rockstaryuzu

Johnny leading by example. https://twitter.com/JohnnyGWeir/status/1290993433302175744?s=20

I think this is straight up going to depend on the visa type they have. Jason basically told the border guards that he had a job to get to in Canada - and in a sense, he does. He probably also got lucky with the border agent and perhaps chanced upon one that was a figure skating fan.

If what Plushenko says is true and that there's been no mention of financial considerations or sponsorship contracts or what have you between him and Kosto, then where did the rumours about sponsorship etc come from and who started them? I mean that's the type of thing that's normally insider knowledge...

Google wasn't especially forthcoming with the French data, that's for sure. On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised, not to mention impressed, by how easy it was to get the Russian numbers.

on the other hand, if they can be convinced to ape the NHL by holding a basically bogus awards show no one wants, maybe we could sell them on a figure skating version of this idea. I could totally get behind an ISU_Figure Winter Classic. Hold it in Nathan Philips Square in January every year. or somewhere like that. Prize is a Canada Goose parka and a lifetime supply of hot chocolate (sponsored by Ghana perhaps ) Better yet, get this rink back up and running and let the boys (and girls) quad away at Parliament.

That was the Challengers. They didn't say anything about senior GP at that time. And since yesterdays announcement by the ISU, the only two GP Yuzu is eligible for this year are NHK or SCI, depending on which country he's in at the time.

Wrong time of year...even with refrigeration, I think you still need some cold weather to make an outdoor rink work. And the ice quality would be questionable. Still though, it would be a very pretty idea. Imagine Yuzu skating against a backdrop of beautiful Japanese gardens.

Don't forget that up until now, Japan hasn't even issued lockdown orders, only requests for cooperation from the public. They aren't taking the same approach to this pandemic as other places have. That being said, i hope they forgo the ticket sales and just stream or live broadcast instead. Anyway, I got curious about the actual situation in all of the GP cities and looked up some data. I couldn't find the same data for all of the cities - for example, Las Vegas, Grenoble, Chongqing and Beijing don't report the number of active cases - but I did get some useful stuff. All info current as of today except for the Chinese cities. All totals cumulative except where otherwise noted Las Vegas (SkAm starts oct 23): population: 2 million in the greater Las Vegas area, 650,00 in the city proper total cases: 44,997 total hospitalizations: 2841 total deaths: 716 infection ratio: 2.25 out of 100 people Ottawa (SCI starts oct 30): population: 1 million total cases: 2560 currently active cases: 196 total deaths: 264 infection ratio: 0. 25 out of 100 people, or 1 person in every 400. Chongqing (CoC starts nov 6): population: 15.9 million in Chongqing proper, 30.48 in the greater Chongqing area total cases: 583 total recovered: 577 total deaths: 6 infection ratio: infinitesimal but this is older data and things could be different now Grenoble (IdF starts nov 13): it was strangely difficult to find data for Grenoble but here is the data for the region where Grenoble is situated: population: 161, 000 total cases: 2093 current hospitalizations: 23 total deaths: 153 infection ratio: 1.3 out of 100 people Moscow (CoR starts nov 20): population: 12.5 million in Moscow proper total cases: 241, 359 currently active cases: 57,731 total deaths: 4460 infection ratio: 1.93 out of 100 people Osaka (NHK starts nov 27): population: 2.7 million total cases: 4720 currently active cases: 1615 total deaths: 92 infection ratio: 0.175 out of 100 people, or roughly 1 in every 600 Beijing (GPF scheduled for dec 10) population: 21.54 million in Beijing proper total cases: 933 currently confirmed: 13 (ie. new infections) total deaths: 9 please note that Beijing reported a cluster of 236 new cases in June but implemented strict measures to get control of the outbreak infection ratio: also infinitesimal, but again this data may be old and things could be different now It was difficult to tell how accurate some of this data is, as different countries have different policies in place for collecting and reporting. However it's safe to say that all these numbers are probably a LOT lower than the actual number of infected people. The risk of infection spreading is definitely going to be higher in some places than others.

In the end, no matter what they do, the virus is going to be affecting the sport for a long time to come. Regardless of what their motivation is, they have only two choices: try to keep some form of skating going, or admit defeat and call a complete moratorium until there's a surefire means of control of the virus, which could be a year or two away still. If they choose moratorium, the sport could take years to come back. There's a whole generation of skaters who would retire, and unlikely that new ones would join in. The popularity of the sport is already supposedly on the wane. A year with no competition at all could, from the ISU's perspective, be a death blow. It's not that their decision is correct... it's that there is more than one way to look at this choice they've made.

