2018-19 U.S. Men’s figure skating

Yay im so happy Torgashev won! i guess he have big chance to qualify. My prediction Pulkinen, Gogolev, Torgashev, Sumoto/Shimada/ russian skater will go to JGPF.

Yaaaay Andrew T.

As he said in his IG, not the best skate, but he fought for it. He has always had those mad skating skillz and hopefully at some point this year the jumps will come together.

I just realized that Adam Rippon has been removed from the ISP, even though he hasn't officially said anything about the future of his career (similar to Mirai, who is in fact, still on the ISP). Thoughts?

bennorii said:

I just realized that Adam Rippon has been removed from the ISP, even though he hasn't officially said anything about the future of his career (similar to Mirai, who is in fact, still on the ISP). Thoughts?

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We won’t ever see Adam on competitive ice again, imo. He’s a beautiful skater and performer but just doesn’t have to quad tech to keep up. Plus he had the absolute best results he could have in this Olympic season. He’s the most famous figure skater in America in quite some time.

bennorii said:

I just realized that Adam Rippon has been removed from the ISP, even though he hasn't officially said anything about the future of his career (similar to Mirai, who is in fact, still on the ISP). Thoughts?

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We are surprised at this? C'mon, the guy's old in figure skating years and he's hot property away from the ice right now. "skipping the season" in this context is basically code for "I'm finished, but the new shiny sponsors/opportunities might dry up if I use the r-word, so let's pretend I'm just on pause". Which is fair. Limited earning opportunities in this sport so I don't begrudge it.

Many of us have been saying since the Olympics (well, at least me, and I’m pretty sure I was not alone).
Adam has been skating for a very long time. Adam has achieved a level of popularity that far exceeds anything, and I mean *anything*, he could achieve as an American male skater. And by that I mean, I have friends who know who Adam Rippon is, who have never once seen an ice rink on TV, streaming, in person, otherwise. They don’t know Nathan Chen, they don’t know Vincent Zhou, if they know Jason Brown, it’s because of me. But they know Adam.

Adam would be foolish to give up all the opportunities that he now has out there in the big wide world to skate competetively again, and Adam is nobody’s fool. I don’t care if developed a quad axel tomorrow, what more could skating do for him? And he has already done everything he can for skating.

He is going out on a high note, but I remain convinced he is going out. Good for him

Speaking of Adam, I just started a new thread about an interview he did on NPR (though we don't have audio online yet, it will be there soon!).
https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/s...w-on-NPR-Weekend-Edition&p=2185312#post218531

The season's fully underway with the senior competitions starting! I've started a new spreadsheet to track the men's scores, yay!

Lots of action going on this weekend. We had five U.S. men (four senior, 1 junior nationally) competing at three different competitions. Here's my summary of their performances.

Tomoki Hiwatashi (JGP Richmond, 2nd): Tomoki has almost been kind of an afterthought after the "big 3" junior men internationally last season -- Alex Krasnozhon, Camden Pulkinen and Andrew Torgashev. But he made a statement here, especially with his wonderful SP, which I felt had wonderful choreography and he show more maturity in his performance. It was my favorite performance out of all the U.S. men competing this weekend. His FS was a bit of a struggle and he dropped to 2nd after leading after the SP, but overall he kept himself in the game for a JGPF spot.

Jimmy Ma (U.S. Classic, 3rd): Perhaps the surprising top U.S. men of this competition, especially as Vincent Zhou was expected to be the runaway winner here. His skaters were not without error, but he turned in two solid skates, including very secure 3As, a jump that had been problematic for him previously. Considering this is his first season competing for Team USA internationally as a senior (he was previously on the JGP in 2013-2014), this is a great result. He definitely surprised everyone with the "Mi Gente" SP (or maybe people expected him to go out-of-the-box after last season!). I'm sad he went back to his old FS, cause I thought the Joshua Farris-choreographed program had promise, but it looks like he wants to master the quad toe loop, so it makes sense to go to a program he knows.

