Evgenia Medvedeva: I did everything I wanted, and I don’t regret anything 

43 minutes ago, Sombreuil said:

Makes me want to ban the k&c.

 

I would completely stop watching skating if they did that. However, I do hate the way they force the top three skaters to all sit together under the scrutiny of cameras and wait to be eliminated. I wish the skaters would get together and refuse to do it.

I don't mind it. In other sports ( skiing, snowboard, sliding events) the top 3 stand together and wait to be beaten, so it is only new to skating...

1 hour ago, yuzupon said:

If I were Tutberidze, and assuming that as a coach she and her team would like to develop well-rounded, long-lasting skaters (also assuming her past with Lipnitskaya and Pitkeev were outliers), this is why I would not be entirely happy with this result.

 

Their goal is to produce medal winners, not to develop long-lasting skaters. They've figured out how to use the current scoring system to max out the points with their young talents, of which they appear to have an endless supply.

5 minutes ago, liv said:

I don't mind it. In other sports ( skiing, snowboard, sliding events) the top 3 stand together and wait to be beaten, so it is only new to skating...

 

I'm sure there are people who enjoy that sort of thing. Watching athletes--especially ones so young--"wait to be beaten" isn't my thing.

32 minutes ago, GreatLakesGal said:

 

Their goal is to produce medal winners, not to develop long-lasting skaters. They've figured out how to use the current scoring system to max out the points with their young talents, of which they appear to have an endless supply.

 

They do have well-rounded skaters in their group, though. Alena Kostornaia is, in my opinion, an amazing example of someone who can backload like the best of them and retain a lot of artistic sensitivity to musical nuances. She even makes me appreciate Adios Nonino, which is not really my favorite piece of music. But Alena came to Eteri later in her development, much like Tarakanova, who also has a lot of talent but in a wilder, more untamed way. 

25 minutes ago, xeyra said:

 

They do have well-rounded skaters in their group, though. Alena Kostornaia is, in my opinion, an amazing example of someone who can backload like the best of them and retain a lot of artistic sensitivity to musical nuances. She even makes me appreciate Adios Nonino, which is not really my favorite piece of music. But Alena came to Eteri later in her development, much like Tarakona, who also has a lot of talent but in a wilder, more untamed way. 

Agree, xeyra, and I'm a bit sick of the Eteri bashing that seems to be the FS community fashion trend of the season to be honest, especially since people forget there are definitely good skaters in her school. 

 

There are a lot of talented young girls in Russia, each with laser sharp focus on the prize at the top. And so far, the average career of female skaters is much shorter than the men. Kostner and Aljona are outliers and admired for a reason, because most female skaters don't see their bodies holding up that long. Eteri herself cannot exactly tell each girl that walks in her doors, “Sweetie, we will focus on making you a well-rounded skater first, and then when you're around 20, 23ish, we'll nab you that gold, how about it?” That's a wonderful surefire way to attract students (not) who probably have feds and parents keenly aware of the average competitive lifespan of a female skater. And if you are an ambitious, competitive young girl, you wouldn't like that either. 

 

So how will this 1-2 finish impact Eteri? I think someone asked above. Well, if I had to guess, nada. Med and Alina are both keenly aware of what is coming next-it's happening at their own rinks. You can have the highest PCS in the universe, but it may be insufficient to hold up under an onslaught of quads, 3As and 3-3s backloaded. Then once that becomes the norm for the top6 ladies, we'll see PCs again, play a greater role in differentiating the ladies. Nothing has dramatically changed-you can't ignore basic skills/artistry/PCS because a tech cushion will only buffer you so far. That's just the cycle of figure skating itself. And to a degree, Alina's win might even force her to change the backloading strategy a bit, since there's such a backlash against it now, even though full backloading has only been here in seniors for just 1 season. 

 

As for the backloading issue itself, I'm not ready to completely disown the extra bonus, since full backloading is not even close to the norm in ladies. Far from it. How many did we see? Alina, Kaori in the SP for senior ladies. Maybe more next season, but also, maybe not? But then if we get more next season, we may see more variety, more options, and then with the backloading BV being even again, skaters get pushed more on PCS and GOEs. Again, that cycle of just figure skating.

 

Anyways, hope this didn't offend anyone. 

 

8 hours ago, Forcefield said:

 

I think it's interesting that it's usually the free skates that people remember and determine who they think the rightful winner is like here or pairs (didn't pay attention to dance), but (though Nathan won the FS) Yuzu made such a big impression both days that even with mistakes in FS his win is undisputed (unless you're an uber of someone else). Hurrah.

 

I think it's because he turned in a fabulous Seimei interpretation-wise and had only small mistakes that looked more like an Olympic fighting moment than failures, and because of his happy reaction. He believed he did great, so people believed it too.

 

Med turned in a better performance interpretation-wise and that's people belive she should have won.

 

 

Sigh. Crime against figure skating.

