2 minutes ago, WinForPooh said:

I dunno. Sure he did have a nightmare skate. But so did Han Yan and they called his 3A UR, as it was. And his camp had no complaints when he was being built up like he was the second coming of Arthur of legend, so while I feel bad for Nathan personally, I don't think that sentiment should extend to his scores or the calls made.

 

I am being 1000% personal with my feelings.

 

(Han's 3A was amazing before he landed.)

5 minutes ago, Xen said:

This one is even worse:

http://web.icenetwork.com/news/2018/02/09/266183266

At least Paul Wylie is being straight about the schedule. Ugh, getting up at 5, stretching at 6-7 am, pretty much not the best time to actually stretch your limbs out. And NBC wonders why people aren't happy about the men. Here have a cookie for a correct answer.

I hate the media cycle. Especially as somebody who worked in it for years. I hate it. I hate the building up, I hate the glee with which tumbles are greeted and made out to be so much worse than they are. This is the worst thing about the Internet. Bang out the damn copy with the most clickbaity headline and the most over-the-top content. No more taking a few hours to tune it and bring in perspective. UGHH It makes me mad. Nathan deserves better than that.

2 minutes ago, SparkleSalad said:

 

I am being 1000% personal with my feelings.

 

(Han's 3A was amazing before he landed.)

I'm crying over it.

 

I meant it about the tear glands activation.

4 hours ago, beki said:

Watched on CBC, now I’m rewatching on NBC.

 

Junhwan got so tall! Do we think he’ll get the quads?

The last of the Korean selection competitions showed him landing a really nice one. A 4S I think, it was a while ago. Well a 4S or a 4T. The one where he made up the 20-30 points to get selected to the Olys team.

52 minutes ago, WinForPooh said:

http://www.isuresults.com/results/season1718/owg2018/OWG2018_TeamPairs_SP_P_Scores.pdf

 

Oops wrong tab

 

http://www.isuresults.com/results/season1718/owg2018/OWG2018_TeamMen_SP_M_Scores.pdf 

 

ETA: lol Ralu going ninja like Yuzu

I hate to nitpick but basically 0 GOE for that 4F-2T is a bit generous..

Didn't woke up enough to watch it.

(I lurked in here a bit, but that's with my tab underneath the blanket, cz it started at 2ish my time, so just watched the comments got progressively more and more depressed by each page. I am on an internship at a research hospital and Thursday was 'full day clinic round'. Mind you I am a math student, so the only thing I did was watch and observe. Did you know that's even more exhausting?)

 

So, typical men event this season, then? 

Yeah, NBC (and IOC for grabby-hand-ing the ) effed up. For the sake of US home spectators, athletes and arena spectators are sacrificed. 

 

But I do think the underwhelming performances were due to several factors, which I guess is not helped by having the competition scheduled the way it is. I still think it was somewhat doable to anticipate that, tho (I am fully aware I am probably setting the standard too high). We shall see how the other events fare. Then, there's the ice. I mean. Talk about doing it against all odds.

 

Also, slight kudos for the absence of boots blaming. Or do I speak too soon?

Okay I should post a recap of my memory of the event before I forget  It's quite short, actually, since I don't watch pairs very much and this was only a fraction of the lineup that we'll see in singles anyway.

 

So I left my AirBnB like 30 minutes before the event started (Google Maps told me it would take 10 minutes to get there). But my taxi driver didn't really know how to get there, which is a bit strange, because Gangneung is not really a very busy metropolis, and there can't be too many points of interest here than the Olympic Stadium at the moment. But anyway, so I had to walk 30 minutes through some frozen farmland to get to the entrance of the stadium, and by that time I missed more than half of the first group.

