Grand Prix Final Preview: Seniors | Page 2 | Golden Skate

Grand Prix Final Preview: Seniors

Skater Boy

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 24, 2012
if mistakes are made by both skaters, i don’t think the judges will throw Bradie a lifeline in the form of high goe and overly generous pcs like they will Alina. However if Bradie is mostly clean and sharp, and Alina messy and struggling with jumps, then Bradie should be able to overtake her. I can’t believe I’m out here rooting for Bradie Tennell, but her improvement can not be denied

I will play devil's advocate and cheer for Alina only because it is so so saad that the world champion who isn't skating terribly is not even considered a threat to make the world team for Russia.
 

Arbitrary

Medalist
Joined
Sep 5, 2018
Thrown out of the podium in GPF would send a very grave signal to Alina.
All others are in a much better position.

Being totally clean Trusova cannot be below the 2nd place. The only possibility if the Board will decide to zero her PCS or, more likely, to set -1-0 GOE all across ... for two clean runs.
 

katymay

Medalist
Joined
Mar 7, 2006
I will play devil's advocate and cheer for Alina only because it is so so saad that the world champion who isn't skating terribly is not even considered a threat to make the world team for Russia.

Alina seems very busy these days with commercials and shows. Good For Her. IOW, I believe she is transitioning to the next stage of her career which she has earned: Cashing IN!
 

flanker

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 10, 2018
Country
Czech-Republic
Free Skate:
GP France - Alina's messy FS she got a TES of 68.85 and PCS of 72.97
GP USA - Bradie with a clean FS at home got a TES of 71.88 and PCS of 69.16

So at home with a clean FS Bradie was still almost 4 points behind Zagitova's PCS on a messy skate.

Short Programs:
GP USA - Bradie with a clean SP at home got a TES of 41.33 and PCS of 33.77
GP Japan - Alina had a bad skate got a TES of 31.15 and PCS of 35.69

Yet again at home with a clean SP Bradie's PCS was several points lower than a messy Zagitova. Zagitova has messy skates but rarely does she have both a SP and FS that are disasters at the same competition and frankly that's what Bradie needs because the judges aren't knocking Zagitova's PCS down for bad skates.

"Messy" or "bad" skate is not equal to one mistake in FS (France) and one mistake in SP (NHK). If so, Bradie's FS at Skate Canada would have to be called messy or bad as well. If somebody really got support from the judges of those two, then it was Bradie at CS Warshaw Cup, where her FS was one big disaster and yet she remained on the second place.

People are talking how close their scores are, but while with others there are included CS events in the analysis, it is missing with Bradie.
 

flanker

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 10, 2018
Country
Czech-Republic
Alina seems very busy these days with commercials and shows. Good For Her. IOW, I believe she is transitioning to the next stage of her career which she has earned: Cashing IN!

Another "career ending call". Truly, people probably never saw an active athlete doing commercial or attending non-competitive event. It is there all the time, but as usually, when Alina does something like that, it is "transitioning to another sphere": I don't understand why so many people don't like her to this level that we are continuosly reminded about her ending her career. When she didn't do well, it was "She has troubles, she should end", when she is on the top, it is "She won everything, she should transfer elsewhere" (like "she should be interested only in money, nothing else" :confused2:). What do you people hold agains her, what did she do to the world.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Thrown out of the podium in GPF would send a very grave signal to Alina.
All others are in a much better position.

Being totally clean Trusova cannot be below the 2nd place. The only possibility if the Board will decide to zero her PCS or, more likely, to set -1-0 GOE all across ... for two clean runs.

Who is The Board? Why would The Board want to send any grave signals to anyone? Why would THe Board be against Trusova? Or Alina? Or Bradie?
 

Artemisa

Final Flight
Joined
Sep 15, 2017
Stats analysis for pairs now added to my GitHub repository at lariko’s request.

Link to graph: https://github.com/IcyMathStats/GPF2019/blob/master/GPF19_Pairs.pdf

For methodology and how to interpret the graph, please refer to post #11.

