Fay

Welcome back - always nice to see you here!

I think it's down to a different tradition of translating Japanese names into Russian, so if you go all traditional you get S(y)oma Uno, Daisuke Takahasi etc. But there are a number of commentators who happily call Shoma Shoma. I'm well used to that now. If you compare it to the same name of Huxley being translated as 'Гексли" and "Хаксли", then you just learn to ignore such niceties.

No, i think it was Averbukh (the one on the left) choreographing for Kovtun, Misha choreographed for Voronov, I think...

Oh it's OK, our dear admins haven't yet started telling us we're short of space.

GPF 2013 LP Romeo and Juliet ESP-RUS Hanyu has an excellent headstart after his short program, over 12 points – that’s around the value of 4T2T with positive GOE, so only after not executing such a combination will he lose this headstart. Well, what will Hanyu show us today? It’s clear there’ll be two quads, but how well will he jump them? Hanyu’s got a strong layout, the layout from his last season, 4T, 4S and two 3A, speaking about the difficulty of the program. He’s also got wonderful choreography. David Wilson and Jeffrey Buttle choreographed his programs. So Romeo and Juliet, Nino Rota’s music. (Yuzu falls on his 4S) well, yes, yes. One could see at the entry that he’d fail his 4S. There he lost something – around 4 points or 5. But he lands his 4T. 3A3T. In the second half of the program. The BV is multiplied by 1.1. And one more 3A off his trademark entry and 2T with arms aloft. This seemingly slight young man has so much strength, because it’s incredibly difficult to do two triple axels in a row in the second half of the program – the muscles get tired (literally, get clogged). (After Yuzu nearly collapses after his final spin) Oh, hold on, hold on! Well! While he was doing his jumps, there were still some reserves of energy, as soon as… Is that an injury? Or has he just run of his steam? The technical score is something… 102 and more, incredible! I think the Japanese audience are being quite reserved, as such a skate deserves a much louder applause in order to put pressure onto the judges so that they didn’t have any doubt who won today, who won here in Fukuoka. Yes, it was a brilliant skate and Yuzuru Hanyu has shown us how to beat Patrick Chan. Well, we’ll wait, but honestly… he made one mistake – the failure to execute 4S at the beginning, where he lost 5 points, but that was it. The layout is excellent, just excellent! The boy is 19, he won the Junior World Championship back in 2010, so he was… 15 years old then! By the way, he’s… is it December 7th, I lost count… no, it’s December 6th today, he has his birthday tomorrow. Yes, he skated very well in the Vancouver Olympic season… they’re showing us that only mistake he made when he landed on the back side of the blade and his body went backwards o his 4S… and this is his 4T, very high quality, very well executed! Yes, he became a junior world champion in the Olympic season. He could have gone there, but he only came 4th at the Nationals, so he didn’t go to the Olympics. (hmmm, they’re confusing seasons 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 here). Next year, he was second in the 4CC and the year before last he won the bronze medal. So these are the milestones of his career, though we can also add up last year’s GPF silver medal. But I think that this year he’ll add the gold medal to that silver… we’ll wait of course, we see Brian Orser jumping for joy at the rink board because I think that Brian Orser has been doing some mental arithmetic and he knows how much his student will get for all these jumps and spins. It seemed during the skate that this skinny boy, made of iron, but the last spin showed that he was skating on willpower alone up to the last second, but he was very tired. 293.25! 193.41 for his free program, this is his personal best, and he came only 2 points behind the world record by Patrick Chan in Paris three week ago. So we congratulate Yuzuru Hanyu! Patrick Chan has failed to win his second GPF in a row – maybe he did it on purpose here, I don’t know… Yuzuru Hanyu has finished higher than him for the second time in a row, though last time there was Daisuke Takahashi, this year, Takahashi is absent, but there’s Yuzuru Hanyu who made the Japanese public happy.

Anna Pogorilaya's having her SP choreographed by Camerlengo and FP by Morozov. http://rsport.ru/figure_skating/20170602/1121280364.html

you should trust your brain more and give it more free rein - it's capable of producing amazing stuff!

I'm just here to say how much I'll miss this if I never see it again...

not that I heard of.

Yes. That's the way most children get into sports, it seems - their parents want to help them to overcome some disease. here are some exceptions, of course.

some more Adian. Moody, dark, and hot.

Those pictures come from this interview http://www.marieclaire.ru/stil-zjizny/evgeniya-medvedeva-interview-2017/ She considers herself no longer a child, but not yet an adult - she's as responsible as an adult, but yet her reactions are sometimes those of a kid (heh, Zhenya, it never goes, btw). Her training session starts at 10 a.m. and finishes at 7 p.m. - the onle free day is Monday when she studies. She's having her final school exams now. She did play usual children's games - in he sports' school, Sambo-70. She has loads of soft toys in her room as well as her first pair of Edea skates she competed in. She loves competing and performing and she goes into her own shell before and during her competitive skates. She doesn't panic. Her mother got her into FS because she was weak and because the mum had been a skater herself. She's been with Tutberidze for 10 years now and they're seem to be equals. Her nickname among the Japanese is Medo-chan. She's planning to stay for at least two Olympic cycles.

those who've been missing Adian PItkeev - here he is, not quite skating though

Oh gosh, I'm so thankful my relatives also don't get to give interviews on me too! LOL But they'd probably never diss me in public.

Wow. Now didn't Asada train abroad once?

Yuzu is just this incredible find for advertisers. I hope they pay him well!

I'd wake up screaming in cold sweat if I dreamed of that ever!

You mean the old FF was easier to manage? LOL

don't know - I'm just trying to envisage some society somewhere which would find that horror attractive. There were none in the past, there are none in the present - so ergo, they should appear in the future? (I'm also helped by the fever I'm running)

Or Yuzu's taking part in a sci-fi film shooting... :)

I believe that tailors and seamstresses don't believe, can't believe anyone can be this tiny - so they invariably make clothes too big for him

He just trusts these people too much!!!

As for that awful outfit.. I just admire Yuzu's heroism in putting on any sartorial atrocity on.

Share some of it with us. We're having a rotten summer so far. Have been promised another gale.

No, it's actually perfectly on topic. I remember seeing rhythmic gymnasts doing their stretch exercises - the younger of them were literally crying because it was so painful - and I felt so sorry for them. I also had a student whose daughter was a rhythmic gymnast up until recently (they had to give up because she was deemed to be too small and too short to ever make an elite gymnast) - coaches were always on the lookout for girls with superflexible joints like you, because that's what gave them a headstart. But I wonder if the most flexible of them are quite as quite as good jumpers - Alina Kabaeva could do wonders with her body flexibility, but she didn't jump as high as others, I think.