2013 Skate America Ladies Free Program

[Icey]

Even caroline had a 3 loop/ 3 loop ratified at 4cc 2012. It did have a negative goe though, -1.06. I believe the base value is 10+

 

[blue_idealist]

sorry if I might have missed somthing earlier in this thread , but , to me Samantha Cesario was the star of the night especially on PCS! She seemed so into her program and her jumps were very solid and nice and high and the program held my attention compared to the blah top 5. Maybe posters didnt mention her much because if they watched NBC only, they didnt even see Samantha? Just curious as to what everybody else thought of her LP and does she have another Grand Prix assignent?

I didn't see her since I watched it on NBC. I might go back and watch the performance on youtube later, now that you've mentioned that it was good.

 

[hippomoomin]

The marks were suprisingly high but they were high for everyone. IMO the actual standings were correct.

I thought Mao's program was very strong. Yes, some jump issues but other than that the choreography was good. Perhaps her best ever free skate choreo.

Ashley's music is wonderful but the choreography is not there yet. She really has to get rid of those overdone facial expressions. She always has that same expression when she skates to sad or dramatic music. IMO skater's facial expression should be very, very subtle. It is the body that should reflect the music as much as possible. All that said this program has a potential to be great.

I agree with you on Ashley's facial expression. LOL. That's why I like Mao--she uses much more her body to tell the story than her face.

 

[guanchi]

I'd be OK with the Flutz if it was at least a consistent flutz. But no, she tried instead to fix it and the edge is scarcely better but she lost all semblance of consistency on it. Might as well have left it unfixed and proudly flutzed with reckless abandon. Anyway, if she's not including the 3F-3Lo, she might as well do a final 3Lo. Otherwise, I'd agree. Better to go for 2 or 3 of the less secure point scorers than to attempt all 4 and accomplish 0.



She's facing forward when she leaves the ice on her Loop... Isn't that your definition of "cheating pre-rotation," or is only Asada not allowed to do that?

http://youtu.be/ZmyUwtmch9w?t=4m24s

So does that mean Asada was able to do 3F-3Lo, or do you plan to retroactively invalidate the efforts of Miki Ando, Irina Slutskaya, and Tara Lipinski?

Miki, who is a better technical jumper than Asada, would probably not get her 3-3lo ratified today- why do you think she abandoned it years ago? And Mao's flip was pretty flawed back then too- she looked a little forward on that takeoff too so I doubt that combo would've been ratified today. Her flip is better now ,but still - if better jumper Miki can't get the calls on her 3-3lo, do you really think Mao currently would get hers?

 

[cooper]

But its not like the triple axel is a jump Asada Can't do. Its a difficult jump and she's going to mess it up once in a while. I personally feel differently about one fall if the rest of the program is good. I think other aspects do matter and Asada has a ton of qualities over Ashley.

Even in 6.0, top skaters could maybe get away with the one fall.

I think a balance is needed in the sport where on fall isn't treated as the end of the world, but a line is drawn with multiple major errors.

Plus this a jump that no other lady even bothers to do. I'm not inclined to see Asada's PCS drop big time if she messes up that jump, as long as everything else is good. Now I would feel differently if this was a "hail mary" jump like Jeff Buttle's quad.

listen i have no problem with mao winning. she deserves it. it's great that she's re-working her technique. i'm only questioning hurrah's statement about the judges giving mao the leeway because she's planning to do an 8 triple program. if midori ito is competing and planning to do an 8 triple program then i would have understand that. that the judges will give her a leeway because after all she has the reputation to land all those jumps properly without an edge call/underrotation/two-footed problems.

 

[minze]

Ok, so if Mao skates visibly clean performances with extremely difficult content (3A + 2 different 3x3s, or 2 3As), which she did several times btw (see bellow),
all people seem to care about are underrotations, hardly noticeable errors and levels.
Just check for yourself what kind of performances (with falls) scored higher or the same like e.g. her practically clean skates at 2010 Worlds or 2007 GPF. Somehow I don't remember people predicting doom to figure skating then.
Quite the opposite actually. The obviously ignorant fans who wanted to see cleanish and ultimately challenging performances like that rewarded more, were advised to learn how COP works and stop counting falls as there are so many other elements that can score as much as a triple jump, that it's the quality not quantity that counts etc.

When Mao watered down her technical content while reworking her jumps, focusing on all the other important elements and dealing with serious personal problems at the same time, people were screaming that she is being lazy, playing it safe and not pushing the sport.
How dare she not attempt the 3A in every single SP after the villainous Japanese Federation bribed everyone to allow her do a solo 3A in the SP?
She should at least try to go for the big tricks, right?

And when she starts including difficult jumps again and, oh the horror, happens to make mistakes while attempting a layout no lady had ever done before, she deserves to be crucified again. Why does she even try to go for something that she cannot execute 100% (ok 90% then) of the time, huh?