Nice summary by Tatjana Flade. I appreciated how she strived for objectivity, and highlighted each skater’s strengths and weaknesses. I also appreciated the fact that she compiled the performance statistics for each skater from challenger series and Grand Prix events. I wasn’t planning to do any statistical analyses for the final due to time constraints, but her helpful minitables made data entry easy and straightforward, and since I was among those who received a private invitation to comment in this thread, I thought I would spend a couple of hours trying to be a good Goldenskate citizen, and add some number crunching and data visualization to the discussion. My analysis is intended to supplement Tatjana’s analysis, which contains a lot of qualitative aspects that the statistical analyses can’t adequately capture.

Data visualizations are constructed as follows. Each graph contains 6 columns corresponding to the 6 qualified skaters (x-axis). The y-axis displays the competition scores. For each skater, the light-colored dots indicate the scores for each segment (SP, FS), and total, in chronological order for each event. The light lines represent time-series trends. The darker-colored squares and bars are averages for each segment and total, with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (assuming scores are drawn form a normal distribution with observed mean, that a skater’s SP and FS performances are independent of one another, and therefore the variance for total score equals the sum of the segment variances). The red arrows give the observed potential range, that is, the range of possible scores from the total score the skater would receive if they were to deliver their worst SP and worst FS of the season, all the way to the score they would receive if they delivered the combination of the best SP and best FS they have shown in the season so far (tip of the arrow).

Caveats: (1) The lack of score intercomparability across events (technical panels more lenient/stricter, some skaters benefitted from homescoring while others did not); (2) For the 95% confidence intervals, if the distributional assumptions above do not hold, they lack reliability (hence the addition of the observed potential range as an alternative measure of dispersion); (3) Too few datapoints, so averages, time trends, variability etc. should be treated with due caution.

The results:

MEN (graph at indicated link)

https://github.com/IcyMathStats/GPF2019/blob/master/GPF19_Men.pdf

Hanyu has the best prospects to win based on his season so far. He started with a challenger performance well below his abilities early in the season, was stellar at Skate Canada, but didn’t match that performance at NHK. Still, even factoring in his weakest (uncharacteristic) performance, his average across 3 events is still higher than Chen’s combination of best SP and best FS scores so far. Chen only had two events with remarkably close scores (very low variance, 95% CI barely visible on the graph), but if he doesn’t improve his technical scores, his best so far can only help him win gold if Hanyu performs at approx. one standard deviation below his mean. Chen definitely has the technical arsenal to beat Hanyu (and has done that more than once), but given the way things have unfolded so far, Hanyu has the edge to win GPF. That said, Chen has a guaranteed silver with the combination of worst SP and worst FS so far, even if all of the remaining 4 skaters deliver their best SPs and FSs of the season. These 4 skaters can then be in any order on the podium; their 95% CIs and observed potential ranges overlap substantially. If everyone skates at their best so far in the season, the bronze goes to Jin, with Samarin, Aliev, and Aymoz placing 4th, 5th, and 6th, respectively. Samarin has shown improvement over time in the FS, but not in the SP, while Jin had a good challenger event, a dip a Skate America (could have been a fluke like a jet lag?), and an amazing recovery at Cup of China. These are the two strongest contenders for the bronze, but they are also the skaters that have exhibited highest score variability during the season.


LADIES (graph at indicated link)

https://github.com/IcyMathStats/GPF2019/blob/master/GPF19_Ladies.pdf

The fight for the gold is between Kostornaia and Trusova. Their averages are very close, and there’s a lot of overlap in their 95% CIs and observed potential ranges; Kostornaia’s combination of best SP and best FS is better than Trusova’s combination of best SP and best FS of the season, while Kostoraia’s combination of worst SP and worst FS of the season is worse than the corresponding combination for Trusova. Trusova’s potential best is only roughly 5 points behind Kostornaia’s potential best, which means that Trusova can win over a clean Kostornaia with either a landed 4S or a landed 3A (and no fall on the 3Lz3Lo combo, or substituting that with the more stable 3Lz3T); if she does both she should win by a good margin. However, her success rate with the 4S hasn’t been very high (either in competition or practice), and the 3A would be a new element that she never attempted in competition over the past 2-3 years, so I gave Kostornaia the edge in the predictions. With no lutzes or quads in the program, Kihira can only get silver if she skates at her best while Kostornaia skates at her worst. She is approx. 10 points behind Kostornaia’s and Trusova’s best potential performances, so in order to challenge for gold or silver she would need to incorporate both two 3Lz and a 4S in her program. On the other hand, a new layout could be risky, and it may cost her the bronze. Sherbakova at her best observed potential combination is below Trusova’s worst and roughly at Kostornaia’s worst, and she has yet to deliver both a clean SP and a clean FS in the same competition. Her two best actual performances are below Kihira’s two best. So Kihira has the edge over Scherbakova to win the bronze. Zagitova has shown the highest variability of all ladies; at her best she could get bronze if both Kihira and Scherbakova deliver performances below their season averages so far, but she is relying on others to make mistakes in order to podium. Bradie Tennell has delivered solid performances in her two GP events, but she will need to upgrade the technical content in order to be a podium contender; still, being the only US lady to qualify for GPF in a long time is an impressive achievement.


