Hana Chan

I'll top that with baby Yuzu

Raf pissed me off with how he talked about Nathan's competition this time around and basically shitting over Yuzuru's 4axel efforts (comparing it to going to an expensive restaurant and not being able to pay the bill). It was grating, especially with how much Nathan respects Yuzuru as a competitor. And it wasn't like Brian Orser was telling the press that some of Yuzuru's competition might have great careers as ice polishers with the way their backsides spent more time on the ice than their skates at PyeongChang. Raf's comments were entirely uncalled for.

There are only so many athletes that a good coach can devote time to - especially when they're all in the elite class. Having trained so many Olympic & World medalists (like Yuzuru, Javi, Yuma, etc), Brian can certainly be picky about who he takes on. I am in total agreement that Eteri is not the only bad coach out there. There are plenty who don't recognize where the line between hard/strict ends and abusive begins. And there are time when skaters and coaches just don't mesh and a change works out for the better so the skater can advance. The question becomes how the coach approaches their job. Do they try to build up an athlete as Brian does, or do they break them down in Eteri's fashion? Do the athletes feel supported and encouraged, or terrified of failure? A coach who's first instinct after a bad program is to publicly berate a crying 15 year old girl is outright abusive. And if Eteri is that bad in public, who can only imagine how vicious she is behind closed doors? While bad coaches can exist in any country, few have the official support of both the nation's federation and governmental leadership that Eteri does. In fact, I can't think of any other that comes close. It's not a surprise that she feels free to act with such impunity, because there is no one who will stand up to her. No athletes are promised a long career of many years, but there is a major crisis in a sport where to even consider enduring more than a single quad as a skater is all but unthinkable. Older women might not be as competitive technically (especially if they are trying to match girls who are barely teens doing quads) but what they lose in the extreme jumping ability, they make up for in more mature precision and artistry. Not every skater is a Yuzuru Hanyu who was so artistically proficient at the beginning of his senior career (and even so, he's lightyears ahead in artistic expression now). Nathan Chen took several years to mature as a skater and while I still find his artistic quality to be less than skaters like Yuzuru, Shoma and Jason, he's miles better now than what he was in PyeongChang. The girls don't get that chance to grow and evolve. And it seems that the younger they are when they peak technically, the younger they retire. I'm looking forward the day when I can follow a female skater the way I've followed Michele Kwan, Yuma Kim, Irena Slutskaya and Mao Asada. I want the competitive rivalries that can go on for years and see women stay in the sport even if they're not on the podium all the time. I want to see a 27 year old woman who just decides that no, they're not ready to call it quits because they love to skate and feel they have more to show (as Yuzuru is). If gymnastics can change enough that athletes like Simone Biles, Ally Raiseman and Aliya Mustafina can not just compete but excel at more than one Olympics and address the toxic abuse that happened behind the scenes, there's no reason that figure skating can't. They just need to want to, and we as fans have to demand it.

So nice to see Vanessa James skating again. I also loved her and she seems to be matching up well with her new partner. After what happened with Cipres (creep) I'm glad that she's making another Olympic showing.

I've been doing a lot of thinking over the past few days on what might be done to fix figure skating and the sad fact is that because there are two very distinct and sometimes contradictory elements that make up the sport, reforms are going to be very difficult. It seems like everything that the ISU does to make scoring more transparent and logical just make things worse. You're trying to reward technical and athletic advances (like the quad revolution for both men and women) while still keeping the artistic elements that give the sport its soul. To often, it seems that the athletic/technical side of the sport are given so much weight that we see skaters like Trusova getting on the podium by virtue of athleticism alone. The most recent reforms, for example, they raised a potential GOE for an element to +5 (and lowering a poor GOE to -5) ended up not making scoring more fair. Instead we saw certain skaters with highly inflated GOEs and others more proportionate. We have judges, all of whom are unpaid volunteers, unable to judge by any fair or reasonable standard. Favored skaters from favored coaches have their mistakes ignored while those who aren't the special snowflakes get zinged for any minor error mercilessly. If it's obvious to casual views (and with Johnny and Tara pulling no punches - finally - over how inconsistent and unfair the judging has gotten), then the sport is in serious trouble. One proposition I saw was to have a team of professional judges in the employ of the ISU itself to do the judging at international meets. Having paid professionals with clear training and standards might help level the field a bit and stop the score inflation. Another proposal that I saw was to separate the judging and have one set of judges strictly for the technical/athletic elements and one for the artistic (with both scores holding equal weight in the final score). I think that both of these should be seriously considered. One other option that I would propose is to end the -5/+5 GOE idea and instead do what we have in artistic gymnastics. Have each element have a maximum score (instead of a base value). The judges then would deduct for flaws/errors. This would markedly cut back on the score inflation and put a focus on not just completing an element, but doing it as correctly as possible. A lot of the things that the Russian girls (and even Nathan Chen) get away with like pre-rotations, wrong edges, etc. should not be rewarded with high GOEs the way they have been. Obviously that also bring us to raising the age limit for women (and men) to compete as seniors. I think that is going to be unavoidable after this fiasco but I don't think it's going to hurt the sport. It didn't hurt gymnastics. What it will do is end the quad revolution for women, at least for now. Instead of depending on bad technique and pre-teen bodies, we would have to develop strong skaters who are able to complete these elements properly and with good technique who then have an opportunity to be competitive past the age of 18. It will take time for women to catch up, but the benefit will be less pressure on pre-teens to brutalize their bodies in order to get that skill set in so they can hit the Olympics at 15. I would also agree that limiting quad elements (for both men and women) and putting more emphasis on actual skating would help. And then we have Eteri and the Russian Fed... they need to be banned. At least for one full quad and WADA and the IOC need to have a serious investigation into all aspects of their programs. That is unavoidable at this point, and not just for skating. This might be the most public and egregious example, but Russia has proven repeatedly that they cannot be permitted to manage any aspect of their doping surveillance. The fact that Valieva had these drugs in her sample, but it took over a month to get the results because her samples weren't flagged as priority the way they are required to be in not something that can be overlooked. Russia has run out of chances.

