General Skating Chat

[Sombreuil]

59 minutes ago, Danibellerika said:

 

"Nathan Chen is arguably a bigger favorite at this week’s world championships than going into the Olympics"

 

Jeee, that's an interesting new tune than what they weren't singing going into the Olympics.  This would be news to me!!  

Didn't they learn their lesson at PC?  Give the kid some breathing room unless you actually want another splatfest.

[xeyra]

1 hour ago, Danibellerika said:

 

"Nathan Chen is arguably a bigger favorite at this week’s world championships than going into the Olympics"

 

Jeee, that's an interesting new tune than what they weren't singing going into the Olympics.  This would be news to me!!  

 

I noticed that too. 

[Danibellerika]

2 hours ago, Aotoshiro said:

Well, TECHNICALLY they are right...he has a bigger chance, since now it's one-in-four, rather than one-in-seven, with three of the big 6 (big7 with Kolyada) are gone off the radar...too bad Nate actually wished for the lesser favorite if this meant he could compete with his half-idolised opponents...

But, why keep a tone of the article coherent with the interview put in it, right?

 

Yeah, his chance is better, but now it's backtracking since he didn't win the olympics.  Suddenly he wasn't a heavy favorite anyway *eyeroll*.  

[yuzupon]

9 hours ago, Danibellerika said:

 

"Nathan Chen is arguably a bigger favorite at this week’s world championships than going into the Olympics"

 

Jeee, that's an interesting new tune than what they weren't singing going into the Olympics.  This would be news to me!!  

 

These so-called journalists,,, and they wonder how 'fake news' gets tagged to them, too. Have some self respect, honestly. Or respect for your profession, at least. Since respecting athletes, your countrymen or otherwise, seems too far fetched apparently. 

 

Sorry, I actually have a lot of respect for journalism as a profession, so this kind of pathetic journalistic practices always manages to bother me. I'll do better next time. Ugh!

[yuzupon]

You could say, I've been waiting for Alice to address the majority of the questions I still have lingering re: men's event at PC.

Here.

• There's explanation with gifs re: Uno's FCCoSp in his FS (as opposed to Zu's lvl3 spin in his SP).
• There's explanation on how, if tech panels were less blinded to Uno's flawed techniques, Fernandez would have gone home with Silver, in addition to this post.
• There's explanation on why Zu was absolutely correct when he said even if Uno had landed that 4Lo (and even given the fact that the tech panel went easy on Uno), he would still have won.
• There's also an explanation of Zu's borderline UR on his 4T at SP - that wasn't called by tech panel but was penalised by the judges anyway, and why the step-out on the 2nd 4T at FS.

(It's rather too early in the morning for tech talk for me, but hey.)

[Lilona]

2 часа назад, yuzupon сказал:

You could say, I've been waiting for Alice to address the majority of the questions I still have lingering re: men's event at PC.

Here.

• There's explanation with gifs re: Uno's FCCoSp in his FS (as opposed to Zu's lvl3 spin in his SP).
• There's explanation on how, if tech panels were less blinded to Uno's flawed techniques, Fernandez would have gone home with Silver, in addition to this post.
• There's explanation on why Zu was absolutely correct when he said even if Uno had landed that 4Lo (and even given the fact that the tech panel went easy on Uno), he would still have won.
• There's also an explanation of Zu's borderline UR on his 4T at SP - that wasn't called by tech panel but was penalised by the judges anyway, and why the step-out on the 2nd 4T at FS.

(It's rather too early in the morning for tech talk for me, but hey.)

I stan her! She is WONDERFUL and FUNNY and her dry humor just die for.

