Team Japan

[luvsk8]

36 minutes ago, WinForPooh said:

@LadyLou There's a piece up by Jack that talks about how having Dai and Kana at Beijing will help Team Japan's podium chances in the team event, and Jack is pretty often used as a media contact by JSF to get their POV out. 

 

I think Team KoKo is the better choice...

[Vadrouille]

3 hours ago, Sombreuil said:

Am I alone in finding it odd that if they are aiming for Beijing he is going to carry on with singles this season and switch next season with such a short time left?  If they were really serious wouldn’t they start now?  

In my humble opinion, Dai and Kana for obvious raisons, they aim to be able to skate ID in the Team event at the Olympics in Beijing 2020 so maybe Team Japan can win a medal in Team event. Even that is quite hard to get to. I can't imagine they pretend to be able to beat all the excellent teams in Ice Dance at the Olympics to be on Olympics Ice Dance podium,  like the French couple Gabrielle/Guillaume, or the American couples, or Russian couples, or even Canadian couples.

- I always find it strange that Yuzuru is not the favourite skater for JSF, even there is a group of loud and hard haters in Japan who is not shy to speak loudly against him.

- I always find it strange that Yuzuru is never invited to skate in Japan Open, even after his Sochi gold medal in 2014, even after his second gold medal in Peochang in 2018.

Japan Open always invite some chosen ones like Dai, Shoma, Mao or Akiko for Japan, for Men singles  there are Abbott, Pluschenko, Lambiel, Patrick, Javier Fernandez. Now they invite also the best American and Russian skaters, like Nathan, Vincent Zhou, Alina Zagitova , Trusova. I am happy for them to get the invitation every year.

- I also find it strange that Yuzuru was never invited to skate at shows in Japan like The Ice, and other shows like Friends on ice etc...

Yuzuru has participated in one show The Ice back in 2011 or 2012, then never again. I suppose that once he retires, he has to organize his own ice shows if he wants so skate.

- I also find it uncomprehensible that JSF can admire, support, appreciate or  invite other skaters champions like Pluschenko, Lambiel

Patrick, Fernandez or Nathan, but not their own champion Yuzuru.

Winning 2 Olympics gold medal in 2 consecutive Olympics since Dick Button in 66 years is not big enough for them .

I am not Japanese, I don't live in Japan so I don't understand a lot of things the JSF is doing.

Now with your informative posts here, I guess I understand a little bit more of their mentality, but not very much.

 

[yuzuangel]

I don't think Dai and Kana need to beat the top ice dance teams to aim for a team medal (what are Canada's chances, you think?)

 

They just have to not be in the running for last place...

[WinForPooh]

I don't think we know what all ice shows Yuzu is invited to, tbh, and same goes for things like Japan Open. A lot of it has to do with sponsorships, too, I believe. FaOI is sponsored by P&G, I think? Yuzu had a pretty long contract with them.

 

I don't think he accepts every invitation he gets, and I'm sure there's a lot of politics behind who gets invited to what, but ice shows are put on by people who want to make money so he'd be able to go to just about any ice show he wanted to whenever he retires, I'm pretty sure of that. 

[andchipzz]

35 minutes ago, Vadrouille said:

In my humble opinion, Dai and Kana for obvious raisons, they aim to be able to skate ID in the Team event at the Olympics in Beijing 2020 so maybe Team Japan can win a medal in Team event. Even that is quite hard to get to. I can't imagine they pretend to be able to beat all the excellent teams in Ice Dance at the Olympics to be on Olympics Ice Dance podium,  like the French couple Gabrielle/Guillaume, or the American couples, or Russian couples, or even Canadian couples.

- I always find it strange that Yuzuru is not the favourite skater for JSF, even there is a group of loud and hard haters in Japan who is not shy to speak loudly against him.

- I always find it strange that Yuzuru is never invited to skate in Japan Open, even after his Sochi gold medal in 2014, even after his second gold medal in Peochang in 2018.

