2018-19 British figure skating

La Rhumba said:

Our friend Jane Bradley from the Scotsman asked PJ to follow her back on Twitter so she could DM him and has now written this article.

https://www.scotsman.com/sport/gb-to-send-full-team-of-skaters-to-world-championships-1-4878980

I'm so delighted for him, but just as heartbroken for Karly, who did so well to finish 6th in a such a high class field at Challenge Cup yesterday. I really do think she should go to Worlds too instead of being 1st Reserve, she has the potential to achieve a higher placement with a wider variety of triple jumps, and I personally love her programmes. The British Championships result could have gone either way.

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Karly’s field was much more competitive than the men’s one so her placement imo was much more of an achievement. Perhaps since she’s not going to Worlds NISA (British Figure Skating is so cumbersome to type but it is a better name tbf) can put her name forward for a GP event? He seasons best is so much higher that Natasha’s.

La Rhumba said:

I go back to the days when National papers like the Times, Telegraph & Guardian had a Skating Correspondent, and reported on all the big events. Nowadays all we get is regional papers covering the British Championships, if at all. Thank god for the internet. Really, it is Skating's best friend by a mile.

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It made me very annoyed recently when The Guardian had an article on Liu winning the US Championships but nothing on the Euros. I understand why as they bought the Liu story of a news agency so it required little work for them but it was so annoying. If our own press don’t support our athletes who will?

jersey1302 said:

I really hate having to say that they got underscored because they were not known to judges. The new scoring system is supposed to prevent this type of thing from happening with a certain base value of an element. The judges all have experience giving GOE and all know what a high GOE vs no or low GOE looks like. It shouldn't matter how new or veteran the team is. They should be scored accordingly to that specific performance.

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I agree so much.

DSQ said:

Karly’s field was much more competitive than the men’s one so her placement imo was much more of an achievement. Perhaps since she’s not going to Worlds NISA (British Figure Skating is so cumbersome to type but it is a better name tbf) can put her name forward for a GP event? He seasons best is so much higher that Natasha’s.

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I hope so. I still don't understand the criteria for GP Qualification. I just hope that at 29 Karly will continue next season.
BIS is the abbreviation used apparently. For British Ice Skating, as they still are the governing body for Speed Skating too, Long & Short Track.

I noticed Phil Harris is official substitute for World's. I guess because he was the only other man with the TES. I wonder if he'd have actually gone to Japan if PJ hadn't made it, as he's officially retired?

http://www.isuresults.com/events/cat03109146.htm

It made me very annoyed recently when The Guardian had an article on Liu winning the US Championships but nothing on the Euros. I understand why as they bought the Liu story of a news agency so it required little work for them but it was so annoying. If our own press don’t support our athletes who will?

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I totally agree. If it was the online Guardian it wouldn't surprise me, as they have alot of US readers and cater for them, just as DM online does.

La Rhumba said:

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I noticed Phil Harris is official substitute for World's. I guess because he was the only other man with the TES. I wonder if he'd have actually gone to Japan if PJ hadn't made it, as he's officially retired?

http://www.isuresults.com/events/cat03109146.htm

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I have a feeling they at least asked him. At least he does have new programs this year from Helsinki.

La Rhumba said:

I totally agree. If it was the online Guardian it wouldn't surprise me, as they have alot of US readers and cater for them, just as DM online does.

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That’s true. Still hopefully with the great work Lilah and Lewis are doing we might see at least a few bylines.

Not excited about the Saitama time difference though! :yawn:

Just noticed Natasha is competing at Cup of Tyrol, March 1st.

http://skateaustria.vs91-250-98-130.cloud-he.de/img/competition/4.2018_19/170/CAT009EN.HTM

In that article in the Scotsman Natasha said she was debuting a new element so perhaps she’s using this competition to test it out before worlds?

The NHK Cup in November was brutal. I just hope Eurosport show us everything live. That’s the dream.

Kinda Skating related, with so many programmes using the music.

La La Land is on the BBC iPlayer if you've never seen it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000309g/la-la-land

La Rhumba said:

Kinda Skating related, with so many programmes using the music.