[axelsandwich]

Yuzuru really is held to a stricter standard... and while I'm sure that forces him to be even more precise and perfect with his elements and is how scoring should work, it's always a little ==;; to see evidence of how he tends to be graded at a different standard. I wonder if there exists a certain psychological resistance to awarding perfect marks or suspicion of anything that looks too perfect that factors into the tendency to be much more picky with his elements 

[yuzupon]

34 minutes ago, kaerb said:

Yuzuru really is held to a stricter standard... and while I'm sure that forces him to be even more precise and perfect with his elements and is how scoring should work, it's always a little ==;; to see evidence of how he tends to be graded at a different standard. I wonder if there exists a certain psychological resistance to awarding perfect marks or suspicion of anything that looks too perfect that factors into the tendency to be much more picky with his elements 

When I was teaching, I did put my best students to a higher standard. But I built relationship with them first, so that they know and understand why I do it. So, if Zu's coaches, for example, put him on a higher standard, that makes sense. But for judges judging competition, NO. They are supposed to judge based on what is delivered at the moment it happens. Not based on potential, perceived abilities, reputations, and whatnot. I don't know exactly why the judges/tech panels do it, but it's so hard not to see it as nefarious in nature.

[axelsandwich]

22 minutes ago, yuzupon said:

When I was teaching, I did put my best students to a higher standard. But I built relationship with them first, so that they know and understand why I do it. So, if Zu's coaches, for example, put him on a higher standard, that makes sense. But for judges judging competition, NO. They are supposed to judge based on what is delivered at the moment it happens. Not based on potential, perceived abilities, reputations, and whatnot. I don't know exactly why the judges/tech panels do it, but it's so hard not to see it as nefarious in nature.

oh yes, in theory they absolutely shouldn't be judging based on perceived abilities but...sadly, they do. yuzuru's one of the few skaters who gets harsher judging the more 'perfect' he is. I was just speculating about whether there's a human dimension of resistance like if your first instinct is to throw +3s at him (because his performances seem perfect), you may be more suspicious of that feeling or feel like you need to work extra hard to do your 'job' and hence be harsher, rather than if you know that a skater eg. usually only delivers +1GOE jumps and then they deliver something above your expectations. 

[OonsieHui]

The most annoying part to me personally isn't just the different standard, it's the way the standards swing so drastically. Yuzu isn't just judged harder, and everyone else judged 'normally', instead he's judged much harder while others are judged much more leniantly and get GOEs and PCS like candy, even in the same competition! 

[yuzupon]

Yuzuruhanyuedits on tumblr: post on GOE ft. the one and only.

 

One thing I find interesting is that apparently at PC, while Zu received the most GOEs, followed by Fernandez, it was Jin that came in 3rd.

[KatjaThera]

I've been catching up a bit reading posts here and I have two main comments.

 

One regarding the possibly simplification of Transitions, by including arm movements and crossovers, you'd think they noticed nobody gets very high Transitions scores, so they decided to artificially increase them. However, I've always been wondering what more Yuzu needs to do to get high Transition scores, aside from all the stuff he's already doing? It's the judges who seem to have some stupidly high standard of what transitions should be, so they never give high scores, rather than skaters needing help along the way... Or maybe they never gave Yuzu high transition scares because they thought he didn't use his arms enough or some such thing...

 

The other, someone mentioned 4A between spread eagles and how even Yuzu would have a hard time with that. I was just looking through the new book last night and something that caught my eye was - IF I understood correctly; I'll double check - Yuzu saying that he learned all his jumps with SE entries. Apparently Tsuzuki-sensei was the one who got him used to it like that and he also said he rarely does jumps without steps into them. So SE-4A-SE might be the only way we see 4A the first time... (or at least SE-4A)

 

All of this makes me conclude that skaters are one thing, but coaches play a huge part. Good coaches can truly help skaters meet their full potential, while, sadly, I believe not so good coaches can ruin good skaters. Yuzu has been blessed with awesome coaches - and well, partly, he chose them really well, too - and I think it's a bit part of his success story.

[Xen]

11 minutes ago, KatjaThera said:

I've been catching up a bit reading posts here and I have two main comments.

 

One regarding the possibly simplification of Transitions, by including arm movements and crossovers, you'd think they noticed nobody gets very high Transitions scores, so they decided to artificially increase them. However, I've always been wondering what more Yuzu needs to do to get high Transition scores, aside from all the stuff he's already doing? It's the judges who seem to have some stupidly high standard of what transitions should be, so they never give high scores, rather than skaters needing help along the way... Or maybe they never gave Yuzu high transition scares because they thought he didn't use his arms enough or some such thing...

