Team Russia

[FlyingCamel]

5 minutes ago, SitTwizzle said:

Only think that at the tender age of 8, Kamila Valieva was able to skate on The Dying Swan without ridicule! 

As to Sofia Akatieva (12), Veronika Zhilina (11)... they will have to wait until Torino.

And neither Kamila Valieva, nor Daria Usacheva must take their selection for granted. I wouldn't even except Alina Zagitova if she resumes competition. She's a great performer, becoming a remarkable interpret, and her skating skills (stopping and departing, step jumps, "speaking" spins etc) are second (all right, by far) only to Yuzuru Hanyu's (and similar to Alena Kostornaya's), in my (ignorant) opinion; and "thanks to" confinement, her training mates/rivals will also have to "restart from scratch". And of course, let's not forget Elizabeta Tuktamysheva, if Alexei Mishin pushes her in this direction. So, we have "the four A", the two Junior, maybe Maiia Khromykh if she goes over her quads, and Liza Tuktamysheva, 8 top skaters for 3 spots... and believe me, Eteri Tutberidze will neglect none of hers.

Of course it will be triple axel PLUS quads, maybe two different.

Weren't we speaking of real life being more incredible than manga or novels?

 

You forgot Evgenia haha and possibly Kseniia Sinitsina

but we are digressing too much now XD

[Paskud]

3 hours ago, SitTwizzle said:

Only think that at the tender age of 8, Kamila Valieva was able to skate on The Dying Swan without ridicule! 

As to Sofia Akatieva (12), Veronika Zhilina (11)... they will have to wait until Torino.

And neither Kamila Valieva, nor Daria Usacheva must take their selection for granted. I wouldn't even except Alina Zagitova if she resumes competition. She's a great performer, becoming a remarkable interpret, and her skating skills (stopping and departing, step jumps, "speaking" spins etc) are second (all right, by far) only to Yuzuru Hanyu's (and similar to Alena Kostornaya's), in my (ignorant) opinion; and "thanks to" confinement, her training mates/rivals will also have to "restart from scratch". And of course, let's not forget Elizabeta Tuktamysheva, if Alexei Mishin pushes her in this direction. So, we have "the four A", the two Junior, maybe Maiia Khromykh if she goes over her quads, and Liza Tuktamysheva, 8 top skaters for 3 spots... and believe me, Eteri Tutberidze will neglect none of hers.

Of course it will be triple axel PLUS quads, maybe two different.

Weren't we speaking of real life being more incredible than manga or novels?

 

Zagitova's skating skills aren't that good. Tho her spins are indeed beautiful.

[SitTwizzle]

13 minutes ago, Paskud said:

Zagitova's skating skills aren't that good. Tho her spins are indeed beautiful.

Daniil Gleichengauz makes the best of it, but he doesn't have her glide in his choreos for her, so I suppose she doesn't glide that beautifully. Do her skating skills have other shortcomings?

[Paskud]

39 minutes ago, SitTwizzle said:

Daniil Gleichengauz makes the best of it, but he doesn't have her glide in his choreos for her, so I suppose she doesn't glide that beautifully. Do her skating skills have other shortcomings?

Just compare how Alina is skating and for example Marin (putting here Zuzu would be cruel 😅).

[SitTwizzle]

2 hours ago, Paskud said:

Just compare how Alina is skating and for example Marin (putting here Zuzu would be cruel 😅).

I love Marin Honda, and am sorry she doesn't catch up with top level as a senior.

But Alina Zagitova's short program wasn't meant to show off her viruosity, but her lyricism, and I find it a real success.

Her FS is quite different, either the beginning in Fokine (Egyptian Nights) or in "street dance" styles.

 

[PapiandPooh422]

3 hours ago, SitTwizzle said:

Do her skating skills have other shortcomings?

One good indicator that a skater doesn't have a good skating skills is when he/she can't gain much speed even if he/she is doing crossovers because normally you do crossovers to gain momentum. What I also notice about her when she does her crossovers is that she bends too much. Make her hips as the vertex. Whenever she does her crossovers her upper and lower body almost forms a 90 degree angle. And you do that to compensate for weak skating skills, when your legs alone can't get you that momentum that you want. I haven't seen her skate live, but I have seen multiple people saying that she's painfully slow on the ice.

[Paskud]

Quote

The head of the FFKR also answered the question of whether the Olympic champion Alina Zagitova , who announced the suspension of her career , would remain in the national team . 

“I can’t answer this question right now. We have not yet discussed the composition in detail. There was no conversation with Alina on this subject, ”Gorshkov added. 

https://www.sports.ru/figure-skating/1084939545.html

[SitTwizzle]

1 hour ago, PapiandPooh422 said:

One good indicator that a skater doesn't have a good skating skills is when he/she can't gain much speed even if he/she is doing crossovers because normally you do crossovers to gain momentum. What I also notice about her when she does her crossovers is that she bends too much. Make her hips as the vertex. Whenever she does her crossovers her upper and lower body almost forms a 90 degree angle. And you do that to compensate for weak skating skills, when your legs alone can't get you that momentum that you want. I haven't seen her skate live, but I have seen multiple people saying that she's painfully slow on the ice.