Japan Open always invite some chosen ones like Dai, Shoma, Mao or Akiko for Japan, for Men singles  there are Abbott, Pluschenko, Lambiel, Patrick, Javier Fernandez. Now they invite also the best American and Russian skaters, like Nathan, Vincent Zhou, Alina Zagitova , Trusova. I am happy for them to get the invitation every year.

- I also find it strange that Yuzuru was never invited to skate at shows in Japan like The Ice, and other shows like Friends on ice etc...

Yuzuru has participated in one show The Ice back in 2011 or 2012, then never again. I suppose that once he retires, he has to organize his own ice shows if he wants so skate.

- I also find it uncomprehensible that JSF can admire, support, appreciate or  invite other skaters champions like Pluschenko, Lambiel

Patrick, Fernandez or Nathan, but not their own champion Yuzuru.

Winning 2 Olympics gold medal in 2 consecutive Olympics since Dick Button in 66 years is not big enough for them .

I am not Japanese, I don't live in Japan so I don't understand a lot of things the JSF is doing.

Now with your informative posts here, I guess I understand a little bit more of their mentality, but not very much.

 

This should be asked and answered in general thread in my opinion but I will try:

1. Unless Yuzuru care and do legal action against those haters, then nobody can shut them, just like how it happens with all public figures in every part of the world.

2. You talk about Japan Open. It is held around October right? It clashes with important competitions that he choose to concentrate in: GPS and GPF. So even if they invite him, it is more likely that he will not attend. And how do we know that they don't invite him?
3. He appears in almost all Ice Shows in 2014 and 2015 until it was revealed in 2016 that he suffered from lisfranc injury which prevented him from attending any shows in 2016, and then there was an agreement between all party involved that he would limit his ice shows appearance. 
4. The thing is, Yuzuru is being backed by a person who was defeated in a faction/political war in JSF (Shirota), cmiiw. According to Shirota, she was one of the main reason of Yuzuru's success, she was his supporter all the way, and furthermore she was involved in moving him to Toronto, and even now she is still supporting him through ANA. Yuzuru's presence and success all happen outside of the current JSF management influence, while the athletes that they sponsor, none has achieved such unrivalled consistency: Yuzuru always get gold and silver in allll competition he is ever involved in since the start of 2013-2014 season. In many ways, this imply that the current JSF management is incompetent compare to Shirota's management (because it is under her management Shizuka Arakawa become gold medalist in Olympic 2006). Shirota is known for her talent development camp but she got involved in embezzlement scandal by ex-president of JSF at that time.

 

Moreover, you should know that Yuzuru does not have best of health compare to other athletes, to the point that he got influenza just before JNats 2016, and then asthma attack 2 weeks before WC 2017. Furthermore, the reason for his fall just before NHK Trophy 2017 is because he caught fever and force himself to practice for NHK Trophy 2017. So it is more likely that his team tries to limit the competition and show that he attends so he can maintain good health for the important competitions that will count toward his World Ranking.

[sweetwater]

1 hour ago, Vadrouille said:

In my humble opinion, Dai and Kana for obvious raisons, they aim to be able to skate ID in the Team event at the Olympics in Beijing 2020 so maybe Team Japan can win a medal in Team event. Even that is quite hard to get to. I can't imagine they pretend to be able to beat all the excellent teams in Ice Dance at the Olympics to be on Olympics Ice Dance podium,  like the French couple Gabrielle/Guillaume, or the American couples, or Russian couples, or even Canadian couples.

- I always find it strange that Yuzuru is not the favourite skater for JSF, even there is a group of loud and hard haters in Japan who is not shy to speak loudly against him.

- I always find it strange that Yuzuru is never invited to skate in Japan Open, even after his Sochi gold medal in 2014, even after his second gold medal in Peochang in 2018.