Could someone also enlighten me, why it matters so much that she supposedly went for 8 triples but eventually only attempted 6 at the actual competition?
Did she get any points for the triples she didn't complete or what?
She did 3F-2L and 2A-2T and that's what I see being scored looking at her protocol.

Anyways, congrats to Mao for making history once again by being the first lady ever to win all 6 GP events,
as well as for being an inspiration and a role model for not only the new generation of skaters but also some of her direct competitors.

Congrats to Ashley too, who was amazing in both programs and to Elena who seems to have everything at the moment to become a future skating superstar.

-----------
BTW, here are some of the visibly practically clean performances by Mao with super challenging content that some of you seem to be crying for now, and that too were being nitpicked to death at the time they were performed.

Worlds 2007 (3A out of brackets, 2A-3T, 3F-3L) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5G3Ns2i86U
Grand Prix Final 2007 (3A, 3F-3T, 3F-3L) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJ_mG6Qvno
4CC 2008 (3A 3F-3T, 3F-3L) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp5aoeVYcHg
NHK Trophy 2008 (3A-2T, 3A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwgyJz-le1w
Worlds 2010 (3A-2T, 3A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsCZCM8AKCU
4CC 2011 (3A, 2A-3T) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpZGFBDYc2w

THiS

The thing is Mao is the only skater who does not have a perfect LP (sarcasam because has had clean LP's). In the history of skating, every female and male competitor always go clean on their programs, so how dare Mao miss some jumps. Haven't you heard she is killing the sport. But as a frequent visitor of this forum, one thing I have learned is that Mao never wins with some people here.

 

[TontoK]

(snip)
On the other point, I do not agree that figure skating is by its nature a boring sport. It is as thrilling as sports that are much more popular. But only when the programs are well skated.

This resonates with me. I have to say that I did find the ladies LP to be boring. I was happy that Ashley completed her 3-3, I was both intrigued and put off by Radionova, and I could recognize some quality skating from Mao. But, really, I was mostly bored. It was an hour spent to really appreciate a few minutes of very good skating.

It just wasn't a good competition... We, as knowledgeable fans, can point out that it's early season, that every skater has a sub-par performance, on and on.

But, just exactly what did we see that would turn a once-in-a-while viewer of figure skater into a hard-core fanatic?

Nothing. Not a thing.

 

[CarneAsada]

Miki, who is a better technical jumper than Asada, would probably not get her 3-3lo ratified today- why do you think she abandoned it years ago? And Mao's flip was pretty flawed back then too- she looked a little forward on that takeoff too so I doubt that combo would've been ratified today. Her flip is better now ,but still - if better jumper Miki can't get the calls on her 3-3lo, do you really think Mao currently would get hers?

Mao and Miki got their 3-3s ratified more often back then not because the judges were more generous but because they were just better at rotating them. You'd have to be silly not to see that Mao's 3F-3Lo back in 2006 is undoubtedly rotated while even her best attempts since the start of 2009 simply don't measure up to that (i.e. her rotation is usually pretty close to the 1/4 mark). Also, Mao's flip technique may be better right now, but in 2006-2008 she almost never failed to get those rotations in safely. Miki got more height on her jumps but her 3-3Lo combinations later on (she was still doing them in the Olympic season) were also being landed near the 1/4-short territory. No one is saying that their combos are perfect (and yes, Asada's most recent attempts from the spring probably deserved a < sign), but no, you don't get to say "oh << downgrade Asada's cheating pre-rotated 3F-3Lo" without getting called out for being either misinformed on how 3-3Lo combos work or just being biased/dumb. If it's a 1/4 turn short on landing, it's a <, not a << just because you hate Asada and/or think a real 3-3Lo should have the 3Lo take off backwards (it shouldn't. You won't find anyone facing backwards on the loop takeoff). But points for trying, Moment. We're making progress here; the loop combination haters are finally admitting that Miki has rotated a 3-3Lo combination at least once.

listen i have no problem with mao winning. she deserves it. it's great that she's re-working her technique. i'm only questioning hurrah's statement about the judges giving mao the leeway because she's planning to do an 8 triple program. if midori ito is competing and planning to do an 8 triple program then i would have understand that. that the judges will give her a leeway because after all she has the reputation to land all those jumps properly without an edge call/underrotation/two-footed problems.

It's not the judges giving her leeway, it's her layout itself giving her leeway. In other words, she watered down the program but still had plenty of triples planned. So you see she gets credit for the 5 triples she had left after falling/watering down (ok 4, if you discount the fLutz), not for a phantom 2A-3T and 3F-3Lo. As for overscoring, that's simple. Wagner's PCS were far too high so they decided to inflate Asada's accordingly. Rather hilarious how at a GP event these days, the top 2 have PCS approaching that of Kim/Asada from the 2010 Olympics. It's like PCS charges interest. Soon they'll have to begin giving PCS out of 12.