 

I think they managed to fill up the seats a bit with locals who didn't have assigned seats and were just instructed to sit anywhere. This was a bit annoying as every time I left my seat and came back there was someone sitting there and I had to tell them that it was my seat. And people got up and moved around all the time, sometimes during the skates. I think most of them aren't dedicated skating fans and were easily impressed and got excited at every jump, which was cute. They were especially impressed with pairs, and I don't blame them since pairs do a lot more obviously dangerous-looking elements like throws and lifts whereas who can tell quads from doubles? lol. But anyway, yeah so the locals were cheering on CJH and clapped for each of the skaters who were placed below him, and sounded disappointed when Matteo Rizzo finally scored higher. 

 

When the last group of men came out, the crowd didn't really seem awake or into it. Whether they were all disappointed (at who wasn't there), or they honestly had no idea who any of the skaters were, I don't know. But Shoma landed a few pretty nice 3As and maybe a quad(?) I don't remember? in practice and it was dead silent. They cheered the loudest for Nathan, so I think the NBC hype is definitely working. He rotates so fast in the air and his quads look quite powerful so people were impressed. Patrick and Mikhail also had their own dedicated cheering contingencies. A group of Russian fans were sitting above me and they got a lot of attention for being so animated. They would also cheer and shout and hold up Kolyada signs during other people's skates and bows, lol. 

 

So I guess there wasn't much to be said that hasn't already been said, but it really wasn't a good event. I think the highlight for me was Matteo who looked so happy to have skated well, and Alexei Bychenko as well. I was happy for them to have at least one Olympic performance to be proud of, and hopefully many more to come. Kolyada's lutz looks huge and beautiful but whenever he jumps it feels like he doesn't expect to land it. Maybe there's a mental block from falling so often at so many important events that he gets hesitant and doubts himself whenever he gets into the air now. And Nathan, well, he looked nervous at the beginning, and when he launched into the 3A it seemed like he was thinking too much about the two mistakes he just made. His axis looked tilted to begin with, and he couldn't have saved it. Shoma skated well, although personally I think not 1-point-from-PB well but *shrug*. In person he has decent skating skills, visibly better than Nathan's I think.

 

I don't remember much about the pairs but Evgenia and Vladimir were definitely the cleanest and most artistic for me. I also liked the Chinese pair.

7 hours ago, WinForPooh said:

On the strength of what we just saw... A three-quad two-3A clean Yuzu might be just fine.

I agree 100%, if the Olympic nerves get to everyone at the singles event like today in the men's SP team event, I'm really not sure how the medal placements would go. If Yuzu skates like he does when he gets world records, he'll win for sure and it'll be a walk in the park. 

 

7 hours ago, kamui said:

I wonder what are thinking the casual viewers about this event

Probably haven't even tuned into watching sports yet maybe, since the opening ceremonies hasn't happened yet.

 

7 hours ago, liv said:

Wonder what yuzu and javi are thinking... chillin' out in Toronto and watching this....

They're probably thinking how glad they were to decide not to participate in the team event to avoid this disaster! 

 

1 hour ago, kaeryth said:

Pyeongchang cam had the best slo-mo and 360 shots... they should gift this to ISU tech panel. If they had this type of cam tech and still don't call then it's obvious they're turning a blind eye. Right now they can give the excuse that they only have 1 cam that is different from the one that the public sees on broadcasts.

This technology is what they should bring to every figure skating competition! It was so cool to watch the high-tech slow-motion sequences the cameras captured. Impressed with Pyeongchang's camera work so far after the team event!

Also really like the deep-violet color theme to the Olympic arena! (just random thoughts: it would match well with the hints of purple Yuzuru has on his SEIMEI costume and the blue-ish periwinkle tones of his Chopin costume)

Poor Mika ... 

 

Good thing I didn't woke up in the middle of the night for this disaster Patrick Nathan Mika Shoma - good boy, though maybe he had a little less pressure.

I hope boys will leave their nerves here, don't want to watch a splatfest in the individuals also.