Japan Open always invite some chosen ones like Dai, Shoma, Mao or Akiko for Japan, for Men singles  there are Abbott, Pluschenko, Lambiel, Patrick, Javier Fernandez. Now they invite also the best American and Russian skaters, like Nathan, Vincent Zhou, Alina Zagitova , Trusova. I am happy for them to get the invitation every year.

- I also find it strange that Yuzuru was never invited to skate at shows in Japan like The Ice, and other shows like Friends on ice etc...

Yuzuru has participated in one show The Ice back in 2011 or 2012, then never again. I suppose that once he retires, he has to organize his own ice shows if he wants so skate.

- I also find it uncomprehensible that JSF can admire, support, appreciate or  invite other skaters champions like Pluschenko, Lambiel

Patrick, Fernandez or Nathan, but not their own champion Yuzuru.

Winning 2 Olympics gold medal in 2 consecutive Olympics since Dick Button in 66 years is not big enough for them .

I am not Japanese, I don't live in Japan so I don't understand a lot of things the JSF is doing.

Now with your informative posts here, I guess I understand a little bit more of their mentality, but not very much.

 

 

In addition to what @andchipzz wrote above, Japan Open is an event produced by IMG (https://www.img.com/) and sponsored by Kinoshita Group, so they mainly invite skaters managed by IMG (such as Nathan, Javi) or skaters sponsored by Kinoshita (such as Satoko, Koshiro this year) or other sponsors of the event. (such as KOSE this year, which supports Rika Kihira) It is not clear why Yuzu hasn't taken part in this event, but joining this event is not necessarily beneficial for skaters since this event doesn't have SP. Skaters cannot see how judges evaluate their SP as they do in other season-opening CS events. Seeing how Yuzu has competed in the past seasons, I think he would turn down this event even if he gets invited.

 

As to other Japanese ice shows, most of them have their headliners like Yuzu for FaOI. The headliner of Friends on Ice is Shizuka or Daisuke. The headliner of The Ice used to be Mao, but now they promote the event focusing on Alina, Nathan, Shoma. Inviting someone who has a bigger title is a bit difficult since they would have to adjust the show's structure.

For your reference, here is my past post about Japanese shows:

 

[rockstaryuzu]

8 hours ago, Sombreuil said:

Am I alone in finding it odd that if they are aiming for Beijing he is going to carry on with singles this season and switch next season with such a short time left?  If they were really serious wouldn’t they start now?  

I can't see how they're going to do it, myself. 

[rockstaryuzu]

6 hours ago, WinForPooh said:

I'd raise my eyebrows if Patrick Chan suddenly made such an announcement too and Patrick is the better skater between the two

Yeah, I don't think it would ever happen. Canada has plenty of good ice dance teams and none of them would just step aside for Patrick. 

 

For that matter, Tim and Misato are doing okay (although she has that concussion right now) so I find this announcement more than a little rude to them. 

[rockstaryuzu]

6 hours ago, WinForPooh said:

@LadyLou There's a piece up by Jack that talks about how having Dai and Kana at Beijing will help Team Japan's podium chances in the team event, and Jack is pretty often used as a media contact by JSF to get their POV out. 

So JSF is actually aiming for a team medal at Beijing then. Well, they're not going to get it without at least one viable pairs team and that is something they definitely can't fix overnight. 

[rockstaryuzu]

4 hours ago, yuzuangel said:

I don't think Dai and Kana need to beat the top ice dance teams to aim for a team medal (what are Canada's chances, you think?)

 

They just have to not be in the running for last place...

Canada's chances:  Right now they're middling when it comes to the team medal, both our men's and ladies singles are in a rebuild phase. And G/P and M-T/M are more like top ten finishers than podium prospects. We've got two years to go but it's a long shot. 

 

Even if they don't have to beat the top ice dance teams, I think it would be a long shot for Dai& Kana to even hit top ten by then. It would take 100% commitment starting from now.