I will try to do similar analyses for the other two events, time permitting.

Thank you ... it's very helpfull... S/H, Chen and Trusova have little variability in the scores ...so no matter what the field the score will be the same ... Kostornaia and Boikova and Dima if they skate to her maximum they can have a chance ... Hanyo is Hanyo
 

[email protected]

Medalist
Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 26, 2014
"Messy" or "bad" skate is not equal to one mistake in FS (France) and one mistake in SP (NHK). If so, Bradie's FS at Skate Canada would have to be called messy or bad as well. If somebody really got support fro,m the judges of those two, than it was Bradie at CS Warshaw Cup, where her FS was one big disaster and yet she remauined on second place.

People are talking how close theis scores are, but wjhile with others there are included CS events in the analysis, it is missing with Bradie.

I agree that recent "Bradie's push" here looks ridiculous. She had one big score this season at SA where TP neglected her URs. Now she is suddenly "a full package", "better the Alina" who beat her fair and square every time they met, etc.

She is a total outsider at GPF. What is left is to convince oneself and try to convince others that she is not that far from Alina as she really is.
 

drivingmissdaisy

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
Alina seems very busy these days with commercials and shows. Good For Her. IOW, I believe she is transitioning to the next stage of her career which she has earned: Cashing IN!

If she were never to make another World team (and I'm not counting on that happening), she's already had a successful career on par with Baiul, Lipinski and Arakawa, and ahead of Hughes and Sotnikova.
 

MarkinBerkeley

On the Ice
Joined
Oct 22, 2019
I will play devil's advocate and cheer for Alina only because it is so so sad that the world champion who isn't skating terribly is not even considered a threat to make the world team for Russia.

Yeah, isn't that quite unexpected? Shows how fast the sport is changing!
 

skateluvr

Record Breaker
Joined
Oct 23, 2011
Alina seems very busy these days with commercials and shows. Good For Her. IOW, I believe she is transitioning to the next stage of her career which she has earned: Cashing IN!

She has to. Train8ng with the three new Eteri girls is writing on the wall daily. Hey how can you feel sorry for a kid who won Oly gold and was kind of gifted a wc. It is a shame there is no pro world outside Japan Ru and Korea to see what kind of programs she will do when not competing. I’d love to see an old school choreo. Like Bezic or Laurie do something they would do for Kostner. Or whoever does Satoko Miyahara programs to work with Alina and not be frenetic point gathering. When she is still at her best and cannot win this year she will leave like all the Russian Eteri girls do. So glad Zhenya is with Brian. She has become so elegant and we know she will become more consistent. But Alina and Zhenya both thought they could still be number one and they both seem broken. Very glad Alina has many shows and she is a beautiful girl. I think many commercials will want her. She has had a short time at the top but she should be very grateful because skating is like watching the speed of the luge run. Ladies hang on!
 

lesnar001

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 19, 2005
She has to. Train8ng with the three new Eteri girls is writing on the wall daily. Hey how can you feel sorry for a kid who won Oly gold and was kind of gifted a wc. It is a shame there is no pro world outside Japan Ru and Korea to see what kind of programs she will do when not competing. I’d love to see an old school choreo. Like Bezic or Laurie do something they would do for Kostner. Or whoever does Satoko Miyahara programs to work with Alina and not be frenetic point gathering. When she is still at her best and cannot win this year she will leave like all the Russian Eteri girls do. So glad Zhenya is with Brian. She has become so elegant and we know she will become more consistent. But Alina and Zhenya both thought they could still be number one and they both seem broken. Very glad Alina has many shows and she is a beautiful girl. I think many commercials will want her. She has had a short time at the top but she should be very grateful because skating is like watching the speed of the luge run. Ladies hang on!