 

The other, someone mentioned 4A between spread eagles and how even Yuzu would have a hard time with that. I was just looking through the new book last night and something that caught my eye was - IF I understood correctly; I'll double check - Yuzu saying that he learned all his jumps with SE entries. Apparently Tsuzuki-sensei was the one who got him used to it like that and he also said he rarely does jumps without steps into them. So SE-4A-SE might be the only way we see 4A the first time... (or at least SE-4A)

 

All of this makes me conclude that skaters are one thing, but coaches play a huge part. Good coaches can truly help skaters meet their full potential, while, sadly, I believe not so good coaches can ruin good skaters. Yuzu has been blessed with awesome coaches - and well, partly, he chose them really well, too - and I think it's a bit part of his success story.

Regarding what you said:

1) Arm movements: I'm not a fan of the flailing arms syndrome, and that worries me-an emphasize on arms in a program, will just get translated as windmill arms. But if the judges give him less transitions scores because he doesn't have arm movements, I'm sorry, I vehemently disagree with their assessment. Yuzu does not move his arms without purpose-his arm movement, whether it is from spins, jumps or step sequences all have a purpose, from shoulder to finger tips. If it gets to the point where footwork is replaced by arm-work, then sorry figure skating, I don't recognize you anymore.

 

2) Steps and Jumps: I am a bit surprised if skaters don't practice jumps with steps/different entries. It was a long long time ago when I actually devoted a significant amount of time to skating, but one of the things I remember was a coach requesting that I learn multiple entries to every single jump as soon as I can stablize it (and then stablize it with all jumps). That is how you show you have good control and good technique (rolling 3-turns into loop jumps are nightmares btw), and is necessary later on for choreography reasons. So it's not really just an issue of good coaching ( I think most coaches would ask you use mutliple entries to practice your jumps), but actually good technique to be able to jump from a variety of entry methods. And that is why we say Yuzu has one of the best jump techniques in the skating world.

 

[KatjaThera]

5 minutes ago, Xen said:

Regarding what you said:

1) Arm movements: I'm not a fan of the flailing arms syndrome, and that worries me-an emphasize on arms in a program, will just get translated as windmill arms. But if the judges give him less transitions scores because he doesn't have arm movements, I'm sorry, I vehemently disagree with their assessment. Yuzu does not move his arms without purpose-his arm movement, whether it is from spins, jumps or step sequences all have a purpose, from shoulder to finger tips. If it gets to the point where footwork is replaced by arm-work, then sorry figure skating, I don't recognize you anymore.

 

2) Steps and Jumps: I am a bit surprised if skaters don't practice jumps with steps/different entries. It was a long long time ago when I actually devoted a significant amount of time to skating, but one of the things I remember was a coach requesting that I learn multiple entries to every single jump as soon as I can stablize it (and then stablize it with all jumps). That is how you show you have good control and good technique (rolling 3-turns into loop jumps are nightmares btw), and is necessary later on for choreography reasons. So it's not really just an issue of good coaching ( I think most coaches would ask you use mutliple entries to practice your jumps), but actually good technique to be able to jump from a variety of entry methods. And that is why we say Yuzu has one of the best jump techniques in the skating world.

 

1) I agree. I have no idea if that's why they don't give him higher scores, because it always baffles me, but I guess that would make the twisted kind of sense ISU rules generally seem to have. But I agree, pointless arm movements are pointless and shouldn't matter. Nice and purposeful arm movements, on top of difficult steps getting extra points, yes. But not by themselves or with simple steps. (Which is really weird for me to say since I'd probably fall just from standing on ice skates, but still.)

 

2) That makes sense. But is it really the case? Though, of course, there's simple steps and difficult steps. I'll come back with more details about what he said after I get home and check the text again, so as not to give wrong information ^_^ It seemed pretty interesting to me, but as I'm new to the technical stuff, it might actually not be a big deal. lol

[Lilona]

Alena Kostornaya landed triple Axel... And with difficult enter. And it looks a lot like Yuzuru's enter oO. And Massimiliano Ambesi liked my comment T___T I'm happy