 

[Kelly]

listen i have no problem with mao winning. she deserves it. it's great that she's re-working her technique. i'm only questioning hurrah's statement about the judges giving mao the leeway because she's planning to do an 8 triple program. if midori ito is competing and planning to do an 8 triple program then i would have understand that. that the judges will give her a leeway because after all she has the reputation to land all those jumps properly without an edge call/underrotation/two-footed problems.

It's just your thinking that the judges give Mao leeway because they know Mao has a 8-triple free program. The math is a 8-triple program has more chances to get points from jumps than a 6-triple program if or not there are jumping mistakes when performing.

 

[hurrah]

It's just your thinking that the judges give Mao leeway because they know Mao has a 8-triple free program. The math is a 8-triple program has more chances to get points from jumps than a 6-triple program if or not there are jumping mistakes when performing.

Go back to my posts and read carefully what I wrote, and tell me where you think I wrote that judges should give Mao leeway for planning eight triples.

 

[szidon]

Whether of not judges are giving Mao leeway for planning eight triples, it' obvious the current rules are relatively favorable to skaters with underrotated and/or wrong-edged jumps.

 

[mary01]

Whether of not judges are giving Mao leeway for planning eight triples, it' obvious the current rules are relatively favorable to skaters with underrotated and/or wrong-edged jumps.

Are you sure about that, because based on what I saw at the World Championships the last couple of years I would say that the skaters who repeatedly fall are penalized much less. The order of the World Medalist would therefor have looked quite different if so.

 

[wordsworthgirl]

Kori Ade's strategy is that Jason doesn't bring out the elements until he's pretty much mastered them. That was the case with the 3A and that is going to be the case with the quad. I get the sense is that they value having clean, well-trained programs.

And Jason can bring the house down with clean amazing programs even without having the big jump. See Exhibit A: Greensboro 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G94pHGvq3Fs Not a 3A in sight. But he hit everything else and by the time he did that 3F-2T-2T combo, everyone was cheering and ready to be on their feet.

One thing I like about their strategy is they don't twiddle on their thumbs waiting for a certain jump to happen. They try to find ways to get extra +GOE or focus on hitting all the levels in the non-jump elements. I really liked that whole two-hands behind the back thing he did on the 2T at the end of his 3F-2T combo.

Of course that also means that if he makes mistakes on his current programs he won't score very well in the meanwhile. That was the case at JGP Courchevel last year when he didn't have the 3A and ended up lots of URs and it was the case on Saturday when he succumbed to nerves and missed both his 3A attempts and didn't have the quad.

Mrs. P, thank you sooooo much for sharing that absolutely amazing video of Jason at 2011 Nationals. I've only recently started following him and just adore his skating and him- what a lovely, good-hearted, modest, kind boy. What he says about his Dad on this video is priceless. and he has IT. a special, emotional, transcendent quality that makes him light up the room and convey genuine feeling to the audience. Plus he is a great all-around skater. I am crossing all my body parts that his shaky long at Skate America was a one-off and he will be the future of US skating. He is so talented and such a great role model.
But you know what? as long as he continues to perform well, I don't even care if he ultimately medals at Olympics or Worlds. I just want him to continue progressing as an artist and a person. I like Kori's strategy of developing all aspects of his skating and not rushing him. I look forward to what will hopefully be a long and successful career for him!

 

[Kelly]

Go back to my posts and read carefully what I wrote, and tell me where you think I wrote that judges should give Mao leeway for planning eight triples.

I meant it's what cooper thinks not you, hurrah.:scratch:

 

[flying camel]

I guess some of you are right about Ashley's not having much choreography in her LP. In the article below she talks about gradually adding in the choreography as she feels more comfortable.

http://m.washingtonpost.com/sports/...7438e8-39d0-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html

I hope the link works.

 

[hurrah]

I meant it's what cooper thinks not you, hurrah.:scratch:

Sorry about that Kelly. I misquoted you and didn't realize until I got a PM from mary01 (thanx, mary01) pointing this out.

 

[Bartek]

Ok, so if Mao skates visibly clean performances with extremely difficult content (3A + 2 different 3x3s, or 2 3As), which she did several times btw (see bellow),
all people seem to care about are underrotations, hardly noticeable errors and levels.
Just check for yourself what kind of performances (with falls) scored higher or the same like e.g. her practically clean skates at 2010 Worlds or 2007 GPF. Somehow I don't remember people predicting doom to figure skating then.
Quite the opposite actually. The obviously ignorant fans who wanted to see cleanish and ultimately challenging performances like that rewarded more, were advised to learn how COP works and stop counting falls as there are so many other elements that can score as much as a triple jump, that it's the quality not quantity that counts etc.

