2017-18 State of Russian Ladies skating

It's hard to believe that Maria is still 17, and she is 5'8" !!!! That might height is the main obstacle for her further development and success. That is the same height as Hanyu and Javier, taller than Nathan, Boyang... It is much harder for her to have consistency in jumps, not to mention doings tons of transitions without exhausting herself. She will probably grow fuller in the next two years, so the future is not good for her. There's a reason why Eteri prefer relatively short and tiny girls— puberty will affect them much less.

Yuzu about Alina and Evgenia: I would give gold to both
https://www.sports.ru/figure-skating/1060583927.html

The pattern in Zagitova's jump drill (second half of her program) is so small, it uses so much less of the rink than any of the other top ladies. How this gets high marks in composition is beyond me.

hippomoomin said:

It's hard to believe that Maria is still 17, and she is 5'8" !!!! That might height is the main obstacle for her further development and success. That is the same height as Hanyu and Javier, taller than Nathan, Boyang... It is much harder for her to have consistency in jumps, not to mention doings tons of transitions without exhausting herself. She will probably grow fuller in the next two years, so the future is not good for her. There's a reason why Eteri prefer relatively short and tiny girls— puberty will affect them much less.

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With her height and lines, Masha would make a hell of an ice dancer.

Grin said:

Yuzu about Alina and Evgenia: I would give gold to both
https://www.sports.ru/figure-skating/1060583927.html

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Yuzu is a smart dude
also why can I not stop shipping Yuzu and Zhenya???

Nightcrawler said:

With her height and lines, Masha would make a hell of an ice dancer.

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To be an ice dancer, Masha needs to improve her SS...

alvina9894 said:

To be an ice dancer, Masha needs to improve her SS...

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She's 17, she can improve. Besides, Aleksandra Stepanova, Madison Chock and Piper Gilles are doing just fine.

Today is Eteri's birthday. What a gift her girls have given to her yesterday!

Total value of jumps by Olympic Gold medalists and dress colors of OGM's. Since Alina has got it all, she was an unevitable champion!

russianfan said:

Today is Eteri's birthday. What a gift her girls have given to her yesterday!

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And look how much she hates Alina! What a horrible, biased, evil witch she is...

Happy birthday Eteri!

Interesting article about Eteri, Evgenia and Alina

It's interesting to think about the different development methods for the young skaters, at least when it comes to their competitive programs. For some skaters, it appears as if they perform much too difficult content and move up higher and higher in difficult well before they are ready. Constantly pushing to advance further and further. But this has the downside of perhaps causing the skater to learn bad habits or "cheat" as they try to move up to more difficult content before they might have mastered the basics. This can lead to bad jumping habits, with incorrect edges for instance. On the other hand, some skaters seem to do a bit too simple content for their level where it seems like the focus is on doing that content as well as possible and trying to concentrate on getting the details and the basics right. But this method can backfire with the skater not being able to learn everything they might have the potential to. I believe it's rather important to have a balance.


On that topic, we have the 8-year-old Uliana Vasilieva who in my opinion has an extremely light program considering her skill level. It's as if they only include stuff that she can perform more or less perfectly and it doesn't exactly challenge her. As a result, the level she competes at is very low and I don't even know if she is going to be participating in the Sports 2 category even next season. I also cannot get any decent hint about what her rotation speed is actually like. But it shouldn't be terrible judging by the combo jump and her especially gorgeous air rotation position. Regardless, I think she's a great jumping talent at this point in time. Though they are just double jumps, both the Lutz and the Flip are on the correct edges. The Lutz edge is especially deep.

And take a look at the height - For example the Flip here. She's only 8 years and 2 months of age and that's already the height of a genuine JGP level triple jump. And not of the tiny variety. The axel looks like she also puts absolutely no effort into it and still gains enough air time for where some skaters might be able to perform a double axel. For the 2009 age category, no one else's jumps look like this this season, and it's doubtful she's even jumping as high as she could. I almost would feel very confident about her becoming the youngest skater to actually perform a fully rotated triple jump or at the very least the first 2009-born skater to(She has the elevation already), but I don't even know if she's going to be skating at a level where the triple jumps are allowed. But I do hope that she's going to continue improving the jump height and that she's able to maintain those proper edges on these jumps even after she upgrades to triple jumps.

