SeanC

Alright, Kaori, feminist slam poetry time!

Too bad about the double Lutz, she probably won't beat Karen because of that, but that was easily her best free skate to date! And she's left room to have that perfect skate in the women's event later.

Right after the Chinese skater performing to Sunset Boulevard, here's an American skater performing to the "Butterfly Lovers' Violin Concerto".

Raises hand.

Yes, this is their last season. The song choice is reflecting on their eleven seasons together.

Pretty much non-existent. They're aiming for top five.

I think it may have been a GOE feature at some point prior to 2018, but it hasn't been for a while. Skaters still do it because it looks cool and since it's difficult it tells the judges that they're skilled.

You don't get extra points for doing it. It's not a GOE or level feature.

Cross-nationality partnerships are pretty normal in skating, particularly if you're a skater from a smaller federation who may not have anybody at the elite international level to partner up with. In Tim's case, he I think could fairly be called a modestly talented dancer, he's not somebody who would ever make a US national podium or Olympic/World team. By skating with women from other countries it's mutually beneficial, both get to compete internationally when they otherwise wouldn't. Misato actually skated for Italy for a few years, rather than Japan, because of the lack of Japanese men who do ice dance.

It’s not a GOE or level feature so you don’t get points for doing it.

Mirabel wasn't excluded from the photo, she hung back and didn't enter it. The point of that scene is that nobody in the family noticed she wasn't there.

Countries can only switch out skaters in two of the four disciplines, and for the US the men and dance teams had first dibs because they're the most successful.

Current standings 45 - ROC 42 - USA 39 - Japan 30 - Canada 29 - China The remain segments by season's best: Free dance 10 - Sinitsina/Katsalapov (130.07) 9 - Chock/Bates (125.68) 8 - Gilles/Poirier (125.62) 7 - Wang/Liu (111.31) 6 - Komatsubara/Koleto (104.07) Pairs free 10 - Mishina/Galliamov or Boikova/Kozlovskii or Tarasova/Morozov 9 - Knierim/Frazier (136.60) 8 - Miura/Kihara (135.57) 7 - Peng/Jin (135.15) 6 - James/Radford (130.83) Women's free 10 - Valieva or Trusova or Shcherbakova 9 - Sakamoto (146.78) 8 - Chen (134.99) 7 - Schizas (125.44) 6 - Zhu (111.25) 75 - ROC (45+10+10+10) 68 - USA (42+9+9+8) 62 - Japan (39+6+8+9) 51 - Canada (30+8+6+7) 49 - China (29+7+7+6) Now, there's a bit of wiggle room for a lot of these, though. In ice dance the bottom two are locked in, I'd say, but given how shaky S/K looked in the rhythm dance and that having been their better program for most of this season, I don't think first place is a given for them. The Russian pair finishing first is pretty close to a given, and I expect J/R to finish last, but the middle three could really be in any order. For the women I think the order of the top two and the last-place finisher are also set, but it's vaguely possible that Maddie could catch up to Karen depending on how things go. Realistically I think Komatsubara/Koleto would need to somehow move up an ordinal or two for Japan to have a shot at silver.

The assumption is that Nathan is going to 2022 Worlds.

That's his short program.

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2023 World champion.

The music builds incredibly.

Why would that take away from the artistry? It's just a different shape, one is not more artistic than the other. Also, many skaters have learned to do the jumps this way from the beginning, so this is their natural form.

Madeline really rescued Canada there. She really turned into a total clutch skater the past two years, which I wouldn't have expected back when she first appeared at senior nationals and completely forgot her jump layout during the free skate and did four single Axels.

Even if she had been third the US would probably not have won gold, but they should be fine for silver. Japan doesn't have the horses to move up from bronze.

Valieva is now the fourth woman (from the third nation) to land a triple Axel at the Olympics.

On the one hand, yay, the Canadian women's team is kicking ass and taking names as usual. On the other hand, I was kind of hoping that Finland was on its way to becoming a third really competitive international side, but they got utterly dismantled by Canada here. An NHL team that performed like that would get its coach and GM fired the next day.

I don't think this is about justifying what he did. It's a pretty standard storytelling format to present a character with initially sympathetic motivations as a way to pull the audience in before gradually revealing that they're actually or are becoming morally bankrupt.

I was disappointed for Zoha, she made a good run at the end there.

Richard Rodgers and Marvin Hamlisch also did that.