La La Land is on the BBC iPlayer if you've never seen it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000309g/la-la-land

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Taped it on Saturday night, and watched it on Sunday night.

As I said in another thread, even though it was my first time watching "La La Land", there were only about 2 songs that I didn't know!

I enjoyed the film, and would definitely recommend watching it while it is so widely available! :agree:

(I'm actually surprised that it is available on the iPlayer, as a lot of films shown on the BBC don't appear on it afterwards).

CaroLiza_fan

I was surprised too! I went on iPlayer to watch something else today, and La La Land was there, I hadn't even known it was on BBC2 (I was watching the Icelandic drama Trapped on BBC4). I do agree it is worth watching, and a much better film than "The Greatest Showman" which has some good songs but is not a great film. Also I love the La La Land score, a lot of skating fans are critical of it, but I would choose it to skate to! :cool2:

I've been trying to find out more info about our Advanced Novice Ice Dancers who won Bronze at the Jevigrag Cup in Hungary recently, and Silver at the British Championships. All I know is they train at Bracknell, but have unusual names that I'm trying to find out the heritage of, with no luck. Can anyone help, please? They are Vasilisa Ahramenka & Alessio Surenkov-Gulchev, a promising couple.

I’m not able to give you more information but I did find Vasilisa’s YouTube channel.

https://youtu.be/g6Ze4r6qsHg

She also compete’s in solo dance!

It’s times like this I wish Advanced Novices had ISU bio’s.

La Rhumba said:

I've been trying to find out more info about our Advanced Novice Ice Dancers who won Bronze at the Jevigrag Cup in Hungary recently, and Silver at the British Championships. All I know is they train at Bracknell, but have unusual names that I'm trying to find out the heritage of, with no luck. Can anyone help, please? They are Vasilisa Ahramenka & Alessio Surenkov-Gulchev, a promising couple.

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Here is a story about them from the Farnham Herald:

http://www.farnhamherald.com/articl...irl in Denmark&sectionIs=news&searchyear=2018

I just did a quick search for each of the three surnames, and apart from our Vasilisa, most of the results for Ahramenka seemed to be Belorussian.

Here is the Cyrillic transliteration of her name: Василиса Ахраменка

And when I searched for this, there were image results from an Odnoklassniki profile of Vasilisa skating when she was VERY young. But, the captions stated that she was English, so there were no clues there as to her background. (The owner of the profile had a very English name, which may explain why).

As for Alessio, well it is obviously an Italian first name. The results for Surenkov were mostly Russian, and so were the results for Gulchev.

Here is the Cyrillic transliteration of his name: Алессио Суренков-Гульчев

However, there were no results whatsoever when I searched for the Cyrillic versions of the two surnames together.

Of course, all this probably means nothing. But, it may be a help.


CaroLiza_fan

DSQ said:

It’s times like this I wish Advanced Novices had ISU bio’s.

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I second that!

I have recently adopted an Advanced Novice Ice Dance partnership, and whilst I could find out some information about the guy on fskate.ru (he used to be a Singles skater in Russia), I could find absolutely nothing about the girl. Like, I had to ask the mother of one of their team-mates just to find out if this girl was old enough to have a Fan Fest.

Thankfully, she was. But, I still don't know anything else about her.

CaroLiza_fan

Caroliza your google skills are very impressive!

As the age of competitive competitors in seniors has dropped we’ve all had to pay more attention to these advanced novices so having bio’s would be helpful to keep track of how they are fairing against their peers and who their coaches are while still maintaining that necessary privacy that 13 year olds should have.

It always kinda worries me to see skaters like US champion Liu and Canadian Gogolev on Instagram.

I have to praise your research skills too Caro_Liza Fan. I know where to come in future for info on any skaters! That local article was great too, thanks for that. :agree:

We have to also thank the eastern European connection to GB Skating, as apart from these 2, we have the Fairbridge's Mother who is eastern European, Katarina & Alexander are our Intermediate Novice Dance Champions. Hungarian coach to Josh Brown, former Junior Champ, Gurgen Vardanjan, now returned to his native land, and was Hungary Team Leader at Europeans in Minsk, and Junior skater Georgina Somerville's Mother who is Bulgarian. I wish BIS would provide Bios of our Novice skaters, especially as now they are being livestreamed for the British Championships. Also I expect we'll see a few new faces next season at the JGP as Josh has retired and Kristen is moving to Seniors.

