2020 Europeans: Men's Free Skate Recap | Golden Skate

2020 Europeans: Men's Free Skate Recap

gsk8

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Country
United-States
Russia’s Dmitri Aliev rose to claim the gold on Thursday after the Men’s Free Skate in Graz, Austria. Teammate Artur Danielian captured the silver in his debut at this event, while Georgia’s Morisi Kvitelashvili pocketed the bronze—becoming the first man from his country to win a European medal.

Skating to “The Sound of Silence”, Aliev underroated and put a foot down on his opening quad Lutz, but landed a solid quad toe and quad toe-triple toe in addition to six solid triple jumps. The 2019 CS Nepela Memorial champion also showed strong level 4 footwork and two spins to finish first in the free skate with a new personal best of 184.44—over 15 points more than his personal best from 2019 Rostelecom Cup where he took silver. With a total overall score of 272.89 points, he easily won the gold.

“I am incredibly happy,” said the Russian Champion. “At the end of my program, I cried out of happiness and feeling proud. I could not hold back the tears, because right away I had imagined in my head of my path to this result. Now on the podium, I just feel crazily happy—it was fireworks inside. It was happiness and an inner smile. It was a good and happy day for me. I have not yet realized that I won, but I feel it. I somehow believed in myself and I am very happy that I was able to rely on myself. I was nervous, but I believed in myself.”

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What are your overall thoughts on the Men's event? What surprised or disappointed you? Were you moved by any of the performances?
 
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lariko

Medalist
Joined
Jan 31, 2019
Country
Canada
For me, Aliev and Grassl stood out the most, those felt like truly inspired skates. Danielian had an incredible start of his senior program, and omg, that huge combo!

I also admired Majorov’s grit, finishing the skate clean with a nose bleed (and it went a little bit with Addams program)... Litvinzev seems more sure this year.

Also, the commentator said that Gorodnitsky’s music was underwhelming, but I dunno... I liked that program very much.
 

Mishaminion

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 12, 2014
Aliev was very impressive...a different skater from his GPF disaster FS...I hope he can continue to build on this result!

Danielian is a little firecracker, he's adorable.

Very pleased to see Kvitelashvili win a medal, a historic first for his country too.

Grassl is very very impressive, what an amazing talent he is for the future.

Sad for Brezina but I kind of expected him to drop, I think even he was shocked to be leading after the short!

Samarin was...oh dear, just not good. He's a distant third in Russian mens now with his teammates going 1-2.

Still so stunned Aymoz didn't make the FS...his absence was never far from my mind. Poor Kevin, his heartbreak was so painful to watch. I hope he can bounce back from this, he was so good at GPF, he needs to remember that.
 

Lovechihuahua

Match Penalty
Joined
Jul 18, 2018
I'm very happy for Morisi, finally his talent and hardworking got admired and awarded.
Happy for Dima and Arthur too, Dima just proved us that he is the solid Russian No.1, looks like he is more reliable than Mikhail Kolyada to some extent, witnessing a new European champion getting crowned after so many years is really exciting.
Danil Grassl is a true talent, but kid please fix your technical elements before it's too late, and work on skating skills and postures, those problems just keep you from getting on the podium all the time.
I'm never a fan of Brezina, but oh boy this is heartbreaking, given he is gonna be a girl's father soon.:sad4:
 

Ichatdelune

Long live the Queen and her successors
Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 22, 2018
Country
South-Korea
I've only watched the medalists so far, and Dima not only had a clean 3A, aside from the 4Lz (where he put his foot down) he did not have a single error with his quads!!!! :yahoo: Way to go Dima, way to rebound after GPF. Please keep at it, new Euros champ. :luv17:

Artur, oh, Artur, what an Euros debut, what a fantastic Euros debut. His lutz has been a bit unstable for quite some time now as he fixed his edge, but two beautiful quad sals at the biggest stage of his career so far (weeps with joy) He has a blisteringly bright future ahead of him, just you wait.