[EisElle]

6 hours ago, WinForPooh said:

@LadyLou There's a piece up by Jack that talks about how having Dai and Kana at Beijing will help Team Japan's podium chances in the team event, and Jack is pretty often used as a media contact by JSF to get their POV out. 

LMAO I had completely forgotten the team event 🤣🤣🤣

Well, that's much more likely than individual ID medal for sure😅 

but still, I'm not sure about how much a team we haven't seen even once in comp (and whose scoring potential is unknown) can help podium chances...we have literally no idea if they, for example, can score better of KoKo, or e.g. Chinese team, or Korean team(is there a korean team? Last I read they had split too but iirc she had found a new partner...anyway, offtopic). 

I think Jack is just riding the hype (as always)

Realistically: Kana had 4 whole years between her switching to ID and Pyeongchang and 3 of them were spent with Chris, a very experienced ice dancer. Now we have Dai with 2 years of time before OWG, I'm not sure if we should expect this new partnership to have potential for better placements in less time

It also will depend a lot on which countries qualify, China, for example, while not likely to get a team medal, has stronger pairs (and possibly stronger ID) that could push jpn pairs (and maybe ID) lower, hence lowering whole TJ chances for a medal...or even to qualify for the fs). We basically miss a lot of data right now.

And anyway, if rules will stay the same, it's still necessary for an ID team or a pair to qualify for individual olys event (and atm pairs is an even bigger question mark), so a team, be it Kana&Dai or KoKo or whoever, will still need to rank well at WC2021 or get an additional spot later, like for Pyeongchang...

 

6 hours ago, luvsk8 said:

 

I think Team KoKo is the better choice...

Too early to say, especially since injuries can change things in a moment 

(My hope is that there won't be any undue internal pushing for a team, if that team hasn't really better scoring potential)

I had also read there might be problems for Tim's citizenship, but I am not sure if it was just a generic worry based on past issues...

 

4 hours ago, yuzuangel said:

I don't think Dai and Kana need to beat the top ice dance teams to aim for a team medal (what are Canada's chances, you think?)

 

They just have to not be in the running for last place...

even with Canada possibly weaker in singles in 2022 (but, like China, with their ID and pairs they can lower TJ placement in those segments), I wouldn't underestimate France and Italy, both much weaker in ladies atm but pretty much middle of the pack (or more) in the other 3 fields, with their Men on the raise (not sure about italian pairs, DM/G aren't exactly young but iirc atm they are still competing. Same for G/F in ID, I guess they'd like to go to Beijing as the top Italian team)

Tbh I don't expect that any jpn ID team will make TJ chances better compared to PyeongChang, where Kana and Chris did place quite well in the sp (5th, only behind Rus/US/Can/Ita). That's basically the very best one can hope (and P/C were not competing in team event, so France placed much lower).

Of course, jpn ID team fighting for more than last place is definitely necessary for a chance at medal😅 but even a team at Kana&Chris level might not be enough (and of course a lot depends on pairs too)

If any, the relative weakness of canadian and italian ladies might be more relevant for jpn podium chances compared to Kana&Dai maybe scoring better than KoKo

 

I bet, though, that KoKo are feeling more pressure now. Especially with Misato's injury, learning all of a sudden there is a new glamurous team ready to contend for international spots can't have been entirely pleasant ("glamurous" because unavoidably there's lot of interest around them)

 

(In the meanwhile I keep dreaming Utashin will rise through the ranks fast and steal the scene LOL ok no I would be sad for current senior teams, but if Utashin were to really compete as senior team and be the strongest one...well, at the end of the day what I want if for the best team to go....if Japan manages to qualify for a spot to begin with)

[EisElle]

56 minutes ago, rockstaryuzu said:

Canada's chances:  Right now they're middling when it comes to the team medal, both our men's and ladies singles are in a rebuild phase. And G/P and M-T/M are more like top ten finishers than podium prospects. We've got two years to go but it's a long shot. 

 

Even if they don't have to beat the top ice dance teams, I think it would be a long shot for Dai& Kana to even hit top ten by then. It would take 100% commitment starting from now.

