Team USA

[yuzupon]

19 hours ago, Sombreuil said:

He’s pedestrian.

 I can't with this description... So apt, but I 

[rockstaryuzu]

...but he's working so hard to try and overcome it...you'd think he'd have gotten somewhere...

[Figure_Frenzy]

22 hours ago, rockstaryuzu said:

So I finally had a chance to sit down and watch Nathan's SP, and...well...hmm...I can tell that he's trying. so. hard.  There's definitely more going on in there than there was before, and it has an actual step sequence, and I can see that SLB worked hard to give him something better than he had before...but. 

 

But. 

But. 

 

It's still kind of meh. 

 

Why? I really want to like it. 

 

Eh, I think it's pretty decent though again considering his outing pattern I am not holding my breath that he'd keep that level of performance complexity through the rest of the season though 😑

[FlyingCamel]

 

[Sombreuil]

On 10/6/2020 at 12:47 PM, Figure_Frenzy said:

 

Eh, I think it's pretty decent though again considering his outing pattern I am not holding my breath that he'd keep that level of performance complexity through the rest of the season though 😑

It’s Ok - that’s as much as you can say.  ‘ Pretty decent’ is what you expect of reasonable mid level skaters - surely a champion should be more than that.  They all  work hard - the likes of Harry Mattick and Conor Stakelum work very hard with no big fed support, no cash and at the moment no ice.  Working hard isn’t enough, according to ISUs own guidelines they have to perform wonderful correct jumps with height, beautiful landings and the appearance of effortlessness — on paper.  In fact if your face and flag and coach fit ( and I’m not just talking about the men or NC now ) you can get away with incorrect jumps, obvious strain, stiff knees on landing, terrible posture and crappy (or no ) transitions and be showered with points.  You can be exceptionally highly marked for ‘consistency’, which I don’t believe appears in the ‘ guidelines’ ( I feel like Captain Barbossa) instead of the performance you actually put on the ice on that day in that championship.
 

 If ISU were honest it wouldn’t annoy me so much but I’ve been watching a lot of old competitions over the last months and it really drives it home to you.  The anointed get the benefit of the pcs as soon as they become contenders  - the unanointed must work extra hard for them, in fact in some cases may never get them.  Consider - if Fernandez hadn’t had an exceptionally supportive family, been willing to move countries several times and hadn’t ended up at TCC, or a similarly highly rated coaching establishment which was willing to nurture him along, would he have ended up a multiple European and world champion? 
 

If the ISU said, in terms, we don’t care about transitions for men, just give us the quads, in ladies we don’t care about correct jumps or posture,  just pack in as many scrambled transitions as you can ,  I would have less of an issue with it all (- though I would still be complaining about some of the  jump scores ) but at least skaters wouldn’t be trying to reach a standard that the ISU don’t actually want or aspire to, and certainly their judges don’t attempt to enforce.

 

 

[Melodie]

7 hours ago, Figure_Frenzy said:

 

Eh, I think it's pretty decent though again considering his outing pattern I am not holding my breath that he'd keep that level of performance complexity through the rest of the season though 😑

Eh, I just watched his SP and FP for the second challenge. Here goes

 

- I think he has improved in some aspects (he still looks slow on the ice, which bothers me).

- Some tragic spins right there (why does he spin slowly when the music is fast and building up ? It doesn't match the music at all )

- For the FP, with his 3Lo3T in the second half in the first challenge and 3Lo as the second jump in the second challenge, I think he is planning to bring the 4Lo back. He might go for sth like 4F3T, 4Lo, 4Lz, 4S, 4T-Eu-3F, 4T3T, 3A in the latter half of this season and even Beijing.

- Anyway, so I saw an analysis of the steps and turns in his FP. And boy, his TRs are really mostly just mohawks and crossovers (sth never changes, I guess).

 

 

[memae]

5 hours ago, Melodie said:

Eh, I just watched his SP and FP for the second challenge. Here goes

 

- I think he has improved in some aspects (he still looks slow on the ice, which bothers me).

- Some tragic spins right there (why does he spin slowly when the music is fast and building up ? It doesn't match the music at all )

- For the FP, with his 3Lo3T in the second half in the first challenge and 3Lo as the second jump in the second challenge, I think he is planning to bring the 4Lo back. He might go for sth like 4F3T, 4Lo, 4Lz, 4S, 4T-Eu-3F, 4T3T, 3A in the latter half of this season and even Beijing.