I disagree strenuosly.
She was NOT gifted a World Championship - "kind of" or otherwise.

Why do you think Alina should retire and not Evgenia?
I mention her only because you said they both "seem broken".

"She has had a short time at the top".
:think: Even if she never wins another competition in her life, her "time at the top" has been longer than most skaters.
And I am not trying to denigrate any other skaters' records by saying that.
You however really seem to be denigrating her record, though.

I really thought all the "stick a fork in her she is done!" talk would have ended after she won Worlds last season.
Different year, same story. Only this time its her teammates and not puberty that are going to drive her from the sport.

But I do agree with you on one thing.
I would like to see her choreographed "old school" also.
She has done it a few times in group numbers at ice shows.
And she matches up very nicely with skaters you think are her artistic superiors.
 

Thrashergurl

On the Ice
Joined
Oct 27, 2019
Why all the nastiness towards Bradie? She has potential to beat Zagitova. Mariah beat Zagitova in the LP, so what makes any of you think Alina can’t be beaten by Bradie? These skaters all work hard. Not just one or two of them, or your favorites. Kudos to the girls that are continually trying to improve. Bradie must be a threat to get this type of nastiness. She is no more an outsider than any other girl at the GPF. She earned her spot and does just as difficult jumps as Alina. For a poster on a message board to imply an actual skater is an outsider is a very low blow. Very nasty and bashing comments. Wow.
 

Amei

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 11, 2013
Another "career ending call". Truly, people probably never saw an active athlete doing commercial or attending non-competitive event. It is there all the time, but as usually, when Alina does something like that, it is "transitioning to another sphere": I don't understand why so many people don't like her to this level that we are continuosly reminded about her ending her career. When she didn't do well, it was "She has troubles, she should end", when she is on the top, it is "She won everything, she should transfer elsewhere" (like "she should be interested only in money, nothing else" :confused2:). What do you people hold agains her, what did she do to the world.

Hate to burst your bubble but that critique/commentary on skaters that branch out that do commercial type things with their sponsors during the season like filming commercials and doing shows has been going on for years, in fact there was similar commentary happening the other day in the US Ladies thread with a skater that wasn't Zagitova. And I believe she did an interview where she talked about how child-like it is that her training mates focus so much on winning (or something along those lines) and that she only wants to go out and perform well - that's lovely statement for her die-hard fans but for others that can give a different impression than perhaps she intended.

On the ice, she's openly said that she can't train the difficult jumps that her competition are doing, and she's putting out the least technically difficult program of her career - she came into the senior circuit and backloaded everything but then this season when she can't do the most difficult jumps like skaters that she's gonna have to compete against for a spot on podiums and being on the team for Euros/Worlds - she's not even planning to backload 1 triple-triple combination where it gets her closer on a technical score with the quad/triple axel skaters. In combination with her PCS advantage, a couple backloaded triple-triples could overtake a clean quad/triple axel of a skater with less reputation than her.
 

Joekaz

On the Ice
Joined
Feb 13, 2018
Why all the nastiness towards Bradie? She has potential to beat Zagitova. Mariah beat Zagitova in the LP, so what makes any of you think Alina can’t be beaten by Bradie? These skaters all work hard. Not just one or two of them, or your favorites. Kudos to the girls that are continually trying to improve. Bradie must be a threat to get this type of nastiness. She is no more an outsider than any other girl at the GPF. She earned her spot and does just as difficult jumps as Alina. For a poster on a message board to imply an actual skater is an outsider is a very low blow. Very nasty and bashing comments. Wow.
Its just someone's opinion. This is a competitive sport, not kindergarten. I believe Brady had a great year for her, but the main reason she is there is because several of the Japanese who have higher scoring potential underperformed this season.
 

Thrashergurl

On the Ice
Joined
Oct 27, 2019
It’s not her fault the other skaters didn’t skate well. It’s a sport. She earned her spot. She has never been one of my favorite skaters, but I certainly recognize that this season she is on par with Alina. It’s quite possible that Alina wouldn’t have made it to GPF is all the Japanese ladies skaters to their potential. Why pick on just Bradie?
 