Vincent Zhou (U.S. Classic, 4th): Vincent was expected to win this competition, but there was a relatively late reveal that Vincent had been struggling with a back injury ever since Worlds (that was given as an explanation for his poor performance at Worlds FS) and that he only been practicing for a few weeks. Therefore his relatively poor performances here were not surprising to me for that reason. The silver lining is that Vincent shows some growth potential with his programs and skating . For me, he showed potential in his free skate -- which turned out to be the highest of the night, though not enough overall to get him a medal. There's effort to finish his movements more and not rush from jump to jump. Rotations were a problem here, but it's not clear whether that's a reflection of a lack of training time or that he hasn't fixed chronic URs we saw last season.

Timothy Dolensky (Lombardia Trophy, 6th) : First of all, Tim has two really lovely programs (SP: Spark by Amber Run and FS: Faux by Novo Amor, Ed Tullett
Faux (Remix) by Said the Sky, which I believe he kept from last season). They are very much in his wheel house and he moves well to the music He had some technical issues here. The SP was relatively good, though he fell on his 4S<. The FS had more technical issues with another fall on his 4S<< and popping both his 3As. He was clearly in the running for the TBD, but this competition (like Jimmy at U.S. Classic) kinda showed why, unfortunately he was passed for the spot. I believe Timothy has another Challenger scheduled, so I'll be looking for some improvements there.

Peter Liu (JGP Richmond, 12th): He started out well with a 6th place SP, putting him in the final group. He then sadly fell 4 times in the FS and dropped to 12th (with a 15th place FS). He has some good musicality. The FS was unfortunate, but I'm hoping he'll use it as a a good learning experience.

So after 3 JGP competitions and 2 Challengers, our top scoring U.S. man is Camden Pulkinen at 222.95. Tomoki Hiwatashi is 2nd with 213.24 and Jimmy Ma at 206.10. Obviously there are a whole bunch of U.S. men we haven't seen yet, so obviously these rankings will change. I'll do my score tracker when we have a few more folks compete.

But to sum things up -- U.S. men look good on the JGP, we could end up with up to three U.S. men to the JGPF. And we're 1 for (Edited: 2, forgot about Asian Trophy) on medals in the Challenger series.

Next up this week: Jason Brown at Autumn Classic, Sean Rabbit at Ondrej Nepala Trophy. Jason will have the opportunity to make an early statement and show the results of the numerous changes he made off-season. A lot of folks wanted Sean to have the TBD at SkAm, but he'll have a chance to show a case for additional assignments.

Mrs. P said:

… Lots of action going on this weekend. We had five U.S. men (four senior, 1 junior nationally) competing at three different competitions. Here's my summary of their performances.

… So after 3 JGP competitions and 2 Challengers, our top scoring U.S. man is Camden Pulkinen at 222.95. Tomoki Hiwatashi is 2nd with 213.24 and Jimmy Ma at 206.10. Obviously there are a whole bunch of U.S. men we haven't seen yet, so obviously these rankings will change. I'll do my score tracker when we have a few more folks compete.

But to sum things up -- U.S. men look good on the JGP, we could end up with up to three U.S. men to the JGPF. And we're 1 for 1 on medals in the Challenger series. …

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Thx for putting together an extensive summary, Mrs. P.

Congratulations to Tomoki and to Jimmy. :hap85:

(No big deal and sorry for being the typo police, but you meant that U.S. men are 1 for 2 for medals at Challengers this season.)

As I try to increase my own awareness of non-senior men, will add below the medalists from U.S. Challenge Skate. Congratulations to all. :hap85:


Good luck to Jason and to Sean this week. :yay:

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andromache said:

Not necessarily relevant to the US men specifically, but man, my heart hurts just thinking about Oleg Protopopov performing without his wife.

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ice coverage said:

Although it is not clear to me whether "special guest" means Oleg will give a performance, the point about losing Ludmila remains the same. …

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Off topic, but following up to say that Oleg Protopopov did perform by himself for An Evening With Champions, and received a standing O. :sad4:


Oleg's performance was part of a multi-faceted EWC tribute to Ludmila, according to posts on FSU.

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BTW, has anyone found video of Alex Johnson's EWC performance? He debuted his brand-new SP (“Don’t Stop the Music” by Jamie Cullum - choreo by Shae Lynn).

JGP Armenia entry lists have been updated. Peter Liu has been switched out for Nicholas Hsieh.

