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Love them. P/C with two new programs this season? I can see why H/D changed their RD with the judges not living their packaging last season, but I’m surprised P/C aren’t keeping Fame!

Yes - I’ve missed watching live skating so much! Between this and Russian test skates we’ve actually got quite a bit to watch this weekend.

I got Stephane’s cat program. I’d just managed to forget it existed, too... “Italian Yuzuru”... well, how else is Yuzu supposed to be the first skater to win everything, including both 4CC and Euros? Pretending he’s Italian is as good of a plan as any other, I suppose.

It's so true, though! That's what makes it particularly annoying that anyone thinks Yuzu's not being humble enough by acknowledging that he draws fans to competitions. I remember the week or so before Worlds, when everyone was debating whether or not it was worth the risk to travel during a pandemic just to see Yuzuru. Personally, I knew it was probably a bad idea, but then Ballade and Seimei and the potential for a quadruple Axel were all there and I was going to grit my teeth and go, even though it was terrifying. So he's not wrong at all that his fans will reluctantly throw caution to the wind just to watch him.

I don't think he's affiliated with JSF, he works in the casino industry. Yuzu has his fair share of antis on Twitter. Best not to engage, in my opinion. Not worth the effort. And if JSF is angry about Yuzu's entirely sensible and well-thought out decision, well... he's never been their favorite. What else is new?

I’m Ballade. I’ll take it.

And you know that “perfect” by his standards involves complex transitions in and out of the jump...

I haven’t seen this particular Citizen picture before and had to share... Now when will the Q&A be released?????

I think you have to be a romantic at heart to skate two different Romeo and Juliet programs.

I worry about him being coached remotely. Remember what happened last season when he didn’t have a coach? Hopefully he trains just as hard with Stephane watching over Zoom as he would if he were at Champery.

Hey now, I resemble those remarks! Anyway, Alyona’s 16. There’s a good chance she’ll go into something completely unrelated to neurosurgery, or even medicine in general. Domestic comps only though, right? She isn’t age eligible for international senior competition unless the ISU changed the rule and I missed it.

I was planning to ask for the weekend of NHK Trophy off of work (assuming Yuzu goes there as he’s in Japan) only to realize it’s a holiday weekend in the US and I’ve already agreed to cover it for a coworker! That’ll teach me to agree to anything without checking the figure skating schedule first...

The ISU is making a bad decision? I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

Yeah, it's not translated, but the very first tweet in Japanese says this is an excerpt from an article published in 2017. Kind of an important detail for the translator to have left out.

Interesting that they opened their call for volunteers - by the 12-week rule Skate Canada has a week to make a decision about SCI. That makes me think they're going to try to hold it in some form or fashion. Also, the ISU's deadline for cancelling Skate America is tomorrow. They can't seriously consider holding it this year, right?

I can't find it now, but I think he said Yuzu was really hard to keep up with. He'd been filming for hours by that point, and Yuzu was the next to last skater. Combine fatigue with Yuzu being an incredibly fast skater, and you have a recipe for one tough program to film. (And isn't that the choreo for right after the 3A, where the music changes in PW, and Yuzu takes off in a different direction? Maybe I've spent too much time watching PW if I can get that from a picture...)

The deadline for making a decision to cancel or to go ahead with Skate America is Friday, if the ISU holds to their 12 week rule. I can't imagine how it could possibly go forward with the US (and Nevada in particular) being in the shape it's in (link to epidemiologic statistics for Nevada), but we should start seeing some decisions regarding the GP series in the next few weeks.

GOE actually doesn't get a 10% bonus for being backloaded - only the base value of the jump is increased. I do agree with you that the jump deserved a +5 across the board, though. So the math should work out to be 8.00 (3A BV) * 1.1 (backloading bonus) + 4.00 (+5 GOE gives 50% of the base value without the bonus) = 12.80 points.

Who says you can’t learn quads in your 30s? (Seriously. If she got a 3A and 4T out of harness, she could easily come back as a singles skater and show those kids a thing or two...)

Yuzu’s voice sounds so much deeper in this video than usual!

On a more cheerful note...

Or Cain/Leduc being allowed to finish their program at Golden Spin 2018 after she fell out of a lift onto her head and was obviously dazed for the rest of the skate. Figure skating needs a head (and neck, @Geo1 is right) injury protocol. We know it’s a high-risk sport, I have no idea why the ISU hasn’t done something.

This is definitely a large part of it. Whenever you do any type of emergency medical training, any level from basic first aid all the way to Advanced Cardiac Life Support (which is fully caring for a cardiac arrest in its first minutes with medications, endotracheal intubation, defibrillation if indicated) has the same first step: ensure that the scene is safe. If you cannot safely care for the first patient, you run the risk of becoming a second patient yourself. And if the scene is not safe, you do not provide care. Full stop. You will fail your test if you skip that step during a certification exam. Certainly, a warmup session with four senior men’s skaters going full speed would qualify as an unsafe scene. It would have taken a few seconds for the referee to realize what had happened, then a bit more time to clear the ice, then the medics had to work out how to get out there on a sheet of ice to tend to Yuzu. Do I think he should have skated? From a medical standpoint, no. Head trauma, regardless of what he said about not feeling like he had a concussion, should have been disqualifying due to the risk of second-impact syndrome. That’s potentially fatal or permanently debilitating, and it would have been all too easy for him to have gotten a second head impact on one of his five falls in that free skate had he been wrong. But do I respect him for making the choice to compete given what was at stake, and seeing how obviously difficult it was for him? A thousand times yes. The ISU just needs better concussion management protocols so that athletes with head injuries (which can certainly impact one’s judgment) don’t have to make those choices. It shouldn’t have been up to him in the first place.

Is there anything she can’t do? Amazing.

There are areas of the US that are exceeding their ICU capacity, and as we’re reopening, many cities’ hospital admissions are spiking again. Due to the fragmented nature of the US’s COVID-19 response, it’s probably more useful to look at our data on a state-by-state basis. Some states are doing well, some are on the brink of a crisis. @yuzuangel Fortunately, I live in an area with high testing levels, low prevalence, and aggressive contact tracing. My rink has limited the number of skaters allowed on ice at any time. I was a bit apprehensive about going at first, but it really does seem to be relatively safe for the time being. Obviously, if our cases start spiking, I’ll stop going... but until then, it was such a relief to get back on the ice for a bit.