Joekaz

On the Ice
Joined
Feb 13, 2018
It’s not her fault the other skaters didn’t skate well. It’s a sport. She earned her spot. She has never been one of my favorite skaters, but I certainly recognize that this season she is on par with Alina. It’s quite possible that Alina wouldn’t have made it to GPF is all the Japanese ladies skaters to their potential. Why pick on just Bradie?
I'm not picking on anyone. She had a great season. But she isn't as good as Zagitova or alot of the Japanese. But that doesn't mean she can't beat them if they screw up and she doesnt. That's called an upset, and it happens in sport all the time.
 

flanker

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 10, 2018
Country
Czech-Republic
Hate to burst your bubble but that critique/commentary on skaters that branch out that do commercial type things with their sponsors during the season like filming commercials and doing shows has been going on for years, in fact there was similar commentary happening the other day in the US Ladies thread with a skater that wasn't Zagitova. And I believe she did an interview where she talked about how child-like it is that her training mates focus so much on winning (or something along those lines) and that she only wants to go out and perform well - that's lovely statement for her die-hard fans but for others that can give a different impression than perhaps she intended.

On the ice, she's openly said that she can't train the difficult jumps that her competition are doing, and she's putting out the least technically difficult program of her career - she came into the senior circuit and backloaded everything but then this season when she can't do the most difficult jumps like skaters that she's gonna have to compete against for a spot on podiums and being on the team for Euros/Worlds - she's not even planning to backload 1 triple-triple combination where it gets her closer on a technical score with the quad/triple axel skaters. In combination with her PCS advantage, a couple backloaded triple-triples could overtake a clean quad/triple axel of a skater with less reputation than her.

I don't know what "different impression" do you have about a statement saying that victory itself is not the most important thing for Alina now.

In fact Alina's free skate BV is lower only about the 10 % bonus for 3Lo, which is 0.49, that is that "the least technically difficult program of her career". :rolleye: For the record, last season Alina had two 2As without combo in her FS, this season she does 2A-3T, so the difference in GOE can easily compensate the huge and nearly cathastrophic difference of 0.49 point in her BV :biggrin:. This "least technically difficult program of her career" is still a program to kill for for 99 % of her opponents. Remember that at NHK Alina's TES was nearly the same as Rika's with two 3As, and was lower only because another problematic UR call in 3F-2T-2Lo combo. So the obvious strategy is to skate a program with maybea little lower BV but that gives Alina the opportunity to focus on clean performance and potentially get higher GOE and of course getting high PCS for clean and self-confidently performed program, backloading one more 3Lo won't make significant difference in that.

Alina has never said "I can't train quads", that's complete desinterpreation (after all, she trained quad flip already), she only said it could be potentially dangerous. So what's the thing in that? Alina had to skate her three consecutive international seasons at full strength. In 2016/2017 she was a newbie, nobody knew her and even in Russia she wasn't well known and considered a favorite. In Russia junior favorites were Polina Tsurskaya and Nastya Gubanova and internationally it was Marin Honda who was expected to defend her junior worlds title. And some nearly unknown Alina, who just a year ago wasn't even able to do more difficult jump than 3S came and won nearly everything, because she left everything on the ice. Than 2017/2018 season came, which, I believe, we all have still in our memory. Chance to be assigned for the olympics made Alina to skate like for her life. Some people still didn't forgive her this sin. And than the 2018/2019 season came, which began with all the talks "she is just one-year miracle, she won't win anything more, she ousted Evgenia from the camp, she will not develop under Eteri" and all this evil talks. More than that, she had to deal with the puberty, gaining height and a "female body". All this pressure would probably break anybody with weaker will, but Alina again proved the will of the true warrior and became world champion (another deadly sin, because she turned so many predictions about her into worthless dust). So, I can easily understand if now, after whole three seasons like that Alina already feel that she proved everything that was even possible to prove about herself and that there is no need to fight till the last drop of the blood and rather focus on clean, beautiful skating. Whether it will work or not it is a question because she seems to me that she need exactly to be underestimated and to be disrupting the narratives to deliver her best, but from human perspective it is completely understandable. But whatever it will be this season, that doesn't say anything about how it will be the the next ones. It is obvious that Alina thinks in longer perspective and that she is thinking about qualifying to the next olympics. For this task she truly doesn't need to win everything this season, not even the next one, for this it is completely satisfying to be where she is now and preparing slowly and without unnecessary risks for this.
 
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