Top ten in ID individual event definitely hard and IMO very unlikeky, but for team event ID it's different, every country (USA, Canada, Russia) has only one team per segment, add France and Italy and they only take 5 spots (instead of potential top 10 like in Saitama), likely Spain won't qualify for Team event (Spain has two good ID team), likely no GB either (another very good team).... so things are a much "easier" and one can aim for 6th (even 5th if no P/C) but we'll need to wait at least one more year to finally reason about TES and PB and compare with potential "rivals" (like chinese/korean/aussie teams and so on)

 

Eta: actually, I am not sure about Spain chances to be in team even, I think currently men is their weakest field, but rn Germany for example doesn't have a pair team as strong as S/M, so maybe Spain will be in and Germany out...sorry for 

[Fay]

9 minutes ago, LadyLou said:

Top ten in ID event definitely hard and IMO very unlikeky, but for team event it's different, every country (USA, Canada, Russia) has only one team per segment, add France and Italy and they only take 5 spots (instead of potential top 10 like in Saitama), likely Spain won't qualify (Spain has two good ID team), likely no GB either (another very good team).... so things are a much "easier" and one can aim for 6th (even 5th if no P/C) but we'll need to wait at least one more year to finally reason about TES and PB and compare with potential "rivals" (like chinese/korean/aussie teams and so on)

Italy, France... they will be in contention. 

[Vadrouille]

24 minutes ago, rockstaryuzu said:

So JSF is actually aiming for a team medal at Beijing then. Well, they're not going to get it without at least one viable pairs team and that is something they definitely can't fix overnight. 

If I remembered well, I believe that for Team Japan to qualify among the 5 Teams in Final Team event at the Olympics in Beijing 2022  will be a big order, not guaranteed at all.

At the last 2 Olympics in Sochi and in Peoinchang, Team Japan had much difficulties in qualifying their Pairs couple and their Ice Dance couple. They still at that time had a good ID couple with many years of experiences in the brother and sister Reed/Reed , then with Kana/Reed.

The Japanese Pairs couple had also got their qualification by extremis, I don't remembered how.

So for Olympics Beijing in 2022, will Dai and Kana do better than Reed/Reed in 2014 or Reed and Kana in 2018 ?

We will see how they will do next year in their international competitions in 2020.

For the chances of Team Canada in Team event, fortunately we still have very good couples in Pairs and in Dance.

It is too bad that we can not have Patrick and Kathy Osmond in Singles and Team competitions anymore to help our team.

 

[Lunna]

11 часов назад, Sombreuil сказал:

Am I alone in finding it odd that if they are aiming for Beijing he is going to carry on with singles this season and switch next season with such a short time left?  If they were really serious wouldn’t they start now?  

I think I've read Dai was going to switch right after Nats.

I'm not waiting anything from this project, pity that Kana can't find good partner and it's too hard to receive Japanese citizenship for a foreign partner. No offence to Dai but I think he had knee problems, must learn lifts and never had SS of Patrick or Kazuka. Publicity might be good, but for now it seems like the only way to get a good pair for Japan is to find two juniors with very good SS, but not good jumps and send them abroad, but it doesn't look like JSF is interested. I don't know how Utana and Shingo decided to skate together and who was for their move to Canada.

9 часов назад, LadyLou сказал:

podium is definitely unrealistic, unless, suddenly, most of current sr teams (and a few of the jr ones that will turn senior by then) for some reason won't be able to compete, or will be forced to compete at a much lower level than they do now...the war for podium will likely be among France, USA, Russia and Canada too (especially if FD/S keeps developing as fast), even if there was a jpn team competitive with them in bv(levels) by 2022, there just wouldn't be any space for them to get the political backing they would need for goe and pcs to be on par with top teams)

Maybe fight for team bronze as Canada now have biggest problems in singles, but Japan also needs a pair, so France looks more strong here.