This is also why (being slower; I didn't know the other criteria, thank you) I suspected she didn't have a good glide, and I like very much, well, of course Yuzuru Hanyu's superb glide, but a very few others I think, have a very good one. And I don't know if she will really progress on it, she rather progressed on other skills, unlike Anna Scherbakova who seems to progress a good deal on it (or Rika Kihira, who was already correct as a junior by the way, if I remember well).

Yet this is not the only skating skill.

[PapiandPooh422]

8 minutes ago, SitTwizzle said:

Yet this is not the only skating skill.

Yes, it's not. But I can't help but notice that when she does her StSq it is not as effortless as other skaters does theirs. It can be because she has a lot of transitions but I have seen other skaters do some of the steps she does and making it look effortless than how she does it. Maybe other people here can enlighten us more.

[rockstaryuzu]

4 hours ago, PapiandPooh422 said:

Yes, it's not. But I can't help but notice that when she does her StSq it is not as effortless as other skaters does theirs. It can be because she has a lot of transitions but I have seen other skaters do some of the steps she does and making it look effortless than how she does it. Maybe other people here can enlighten us more.

The way I would describe Alina's skating is that she's clearly done a lot of it, but she seems to lack an understanding of the most basic fundamental: the physical mechanics of blade meeting ice and what way to place the foot for maximum benefit from minimum effort. If you watch a skater like Patrick Chan or Hanyu or even Zhenya (both now and back when she was still with Eteri), you'll see what I mean immediately. 

 

In general, I think the girls of Sambo70 work too hard on the ice for what they get back: their stroking can be labored, they lose speed, they have inefficient body positions, etc. Yes they jump brilliantly, but...

[FlyingCamel]

Among the Sambo girls I actually think Alena Kostornaia has the best skating skills!

[rockstaryuzu]

2 minutes ago, FlyingCamel said:

Among the Sambo girls I actually think Alena Kostornaia has the best skating skills!

Agree.

[FlyingCamel]

Yuzu at home now? XD

[SitTwizzle]

6 hours ago, rockstaryuzu said:

The way I would describe Alina's skating is that she's clearly done a lot of it, but she seems to lack an understanding of the most basic fundamental: the physical mechanics of blade meeting ice and what way to place the foot for maximum benefit from minimum effort. If you watch a skater like Patrick Chan or Hanyu or even Zhenya (both now and back when she was still with Eteri), you'll see what I mean immediately. 

 

In general, I think the girls of Sambo70 work too hard on the ice for what they get back: their stroking can be labored, they lose speed, they have inefficient body positions, etc. Yes they jump brilliantly, but...

I didn't try to look at Evgenia Medvedeva back then because when I saw her I was even more ignorant than now, and I really disliked her style (while perceiving her as an artist, but not to my taste), only last season I started to like watching her skating.

I think every skater but Yuzuru Hanyu, practice too much blindly, isn't it? And he says (but it may be just by humility) that even for him, it was his asthma and other conditions which prevented him from actually practising as much as others, which forced him to reflect more on what he was doing on-ice (and probably off-ice) to focus on what he really needed.

In fact, this is a culture (practising somehow blindly) which prevails in soooo many domains, not only figure skating. If you look at how so many people try to prove a Maths theorem by systematically "ticking" each and every possibility, instead of trying to find where it is more likely to pass and likeliness with other domains etc, which usually give short, elegant ("French-style"? ;-q) proofs. It takes more intelligent thoughtfulness to become such a skater as Yuzuru Hanyu, than pure physical ability, don't you think so? Though his beautiful lines in costume enhance it, and he must have other "gifts" (I should say : we must have other gifts in him).

You will be quite shocked : I have never watched any program of Patrick Chan's. Sorry. I stopped watching any figure skating nearly thirty years ago, and resumed, at first a little three years ago (only Ladies, mainly Eteri Girls) then much more ;-) a few months ago, when I "discovered" Yuzuru Hanyu in the right column of Youtube, "after everybody else", and I am still not at Pairs or Ice Dance, or at whatever before the 2018 change of rules, except for Yuzuru Hanyu of course.

Yet, about Alina Zagitova herself, I get a feeling she "owns the ice" much more than most others.

[rockstaryuzu]

2 hours ago, SitTwizzle said:

practice too much blindly, isn't it?

Yes, I think this is a big issue for Eteri's camp especially. 

 

It's something that happens in all sports, though. As my swimming coach used to say, practice doesn't make perfect - perfect practice makes perfect. If you're doing something incorrectly and go out and practice it 10,000 times, all you've done is created a bad habit.