Sombreuil

Now that would explain a lot. F isn’t the sharpest knife in the block but he must know the chances of this nasty little piece of backstabbing not getting back to the unfortunate recipient are nil. What I couldn’t work out was why he would shoot himself in the foot like this vis a vis getting YH to skate in his shows, get invitations to Japanese ice shows etc. I thought perhaps it was a flare up of envy, and very very stupid of him to give in to it. But if he’s already got a contract then he has got to keep them happy to keep his shows and his embryo training school going and underwriting their current main man is going to require throwing an old training partner under the bus. It won’t work, but his paymasters have failed using direct means, so now have to resort to indirect methods. That makes sense of this unpleasantness. We think of skaters as individuals but apart from feds there are commercial interests behind them with separate agendas, and especially with ex skaters those commercial considerations can be very powerful once they find themselves out in the wide world trying to get a different dream off the ground. Couple it with the residual …. envy/resentment/whatever - that fuelled the ambiguous references that have suddenly become unambiguously anti an old rink mate and it becomes very clear.

Let’s not hate the teenager - we aren’t JW or AR. Let’s dislike JSF for creating the environment - or dislike aspects of his skating. Have a look at the post Sochi TJ interviews and see the OGM pushed to the sidelines. He’s used to it - it’s been happening for his whole career.

It’s fine! It’s normal here!

The intermittent panics over retirement and the worrying about his ankle so prevalent here lately is reminding me of a previous period - the run up to PC when we had no idea what condition his ankle was in, we weren’t expecting him to troll us about it, and I think it was also when everyone was afraid he would rerun Phantom, apart from the handful of Phantom enthusiasts, of whom I am one. It sort of went in waves - a few pages of panic followed by calm down, followed by renewed panic as the world turned and new fanyus woke up, read the pages and panicked in their turn. Business as usual!

I will laugh like a drain if he skates singles and delayed axel at the gala after all this. He’ll bring the house down if he only skates stroking exercises tbh.

He watched Mao Asada in Sochi- but now he would be mobbed and also distract the attention from the competition. Plus covid - all those unmasked Russians last week?

It’s unfortunate that with NBC dictating the shots on tv and US media being loud and annoying that tends to be how the US comes across to the FS watching world, especially the English speaking part of it. I don’t know many Americans but those I do know seem to pan out across the board pretty much like any other nation I’m familiar with. Unfortunately the loud ones always surge to the front. Perhaps the Fernandez years made us too comfortable with people being uninterested or polite - Spain had no particular skin in the game and largely just were happy when JF won and pleasant when YH did. We don’t mean to criticise each American personally on this forum - only the really aggravating ones (JW- SH)

I think Shoma is an immature, somewhat dozy individual, who accepts what comes to him, was quite happy in Yuzuru’s slipstream and might be equally happy in Yumas. There have been some things reported about him that made me think he was probably rather spoiled and sheltered - I think (hope) that life in Stephane Lambiel’s rink is good for him and helping him to grow up a bit. I wonder if his previous coach thought that he needed to get out of his comfort zone. He doesn’t have very good manners - bit of a spoiled brat. Yuma is young, coached by a father who is from the Japanese skating establishment, with whom he presumably lives. I expect he’s also rather spoiled, and probably has a head full of notions that he didn’t think up for himself, and he too lacks the usual exquisite Japanese politeness we’ve become accustomed to. Idk whether he’s ambitious, or his coach/father is so on his behalf, but at this age it probably produces the same result. I strongly expect him to turn into a Japanese version of Nathan Chen, the Japanese bit being the ability to bend his knees. I will be delighted if he proves me wrong, but more delighted if Shun Sato or Kao Miura improve to challenge him - they seem to have a bit more personality.

I agree. He lives for it and I hope he doesn’t allow the more faint hearted among us to spoil his enjoyment of it, even the meagre enjoyment he always manages to extract from the worst competitions.

Totally different. Look at Russia and the US the two places he’s worked - all that matters is the medal table, and when individuals ’ fail’ ie don’t win prizes for you, revile and denigrate them. They weren’t willing to break themselves on the treadmill of national success. I wish it were possible to unmoor the Olympic movement from the outdated nationalist model but it’s far too late. Postwar would have been the best chance, if the IOC could have said , hang on, look at the black comedy that were the Berlin games, let’s take flags and anthems out and have individuals compete, lots of reconstruction going on, let’s reconstruct our movement for a new world situation. But it’s too bloated to go there now.

Nice! I like that!

Eh, RA is an unreconstructed Soviet era coach - he suffered under a system and everyone else deserves to suffer too in his mindset. He’s an immigrant in the US too, and that does a number on peoples heads sometimes. He can be kind - he was nice to Shoma in France when he was at peak meltdown after leaving coach Fluffy before he found a home in M Lambiels home for peculiar children ( thank you wtf_ skating_doodles). He’s probably feeling a bit savage because his stable is possibly heading into a bit of a lull. Or maybe American journalists annoy him as much as they do me.

My husband has been enduring me ranting about pairs since the team SP - he’s very patient but then I have endured many years of sulks, tears, jubilation and constructing our social lives round the Teams fixture list, so I reckon I am owed some comeback. Also he’s fallen under Sui Wenjings spell so ….

I have hopes that Yuzuru has got a bubble of his own and will stick with it in Beijing- there are a number of covid cases popping up in the various groups at the Olympics, including Lambiel, and frankly I’d prefer him to do the k&c on his own if it means steering clear of the virus.

Bitching about rivals is an early to mid Olympic cycle pastime and is usually done by coaches, unless there’s a genuine personality clash (see Plushenko/Yagadin, Lysacek/Weir). Athletes have sponsorships and fan bases to nurture. Olympics is the time to showcase sporting comradeship and let your Fed and media do the sniping.

I get Stockholm Syndrome feelings from everything she says. That rink eats up young girls, chews them up into flawed champions and spits them out as soon as their bodies give out as though the Soviet Union were still in existence which is not particularly surprising but disappointing.

Probably another thing IOC has outsourced to US media…

It’s nice to hear Mishin appreciate what Yuzuru brings to the ice. Robin Cousins said something similar commenting on H&L, but he was less appreciative- he likes showman skaters, because as he admits that was what he was himself, so like Orser, he was a Fernandez fan. He likes skaters who invite you in, make you complicit in what they’re expressing and sometimes I suspect charm you into overlooking their faults. Yuzuru shows us something extraordinary to be amazed and wonder at, and no American commentator could be as harsh to him as he is to himself when he falls short of his own impossibly high standards. When he perceives a fault he works rigorously to eradicate it - look at his flip, instead of coasting along and hoping the panel will fail to call it, he sorted that edge out. It’s the trait he has in common with Kohei Uchimura. When I was an articled clerk (in the Dark Ages) my principal said there were two sorts of lawyers - the ones who hid the difficult or awkward stuff at the back of the filing cabinet or under the blotter and tried to tell themselves that it would work out ok if they dealt with it next week, and the ones who grasped the nettle and answered that awkward letter first, took that stinker of a file and did whatever needed to be done to sort it out. I think a lot of skaters are encouraged now to put their dodgy techniques out there in the hope that they’ll get away with it instead of doing their best to better that technique.

Impossible not to tbh

This is why I’m hoping that whoever Belinda Noonan is commentating for is somehow available to me because I can’t bear the many many sycophants this occupation

I am soooo grateful to the IOC for selling all the rights to the bloody NBC - once again I shall be up in the small hours. Good to know that the ‘International’ bit of their title is so well represented in the deals they make. Prayer circle for a Belinda Noonan commentary from somewhere I can get a stream - I don’t think I can bear to listen to many of the others. I wonder whether the cats will keep me company- the old cat used to but there were a lot more competitions to watch pre Covid and these two haven’t had a chance to get used to it. I think they’re going to be very puzzled when I settle myself down at 1.30 am with my snacks and some wine. I think I’m going to have to prioritise- I can’t stay up for everything. Men’s , Pairs, mid to later groups of Ladies I think - I can catch up on Ice Dance later in the day.

Oh I know - but how enjoyable would it be to watch him take some of them to pieces?

I get the impression he would positively enjoy it if some rabid US commentator decided to engage with him over it - I suspect we might all enjoy it too…..

Agreed wholeheartedly , but he would have done that in an ice show, which would be more than enough acknowledgement of the people in question to my mind, and would have avoided the extra personal pressure of doing justice in competition to something that was a gift for them, but that’s his choice. I’m a little sour about it because I don’t think either reacted as they ought to such an honour, although their reactions were completely in character for them both.

He has many excellent qualities but one that tends to be overlooked is his obstinacy. Injury and illness disrupted his mental timetable so many times - 2014/15, 2017/18, 2018/19, Covid etc but he doesn’t give up, just adjusts his schedule and forges on. (I’m sure 4Loop was way off schedule because of 2014/15, same with 4Ltz.). I can’t think of another skater who would be able to do this repeatedly, and it is that underlying stubbornness that is the foundation of this ability and I for one am profoundly grateful for it. I think not taking that into account is where western media, coaches, ISU, JSF et al delude themselves . They think belittling his achievements, underscoring his efforts, promoting others, subtly (and frequently not subtly at all ) trying to undermine him, mocking his huge fan following, the Pooh bears etc will work, but all that does to a stubborn person is drive them on, to continue to improve, to continue to strive for the best and hardest he can do ( including upgrading the Pooh bear! ). That obstinacy is what underpins his extraordinary vision and helps him keep picking himself up from the setbacks where a lesser competitor would decide that enough is enough, even without all the criticism and politicking. I wonder whether with no injuries or illness an earlier 4L, 4Ltz, and possibly 4A would have had him retiring after PC? How happy ISU would have been. I really enjoy the fact that his continued career has been an unspoken ‘ Get over it - not everything is about you’ to the figure skating establishment, who are too hubristic to see it. For him the skating is the only thing it is really about. I find it interesting that he feels he lost his way a bit after PC. I enjoyed the two Os but I would have preferred him to have carried on in his own way rather than do one tribute programme, much less two alongside each other. Tribute could have waited until ice shows imho, but gratitude and appreciation of the qualities of others are also traits and he wouldn’t be the same person without them. LMEY and Ten chi feel like a reset, and I’m thrilled to have them and Rondo.