Friday, November 17, 2017

2017 NHK Trophy Roundup

I managed some pretty good guesses on my NHK picks… the only completely-out-of-nowhere interloper on the podium was Sergei Voranov. Clearly I should have given him more credit! After all, he has managed 7 GP medals since 2007, not to mention a bronze at the GP Final in 2015. It’s just that he tends to come undone in his free skates, when endurance comes into play a lot more (and of course him being 30 years old doesn’t help the endurance battle much!). Anyway, props to him for his first-ever GP gold!

A few other thoughts about the men:

*   Let Yuzuru Hanyu’s cringe-inducing fall on a practice quad lutz serve as a PSA that what happened to him could happen to ANY of the guys currently training quads so hard.  The risk factor is so very high, and we tend to forget when so much is going well… Hopefully Hanyu will make a full recovery, and Brian Orser & Co. will work OVERTIME keep him from trying to rush things.

*  Though he couldn’t have beaten Voronov on the technical side, I was rather disappointed to see Jason Brown go down on both triple axel attempts (effectively ending any chance at podium finish). Not sure if I’ve seen that since… maybe when he was first including them? (Maybe not even then!)

*  Adam Rippon’s first major event since breaking his foot earlier in the year was just that—an EVENT! And then to add icing to that cake, the guy turns 28 that weekend and ends up being the youngest of the three men on the podium (with bronze going to 29 year-old Alexei Bychenko).  

I’ve actually got nothing to say about pairs this time; the podium unfolded as I figured it would, and the front-runners for that sole U.S. Olympic spot (The Knierims) were middle of the pack instead of at the bottom. Side by side jumps were a no-go. Again. I’m bored talking about this already. NEXT!

About the ladies—I got this podium right too, so just a couple things:

*  Much as I wish Satoko Miyahara’s “first major event since…” proved as successful as Rippon’s, it clearly was not. Will she turn out to be someone who peaked in the wrong part of the Olympic cycle? Last year at this time I’d have thought her to be a lock for PyeongChang. But stack last weekend’s efforts against those of Mai Mihara, Wakaba Higuchi, and senior newcomer Marin Honda… and suffice to say the pressure is on. Japan Nationals, by the way, start December 20.

*  Meanwhile, the U.S. Nationals will start on December 29—and if GP performances are indicative of anything, I’d say Mirai Nagasu is gaining ground and Mariah Bell is losing it, even though neither one of them has done better than 4th (Nagasu’s placement at NHK). But we’ve also seen many a skater flounder on the circuit only to completely kill it at Nats (Karen Chen and Polina Edmunds come to mind), so…

*  Gotta give a little shoutout to Russia’s Alena Leonova, who has struggled since her 2012 peak amongst the deep pool of Russian girls-to-women. She threw down the cleanest FS at NHK that anyone’s seen from her in EONS. Even though I’ve never been much of a fan, it was quite gratifying to see. (Russian Nats, by the way, are on a similar schedule to Japan Nats and will start on December 20.)

And finally, a few words about the stunningly low FD score of the UK’s own comeback kids, Coomes/Buckland. Though they were 5th after the SD with a decent score of 65+, their FD only brought in a 92.51 (25 points less than Virtue/Moir, and 12 points below 4th place-finishers Sinitsina/Katsalapov). I did something I rarely do, especially at GP events—broke out the protocols and tried to make sense of Coo/Buck’s harsh score. As you might guess in an ice dance event with no egregious errors, it was all about LEVELS:

**Only ONE level 4 (their curve lift)

**A level 2 for their diagonal step sequence, netting them only a 6.07 compared to a 10.64 for Cappellini/Lannotte

**Level 3s for most everything else, including twizzles (a 5.77 for them vs. an 8.14 for the level 4 twizzles of Sinitsina/Katsalapov) and their dance spin (a 5.46 vs. a 6.80 for S/K).


Coo/Buck’s total NHK score of 158.15 was light years behind the personal best they obtained at Nebelhorn earlier this season (a 177.13, which would’ve put them in virtual tie with S/K here). The good news, though, is that they’ve presumably got much more time to work than others I’ve mentioned here… their next pressure-cooker event isn’t until Europeans in January.

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