After Joseph Kang, the next best Junior men's score this summer was Joonsoo Kim, but I guess he was skipped over for Hsieh (who has the next best summer score).

I know it is the start of the season but the US Senior men felt.... Lost

Jimmy is fun to watch but can he compete with the big boys?

Vincent feels like he is going backwards. Without his jumps, he looks like he will be buried. And he still has not worked on these URs which is really hurting him now with the new rules. It was suppose to be an easy win for him at US Classic, so he has a lot of work to do.

Ohh Jason, you look great and new, but still no quads? With a new modern look, I wish it followed with the programs because they are too slow and old-fashion.

I hope Nathan can keep it together.

This post will be easy because we essentially only have two U.S. men to talk about. Sean Rabbitt, who was at Ondrej Nepala Trophy (7th) and Jason Brown, who was at Autumn Classic International (4th).

I'll start with Jason. It was a bit of a mixed bag. He has a fantastic SP to "Love is a ....." , which generally (obviously people have different feelings) was met with positive responses and he as of now by far has the highest SP score among the U.S. men. The program, IMO, really was a good vehicle to show a more mature skater. It is very remincient of The Question of U, but updated to make the most of Jason's development with his skating skills in particular.
The free skate to Simon and Garfunkel's Old Friends, Bookends and Hazy Shade of Winter was a whole different story. It was very obvious that he was nervous and he popped both his quad sal and his triple axel and then had little jump problems after that -- he even got docked down a level on a spin, which is usually a reliable standby. In addition, the first half of the program is really empty, especially considering what we usually have seen from Jason in past free skates. I get that perhaps the point of that was to allow him to nail the 4S/3A, but it kinda backfired because when he didn't get either of those jumps, which made the lack of choreography in the first half painfully obvious. That said, the second half with the step sequence is really nice. I can see a credible argument of switching out Old Friends/Bookends to maybe more upbeat S&G songs to match the pacing of Hazy Shade of Winter. On the other hand, I do feel like with some additional choreography in the first half, Jason has an opportunity to use the program to express a certain kind of vulnerability that I feel he hasn't really done in past programs. AND that said, I also won't be surprised if he ends up trashing it entirely.
All that said, there are positive signs of progress -- the 3As in the SP looked great and he was hitting them all in practice. Even though he popped the 4S i the actual competition, he made several credible attempts at various practices and even landed one. That's not bad considering it's a jump he hasn't really worked on. I think TCC was smart to switch the focus, for now, to the 4S.
Anyway, Jason himself expressed pretty tempered expectations for this competition, but I'd imagine he probably knows he could have done much better than he did in the FS. He has a month to work on everything before his first GP and I expect we'll see further improvement.

Sean, as always, has two very entertaining programs. While both are warhorses, (SP to East of Eden and FS to West Side Story) Sean managed to bring his own personality and style to it. He didn't attempt any 3As here, which probably is a big reason, despite his summer scores, USFS did not give Sean the TBD spot at Skate America. I have no idea whether he's working on the 3A or not, but I hope he is. He is an older skater, but he has improved leaps and bounds in the last few years, and I'd love for him to gain some consistency with the 3A before calling it a career. I expect that he might be sent to a second Senior B so he can get a bye from Sectionals to Nationals.

Next weekend:
JGP Ostrava: Camden Pulkinen and Jonathan Yang (I believe this is his JGP debut)
*Camden still has the highest FS skate score among at the U.S. Men. He'll be looking to punch his ticket to another JGP final.
Nebelhorn Trophy: Timothy Dolensky and Alexei Krasnozhon
This is Tim's second Senior B after competing at Lombardia Trophy last week. I'm eager to see where Alexei ends up. He potentially could be a contender for top 3 (and a world berth) at U.S, Nationals.

U.S. Men's skating is going to be interesting this season. We haven't seen Nathan yet, but if we assume that he will remain #1 in the US, who is going to Worlds with him? Yeah we have a whole GP season ahead of us, but it is still interesting to talk about. I am more excited about some of the guys in juniors than most of the seniors.

I'm still banking on Jason, even if I don't much like the FS.

More stuff to chew on after this weekend.