I'm currently watching the rundown on the latest episode of The Skating Lessson and they have Polina Edmunds and she's revealing a great deal about what she thinks is going on behind the scenes and it is ugly. One thing that she brought up is that Eteri basically has a monopoly on taking skaters to the Olympics. The skaters who leave her eventually come back simply because that's their only chance of making the Olympic team. She's also ripping on the judges for the scoring - that Eteri's girls have terrible jumping technique and their faults in form don't get called out while other skaters doing cleaner jumps get scored lower. And she's outright stating that she thinks that the doping goes well beyond Kamila.

I would hope that after the fiasco that this Olympics was that the ISU is going to take a good hard look at the sport as whole and try to find some way to salvage it, because at the rate we're going figure skating is going to die as a sport. Between the inconsistent judging where favorites are rewarded regardless of what happens on the ice, abusive coaches and the way the sport chews up teenage girls and spits them out before they're even 18, there is only so long this can go on before fans abandon the sport. We're seeing this in horse racing, and we saw it in artistic gymnastics. Now I think figure skating is going to have its moment of reckoning. This editorial about what we saw is very thought provoking, and well worth keeping in mind while we're passing judgement on what happened this morning. https://sports.yahoo.com/olympic-figure-skater-kamila-valieva-was-failed-by-the-system-adults-170245056.html

Oh, I think that the writing was on the way that they were already on their way out the door. Sasha's FS was terrible and not something worthy of a gold medal performance. And this will probably be Anna's swan song as she's the gold medalist as a matter of chance. I'm sure that Eteri has a 13 year old able to do multiple quads that she can drag up for Worlds if need be.

I don't know how much blame I can place on Kamila, as she is coming from a very authoritarian society where you don't often feel like you can act in your own best interests. She wouldn't feel like she could push back against Eteri if her coach ordered her to do something, because that would mean a loss of competitive potential. If she was told to to something that would help her win, her first instinct would be to go along with it. As for withdrawing when the drug test came out, I don't believe that was a decision she was free to make. Going by Eteri's behavior and words, she seemed to fully expect Kamila to push though and win, and they would deal with the complications later. I think that Kamila would have wanted to drop out because it was obvious that she was not enjoying herself, even in the SP. And now while the Russian media is trying to put the blame on WADA and the IOC for "breaking" Kamila, it's pretty obvious that the blame belongs to Eteri and the Russian sport system. No one was acting in Kamila's interest. She was nothing more than a vehicle to another gold medal.

This is a really interesting article in the New York Times about how quads are changing the sport for women but the most important thing to me is the table that shows the rate of success of the quads and that 15 seems to be the age when all the girls peak. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/16/sports/olympics/quad-jumps-figure-skating.html What's clear is that by the age of 17, they are not as successful in landing the quads as they were at 15. Sasha's most successful season for quads was when she was 15. At 17, she seems to land them about 50% of the time (compared to maybe 75% at 15). Kamila, up until now, had around a 90% success rate for her quads. Now it's obvious why Eteri was putting so much focus on Kamila, because Sasha and Anna were already on the decline while it appeared that Kamila was peaking at just the right time for the Olympics. Of course, then we had the doping matter and the whole thing fell apart. Sasha's outburst is starting to make a lot more sense than just the whining of an entitled teenager. Unlike Kamila, she was not given a winning program (costume & choreography) and wasn't set up to win.