I'm not the biggest fan of Moris K's style, but he has worked for it for quite some time now and deserves to be rewared for it. And good for small feds to have medalists.

Will probably add more after I catch up on the others

Edit: mostly caught up, some more thoughts

On Elektra's two Italian sons - :clap: to Signorino Grassl for staying on his feet through all those quads and finally getting rid of that bloodstain on his shirt, but while he is a wonderful performer I still want him to fix his posture. It interferes with my enjoyment of his skating. In that aspect Signor Matteo Rizzo excels, his posture and his landings (when he gets them) is very much pleasing to the eye. I do find his FS delightful to watch, wish he could've been clean but what's done is done. He did perform as best as he could've anyway.

I only just learned that Deniss Vasiljevs was skating through ankle/boots issues, so he gets my pardon for his messy jumps. And man his spins, he's worth watching for them alone.

I couldn't watch Michal Brezina fall apart so I just skipped him after his first fall, he keeps his title of gorgeous cactus still.

Although his jumps weren't quite there for him, through watching Alexander Selevko I reaffirmed that I quite enjoy watching the Selevko brothers, I enjoyed his younger brother Mikhail in the JGPs too. Their style is easy on the eyes, hope they both get their jumps with them.
 

Tolstoj

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 21, 2015
It was a nice event, with the short program that kept most of the top skaters with a shot to the gold medal or at least the podium and the free where we've seen some really great performances.

Overall it has been a very good season for Aliev, medalling at every event except GPF which was a fluke, first time winning Nationals and now Europeans too. He looks much stronger and calm than in the past.

There has been some power shifting in Italy, cause while Grassl didn't medal (2nd free skate of the event) he beated Rizzo for the second time in a row after Nationals. Matteo in my opinion had some of the best skating skills and performance qualities at this event, and probably deserved better components, but it's the technical score that is making the difference, with Daniel that is becoming quite consistent with the quads.

It will be interesting to see how that evolves cause remember Daniel's coach Lorenzo Magri also has trains Frangipani who is still not at the level of Grassl but he has the triple axel, and he's becoming more consistent.

Danielan, the youngest at this event, was perhaps the biggest surprise of the event, after that amazing free at Nationals, more or less he has been able to repeat himself here. Incredible artistry for a 16 years old boy. I was watching the event on Rai, they mentioned the reactions from Trankov and i think Grishin when they saw him landing the quad salchow.

Apart from the 4Toe fall, very strong skate from Kvitelashvili too, finally medalling for the first time at the Europeans.

What a shame for Brezina, this was a big chance to at least finish on the podium, the pressure got him, cause in the warmup he landed a beautiful 4S and then couldn't get it during the program.
 

RemyRose

YOLO
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Dec 28, 2005
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United-States
Artur, oh, Artur, what an Euros debut, what a fantastic Euros debut. His lutz has been a bit unstable for quite some time now as he fixed his edge, but two beautiful quad sals at the biggest stage of his career so far (weeps with joy) He has a blisteringly bright future ahead of him, just you wait.

Artur has an edge on his flip, not his Lutz :unsure: He hasn't missed his Lutz in a while.
 

eppen

Medalist
Joined
Mar 28, 2006
Country
Spain
Sat through the free changing place for each group to sit with different friends - love my FS friends and they are just about all here this week! It was a bit hard watching the European men skate without Javier Fernández being there, but I did have some favourites.

In the early groups, I was pleasantly surprised by Slavik Hayrapetyan who in the past has kind of just skated through his music without paying much attention to it. This year there was a real program and a real performance. Aleksandr Selevko's good performance skills were not a surprise, but I still prefer the SP over this FS. Great to watch, though. The same goes for Gabriele Frangipani. Nikolai Majorov did a very good short and the free was more than ok. Paul Fentz had an excellent short, but the free was not quite at the same level.

