2018-19 Canadian figure skating

Since I did mention Matthew Markell---the reigning 2018 Canadian junior champion, for those of you who aren't familiar with him---in my last post, I don't believe anyone has uploaded his gorgeous new SP , and so far it's his career-best performance for this segment (albeit at a non-ISU competition) :thumbsup: : https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tpf54

I apologize for this video being 5 months late : , but I honestly didn't know there was official footage from the 2018 Egna Spring Trophy until now. Matt was 2nd in the SP, but he got injured during practice (the aforementioned stress fracture), and had to withdraw from the free skate.

4everchan said:

you are so not alone Siberia.... Ilyia has many fans. They just don't all hang out here

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Well, of course he has fans outside of GS; I just wish they were willing to keep me company here.

4everchan said:

regarding fan fests for Canadian athletes, Patrick's was the only one that was very active. V/M and K.O. have a decent following but nothing like other Worlds Champions..
D/R : it's pretty much a monologue by yours truly... so Canadian juniors rarely get their own

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Yeah, I know it's perfectly normal for junior-level skaters who don't have major international success to be Fan Fest-less. I usually have to keep my enthusiasm for the lower-ranked athletes bottled up.

^^ my time is limited but you will never be alone when it comes to kovler he is growing to be a beautiful skater... the issue in a couple years will be : who can manage to get on the national team... people were saying that without chiddy Canada was nothing : well, we have more quadsters in this country than anywhere else.... they are just growing up, slowly but surely I hope. ... and well Ilyia is only 15 I think... he doesn't have a quad yet but I am sure it's coming considering how huge his 3a is.

Ilya Kovler won the most outstanding performance award at Minto Summerskate for his long program this year. He has a nice triple axel now. It will be fun to follow his progress this year. Canada has a good field of junior men to push each other.

4everchan said:

^^ my time is limited but you will never be alone when it comes to kovler he is growing to be a beautiful skater...

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I'm so glad that you agree!

4everchan said:

the issue in a couple years will be : who can manage to get on the national team...

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This thought did cross my mind last season: there are so many Canadian male skaters to admire, but not enough room for all of them on the national team. hwell: In the future, watching the Canadian Championships will be excruciating for me because while a few of my favourites will (most likely) make the team, it's guaranteed that others won't simply because the number of spots is capped at five.

4everchan said:

people were saying that without chiddy Canada was nothing : well, we have more quadsters in this country than anywhere else.... they are just growing up, slowly but surely I hope.

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Although we're currently experiencing a "drought" in the men's discipline (i.e. an athlete who can medal Worlds), I did say elsewhere that I didn't believe it was all doom and gloom for the Canadian guys, and I was truly astonished by the depth of talent among the youngsters. I think it's fairly significant that for the national team this season, it's only the men who received the full allotment, and I believe their prospects for international success will gradually improve from here. It may take years, but I have faith that at least one of them will get on the Worlds and Olympics podium.

4everchan said:

and well Ilyia is only 15 I think... he doesn't have a quad yet but I am sure it's coming considering how huge his 3a is.

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Yes, he's 15, and I remember reading somewhere that he was working on a quad, so I assume that we might see it next year.

trains said:

Ilya Kovler won the most outstanding performance award at Minto Summerskate for his long program this year. He has a nice triple axel now. It will be fun to follow his progress this year.

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Iliya didn't medal at Minto, but I did mention in the competition thread that I thought his James Bond LP was the most entertaining! https://vimeo.com/282102401 It's nice to hear that you're interested to see how his skating develops over the course of the season, trains.

trains said:

Canada has a good field of junior men to push each other.

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Hopefully the internal competition will help to motivate them to become the best skater that they can possibly be. :yes:

Frankly, at this point in the quadrennial, I'm not so fussed about World podiums (although I think that we might have a nice surprise).

I just think it's fantastic that we have so many great young men developing in Canada.

We can expect ups and downs in consistency, scores and placements as they add in their quads...especially as the revised scoring punishes poor exits from jumps.

But this is all part of a very exciting journey. Not just one to watch for future, but at least a half a dozen.

I'm feeling pretty enthusiastic about the young dance teams too.

Definitely a quadrennial to take a deep breath and watch great things unfold.

Skate Canada released more tickets for the Autumn Classic today, FYI. Day passes are currently available for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Getting quite excited about ACI! Such a fantastic lineup of skaters Awaiting some flags to arrive here to bring with me to Oakville. Hoping that Roman is well enough to compete, since he withdrew from the GTSA Summer Skate. I assume he's ok or there would have been news by now? It'll be nice to see Bennet without a hockey net impeding my view :dev2:

I'll be curious to see Kevin and Roman's programs, since I haven't seen them yet. In Roman's case I'm going to dial back my expectations since iirc he hasn't been able to compete with his programs yet.

Hopefully I'll get to thank Ted Barton in person, but if not, it's nice to know I can drop him a line regardless.

As always, I wish everyone a safe competition and clean programs

Haleth said:

Getting quite excited about ACI! Such a fantastic lineup of skaters

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I hope you have a great time!

Haleth said:

Hoping that Roman is well enough to compete, since he withdrew from the GTSA Summer Skate. I assume he's ok or there would have been news by now?

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He also withdrew from Minto, so none of us got to see his new programs yet. Roman has been rather quiet on social media, so we aren't sure why he didn't compete during the National Summer Series.

Haleth said:

In Roman's case I'm going to dial back my expectations since iirc he hasn't been able to compete with his programs yet.

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He may have been injured, so that would limit his training.

