jumps. If you watch that video posted by Tom Z., you can actually see his skate blade rock down toward the ice to launch in the air while he's positioned completely forward. There's no question that all his weight is on the blade at take off - though, to be fair, the judges probably wouldn't be able to see the blade action in regular speed.

I admit I really only watched Yuzu when he was on the ice but I made sure to stop myself from cheering for him when it was other people's run through's and made sure to clap when I heard everyone else clapping. I guess I couldn't be sure it was for the person skating their run through without looking but I figure it's mostly about making the other skaters feel like the love is shared. tbh though, I'm not much of a screamer anyway. Actually, the loudest fans I dealt with were screaming for Keegan. I literally had to plug my ears because a couple women seemed to be purposely trying to be louder than the rest of the arena - ironically, in their effort to make the cheering for Keegan louder, it prevented me from cheering for him, which I would have if I wasn't genuinely concerned about my ears

Actually I mentioned both Tursynbaeva and the Koreans as a whole in my initial post about the ladies that I don't expect to threaten to medal at the world podium this year. And OP also mentioned You. With Tursynbaeva, even without the injury, I thought last year's silver was a one shot deal. I'm not sure how serious her injury is, but that puts her more in doubt. I imagine Eteri is going to be focusing more on her skaters that are favored to be world medalists, especially Trusova. Young You is good for someone coming out of juniors, but she has neither the tech of Trusova/Scherbakova nor the polish and presence of the high level seniors. For projected scores, you can use Tursynbaeva's worlds score since the tech panel deemed her clean at that event BV = 96.64 Total Score = 224.26 Young You based on U.S. Classic if she were clean with all her levels and 8.5 PCS BV = 104.34 Actual score = 199.29 Projected score = 228.17 So far she is 0/4 on landing the 3a clean (defined as + GOE) For scoring potential based on the level that you can reasonably expect (as opposed to squeaky clean with all levels) + political pull + reputation points I'd say the top 10 is currently: 1. Trusova 2. Kihira 3. Zagitova 4. Scherbakova 5. Tuktamysheva 6. Medvedeva 7-8. Kostornaya / Sakamoto - really not sure where Kostornaya should be 9. Tursynbaeva (I have her so low because she's less consistent, especially in the first half of the season) 10. Miyahara - Just doesn't have strong enough tech - both in quality and bv I put Kihira above Zagitova because her 3 axel seems more consistent than last year.

For men, I’d say IDF is the toughest, just because, in spite of the world podium, I consider Shoma, Nathan, and Yuzu to still be the big 3 and it’s the only event where 2 of them are going head to head. 2nd most difficult, is probably Rostelecom because Shoma and Vincent are facing off. Sorry, I love Kolyada but Vincent is the bigger threat to the big 3. I don’t put any stock into U.S. classic - Vincent did poorly there last year too. It’s just a question of which tech panel we’re going to get for his events. Also, there’s a much bigger gap between Yuzu and Mikhail than there is between Shoma and Vincent. However, I think Skate America has the deepest field. Short of a melt down, the gold is pretty much a foregone conclusion but it should be a battle for the rest of the podium with Cha, Brown, Aliev, Jin, Brezina, and Messing all contending for the other medals. This event is crazy difficult for the 2nd/3rd tier skaters. All the women’s events are tough at the top. Pretty amazing that Scherbakova, Tuktamysheva, and Tursynbaeva managed to draw each other for both of their grand prix events. If I could only pick one, I’m thinking NHK - Zagitova, Kihira, Kostornaya, and Lim are all reasonable picks to podium and we also have Samodurova. I think Zagitova and Kihira are probably #2 & #3 in scoring potential.

It was a really good read until we actually get to the scoring part. Another one of my patented unpopular opinions - but egregiously biased scoring like this does more harm than good. People who want to discredit any Fanyu effort will point to things like this as to why we're all kooks. As good as the first part was, the author immediately lost credibility as soon as I saw her scoring of the 4 loop. Yes, there is some amount of subjectivity to the bullet points, but we're going to be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks a jump with a severe step out as "effortless throughout". Clearly, there's a struggle if you have to save the landing to prevent falling. Not to mention, the step out is on the landing - how can you give "very good body position from take-off to landing" to a jump that breaks at the waist and never manages to get into landing position?