Anyway, I could probably write twenty paragraphs about everything that's wrong with this result but honestly, I cannot even be bothered. They've sapped everything out of me with this nonsense. 

 

The thing that genuinely makes me laugh is the whole oh we want overall skaters. No, no you don't. As we see time and time again. Actually while the state of the men is slightly better, this same bull exists there as well. We can see that in this Olympics too, with Yuzuru's scores vs the others. We got the right outcome in the end, but we very easily could have ended up with it being all wrong too. And the new system? It's just going to make it ten times worse. Sigh. 

Congratulations to the medalist 

 

I admit to not feeling anything about the results for the ladies. Throughout the season all the top ladies benefited from generous scoring and lenient calls that resulted in undeserved medals or placements, so I really couldn't root for any of them and didn't care much about who medals at the Olympics. This is quite disappointing for me since I was most interested in the ladies at the beginning but lost interest as the season progressed 

 

Just to make it clear, my problem is still with the judging and those ladies all should be proud of themselves and happy with their results, Good fight to all 

8 minutes ago, Moria Polonius said:

 

I think it's because he turned in a fabulous Seimei interpretation-wise and had only small mistakes that looked more like an Olympic fighting moment than failures, and because of his happy reaction. He believed he did great, so people believed it too.

 

Med turned in a better performance interpretation-wise and that's people belive she should have won.

 

 

Oh this is true. The commentator in my country know nothing about FS and rate the performance base on skater's reaction  Too bad they cut the last 3 skaters in both men and ladies so idk what he would say about Yuzuru and Evgenia. 

5 minutes ago, Katt said:

Oh this is true. The commentator in my country know nothing about FS and rate the performance base on skater's reaction  Too bad they cut the last 3 skaters in both men and ladies so idk what he would say about Yuzuru and Evgenia. 

 

Wait, what, they didn't show the last 3 skaters in each discipline? Why not, when that's what determines medals!?

1 hour ago, Xen said:

Agree, xeyra, and I'm a bit sick of the Eteri bashing that seems to be the FS community fashion trend of the season to be honest, especially since people forget there are definitely good skaters in her school. 

 

There are a lot of talented young girls in Russia, each with laser sharp focus on the prize at the top. And so far, the average career of female skaters is much shorter than the men. Kostner and Aljona are outliers and admired for a reason, because most female skaters don't see their bodies holding up that long. Eteri herself cannot exactly tell each girl that walks in her doors, “Sweetie, we will focus on making you a well-rounded skater first, and then when you're around 20, 23ish, we'll nab you that gold, how about it?” That's a wonderful surefire way to attract students (not) who probably have feds and parents keenly aware of the average competitive lifespan of a female skater. And if you are an ambitious, competitive young girl, you wouldn't like that either. 

 

So how will this 1-2 finish impact Eteri? I think someone asked above. Well, if I had to guess, nada. Med and Alina are both keenly aware of what is coming next-it's happening at their own rinks. You can have the highest PCS in the universe, but it may be insufficient to hold up under an onslaught of quads, 3As and 3-3s backloaded. Then once that becomes the norm for the top6 ladies, we'll see PCs again, play a greater role in differentiating the ladies. Nothing has dramatically changed-you can't ignore basic skills/artistry/PCS because a tech cushion will only buffer you so far. That's just the cycle of figure skating itself. And to a degree, Alina's win might even force her to change the backloading strategy a bit, since there's such a backlash against it now, even though full backloading has only been here in seniors for just 1 season. 

 

As for the backloading issue itself, I'm not ready to completely disown the extra bonus, since full backloading is not even close to the norm in ladies. Far from it. How many did we see? Alina, Kaori in the SP for senior ladies. Maybe more next season, but also, maybe not? But then if we get more next season, we may see more variety, more options, and then with the backloading BV being even again, skaters get pushed more on PCS and GOEs. Again, that cycle of just figure skating.

 

Anyways, hope this didn't offend anyone. 

Sasha Trusova is already doing her quads in the first half, so it's reasonable that the backloading issue will sort itself out as soon ladies start adding harder elements 

they are now going though the start of men quads era, with the only difference that men quads era started with a different judging system so there was no gain in going through backloading all triples instead of leaping for quads directly.

I'm more interested in seeing some change in rules that can somehow make ladies career a bit longer (tho even this could happen on itself once the technical content will reach a new plateau and quality, ss and interpretation will be valued again). Some skills usually take time to develop, it's a pity that we might never see talented ladies come close to their potential in competition. Not many people follow skaters in their professional careers and some skaters will quit skating completely

it really feels like a huge loss for the sport.  IMO it also makes harder for more casual viewers to grow fond of skaters, it's only natural to root more for people you see time and time again, but if general audience sees completely different persons every year the emotional attachement just won't be there (and they won't be willing to travel across the world to see them)

 

 

Hello all, I just read through the commemts as I could not watch the competition live, and I have a probably very stupid question: 

 

what is backloading?