rockstaryuzu

well, at least the pandemic is bringing figure skating back to it's outdoors roots. Silver lining maybe.

I can't even begin to imagine how Yuzu would translate this to the ice, but I'm sure he'd make it look incredible.

Even when you haven't actually heard the piece yet. You can tell what the music's like by looking at him. The first time I saw Change was with the sound muted and it was obvious what kind of music it was anyway.

**ahem!** Excuse you, but they are not "trashbag pants" anymore. Because of the superlative job they've done in LMEY delineating every inch of Yuzu's amazing leg lines with gleaming reflections of the arena lights, this sublime garment is a 'trashbag' no longer! Hats off and a moment's acknowledgement for our new costume best friends, the Gleaming Pants of Ascension, or GPOA. Because how could a humble satellite fail to ascend to heaven, upon observing Yuzu's gorgeous gams swathed in slick black fabric that clings like sweet on sugar?

Yuzu really is an all-in performer. If he made movies, he'd be the kind of director who does his own screenwriting, cinematography and editing.

While I agree with you on this, my feeling is that whether or not Beijing Olympics happen is going to depend on only one thing, and that's the situation on the ground in China at two months out from the games. Which I think means that we'll know for sure at Christmas 2021 whether there'll be an Olympics in 2022.

I'm with Yuzu on the subject of competition. I want all his competitors to show up in top form, skate clean, and Yuzu to beat the pants eff 'em fair and square with an amazing skate of his own. That would be worth watching, and worth any money to get to watch. AS for Nathan being overscored - at this point, I don't see the value in continuing to discuss it. The guy does his best, he's not asking the judges to overscore him, they just do it anyway, and he's being meanly slagged for something not in his control. I do wish he'd put the same whole-hearted effort into his programs that Yuzu does, but if that's not Nathan's style, then I fail to see how internet criticism is going to make him change. However, directing all this criticism at the biased judges doing the overscoring is amply justified and should continue. This sport is (on paper, at least) supposed to be fair.

All of this musing on Yuzu's chances at Beijing, presumes that there actually will be a Beijing Olympics. i'm very much not so confident about that last part. This bleedin' pandemic, man...I don't trust it. Just because we have developed some vaccines, doesn't mean the virus won't still turn out to have a nasty sting in the tail farther down the road. At the moment I'me thinking it's 70% likely that Beijing will happen, and it could go either way from there. However, I have full and complete confidence in Yuzu's ability to be freaking AMAZING when it really, truly counts. If there is a Beijing, he'll surpass himself, of that I am certain.

Gosh I hope he keeps it! It's absolutely gorgeous and truly deserves to be shown live. I think he said in the video that he might be changing up the SP though.

Don't forget to round out your Skate Canada Challenge experience by watching Roman watch himself skate!

Aw, that's sad! They had so much potential as a pair!

Oh my God. This explains Zhenya's entire 2020. I knew she was getting horribly bad advice from somewhere.

There's enough figure skaters in Ireland to hold a national championships? I'm not trying to slag Ireland here, but I do know it's a nation with less than a handful of skating rinks so how many skaters could there be?

Of interest, perhaps - I think Brian was rinkside for Corey's and Conrad's skates. I could hear someone clapping every time they completed an element and it sounded exactly like Brian's clapping always does when you watch other competitions. And yes, Brian does have a clapping pattern that is recognizable. I watched the final 4: Corey: Hmm. He shows lots of promise, but compared to his SP I find this FS program a little bland. Looking forward to seeing how he improves Conrad: His planned content included 4Lz, 4S and 4T, with 3As singly and in combo...very ambitious. It's nice that he's so ambitious. He couldn't quite make it work in this skate, and once one thing went wrong it seemed to snowball a bit and the wheels came off progressively more the whole program, which to me says he hasn't yet mastered his mental game. Still, lots of promise here as well. Nam: I love the music and this program is a beautiful departure from his usual style. That being said, once again the skate had a practice session vibe to it. It was a little too relaxed. It would have been nice to see it done in costume and with a bit more emoting and performance going on. I have a feeling that if he'd been doing this in front of a regular crowd, this would have been an emotional high point and a thing of beauty...alas we only get to see what might have been, instead. Roman: Wow. This skate was wonderful and I watched it with such a fond smile on my face. Roman is pure beauty on the ice and watching him move is a pleasure. Shaky combos cost him TES points...but did anyone see the GOE on that opening 4S? 3.23! wow. A PCS score of 90.1 is nothing to sneeze at either. Overall, I think Ted is right - Roman is carrying himself with greater confidence as Canadian champion, and it shows. Also, I loved Ted reading out the comments sent in by the viewers. People were saying such nice things. Good for Roman. Caught a little of the free dance so far. Going to watch more later but Zachary & Marjorie really are impressing me with their creativity and daring.