Earlier in the day I had almost gotten my head bitten off for expressing negative views on Deniss Vasiljevs to someone who also heavily despised Russian skaters for merely jumping and skating twofooted in between. This person loved Deniss for quality. I had not watched him much this fall, so I paid particular attention to his footwork. And unfortunately, I was not impressed. He was doing an awful lot of crossovers and simple twofooted stuff between his triples (some of which were also UR and had unclear edges and all). Now, I certainly do prefer watching Deniss over someone like Samarin (to name names), but at least he is doing his twofooted skating between quads and not triples. Neither is really a complete skater in my opinion and although quality skating probably has different definitions depending on who is defining it, I really appreciate also overall quality combined to technical difficulty when it is much more difficult to do.

Which brings me to the Italian top contenders. Daniel Grassl certainly did the big jumps, but they are soooo ugly. The takeoff position low and crouching, the other foot high and loose in the air position. His rotation is also seemingly slow - I am always surprised he can do the quads. Don't get me wrong though, despite the ugly jumps, he has great flexibility, amazing spins, and capacity for performance, he just needs to work on polishing all that into a shiny whole to get the maximum points. And when Matteo Rizzo skated, the difference was truly tangible. He has great skating skills, great finished movement. The jumps are beautiful, great positions, beautiful landings (well, when he gets them ;) ). He did one quad, fell on it, but ended with only 7 points behind Grassl and his quad collection mostly thanks to the good overall quality.

I confess I did not watch Kvitelashvili really at all for whatever reason, so his bronze performance came as a bit of surprise... Sorry to see Brezina fail once again, but it apparently was not written in the stars that he would ever get two really good programs in one competition. The short was excellent, the free as a program not very appealing.

I saw Artur Danielian in the Moscow gala in 2018 as one of the local kids (Alena Kostornaia was there too) and was impressed by his skating even back then. Have kept on eye on his development since and was super happy to see him climb on the podium in the Russian nats and get a place here. He is a delight live also - great speed and flow in his movement, good jumps, beautiful overall movement and apparently a capacity for expressing different things (the short is Spanish and fierce, the free lighter and classical). He seemed to be mostly unfazed by the big event and skated both programs very well! I was happy to see him get the fabulous quad combo right and although it was not squeaky clean, I gladly give him the silver medal!

Dmitri Aliev has also been on my radar for years, and his way of getting meltdowns was a big concern. But the way he cleared element after element and gave a good performance to top it was throughly delightful. A victory well-deserved! Hope this will carry him onwards to great things!

My most emotional moment was at the end of the victory ceremony when the national flags rose in the air in front of the We Miss You (Javi)! banner and all four were brightly lit by the spotlight. The flags kept going up with the light following them, leaving the banner in the shadow. I cried for the definite end of the Javi era in the Europeans.

E
 

Tolstoj

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 21, 2015
The one suggestion i'd give to Daniel Grassl is to move the 4ltz in the first half of his SP.

We've seen him landing this element but perhaps doing a 4ltz in the bonus is still a bit too much (i mean, no one does it), i haven't seen his practices so i'm sure they saw he can land it that late in the program but as we saw here one fall basically pushed him out of the podium despite all the technical skills.

He doesn't have the components yet because he's still young, so if he falls, judges are not going to save him, it's better to go for the consistency and GOE for now.
 

McBibus

On the Ice
Joined
Dec 7, 2019
The one suggestion i'd give to Daniel Grassl is to move the 4ltz in the first half of his SP.

We've seen him landing this element but perhaps doing a 4ltz in the bonus is still a bit too much (i mean, no one does it), i haven't seen his practices so i'm sure they saw he can land it that late in the program but as we saw here one fall basically pushed him out of the podium despite all the technical skills.

He doesn't have the components yet because he's still young, so if he falls, judges are not going to save him, it's better to go for the consistency and GOE for now.

I hope they don't look at the fall for the missed podium.
It's true in terms of pure scoring, but this things happens to him and to anyone else (except maybe two people that were not there).
Having (or showing) little control over his jumps it's what prevented him to get the podium and the main thing to work on.
I'm sure Lorenzo doesn't need my advice tough.

I like his spins a lot.
Originals and showing his great flexiblity and balance in those positions.
 
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