Skate Camps in May with PapCiz & Gibson!

I heard about Gaby & Guillaume doing some Skate Camps in the UK last week, and it's Lewis Gibson who is organizing it all!! £200 fee if you want to go for one day of on and off ice classes with these amazing skaters, in Ayr and London.

https://www.facebook.com/uknewsonice/posts/1438687276267268

Apparently people will be coming from abroad so book quickly if you want to go!

I really do hope BIS can arrange for our competitive skaters to receive some tuition and hopefully places on the camps as it will be invaluable.

DSQ said:

Yeah this confuses me but perhaps it’s the political power they’re looking for?

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OK, so I've been assuming there's some impediment to athletes getting citizenship in Britain. Like perhaps they need to be living in Britain in order to do so, and they can't because they want to train with the more high-profile & successful coaches in Canada? Or perhaps it takes more years to obtain citizenship in Britain than in many other countries? I wasn't aware of the pair team you are referencing, but I was definitely wondering why Lanaghan & Razgulajevs did not sign up to compete for Britain from the get go. (For that matter, Smart & Diaz might consider it). And they aren't the only ones. Alexander Petrov (the junior dancer, not the singles skater) was born in Britain so why would Efimova & Petrov spend three years trying to get on the JGP in the U.S. when they probably could have qualified right off the bat for Great Britain? Seems like there must be some type of obstacle for bi-national teams to choose to skate for Britain. For sure, there are some advantages to skating for a powerhouse like Canada or the U.S. if you are at the top. But we are talking about teams that are struggling to earn Challenger & JGP events. You would think Britain would be the obvious choice there.

Ice Dance said:

OK, so I've been assuming there's some impediment to athletes getting citizenship in Britain. Like perhaps they need to be living in Britain in order to do so, and they can't because they want to train with the more high-profile & successful coaches in Canada?

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I don't know how it works for athletes, but for regular folk there's a five-year continuous residency requirement (three if you're married to a British citizen) to be 'naturalised' and then another year for citizenship, so a 6-year wait. The Home Office doesn't take kindly to applicants spending more than a months out of the country during the specified period. I've heard of plenty of people getting turned down and having to wait because they went back to their countries of origin for a few months, even if they have homes/families/jobs here. It would probably be hard to get it while training in Canada if they don't have a parent with citizenship.

I weirdly know more than average about immigration law but not necessarily in relation to sports.

Britain’s sporting institutions do not tend to approve of adopting foreign nationals as athletes for Olympics or World Championship events but it’s not totally unheard of, just look at Joe Konta. Some of our top competitive dancers are adoptees. The majority of foreign born athletes are like Graham Newberry and George Waddell, they have passports in their own right or are like Vanessa James who competed for Britain as she was a citizen of a British Overseas Territory.

The Home Office can give citizenship to anyone they like if they have a good reason to do so. The general rule is you need to have lived in the U.K. for six years (it used to be much longer) with nine months of every year being spent in the U.K. We allow dual citizenship. So we are much more lenient than countries like Japan who seem to have no problem with attracting foreign born skaters.

So any skater looking to represent Great Britain with a British partner would have to spend some of their time training here.

DSQ said:

IThe general rule is you need to have lived in the U.K. for six years (it used to be much longer) with nine months of every year being spent in the U.K.

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Well, there you go then. Think Britain would need to develop or bring in some top ice dance or pairs coaching talent then in order to attract these international teams. Hard in a sport like dance where 80% of the athletes tend to migrate toward the same 4 coaching teams or so.

(Italy has managed it, though. With several of their top former dancers going out and coaching under international coaches for several years and now Barbara back in Italy, coaching on her own, and gathering an international group of teams. There was certainly room for someone in Western Europe to do with many of the old European coaching guard retiring and/or on the cusp).

DSQ said:

Caroliza your google skills are very impressive!