In happier, albeit insane news... Yuzuru is trolling the universe again.

Unfortunately, by the time Evgenia arrived in Canada, her back was already a mess so besides trying to learn a new jumping technique, she was battling a body that was already breaking down. Then she got stuck in Russia because of covid and ended up back with Eteri because she had no other options. Kamila is still young enough that making changes now would hopefully extend her career. The problem would be the loss of the Russian bonus points that she always enjoyed.

It looks like Kamila was skating to win and just crumbled if this is accurate. Regardless, burn in hell, Eteri.

Well.. to sum up this event...

The gala list is out for the ladies. I really do feel for Kamila but leaving out Wakaba is a real oversight.

Well, I hope the CAS is happy with "irreparable damage" they wanted to avoid.

And the Russian commentators are putting the blame for Kamila's breakdown on the IOC and WADA. Not on her abusive, manipulative coach. Russia needs to be banned from all international competitions for at least the next entire Olympic cycle. Will suck for the clean athletes (if there are any) but I don't see any other way for the IOC to force them to clean house and take the doping rules seriously.

With the exception of Kaori getting on the podium, a gorgeous routine from Wakaba and the US doing somewhat better than expected, this was a total shit show. It's an embarrassment that those who only watching the sport once every four years that this is the impression they're going to come away with. Eteri is a disgrace. She got her medals as a coach, but she utterly destroyed three girls in the process.

I do feel sorry for Kamila because she should never have been put in this situation. I entirely blame Eteri because when this happened, she did absolutely nothing to protect Kamila. The kinder thing would have been to have her withdraw from competition until the matter was cleared up. Either they threw this kid to the wolves and had her deliberately botch her performance or Kamila finally cracked from the pressure. Either way, this should never have been allowed to happen. Johnny speaks Russian well enough to know exactly what Sasha was saying. I get that she's disappointed because in all reality, this is her one Olympics. There won't be another bite at the apple because of the Eteri Expiration Date. Hopefully she'll get a grip on herself (because she's coming across like a brat) and hightail it back to Plushenko's rink (or better yet, over to Brian Orser before her back is completely wrecked) and tries to have a career as an adult skater.

Every skater is capable of having a bad competition. We saw Nathan spend more time on his backside than on his skates during his SP in Peongchang. We saw Yuzuru have problems here. It is entirely possible that Kamila just had a bad night to miss so many elements. But I just can't buy it. Not with the way she's been performing all year. I'm willing to put good money down on her being instructed to throw the competition to take the focus off of her pending doping tests and saving Eteri and Russia the embarrassment that is sure to follow. And it saves the IOC the headache of not being able to have a medal ceremony (just leaving the team event in flux). Not that I think that Sasha or Anna are clean, but they haven't been caught with testing yet. But I would not be surprised of Kamila suddenly retires this year, especially if the pending tests confirm her doping and she gets suspended. I'm thrilled for Kaori through! And that bronze is as good as gold in my eyes.

This is what makes this sport so problematic. We just had two routines (Sasha & Kaori) and you couldn't have more of a contrast. I can admire the athleticism that it takes to get all those quads in, but that's all there is to her routine. There's not musicality or flow. The whole point of Sasha's program was to go from one jump to the next. Kaori, on the other hand, gave a beautiful program where elements flowed together. She didn't sacrifice artistry for the technical elements. I know which one I'd rather watch. The problem is that the judges are not rewarding artistic skaters any longer. We saw this repeatedly with Nathan's and Yuzuru's scores over the past few years. It's all about big jumps. Personally, I would like to see big elements like quads limited (both for men and women) so that greater emphasis is placed on the classic elements of skating. I'd love to see figures come back, so that we can really judge the quality of their basic skating and not have it turn into the jumping competition that the sport has become.

Yup. Kaori was magnificent but she's 20 points behind Sasha. Unless Anna and Kamila both completely combust on the ice, it's not even going to be close. I love this sport but today... Today I'm hating it.

The problem is that outside of her jumps, her program is positively junior level. There's no life or emotion in it. She's a jumping bean, going from one quad to the next. The sad thing is that I don't expect her to make it through another year of competition at the rate she's going. She's likely to burn out before the next quad begins.

Shoma and Yuzuru are in the audience to cheer on the Japanese ladies. Here's hoping they bring some good luck. Wakaba was glorious! Picture perfect 3A.