I'm going to start with juniors today, because I first want to congratulate Camden Pulkinen for making his second Junior Grand Prix Final by placing 2nd in the JGP Czech Skate. He had a fantastic start in the SP, posting 81+ score, the second 80+ score among the U.S. Men so far this season. His free skate, however, was a bit of a struggle with issues on his 3As and a spin error at the end and he dropped from 1st to 2nd after a 5th place free skate. However, Camden continues to have the highest free skate score for now from his first event. I think Camden is developing nicely. He definitely can be a dark horse for top 6 in his nationals debut as a senior.

Jonathan Yang, who is skating junior both internationally and domestically, placed 12th at the same event. Yang has a lot of energy and loves performing, but as Ted noted several times in both his programs that he often does it at the expense of getting the technical elements. It's a good reminder about just how challenging it can be to perform a program.

Now to Nebelhorn Trophy.

Timothy Dolensky improved his FS Score from Lombardia and placed 4th in this competition. His SP was a bit of a struggle as he fell on his 3A. His FS was clean but he left out the 4S and 3A. To be honest, I'm not sure what the strategy is at this point. Still, I sure enjoy watching his free skate. Timothy does not have a GP this season, so I'm expecting we'll see him at a late-fall Challenger Event.

Alexei Krasnozhon placed 5th with two tough skates. I think his performance here would have been surprising to those who saw him dominate the JGP last year, but of course he is recovering from an injury he suffered at Junior Worlds last year, so I chalk it up to having perhaps less training time to prepare for a new season.
As for his programs. It's obvious he wanted to show a more mature style with his SP to a cover of "Dancing on My Own." However, one of the things I always liked about Alexei is his powerful skating and I really kinda missed it in this program -- that's not to say a more emotional piece can't yield a power of it's own, but it's not quite there yet. The injury was a big reason he opted to expand his short program last season to Korobushka's Bond and make it into his free skate. It makes sense to go this route, but I'd like to see some more growth with the program if you're going to repeat it.
I think it's too early to read Alexei's status since he's obviously recovering from injury. I hope we'll see him in better shape for his GP events.

Next weekend: Nathen Chen at Japan Open (his scores won't count, but we'll get an idea of his status), Alexander Johnson at Finlandia Trophy and Tomoki Hiwatashi at JGP Slovenia, where he'll be trying to nab a spot for JGPF!

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So far we've had nine senior (domestically) men skate in competition this season. Here's the top 3 SP, FS and overall. I'll be posting full numbers once everyone has done their pre-GP Challenger events/JGP

Short Program
1.) Jason Brown 88.90
2.) Camden Pulkinen 81.01
3.) Tomoki Hiwatashi 76.81

Free Skate
1.) Camden Pulkinen 147.80
2.) Jason Brown 144.33
3.) Vincent Zhou 142.90

Overall
1.) Jason Brown 233.23
2.) Camden Pulkinen 222.95
3.) Tomoki Hiwatashi 213.24

With all men skating (except Nathan), I was hoping these scores are higher to start. I hope they only increase as the season progress.

But at the moment it feels like the US will rely on Nathan again, which I was hoping that someone else can be competitive internationally given Nathan is in school.

I thought by now Vincent can fix this underrotation problem because it is more worse for him in this new system. I know he is working on his PCs, but it will take years and he needs to be more consistent with his quads first tbh.

Alex K. still feels like a junior skater in senior. He needs more work and was hoping he change his FP so he looks more senior because it is not helping him.

Jimmy is fun, but he has awhile to go technically and skating wise to compete with the big boys.

Camden needs quads for senior, but right now ok since he still in juniors.

Was really hopeful for Jason shaking those nervous and being more confident with a new coach and environment, but his nerves still gets the best of him to let the program go. He really needs the quads and still a challenge for him all these years. That FP is not helping and should start anew. It does nothing for him.

I hope the US men can step it up this season and be more competitive.

century2009 said:

With all men skating (except Nathan), I was hoping these scores are higher to start. I hope they only increase as the season progress.

But at the moment it feels like the US will rely on Nathan again, which I was hoping that someone else can be competitive internationally given Nathan is in school.

I thought by now Vincent can fix this underrotation problem because it is more worse for him in this new system. I know he is working on his PCs, but it will take years and he needs to be more consistent with his quads first tbh.

Alex K. still feels like a junior skater in senior. He needs more work and was hoping he change his FP so he looks more senior because it is not helping him.