Plush did. NOT! Read the rest of the interview, and I see that he did. Wow. He has a point though, about how aggressive the commentary about skating on social media has become.

I watched Conrad, Corey, Nam, and Roman, and I have to say that I was impressed with all of them. Compared to last year, Conrad has really matured and settled down on the ice. He gave a very confident skate and I think he's coming along nicely as a skater. I am looking forward to seeing him in years to come because he's one of those guys that's just going to get better and better over time. Corey - at first I didn't recognize him. I'm not 100% sure, but I think he's grown quite a lot and is now another tall and willowy skater. He has great presence on the ice, although his jumps looked a little tight to me. Nam - a fluid and expressive performance. Another skater who seems to be maturing into a fine performer right before my eyes. He kept Blues for Klook from last year and this performance is almost as good as he did at SCI in Kelowna. You can tell that he suffers without having audience energy to feed off of, though. This skate felt a little like a practice run through. Roman, doing Exogenesis - maybe there's something about the Exogenesis music that is magic, because every skater who does it turns in enthralling performances - first Zhenya last year, and now Roman this year. Just wow. This might be the best I've seen Roman skate yet. It felt like an Olympic caliber performance to me. There was no hesitancy or shakiness - the jumps were smooth and assured, the skating like silk. He has the knack of performing well even without a physical audience present, which makes his skating come across well even in a situation like this. I really love this skate and it makes me sad that this is probably the only time we'll get to see it this year. I hope all the skaters can hold onto or improve on this form going into Olympic season. Also, does Canada now have the tallest senior men's singles line? Out of these four, I think Nam is the short one and he's, what, 5'10"?

Roman's reaction to Nationals being canceled. He also explains why it got canceled in more detail

He's definitely high risk. I wish him a speedy recovery.

This virtually guarantees Team Canada won't be going to Worlds either. What would be the point? Most if the team have barely been able to compete in even one competition this year.

At least the app finally got it right with the LMEY photo. How many hundreds or thousands of times has Yuzu's photo been uploaded into that thing and this is the very first time it's gotten both the age and the gender right.

100% agree, especially after what I saw a certain pairs-skater-turned-coach-turned-judge post on Twitter one time about Yuzu's StSeqs sometimes being 'messy'.... It dawned on me after watching him live a few times that the judges must be mistaking Yuzu's high complexity of skating as something else. So I personally think it's very much to Yuzu's advantage to pull back a little. But it grinds my gears that his full brilliance doesn't get appreciated...

And now I'm hungry.

As regards the content of H&E: on first watch, I also thought that Yuzu wasn't doing as much in the program as we're used to seeing him do. I don't want to use the term 'empty' , but there is definitely space in it. Breathing room. After reading what others have said about this and reflecting on it, I think the reason why it looks kind of sparse might be because, for the last umpteen seasons, Yuzu has been using programs that are absolutely packed to the brim with SO MUCH stuff that they're literally breathless. Origin had him doing something literally every beat of the music. 4CC Seimei was a jam-packed 4min 30sec program condensed down to an even more dense 4min. Even H&L is full. Yuzu hasn't done a free skate program with breathing room in it for a long, long time. It doesn't mean the program is lacking in any way. It just means there's space in it.