If all this was happening the year after an Olympics, it'd be a lot easier for the ISU to cancel the whole season. But this is the year before the Olympic season and what happens this year is going to be used as part of determining who qualifies for Beijing. When you think about it that way, it's easier to see where the ISU is coming from. They don't really have a ton of alternatives. If they postpone until 2021, then what? Run one huge mega-season from Jan 2021 right through til the end of Olys? And then skip holding World's so everyone can get a rest, and go back to normal schedule in fall 2022? The virus will still be around, so there's no guarantee that doing that would work any better.

I did NOT hear that. *runs for the blessed salt and the holy water* Begone, evil thought, begone!

I wonder what that means for the 4A. ....actually, think about what this means for a skater like Donovan, who still needed Challengers to rise up the rankings and get invited to more GPs...and who now is effectively stranded far from suitable competition. The only GPs he could get to would SkAm or SCI, and he's likely to not be allowed into either country because of the COVD situation. I heard this morning on the radio that the Mexican government is essentially planning to let the virus run it's course there. They have the third highest numbers of deaths from it in the world, but because their hospitals aren't overwhelmed with patients the government isn't taking any steps...so it's pretty likely travellers from Mexico will be persona non grata for a while. So how is Donovan supposed to get to any competitions?

Oh man - that's going to be the War of the Roses practically.

Yes, but Yuzu would win all the spots. I know he'd try mightily, but I just can't envision him doing pairs or ice dance all by himself... Joking apart, it's not a bad idea. IMO there won't be a GPF( I know ISU said they have to have it. But we'll see.) Now to sort out 4CC, if they can. Also, NHK with only Japanese athletes and maybe some Korean ones? It's going to be a bloodbath, especially in the women's. They're all so good.

Told ya Skate Canada would become the ice dance GP. By what the ISU said there, Yuzu can only go to SCi and NHK - and SCI would definitely only be if the restrictions on travel ease up.

All RusFed cares about is that someone Russian wins medals. It doesn't matter who. If Eteri promises that Scherbakova can do it, while simultaneously character-assassinating Kosto, I doubt they'd care too much.

More to the point, who is going to be able to come if anyone entering the country is still required to do a 14 day quarantine by that time? The thing is, I could actually see some of the GPs more-or-less working. For example, Europe has relatively few travel restrictions within the Schengen Zone at this point, and there are enough skaters who train in Europe already that you could have a decent field of competitors. So IdF could go ahead, and probably CoR too - without live audiences, one would assume. SCI would probably become the ice dance GP because so many international ice dance teams are already here in Canada training, so they wouldn't have to cross international borders to attend. However, in singles and pairs (especially singles women) it would be difficult to get enough competitors if they can't travel from outside the country without having to quarantine. SkAm would by necessity have to include only skaters currently training in the US. That leaves Cup of China, which is already a very open question since China has banned sporting events of this nature until 2021, - and the NHK Cup. We all know Japan could easily fill the field with their own singles skaters without even needing to invite other countries, but the situation is very different in ice dance and pairs. I don't know what restrictions Japan has put on people entering the country from abroad, but depending on how things go there(right now it's not looking so good tho), they might end up being the only country to host a 'normal' GP. NHK Cup is also at the end of the series so there's more time for the virus situation to improve by then. So it's not as impossible as it might seem....but it's not exactly easy, and it's certainly not going to be 'as normal'. all of the above is with the caveat that there be no live audiences permitted, only TV coverage/streaming. If any of the countries decide to allow live audiences, I personally would think it very reasonable if skaters refused to participate in those events.

It's at times like these that I'm forced to remember that the ISU is, in essence, a volunteer organization, and like all volunteer organizations, is not run by the best people for the job, or the smartest, but by the ones who want the job bad enough...who are usually people with a vested interest in certain outcomes. So decisions are made accordingly. That being said, just because they decide to go ahead with it doesn't mean the skaters are going to participate.

Latest Romsky. He talks about the difficulty and uncertainty of training programs when you don't even know if there's going to be a season.

The real open question is the fairness and transparency of judging in such a set up.

Maybe this is what Eteri had planned all along? If so, that's low. ...like, Tonya Harding's ex-husband giving Nancy Kerrigan a club to the knee, low.

In one of Roman's early return-to-ice vlogs after the lockdown, he said that he was limiting his spin training to two a day because they make him nauseous and sometimes he bursts capillaries in his skin because of the centripetal forces of the spin forcing the blood in his face outward. If it's like that, I wouldn't want to train spins either.

...is it bad that I popped by this thread tonight just in the hopes of finding more Russian tea?

Nam has posted an extremely cute puppy pic: