rubyblue

I also hope he'll skip NHK. JSF doesn't deserve him after how he was treated this season and how ridicolous the schedule was. I think he'll do Skate Canada (his brand new beloved comp) and.. not sure, maybe Russia? France is maybe even better option timewise if Nate doesn't choose it this time. Cup of China is to close to SCI and final is in China as well so I don't think he'll choose it.

I would love him to stay a bit longer, master that 4axel, but at the other hand - after experiencing this ISU&co clownery for entire season with its great finale rn I would totally understand if he decided to take "bye bye, now I'm going to earn money only for myself and taking my fans with me, sorry not sorry" road. But it's probably not his way Although, I'm too tired to think about it and will just wait for anything new (competitive or not) with excitment. I'm not going to torture myself and engage in long discussion about possible scenarios. Let the boy do what he wants and enjoy what he shares - anything will be precious. I have to say, the biggest disapointment of cancelling worlds is not seeing that shiny neon version of Seimei costume again. Such a royalty. Also, what will happen with the interview by Scott Russell from CBC? I hope they will publish it for consolation. You can't play with fanyus like that.

Such an unusual season. Yuzu didn't get injured, won skate canada, won 4cc, lost comps that he used to win, changed his program in the middle of the season and now worlds are cancelled. This boy can't be bored in his life for a single minute.

Utashin official IG post about the end of the season:

Absolutety, he always comes with some unique hand and head movements to match music accents and its character. And his range of hand (and head) movements as well as its freedom during spinning is second to none. Speed is not the only factor that makes spins good. I thinks this is a main thing that makes Yuzu so special in general - he's probably the only skater who can use absolutely every athletic element (jumps, steps, spins, transitions) as a part of interpretation, they're not just sequence of elements glued with choreo/transitions in between, they're fundaments of his programs, part of his artistic language, equally set to the whole image. Unfortunately, there's no place in the scoring system that can make a justice to that (or - there's no will or competence by the judges side to use the system to make that justice). He's surpassed the frames of this sport That's why I'm on the board with the idea for seperate panel to score PCS - to have some judges who actually can watch a program and see it as a whole peace to be able to notice that differences. It's pretty much imposible rn. Imo, even viewers follow mostly techbox in the corner of the screen while watching competitions irt.

Love that interview. Rika's mind really reminds me of Yuzu's. She's so mentally strong and confident but at the same time so grounded, kind and humble. Great maturity for such a young person. She makes it a bit easier to be her supporter - I kind of never have to worry too much about her, because of her stoicism, patience and bright attitude. (Only thing I worry about is biased scoring against her, but that's a different story).

In this thread you can find compilation of recent statemens by Betina Popova about bad coaching practises and developing eating disorders in FS. Some really alarming stuff.

Little Dima braiding some girl's hair. The cutes thing. Soothing.

With current changes in developing technique and the standards of its evaluation I'm close to opinion that all quads (except axel) should have the same base value and GOE factor. And it shouldn't be higher than current 4T value. Unless judges start to look into the details of take-off, general quality etc,. it;s only matter of preference and with so many tricks to cheat it, quads are not worthy such money as they bring now. Athough it's definitely not the vision of sport that I would like to welcome, I don;t have any hope left that current set of judges and ISU officials would be ever competent to apply some decent evalutation.

I stan "Yuzuru Hanyu's Mind" as menu button

In general, I think that whole definition of artistry and expression in FS is based on standards and dance tradition that originally come from western (white) culture. There is a quiet assumption that it's universal, but (imo) dominant is not equal to universal. So for some of the athletes, who come out of this context it may be hard to adjust to those standards which aren't natural to them. It's much harder to perform this way than within your own tradition. Plus - you need to have access to choreographers who will help you to work on that, and basically all top choerographers are from western countries, so it's expensive and not everybody can afford that (and there's a language barrier). But if those athletes will stick to their own tradition of expression, there's very high probablity that their performance will be misanderstood, by judges but also by commentators, experts etc., cause most of them have no competence/tools to evaluate or interpet that.There are different cultural patterns of expression, but they're not treated equally. Asher said one more interesting thing about that: In addition to the racism inherent in that coach's comments, Hill's also heard multiple comments about certain races of skaters being unable to express themselves on the ice because of the shape of their features. "But when you see a white skater who is [unable to express], they don't say all 'white skaters can't express,'" said Hill. "But if an Asian skater doesn't express, it's all Asian skaters. " I can totally see what he means and it's very disturbing.

And with this serious injury she was still pushed at Tutberidze camp to learn and practise quad toeloop and we will never see her again (in ladies field). Elisabet is also gone for the whole season rn. Of course, injuries can happen everywhere, but based on so many examples from this team, I think they tend to push their skaters too hard when sympotms if injury or health issues appear and they react too late, when injuries are in already in bad conditions. And they always give some back stories about the reason of the injury (genetic condition, previous injury etc.) so I dare to have some doubts. Too many promising atheltes from this camp have already disapeared from the scene to make me blindly believe all those explanations (like Erokhov, Pitkeev and those mentionted before). Imo, those kids train too hard in the time when they body should develop and it causes some unusual health conditions - some can go through it and come back, others don't. It works like pipeline. Still, hopefully it won't be a case for Daniil, as it wasn't for Kostornaia so far. Never too late to learn sth and change sth.

Yes I do. I think he summed it up perfectly in this sentence: "It's very naive to think racism doesn't exist in the sport when it does because it exists in the world".

Asher Hill (former Canadian ice dancer, you can also know him from the CBC show with Dylam Moscovitch) shared his thoughts on racism and white supremacy in figure skating:

It's good that he's resting now, but... I wonder about the timing of the reaction. Knowing Kanysheva's story, Tsurskaya's story and some of the other from this camp, his condition may be harsh at the moment if they decided to WD him from Worlds. They don't do it often last minute, they push their skaters the to the limit, even when injuries occures. He's very young, small and doesn't have an athletic body (yet) and he's at the age when puberty hits. Still, only this season they pushed him to jump 4lutz in GP and YOG, 4lutz and 4flip at RusNats and 4Sal at Jr RusNats. All with the technique which is far from solid and sustainable. He jumps multiplied pre-rotated quads, while even his 3axel is very unstable and often UR. I suppose, those problems with joints haven't appeared just right now from nowhere. So I have some doubts with this sudden care for his health. If they realy cared, they would have designed balanced training methods for such a talented skater. What's the point of endanger his health and entire future career like that in very first junior season? Anyway, hope they've learned sth, he will recover and get back on track with safe and careful development plan.

Dasa Grm wrote very interesting and important post about her journey to get tech min for Worlds, after ISU raised them in the middle of the season (turned out, unfortunately, unsucessful): https://dasagrm.wordpress.com/2020/02/27/a-journey-to-collect-the-minimuns-for-wc/

I guess we'll see a lot of spins.

Skate Canada and 4CC - the new happiest comps for fanyus who would have thought... Yuzu is the trollest troll.

The same. Numbers and protocols can tell more about judges and politics, not that much about skaters nowadays. I can already hear all of this artificial excitment that organizers and ISU will try to project in Montreal and all the explosive adjectives from commentator, whoever he/she will be. I will need a lot of wine to survive all the second hand embarrassement. And... award show...(although if Montreal won't be successfull competition for Yuzu, I think I will skip award show, probably don't be able to digest that). Happily, WC will be followed by some great ice shows with Yuzu to give us a chance to recover.

Here's more info about Samsonov's WD. Team doctor said that he has some problem with joints: https://rsport.ria.ru/20200228/1565328263.html

Maybe. It was next to sth about Samsonov, but not directly related, so it could be about very different topic as well. No names were given. Twitter world is chaotic. Sorry for confusion.

Hmm, I read some strange tweet about broken vials, but not share what is the source and if it;s anything reliable.

Do you know why Samsonov is no longer on JWC list (only as substitude)? Injury?

Or even when another country's flag is in someone else's hands.... Frankly speaking (I hope it won't offend anybodie's feelings) he shows similar attitude even to his pooh-towel (folding it carefully) any many, many other things. He just treats people, objects and symbols with care, that's his manner. Shows the same level of respect and attention towards his rivals, to the ice, to coaches, to the audience, to the pooh, to his costumes, to mascots etc.