- Anyway, so I saw an analysis of the steps and turns in his FP. And boy, his TRs are really mostly just mohawks and crossovers (sth never changes, I guess).

 

 

 

I agree about 4Lo, even though he really doesn't like it. I think Yuzu landing 5 quads, practising that 4A, and landing the 3A-3A in practice at GPF made him really realise that 5 quads isn't going to be enough. Of course, he knows better than anyone that a bad skate can happen but he also knows that those are not a strategy to bank on (as in, he will always train and compete as though everyone will have the skate of their life, rather than hoping to win because his opponent had a fall or pop or something). He knows that Yuzu has GOE and PCS over him. When Yuzu showed he could do 5 quads he showed that he can also match (and potentially better) him for TES. When Yuzu said he hoped to do all quads, including the axel, in a program in that press conference I think Nathan immediately realised he meant it and that if anyone can see such a thing through, it's Yuzu. It's a bit funny because he had just been talking about how much he hated 4Lo but as soon as Yuzu said that, Nathan probably knew he'd have to start training 4Lo again. I also think when there was that scoring change flip-flop and Lz dropped in value, that Nathan probably saw that the 4Lo increase was a way to even out the dip in points for the Lz. I'd say he'd probably hoped to have avoided 4Lo for the rest of his career but has realised he needs it. I'm certain we'll see it again. 

 

I think he just bludged on those spins. His spins have never been the best but these ones really struck me as a choice. I sure hope so.

[EisElle]

mmh... I disagree about Nate knowing that he needs another quad.

Spoiler

On the contary, GPF proved that he just needs to stay on his feet (and sometimes not even that). If I'm done my math right, even without popping 3A3A, Yuzu's BV would have still been in the same range of Nate's (thanks to the utter stupidity of the sequence rule), and with PCS and GOE gap being similarly nonexistent (or even reversed), chances are high he would have still lost he FS even if clean. And we're talking about something that's probalby pretty close to the max layout Yuzu can do.

No one in USA can come close to Nathan, so he doesn't have to worry about domestic competition.

As for int comps, the only ones who can come close to him are not gonna be showered in points as generously.

Not Yuzu, who at this point must be perfectly clean with his hardest content to hope for a fraction of the scores he'd deserve (and 4A wouldn't even that much of an asset, with its huge risks and miserable BV. If he's gonna jump that, it will be for the glory only).

Not Shoma, not even when he lands his content: we've seen that that whenever he and Nate were close, judges always put Nate above him, and that was before Nate's became the alleged paragon of PCS.

Russian men have their own issues.

Yuma might show promise but no way any judge will let him ever beat the Anointed one. Especially not now that it looks Alysa is gonna struggle, so no chances at a Ladies's OGM, which is the only thing USFSA&media would like more than Men's OGM).

 

And judges are not going to wake up one day and reform their ways.

So if Nate is planning to bring back 4Lo it probably has little to do with what he needs and more to do with what he wants.

But I dont' even try and predict his layout, it's definitely way too early for that. I was so sure he was working on having a consistent 2nd 3A last season, in combo, and for potential backloading, and yet he was ready to drop it to go back to a more trusted 1x3A in first half when it mattered. Not that it was a wrong move, since it brought him another WR, and it still gave him huge BV without even repeating or backloading 4F and 4Lz, all thing he could potentially do.

ETA: and the BV change of 4Lo was (not surprisingly) scrapped away, so nothing really changed compared to last season (I don't buy the reasons for ISU taking that change back, pretty sure that if american or russian man had had consistent 4Lo they would have had no whatsoever trouble keeping at least the BV change for 4Lo). 4Lo is still the quad with worst risk/benefit ratio (after, of course, Nessie).

[Melodie]

11 hours ago, memae said:

 

I agree about 4Lo, even though he really doesn't like it. I think Yuzu landing 5 quads, practising that 4A, and landing the 3A-3A in practice at GPF made him really realise that 5 quads isn't going to be enough. Of course, he knows better than anyone that a bad skate can happen but he also knows that those are not a strategy to bank on (as in, he will always train and compete as though everyone will have the skate of their life, rather than hoping to win because his opponent had a fall or pop or something). He knows that Yuzu has GOE and PCS over him. When Yuzu showed he could do 5 quads he showed that he can also match (and potentially better) him for TES. When Yuzu said he hoped to do all quads, including the axel, in a program in that press conference I think Nathan immediately realised he meant it and that if anyone can see such a thing through, it's Yuzu. It's a bit funny because he had just been talking about how much he hated 4Lo but as soon as Yuzu said that, Nathan probably knew he'd have to start training 4Lo again. I also think when there was that scoring change flip-flop and Lz dropped in value, that Nathan probably saw that the 4Lo increase was a way to even out the dip in points for the Lz. I'd say he'd probably hoped to have avoided 4Lo for the rest of his career but has realised he needs it. I'm certain we'll see it again. 