When Mao watered down her technical content while reworking her jumps, focusing on all the other important elements and dealing with serious personal problems at the same time, people were screaming that she is being lazy, playing it safe and not pushing the sport.
How dare she not attempt the 3A in every single SP after the villainous Japanese Federation bribed everyone to allow her do a solo 3A in the SP?
She should at least try to go for the big tricks, right?

And when she starts including difficult jumps again and, oh the horror, happens to make mistakes while attempting a layout no lady had ever done before, she deserves to be crucified again. Why does she even try to go for something that she cannot execute 100% (ok 90% then) of the time, huh?

Could someone also enlighten me, why it matters so much that she supposedly went for 8 triples but eventually only attempted 6 at the actual competition?
Did she get any points for the triples she didn't complete or what?
She did 3F-2L and 2A-2T and that's what I see being scored looking at her protocol.

Anyways, congrats to Mao for making history once again by being the first lady ever to win all 6 GP events,
as well as for being an inspiration and a role model for not only the new generation of skaters but also some of her direct competitors.

Congrats to Ashley too, who was amazing in both programs and to Elena who seems to have everything at the moment to become a future skating superstar.

-----------
BTW, here are some of the visibly practically clean performances by Mao with super challenging content that some of you seem to be crying for now, and that too were being nitpicked to death at the time they were performed.

Worlds 2007 (3A out of brackets, 2A-3T, 3F-3L) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5G3Ns2i86U
Grand Prix Final 2007 (3A, 3F-3T, 3F-3L) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYJ_mG6Qvno
4CC 2008 (3A 3F-3T, 3F-3L) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp5aoeVYcHg
NHK Trophy 2008 (3A-2T, 3A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwgyJz-le1w
Worlds 2010 (3A-2T, 3A) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsCZCM8AKCU
4CC 2011 (3A, 2A-3T) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpZGFBDYc2w

This post summarises everything about Mao and the lack of logic in her haters' posts. It should be visible on every page of this thread and of few other threads as well. I totally agree with everything you've said. Thank you for pointing out those things and reminding peaple of Mao's splendind performances with super difficult technical concent. Now she's improved artisitically so much that if she manages to complete her planned routine it's gonna be absolutely extraordinary. I love her 2013 4CC free skate where she landed 3A, 3F+3Lo and 2A+3T. Even though they were underrotated it was still an impressive performance because she attempted all of those three difficult elements.

 

[minze]

This post summarises everything about Mao and the lack of logic in her haters' posts. It should be visible on every page of this thread and of few other threads as well. I totally agree with everything you've said. Thank you for pointing out those things and reminding peaple of Mao's splendind performances with super difficult technical concent. Now she's improved artisitically so much that if she manages to complete her planned routine it's gonna be absolutely extraordinary. I love her 2013 4CC free skate where she landed 3A, 3F+3Lo and 2A+3T. Even though they were underrotated it was still an impressive performance because she attempted all of those three difficult elements.

Agree. And for the people complaining about Pcs. Any judge would do that, after seeing Ashley and Elena (lovely skaters), but Mao's componets are superior, so the judges rewarded that. Someone on twitter wrote "Mao is a better skater today than she was 4yrs ago and that is not easy" And I tend to agree with that, because Mao took the time to improve everything even her basic skating skills eventhought she was in top 3 skaters of the world.

 

[Olympia]

I didn't realize that Mao is the first to have won all the Grand Prix tournaments. Congratulations to her!

I think that she and the Satos should feel satisfaction that their careful plan of rebuilding her skills is making a difference. It's tremendously impressive that she's doing this. I hope she realizes how much we fans admire her for it, as well as for the beauty of her skating.

 

[Mrs. P]

Mrs. P, thank you sooooo much for sharing that absolutely amazing video of Jason at 2011 Nationals. I've only recently started following him and just adore his skating and him- what a lovely, good-hearted, modest, kind boy. What he says about his Dad on this video is priceless. and he has IT. a special, emotional, transcendent quality that makes him light up the room and convey genuine feeling to the audience. Plus he is a great all-around skater. I am crossing all my body parts that his shaky long at Skate America was a one-off and he will be the future of US skating. He is so talented and such a great role model.
But you know what? as long as he continues to perform well, I don't even care if he ultimately medals at Olympics or Worlds. I just want him to continue progressing as an artist and a person. I like Kori's strategy of developing all aspects of his skating and not rushing him. I look forward to what will hopefully be a long and successful career for him!

I think a lot of us feel that way! You should make your way to the Jason fan thread, you'll find a lot more video of his past programs..so you can enjoy to your heart's delight.