Now I think Plushenko was the best choice for TE in Sochi, young Russian men can't handle the pressure (so girls will have to do all the work again), I didn't expect a miracle from Mika but also not this the worst part it seems like he just don't fight for it (and for landings) after mistakes.

4 минуты назад, ralucutzagy сказал:

Poor Mika ... 

 

TAT can be harsh, when you're good - she praises you, but when you fail really hope he doesn't read press today...

4 hours ago, beki said:

Sometimes I feel like they should just call what the skaters do, not what they plan. But they don’t want to deal with the mountain of Zayak violations. But talk about a rule that would encourage proper technique.

An alternative, given how volatile are the calls, would be what Max & Angelo said once: allow eg a max of 3 Lz+F, without checking the edge, and if you do a 4th Lutz/flip you Zayak. Or even add the loop to the Lz-F cluster, given the hybrid technique some skaters use. Of course the ideal is, if a jump has a certain name and requires a certain technique, to judge that strictly. That's the whole point of having 6  different jumps.

But looks like Olys will have even wilder calls than we have already seen this season (LOL, hardly a surprise )

 

I'm all in for technology helping judges. Tbh it's ridiculous that in 2018 we're still stuck with a single camera with lower quality (and don't even have access to the video feed to know if the panel really tried its best with what it could watch or was just plainly incompetent). I would expect ISU to want to make things easier for panels and, more important, for the athletes, whose careers can change because of a single wrong call. It really looks like ISU prefers tech calls to be discretional instead of more fair to all the skaters. 

 

ETA RE: time schedule 

Imo a few days of adjustment aren't enough, you have to start changing your biorythm way before you get there, so your body can feel at 100% earlier in the day. (I hope Yuzu is doing that, too. Earlier in the season Brian had talked about changing schedule a bit to prepare) and then there is the time zone messing with the skaters's biorythm too (tho Misha didn't had that problem, nor Shoma) and some things might be merely related to the night and day cycle, not with how early you go to sleep. In Winter 5 or 6 in the morning means they have to get up in the coldest hours before dawn, go to the rink and warm up and practice, imo it's harder than it would be if they were to do the same thing in the summer. 

Btw, Worlds's schedule will be pretty much the same  practice starts at 6 in the morning (when metro has barely started working, darn it). I wonder why they schedule it that way, solidarity with Olys?  

I just saw that Alice (with the awesome Tumblr, where I procrastinate) said Nate's flip edge was fine. I think I'll trust her eyes more than mine, she has much more practice. And knowledge for that matter. The post mentioned that the ice flying around can make it seem off sometimes, and maybe it was that. Nathan has enough troubles now without sending Flip-uncertainties his way. And I need to train my eyes a little better instead of sitting and crying over support videos, and possible things that could happen over the next few days.

11 minutes ago, WinForPooh said:

I just saw that Alice (with the awesome Tumblr, where I procrastinate) said Nate's flip edge was fine. I think I'll trust her eyes more than mine, she has much more practice. And knowledge for that matter. The post mentioned that the ice flying around can make it seem off sometimes, and maybe it was that. Nathan has enough troubles now without sending Flip-uncertainties his way. And I need to train my eyes a little better instead of sitting and crying over support videos, and possible things that could happen over the next few days.

I mean I’m no expert but the screenshot that was floating around earlier was absolutely not inside 

1 minute ago, axelnojutsu said:

I mean I’m no expert but the screenshot that was floating around earlier was absolutely not inside 

I took the screenshot. I took about five to get the right millisecond, and I thought I had it right, but the post said she watched slo-mo and it was inside and the flying ice made it seem unclear. Something along those lines. Maybe I didn't get the right millisecond when I took the screenshot? Maybe there was another between that moment and the actual takeoff?

Finally saw Patrick's SP this morning. Oh my god. That was appallingly bad for someone of his stature. Falling on jumps is one thing but the program itself was not remotely Olympic-worthy. 

 

But given the way this season has been going, he'll probably end up with a gold team medal anyway.