MEN
On paper, there were no present-day headliners in the men’s
event… but that only made it all the more interesting. My guess at who would
step into the driver’s seat (Keiji Tanaka) was wrong—he finished down in 5th—but
it was nice to see Boyang Jin regain his jumping “mojo”, claiming his first GP
medal in two years and first-EVER GP gold.
For me, it was even nicer seeing Han Yan take silver… or
seeing him back at all! I’m sure he knows as well as anyone that the quad-free
skating he brought to CoC won’t often place him on the podium, but I doubt that
was his point of competing this time around. I don’t know much about him, but I
always enjoy his breezy interpretations of the music as much as the elements
themselves and it saddened me to see him step away from competition. Did you
see his reactions at the end of each program—standing very still, just taking
in the positive reaction of the crowd? (That’s how I saw it anyway) It felt
like he was reminding himself why he skates, and why he competes. I hope he’s
back for a few more years…
LADIES
Since there was no surprise at the top (Shcherbet and her
magic dress again), I want to jump to looking at the top PCS (component)
scores…
1)
Satoko Miyahara 72.36 (finished 2nd)
2)
Anna Shcherbakova 67.82 (finished
1st)
3)
Elizaveta Tuktamysheva 66.50
(finished 3rd)
4)
Young You 63.36 (finished 4th)
5)
Marin Honda 62.79 (finished 7th)
There’s been some debate already this season about inflated
PCS scores with regards to the Russian teens, particularly Quad Queen Alexandra
Trusova (whose PCS at SkCAN was about the same as Shcherbet’s here). Thank
goodness Miyahara was awarded component scores so far above everyone else’s at
CoC that it compensated for her underrotations (two in the SP; three in the FS)
and actually changed the color of the medal she received from bronze to
silver. It’s unfortunate that she’s been
flagged for the URs enough now that they seem almost inescapable, but the Lori
Nichol choreography on her Schindler’s List free skate is glorious. I
hope she does well enough at Rostelecom Cup (coming up this weekend) to earn a
spot at the GP Final.
PAIRS
Sui/Han were so far above all the other pair teams at CoC, I
felt compelled to remind myself of the other top six finishers at Worlds back
in March…
Tarasova/Morozov (silver medalists) had a rocky start to
their GP experience a few weeks ago at Skate Canada; we’ll see if it was a
fluke or a trend at Rostelecom.
Zabiiako/Enbert (bronze) are not competing this GP due to
injury.
Peng/Jin (4th) took silver here, and have already
qualified for their third GP Final… but remain well behind their teammates (19
points at Worlds; 28.4 points at CoC).
James/Cipres (5th) took the GP season off to be
involved with CBC’s revival of Battle of the Blades.
Boikova/Kozlovskii (6th) won Skate Canada a
couple weeks back, and will likely end up on the podium again next week at Rostelecom.
But it’s worth noting that Sui/Han’s winning score here was 12 points higher
than Boi/Koz’s winning score at SkCAN.
In other words… someone send the skater bubblewrap to China,
please. We need this injury-prone pair of champions to stay healthy in the
worst way.
DANCE
My predictions for this were correct, but did you see
the difference between 1st and 2nd was less than 1.5
points?? Chock/Bates actually defeated reigning World Silver Medalists
Sinitsina/Katsalapov in the FD portion… which means that GP Final coming up in
a month or so is bound to provide a VERY interesting showdown between C/B and
Hubbell/Donohue. (And a great preview for U.S. Nationals, in case that isn’t
obvious)
But here’s something I definitely didn’t see coming: China’s
Wang/Liu coming in 4th—their highest-ever finish at CoC—and beating
Hawayek/Baker by about 6 points. Those
points were mostly earned in the FD; the two teams were both in the 74’s
point-wise for the SD. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me post a
What should they do from here? poll regarding Hawayek Baker’s
Spanish-flavored free dance. (They don’t seem to be setting any personal bests
with either dance this season, but for the purposes of the poll I focused on
the FD.) There was no overwhelming “winner” in my poll—it’s still pinned to my
page (@KLBSt8ofSk8) if you want to take a look—but what got the most votes was
a suggestion for H/B to return to their very successful FD from last year as
they work towards defending their bronze-medal podium spot at Nationals. I hope
to take a harder look at their protocols once GP season is past; if I do, I’ll
probably post about it. Just feeling kinda mystified and frustrated for them…
they’ve worked too long and hard for that #3 spot to lose it so quickly.
(And I was further mystified when someone as knowledgeable
as Ben Agosto expressed similar frustration with their SD scores on the Olympic
Channel broadcast this past week. I haven’t yet watched his take on the FD.
Maybe some clues are uncovered there? )
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