Made some projected scores Methodology: 1. Used highest PCS from previous year - using a flat 8.5 for those who were in juniors last year, anticipating a rise as the season goes on 2. Only changed the GOE for elements with neg GOE, <, e, or v. Used the GOE of a similar element from the same event if possible. If none landed cleanly, used the highest score from an ISU event in Skating Scores on the element. Used the actual composite GOE (after high and low dropped) for all other elements. 3. If a skater lost a level, I changed it to level 4 but kept the actual GOE for the element. 4. was reluctant to use WTT scores. I used it for PCS but not GOE since Tuk didn't get a chance to skate in the 2nd half season events but she did multiple triple axels in the season Keep in mind that these are based on actual attempted layouts and are not taking into account possible technical capabilities Trusova - Ondrej Nepela - PCS of 8.5 BV = 114.84 Actual total score = 240.27 Projected total score = 243.05 Kihira - Autumn Classic - PCS from WTT for SP, Worlds for LP BV = 105.02 Actual Total Score = 224.16 Projected Total Score = 236.78 Scherbakova - Lombardia - PCS of 8.5 BV = 107.89 Actual Total score = 218.2 Projected Total Score = 230.67 Tuktamysheva - Lombardia - PCS from WTT BV = 104.71 Actual Total Score = 214.38 Projected Total Score = 231.67 Medvedeva - Autumn Classic - PCS from Worlds BV = 95.76 Actual total score = 217.43 Projected total score = 226.28

I had my doubts about Scherbakova because I thought she was all 4lz or bust and she mostly busts, but she managed to stay on her feet in 3 of the last 4 competitions so maybe it's stabilizing. If she manages to string together a few good competitions, I imagine her PCS will rise. The story for the ladies this year is going to be which Russians get left off the world team. Trusova is the one to beat this year. I'm really curious what kind of PCS Kostornaya will get. I'm guessing the Russian team will be Trusova, Scherbakova, and Zagitova, which is really sad because I also expect Medvedeva, Tuktamysheva, and Kostornaya to all medal in both their Grand prix events. I also wonder if Zagitova's PCS will come back down to earth this year since I expect her to get supplanted as the top skater. I think only Rika will be able to break up the Russian podium. Sadly, I don't think Satoko is a true world medal contender anymore - she'd need a lot of mistakes to get on the podium - and I don't see Wakaba making a comeback. Kaori is also hoping for mistakes to make the final. I don't see any of the Koreans being a real threat this year and I think Tursynbaeva is likely a one time world medalist. I also wonder if we're going to see a decent program from any of the ladies. All the ones I've seen so far have ranged from awful to mediocre (but I haven't seen all the competitions yet) but I'm holding out hope that some of them will be good with a little more polish.

uuuh, you do realize that when he skates near clean he gets the highest PCS scores with these "bad posture and weak expression narration" right? The real question is "how can he win these when he won't bother entering a competition like that" but, as I've already said multiple times, I'm looking at it from the ISU perspective, not personal preference or what is likely to happen.

I'm pretty sure strong feds are strong feds because they're seen as sources of money. Perhaps I'm overly cynical (actually no more than you guys, just a different type of cynical), but I think it all comes down to money. From a business perspective, it makes way more sense to provide an avenue for older skaters to stay in the sport. In skating, careers are often so short and it takes years to build up a new following. Medvedeva is still hugely popular but does anyone realistically see her even making the team in Beijing? ISU can either provide an avenue where she still has regular public exposure or just accept that it'll lose at least some of her fans. I'm not immersed in anyone else's fandoms, but I'm guessing anyone who is hugely popular has fans that won't be interested when they're gone. However, if she's still in competition in some form, ISU can still milk her popularity - there are sure to be fans who will buy all event tickets just to see her. No, ISU does not care about preserving skater careers, per se. But they do care about what will make money. Having a combination of older skaters and newer skaters as well as a variety of markets makes more sense for business than putting all your eggs in 1 or 2 very fragile, short lived baskets. ISU does not seem to have any idea about nuances of fandom and sporting philosophies so they're not calculating any of that. From their very limited perspective, I can kind of see why they're pushing this. I personally think the whole team competition makes the sport look more like a joke, but maybe that's not true outside of the serious fandom - maybe from ISU perspective, the team comp is doing what it was intended for and they're just looking for more exposure. I just hope that they can format it in a way that it still has some semblance of respectability, but I don't have high expectations based on what I see of the team comp. Simply the fact that they're calling it an "artistic" competition makes me think that it'll be a farce of a competition. The only way I can see it working is if it's structured like the SP, where there's still a set of technical requirements that are *supposed* to be judged by a set standard, but more limited in number of elements you're allowed to do while giving more time for non jump elements. But then, there's also the issue of judging PCS correctly. Either way, the supposed artistic portion needs to have set standards in order to have any legitimacy as a sport and hopefully they also don't call it the "artistic" competition.

I agree. Anna, and especially Sasha, have much better jumps than Alyssa, though I do think all 3 of them (and Vincent and Aliev) should be getting << on their quads. I think the gif is more about the toe axel than the actual axel. Most people use lack of replay as the excuse for not <<, but in this case, she's not even setting up backward. There's no way you can miss the << unless you're not looking at all.

I don't see Yuzu wanting to participate in a competition like that either, but I don't think ISU knows anything about his personal philosophies toward the sport. They're just looking for opportunities to make more money