I know this is turning up almost two weeks after Rostelecom
took place, but between prep for an interview I recorded with The Skating Lesson last week (!) and more than a little anxiety/distraction following the
elections (!!), I’ve fallen behind. But I’m a No-GP Event-Review-Left-Behind
kind of girl, so here we go:
LADIES:
1)
It was one of the collectively
cleanest sets of SPs I can ever remember seeing in a GP event. The only fall,
as I recall, was a fluke-ish one just after the double axel in Elizabet
Tursynbayeva’s program (and she happened to skate last)!
2)
And the free skates were going
fairly well too… all the way until Julia Lipnitskaia did that waltz jump that
made everyone watching say UH OH. You’ve probably seen what happened from there— another non-jump, followed by around three minutes and 15 seconds of a
bewildered Julia drifting between coach Alexei Urmanov and the judges/referees
while she/he/they tried to determine what would happen next. Which, ultimately,
was Julia insisting on completing her program… gamely and in obvious pain (and
a hard fall on a double axel surely didn’t help). Here’s all I really want to
say about this: Please, ISU, make a rule that if a skater has to stop a
program due to illness or injury, the program music will not be re-started
unless and until the COACH (not the skater) gives the signal to do so.
As British Eurosport commentators
said at the time (paraphrased) about her (apparently supported) decision to
continue: “She’s 18. Alexei Urmonov is not. He should know better.” Indeed.
3)
So Lipnitskaia finished dead last,
and USA ’s
Courtney Hicks (who had already done well enough to leapfrog two skaters to
move from 6th to a probably 4th place finish) claimed
bronze. As Hicks herself said via Twitter, it wasn’t the way she wanted to end
up on the podium. But the good news is that she skated quite well in both
phases of the event (yes she was 6th after the SP but it was due to
extremely tough competition, not any major errors on her part). And Hicks
received two GP assignments—she’ll be at Cup of China—so while the competition
there promises to be quite tight as well, she’ll get a second chance at the GP
podium (unlike Mariah Bell, who despite her excellent showing at SkAM was passed over for an NHK spot when Polina
Edwards had to withdraw due to injury).
4)
And as for Anna Pogorilaya—who
also did back-to-back clean programs and easily won the event—there’s something
I said about her on Twitter that others seemed to agree with: It's like she
won World bronze she said "wait! If I can get this after the season I've
had, I can get gold" & got to work right away. Honest to goodness
this is a night & day difference from this time last year (except last year
she wasn’t even one of the three Russian women invited to compete).
MEN:
1)
While I’m proposing rules about
coach-only music restarts, here’s another proposal: If a competitor is
bleeding for any reason, cut their music. It’s rare (unless you’re pairs
World Champ Meagan Duhamel, who has actually encountered this twice that
I recall), but it does happen, sometimes in the form of a bloody nose as it did
with Sweden’s Alexander Majorov at Rostelecom. Whatever triggered his—it seemed to start
after he took a fall on his opening quad toe, though the fall didn’t look to
affect his face in any way—it continued for the rest of the program, making for
a long and uncomfortable 4 minutes as Majorov became clearly distracted and the
rest of us became mindful of the possibility of bodily fluids on the ice. He
did, however, manage to do most of his final footwork sequence while
pinching his nose with one hand… does IJS have a component score for
that??
2)
Former U.S. men’s champ Max Aaron
didn’t fare too badly in Moscow—rebounding from an 8th place
SP to finish 4th in the FS and 5th overall—but something
that I found myself asking as he struggled through that Nessum Dorma
short program was “Why do I feel like we’ve been looking at the same SP for Max
since 2003?” Answer—because we’ve been looking at it since early 2015 (when he
replaced “Footloose” with ND for Worlds), and nearly three years in SP Time feels like approximately 12 years in real time. Please, Coach Tom Z, give Max an SP reboot
in time for Nationals!
3)
A fascinating story to keep
watching, particularly if he makes it to Pyeongchang in 2018, is that of Israel ’s
Alexei Bychenko… simply stated, Rostelecom provided him one of the best
competitions he’s ever had at this level (Personal Bests all over the place,
and a Bronze medal to boot)… with the possible exception of Euros earlier this
year, at which he earned silver. This from a man who didn’t even qualify for
the FS at Worlds in his first two attempts (2012-13). This from a man who was
21st at the Sochi Olympics, and last place at Skate America as
recently as last year. This from a man who will be 29 years old in February!
Let’s watch him at his other GP assignment (NHK) and see if he can stay
consistent enough to be considered a serious threat to crack Worlds Top 10 this
year.
Since this is coming so late, I’m again going to skip over
the Pairs and Dance disciplines of 2016 Rostelecom… EXCEPT to say
1)
Savchenko/Massot won here, but
Savchenko damaged ligaments in her ankle on a throw 3ax at Trophee de France
(one week later). So despite a win in Paris
as well, they’ve already opted out of the GP Finals for which they easily
qualified.
2)
Both Bobrova/Soloviev and
Chock/Bates qualified for the Final with respective gold and silver wins here.
I picked C/B to win, but an egregious error on Bates’ part in the FD (with the
twizzles) combined with remarkably higher scores all around for Bob/Solo
(compared to SkAM). Weaver/Poje made their season GP debut here and got bronze;
their 2nd run at gold will pit them against the Shib Sibs at Cup of
China.
Speaking of which… CoC predictions, which I’ll be posting
late Thursday night so that everything’s up in time for the SPs. Those will
begin with Short Dance at 2:30 AM
(ET) in the wee small hours of Friday morning.
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