I would love to see them all skate clean so the chips can land where they lay.
The thing that will make nationals fun this year is that the door is wide open. There isn’t anything that would surprise me. Sure- Bradie and Mariah look like a solid 1-2 on paper but neither of them has enough reputation (neither had a stellar Grand Prix season) to compensate if someone else skates lights out.
Bradie won the ONLY US ladies GP medal this season, and she also won two Challenger events. That seems like plenty of "reputation" points to me.
No one else has a better fall season record.
Bradie won the ONLY US ladies GP medal this season, and she also won two Challenger events. That seems like plenty of "reputation" points to me.
No one else has a better fall season record.
The conference calls for Nationals have been uploaded by the Lansing Herald. Listened to Mariah's and she was pointedly asked about upping her technical content to compete with the likes of Alysa and the Russians/Japanese. Mariah answered that the 3A wasn't off the table, but that she is focusing on honing her other technical elements first.
https://lansingherald.com/sports#f6b64700-0e64-4498-9672-d5baac07a64b
I'll PM you when I find it. The problem is remembering what rabbit hole I was going down when I came across it in the first place.
From what I can understand the reason it was described as a brain thing is because our brains response to negative feedback in the same way it would a death threat unless you've specifically and systematically trained yourself to deal with it. And that "training" may not protect you from every negative comment. I think we've all had that one unexpected thing get to us in a way that has our heart thumping in our chest. Social media is triggering our reptile brains.
Mariah seems to have been on the cusp for years. Whatever she is doing doesn't seem to be working quite right that so mixing it up seems to be a good decision. Bit I also question if working on a 3A is the best use of time if she does not have consistent fully rotated multiple 3-3.
I personally thought that Mirai's focus on the 3A was to the detriment of her other jumps.
The conference calls for Nationals have been uploaded by the Lansing Herald. Listened to Mariah's and she was pointedly asked about upping her technical content to compete with the likes of Alysa and the Russians/Japanese. Mariah answered that the 3A wasn't off the table, but that she is focusing on honing her other technical elements first.
https://lansingherald.com/sports#f6b64700-0e64-4498-9672-d5baac07a64b
I'd be VERY surprised if Mariah goes for the 3A. The second Worlds spot is really her's to lose at this point, so taking unnecessary risk seems like a bad idea since she'll have to be near her best to secure that placement.
(Personally, while I am no fan of reputation scoring, I think it may be a good idea to reward skaters for long-standing skating skills and quality instead of only looking at who skated the cleanest on the day.)
Do you really think that?
To me, in any athletic competition you have to give the highest scores to the one who performed the best. Otherwise, why hold a competition?
The thing that will make nationals fun this year is that the door is wide open. There isn’t anything that would surprise me. Sure- Bradie and Mariah look like a solid 1-2 on paper but neither of them has enough reputation (neither had a stellar Grand Prix season) to compensate if someone else skates lights out.
I think what the poster was getting at is that the US judges will reward programs that are clean, regardless of international judges' assessment of PCS features like SS. There's probably some truth to that, as I think it's easier for a skater to stand out at Nationals if they don't have a strong international reputation.
That said, it would probably be a different situation if the US had a very strong PCS skater (then again, Ashley was not rewarded very high PCS at Nationals last year...so who knows? But she and Gracie were both very well-rewarded for flawed programs in previous years...things just change.)
How Alysa Liu is scored in PCS will be interesting. She's pretty far behind Bradie, Mariah, Ting, and other ladies in terms of SS (unlike most of the Russian/Japanese wunderkind). Nathan placed 3rd to Adam and Max in 2016 (?) despite his comparatively insane technical content. So the judges could "lowball" her and surprise us.
Bradie won the ONLY US ladies GP medal this season, and she also won two Challenger events. That seems like plenty of "reputation" points to me.
No one else has a better fall season record.
That said, it would probably be a different situation if the US had a very strong PCS skater (then again, Ashley was not rewarded very high PCS at Nationals last year...so who knows? But she and Gracie were both very well-rewarded for flawed programs in previous years...things just change.)
How Alysa Liu is scored in PCS will be interesting. She's pretty far behind Bradie, Mariah, Ting, and other ladies in terms of SS (unlike most of the Russian/Japanese wunderkind). Nathan placed 3rd to Adam and Max in 2016 (?) despite his comparatively insane technical content. So the judges could "lowball" her and surprise us.