As a side note, curious arm variation on the jumps. I wonder if that's something she plans on keeping. Would be more interesting than all the tanos at least.

hippomoomin said:

It's hard to believe that Maria is still 17, and she is 5'8" !!!! That might height is the main obstacle for her further development and success. That is the same height as Hanyu and Javier, taller than Nathan, Boyang... It is much harder for her to have consistency in jumps, not to mention doings tons of transitions without exhausting herself. She will probably grow fuller in the next two years, so the future is not good for her. There's a reason why Eteri prefer relatively short and tiny girls— puberty will affect them much less.

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Well, I think her biggest problem is that she's boring to watch. She needs to become a better performer.

Happy birthday, Eteri! May your skaters continue to be successful and happy and may you have a long, happy life

С днем ​​рождения Eteri! The true winner of the 2018 Olympics.

Spirals for Miles said:

Sotskova might be replaced due to poor results. And the fact that they LOVE both Konstantinova and Gubanova...

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Sending anyone other than Masha to Worlds (+ Zhenia and Alina of course) is a step in gifting 3 spots to the US ladies. She's the only one of the "rest" who can be relied on to score 200+ consistently. Anyone else is beatable by one or more of the US ladies which is a step to conceding a top-6 spot at Worlds.

I don't think RusFed cares about American ladies spots.

kalee said:

Sending anyone other than Masha to Worlds (+ Zhenia and Alina of course) is a step in gifting 3 spots to the US ladies. She's the only one of the "rest" who can be relied on to score 200+ consistently. Anyone else is beatable by one or more of the US ladies which is a step to conceding a top-6 spot at Worlds.

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I don't exactly agree with this. First of all, Russia isn't that concerned with whether America gets 3 spots or not for next season. But second, 7 Russian skaters actually have higher PBs than any American skaters this season. Trusova and Kostornaia aren't senior eligible, but in addition to Medvedeva and Zagitova, there's Sotskova, Tsurskaya and Radionova that each have a better SB than any American. I also don't agree that she can be relied to score 200+ consistently. She's really not that consistent and has some UR issues. After the top 2, there really are no consistent ladies in Russia currently. Tsurskaya is the one with the highest potential for scoring high, however.

With the cards they have dealt themselves, to me the ideal scenario would be one where they actually send Konstantinova over Sotskova to worlds and then send Gubanova to jr. worlds. Of course, I'd rather not see Konstantinova at all but for this scenario I'd be willing to make an exception.

Imagine said:

And look how much she hates Alina! What a horrible, biased, evil witch she is...

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Ugh, such wickedness & malice! I don't understand how you could post such things here...

Anyway, seriously though, I think Eteri was in a somewhat difficult position when Evgenia's scores were announced. We all saw how sad Evgenia was on first hearing her scores (and my heart went out to her), and it's not like Eteri could just ditch her and run off to celebrate with Alina. And we all know what people would have said if she had...

Shayuki said:

I don't exactly agree with this. First of all, Russia isn't that concerned with whether America gets 3 spots or not for next season. But second, 7 Russian skaters actually have higher PBs than any American skaters this season. Trusova and Kostornaia aren't senior eligible, but in addition to Medvedeva and Zagitova, there's Sotskova, Tsurskaya and Radionova that each have a better SB than any American. I also don't agree that she can be relied to score 200+ consistently. She's really not that consistent and has some UR issues. After the top 2, there really are no consistent ladies in Russia currently. Tsurskaya is the one with the highest potential for scoring high, however.

With the cards they have dealt themselves, to me the ideal scenario would be one where they actually send Konstantinova over Sotskova to worlds and then send Gubanova to jr. worlds. Of course, I'd rather not see Konstantinova at all but for this scenario I'd be willing to make an exception.

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True, Russia may not be concerned about US spots per se. But presumably, they should be interested in maintaining the highest possible placements for their Worlds team? If so, then Sotskova has not performed badly enough to forfeit her Worlds spot as Konstantinova could concede even more placements at Worlds, including to potentially one or more of the US ladies plus others.
Agree that Tsurskaya has the highest potential for scoring if sent to Worlds, though her Final of Russian Cup results don't point to her being in the best of recent form. Tsurskaya --> Radionova --> Tukt --> Konstantinova would be my guess at the scoring potential at Worlds but sadly as you've mentioned, they've got to work "with the cards they have dealt themselves" due to the scoring at Nats.

I would bet on Radionova rather than Konstantinova. Konstantinova scored higher at the nationals, but she won’t get those marks at senior worlds, whereas Radionova will.