Jimmy is fun, but he has awhile to go technically and skating wise to compete with the big boys.

Camden needs quads for senior, but right now ok since he still in juniors.

Was really hopeful for Jason shaking those nervous and being more confident with a new coach and environment, but his nerves still gets the best of him to let the program go. He really needs the quads and still a challenge for him all these years. That FP is not helping and should start anew. It does nothing for him.

I hope the US men can step it up this season and be more competitive.

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A few thoughts on your comments.

First regarding the men overall:

-- Keep in mind that the scores are going to be slightly lower cause we're dealing with one less jump in the free skate. In addition, it's clear that the judges aren't completely unified in terms of how to score with the new +5/-5 system or some of the new guidelines regarding PCS.

-- The other thing is that the men are also getting use to 4 minute programs with only less jumping pass -- that means they're essentially having to do more in less time, as a result the programs are going to look a bit rougher.

Regarding some of the skaters:
-- Both Vincent, Alexei and Jason were all injured at some point this summer with Vincent being the most injured recently. Injury takes away training time and it means all three are likely not at where they were pre-injury just yet. Jason is probably the furthest along since his injury, relatively speaking, was not as severe as Vincent or Alexei and he started jumping again far earlier (around June compared to a few weeks ago for Vincent and mid-summer, I think, for Alexei)
-- Jason is also learning new technique on his jumps, in particular the 3A and quads. There were signs of progress on both accounts at ACI (namely in the practices), but you're right that with the nerves he let that new technique get away. Still, you're talking about having to erase years of muscle memory and I expect some of the consistency that Jason used to have might be on hiatus for a bit while he masters it.
-- Camden has a really good 3A and in this new system that is helping him a lot while he learns about the quads.
-- Jimmy Ma is definitely a late bloomer. His 3A is really solid, which wasn't the case just a few years ago. Again not world contender status, but seeing his growth is fun to watch.

All that said, Nathan, depending on how he's faring with balancing college/skating will likely continue to lead the U.S. men. But what Nathan needs isn't necessarily another world medal contender, though that would be nice. The goal is to find someone(s -- since we have 3 spots) do well enough to keep the U.S. going with world spots. We did lose some depth there with Max Aaron's retirement and Adam Rippon not competing this season (he hasn't announced retirement). But I expect Vincent and Jason to do better as the season goes on and I expect Camden and Alexei to improve as well. We'll see.

I need to say, Jonathan Yang was a complete revelation to me. I love the new discoveries of new junior men

Timmy D. is a mystery. I didn't even know he had left the Cains until a recent interview. Still has the smoothness and style and of course the spins but I'm not understanding his programs.

And I agree about Alex K. His strength is his passion and power, and if he gets Korobushka to LP length, it could work, but I don't think that SP is not playing to his strengths. I also didn't realize just how much he was injured; hopefully, he will recover for the GP circuit.

I like Jonathan Yang. He has a lot of personality, but I agree with Ted that he sometime sacrifices his technicals with his performance. So that is something he needs to work on.

I know the scores are a bit down given the new rules, but still possible for high scores.

I was more on each of their performances so far, and dont see too much push or competitiveness.

At the moment, the other US men are not standing out.

Everyone's injury is different and how your body heals, but then, I am then more impress with Nathan being off the ice for 6 months and a big injury with surgery to come out his 1st senior year with the hardest quads to compete with the big boys.

I hope Nathan can balance school and skating, which is pretty tough so more power to him if he can make to work.

To be honest right now beyond Nathan, Jason and Vincent there is not a lot depth with the US Men right now with all the retirements. No country lost as much in terms of top quality men as the US did this season so it will be up to the young guys like Camden, Alexi,Tommy H and Andrew T to rebuild that depth in the next couple of years.

Jammers said:

To be honest right now beyond Nathan, Jason and Vincent there is not a lot depth with the US Men right now with all the retirements. No country lost as much in terms of top quality men as the US did this season so it will be up to the young guys like Camden, Alexi,Tommy H and Andrew T to rebuild that depth in the next couple of years.

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I completely agree with this. This slow start by the new seniors could bode well for Alex Johnson. He's been knocking on the door for a while and he might get through it this year.