 

I think he just bludged on those spins. His spins have never been the best but these ones really struck me as a choice. I sure hope so.

Well if his spins are his choices then I would like to see better choices.

 

I should have noted that the slow spin I wanted to highlight was in the FP because it failed spectacularly at accentuating the ebbs and flows of the music. Across both the SP and FP in general, his spins were just mediocre. BTW, I notice that he put an extra arm movement in his final spin for the FP (looks like Yuzu's move in his Haru yo koi), which is nice. 

[Figure_Frenzy]

@Sombreuil oh I agree with your assessment — having been away from (re)watching for a long while had made me a bit lenient on judging the elements it seems, though I'd like to say that when I wrote my first comment on Nate's SP I only compare it to... Nathan's own previous performance I last saw (which was...his Elton John FS 🙈🙈 (which was not befitting for a supposed champion of, what, GPF?? Nuh uh, nope, nope). I knew, what a dismal viewing 🙀). I promise you, I might look like I walked back on my initial comment, but it is really what I think. (...should have made it clear the first time around, I guess... 🙈🙈)

 

@Melodie I didn't pay much attention to his spins (much less paying attention in the technical aspect) in the SP but I saw that his first spin traveled quite a bit — granted it was a first outing but come on...

 

...I loathe to watch his FS, with music by Philip Glass...no shade to Philip but his music is like...an ever absorbent void of nonexistence 💀 (...though come to think of it, music by a void composer for a void skater, that's surprisingly fitting! 😛)

[Melodie]

41 minutes ago, Figure_Frenzy said:

@Sombreuil oh I agree with your assessment — having been away from (re)watching for a long while had made me a bit lenient on judging the elements it seems, though I'd like to say that when I wrote my first comment on Nate's SP I only compare it to... Nathan's own previous performance I last saw (which was...his Elton John FS 🙈🙈 (which was not befitting for a supposed champion of, what, GPF?? Nuh uh, nope, nope). I knew, what a dismal viewing 🙀). I promise you, I might look like I walked back on my initial comment, but it is really what I think. (...should have made it clear the first time around, I guess... 🙈🙈)

 

@Melodie I didn't pay much attention to his spins (much less paying attention in the technical aspect) in the SP but I saw that his first spin traveled quite a bit — granted it was a first outing but come on...

 

...I loathe to watch his FS, with music by Philip Glass...no shade to Philip but his music is like...an ever absorbent void of nonexistence 💀 (...though come to think of it, music by a void composer for a void skater, that's surprisingly fitting! 😛)

I like Philip Glass's music, but the first part (Metamorphosis?) is Satton's and Satton's alone.

 

PS: I watched his Rocketman exhibition for JO 2020 without the music just the other day and the whole time, all the way until he hit the ChSq, I thought he was performing his Phillip Glass' selections instead. 

[sweetwater]

Quote

"After much consideration, we have decided to withdraw from Skate America," Chock and Bates said. "Our training and preparation have been affected by the pandemic and at this time we are 100% focused on our preparation for the 2021 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships. We will be staying at our training base in Montreal, but will certainly miss the thrill of competition and seeing our U.S. Figure Skating family. We wish everyone good health and good luck!"

 

[FlyingCamel]

 

[FlyingCamel]

 

[Veveco]

 

So he's flying from Montreal to Vegas (a known hub for contamination), then to New Jersey in the span of 1 week. Quarantine who, what? Don't know her. Then probably back to Montreal. Anyone believes that he'll observe the 14d quarantine required upon entry if they let him back in? I'm disgusted. 

 

In fact a number of skaters were seen traveling today. Hawayek and Baker, notably, also from Montreal. Competition starts on Friday, assuming practice on Wednesday or Thursday, that means barely a few days after traveling. They're not even pretending to quarantine at all.

 

I hate everything about SkAm already.