4everchan said:

you are so not alone Siberia.... Ilyia has many fans. They just don't all hang out here


regarding fan fests for Canadian athletes, Patrick's was the only one that was very active. V/M and K.O. have a decent following but nothing like other Worlds Champions..
D/R : it's pretty much a monologue by yours truly... so Canadian juniors rarely get their own

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I think you underrate V/M's fandom ALOT if you are judging it based on how active their fan thread is on here (which is still the most active thread for an ice dance team after P/C and the most active for an ice dance team on fsuniverse plus V/M usually get new threads eahc season while patrick has had the same thread since 2014 i believe). V/M have the biggest fandom of any ice dance team or canadian skater EVER by FAR and one of the biggest fandoms of all time counting all the displines in figure skating. Just look on social media.they have the biggest fan following on social media (twitter and tumblr and instagram youtube etc.) only eclipsed by hanyu and yuna kim/ mao asada when they were still competing. Tessa is also in the top ten of most followed figure skaters on instagram and twitter, the only canadian figure skater in the top ten with 300k plus followers on insta, and 120k plus on twitter.

StephenGfan said:

I think you underrate V/M's fandom ALOT if you are judging it based on how active their fan thread is on here (which is still the most active thread for an ice dance team after P/C and the most active for an ice dance team on fsuniverse plus V/M usually get new threads eahc season while patrick has had the same thread since 2014 i believe). V/M have the biggest fandom of any ice dance team or canadian skater EVER by FAR and one of the biggest fandoms of all time counting all the displines in figure skating. Just look on social media.they have the biggest fan following on social media (twitter and tumblr and instagram youtube etc.) only eclipsed by hanyu and yuna kim/ mao asada when they were still competing. Tessa is also in the top ten of most followed figure skaters on instagram and twitter, the only canadian figure skater in the top ten with 300k plus followers on insta, and 120k plus on twitter.

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I don't think you are reading my post correctly. I am not underestimating the fandom of VM. I am part of it and I know it is huge... however, what I am discussing here is that on this specific forum, during the years I have been lurking and posting, there seemed to be only one very active fan fest among the Canadian athletes, which is the one of Patrick Chan, which has over 1100 pages now, ten times MORE than the next Canadian skaters with VM. It's not a competition about who is more popular or whatever, I am plenty aware that VM have tons of dedicated fans all over the world and outside this forum... however, in response to Siberia who was commenting on the fact that Ilyia Kovler doesn't have a fan fest here, well...it's not surprising... as it seems that Canadian users, outside Patrick's fans, are connecting on different threads and not necessarily spending much time in fan fests...

Tessa and Scott's fan fest was started in 2012 and though is has a good 105 pages, the shibs are at 206, PapaZero are at 500 + and their thread is much more recent, while BobSol are at 140 pages also with a more recent birthdate Elena and Ruslan's thread is 954 pages long...

Is it a reflection of how it is worldwide... probably not.. but these are the numbers on GS....

So my point is that, in the days that I joined this forum until his retirement, Patrick's fan fest was the only very active one in terms of Canadian athletes... i did post a bit in VM's fan fest myself, showing up at position # 6 in total replies... but when I did so, I often had to fetch their thread from the second page on the forum (before the 4 disciplines were split)... and I remember fetching D/R's thread from page 7 or 8 of the fan fest....

so my point here, as a devout VM and Canadian skating fan myself, is that GS is not really the place where to expect a lot of discussion of our junior athletes.... when even 2 times world champion D/R barely have a fan fest...

those at ACI

we expect full reviews

P.J. Kwong evidently saw a preview of Piper and Paul’s free dance, and was a big fan.

Colonel Green said:

P.J. Kwong evidently saw a preview of Piper and Paul’s free dance, and was a big fan.

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But she didn't spill ((

Just a week to go!!!

Is there any news about Julianne Sequin and Charlie Bilodeau?

withwings said:

Is there any news about Julianne Sequin and Charlie Bilodeau?

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We haven't heard anything about new partners for either of them since the split in early summer.

TGee said:

We haven't heard anything about new partners for either of them since the split in early summer.

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Thank you, TGee!
Oh, soo sad, they truly were able to touch the hearts, had that special "something"...

withwings said:

Thank you, TGee!
Oh, soo sad, they truly were able to touch the hearts, had that special "something"...

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Many Canadian fans are fairly unhappy about the split and how it happened.

It's a fairly loud Canadian silence on this one. Not a lot being said in that 'if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all' way.

Here's the Skate Canada News Release

https://skatecanada.ca/2018/07/canadian-pair-skaters-seguin-and-bilodeau-end-skating-partnership/


Here's an article in French from ICI Radio Canada (French CBC). Julianne makes it clear that while she respects Charlie's decision, she had never imagined in the preceding months that he would wish to split.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/sports/1113733/jai-senti-que-cetait-le-moment-charlie-bilodeau

TGee said:

Many Canadian fans are fairly unhappy about the split and how it happened.

It's a fairly loud Canadian silence on this one. Not a lot being said in that 'if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all' way.

Here's the Skate Canada News Release

https://skatecanada.ca/2018/07/canadian-pair-skaters-seguin-and-bilodeau-end-skating-partnership/


Here's an article in French from ICI Radio Canada (French CBC). Julianne makes it clear that while she respects Charlie's decision, she had never imagined in the preceding months that he would wish to split.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/sports/1113733/jai-senti-que-cetait-le-moment-charlie-bilodeau

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Thank you.
Oh, yes, a speaking silence sometimes is more eloquent than any words. Julianne somehow brought a soul on ice, at least it is how I felt/perceived them.
Heartfelt thank you to them both for wonderful moments of skating.
There is ALWAYS day after night.

I saw WeaPo's rhythm dance and I must say I was super impressed, the program is spectacular. Are they sure they want to skip the whole season? They would be a dominant pair this season.

Nobody ever said anything about skipping the whole season, just the Grand Prix series