As the age of competitive competitors in seniors has dropped we’ve all had to pay more attention to these advanced novices so having bio’s would be helpful to keep track of how they are fairing against their peers and who their coaches are while still maintaining that necessary privacy that 13 year olds should have.

It always kinda worries me to see skaters like US champion Liu and Canadian Gogolev on Instagram.

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I thoroughly agree with you, and particularly on that last point. This is going to make me sound like an auld fogey, but I don't think children should be allowed near a mobile phone or social media until they are at least 16. For me, 13 is too low a lower age limit.

That assessment may be a bit biased, because I was in my late teens when the whole mobile phone and social media revolution started to kick off. So, I don't know how essential these things are for teenagers nowadays. But I know that I managed alright without them when I was in my early teens.

And although I found Bebo was great for keeping up to date with people from home when I was at Uni, it wasn't the be-all and end-all. I would have survived happily enough without it.

You know, when I want to create a Fan Fest for a skater that is under 17, I try to hunt down and contact a parent first to ask for their permission. And for the most part, they are more than happy that somebody has noticed the efforts of their child, and wants to raise their profile. But, I do feel uneasy if the skater subsequently contacts me, or sends me a friend request. And I'm thinking:


(OK, so it has only happened once that the skater was that much younger. But, I thought this extreme example would be good for making the point).

As I said before, I am way out of touch with people that are just a few years younger than me, and I don't think I will ever understand their lifestyle.

La Rhumba said:

I have to praise your research skills too Caro_Liza Fan. I know where to come in future for info on any skaters! That local article was great too, thanks for that. :agree:

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Aww, I wouldn't quite say that! I just like finding out things. I would have loved to have done a PhD, but unfortunately there were school mergers going on at the time at my Uni, and my subject's school was downgraded to a department. As a result, they really cut back on the PhD's being offered, and those that were on offer weren't things I was interested in.

But, over the years, I have found fskate.ru to be an absolute godsend for finding out about skaters who have skated for Russia at some stage of their careers. Their Bios are so comprehensive, and you get so much better a picture of the skater's competitive history than you do from their ISU Bios. I just wish all Federations (and the ISU!) would provide this sort of comprehensive Bio.

lavenderblossom said:

I don't know how it works for athletes...

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DSQ said:

I weirdly know more than average about immigration law but not necessarily in relation to sports....

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Not going to quote the whole posts, but I think the points both of you have raised in your posts explain everything we need to know. Unlike in other countries, the Home Office doesn't seem to have special rules for sportspeople. They have to follow the same rules as everybody else. Which means that it is more attractive for you to switch to your partner's country.

Ice Dance said:

I wasn't aware of the pair team you are referencing, but I was definitely wondering why Lanaghan & Razgulajevs did not sign up to compete for Britain from the get go. (For that matter, Smart & Diaz might consider it).

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With all the different countries that his Dad represented during his career, I wonder just what citizenship Dmitre Razgulajevs has. Because, for me the obvious choice would have been for him and Molly to represent his ancestral homeland of Latvia. Like, I can't think of any Ice Dancers that are currently representing Latvia at either Junior or Senior level. And as Latvia's Singles skating programme has shown, the Fed does have the resources to get good coaches in. With the other options, there is more competition for the international slots, and less chances of getting them.

As for Smart and Díaz , I think they opted for the right country. Because although Spain only has one slot at the moment, both partnerships that came out of the Hurtado / Díaz split are good enough to earn Spain a second slot. And there is no other competition. So, I am sure that one of them having to miss out this season is only going to be a temporary thing.

Ice Dance said:

Well, there you go then. Think Britain would need to develop or bring in some top ice dance or pairs coaching talent then in order to attract these international teams. Hard in a sport like dance where 80% of the athletes tend to migrate toward the same 4 coaching teams or so.

(Italy has managed it, though. With several of their top former dancers going out and coaching under international coaches for several years and now Barbara back in Italy, coaching on her own, and gathering an international group of teams. There was certainly room for someone in Western Europe to do with many of the old European coaching guard retiring and/or on the cusp).

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And that is the crux of the whole problem - the lack of top coaches that are based in the British Isles. If we could attract some British coaches to come back home, or even attract some foreign coaches to come, it would make the world of difference.

CaroLiza_fan