2018 Internationaux de France Ladies Short Program

[Skater Boy]

This is looking good for Rika. She has a chance toshowshe canlay down consistent solid programs; she has little to lose. Her teammates could make a swee of it. Sotskova may have been "dumped" her scores I thought were a bit low but the Ur's are the iffy issue. I think the height issue is a challenge. Evgenia is still a fairly good skater but she is dealing with programs which show she is trying but are not really her. Coupled with body changes that affects the jumps and mentally she no long is as tough or confident she is struggling. She may not even make the russian world team. The Japanese ladies are looking really solid - maybe even stronger than Russia. Interesting Russia and Japan have their consistent solid skaters Alina and Satoko. They their 3A queens Rika and Liza. And the a hot mess of potentially great skaters. you don't want to say one skate defeines you but this Freeskate is kind of big for Evgenia - to show she can get it together. If she fails to make the GPF she opens the door for someone other Russian skater to push her off the world team. So from once was thouguht a safe second in Russia is now becoming a precarious third. Liza can solidfy Russia no. 2 by beating Evgenia ifshe makes the GP final

 

[melgirl25]

I don't think Evgenia's problems right now are mental but rather technical.... She is very unconfident on the tech part, therefore she focuses more on this.

She was haunted about what happened at Skate Canada with her flip combo.

 

[rikaquegira]

At least Evgenia’s Free Skate doesn’t require a lot of emoting, even a “stone face” will do. Of course a deeper level of expression would be better but it wouldn’t be a disaster like it was in the SP if she doesn’t interpret the program as it should be interpreted. The SP was shocking, the lack of emotion was the worst thing about it imo. Forget about the jumps, there was no personality whatsoever in that program, the performance was really bad, probably the worst for Evgenia.
And I don’t agree with “oh, that program doesn’t suit her, they have to change it, this was a mistake”. She was performing this program just fine at the test skates and even at the other competitions, it wasn’t perfect but there was something to it. This performance at IdF was just disappointing and a total downgrade.
With that said, she can turn this around. I don’t know why she was so bad here, only she and her team know. I wish her better luck next time and a good Free Skate today. Maybe she can still qualify for the Final, that would be amazing! But even if she doesn’t, I say the same thing about Rika: save those good programs for Nats and WC! [emoji23]
jk but not jk, GPF doesn’t have the same prestige as Worlds, as much as I find it just as interesting if not much more interesting than WC.

 

[MaiKatze]

Was it just me or did everyone's jumps look really tiny? I mean, there was no ooomph to any of them other than Mae-Berenice Meite's perhaps. Compared to teammate Kaori's, Mai's jumps also looked so low...idk. Mai's SP, I just don't like it. It's not magic, it's boring. She needs something much more exciting than this. It's weird how Mai and Marin with basically clean performances are in the same category with Rika and Evgenia who both made major mistakes. But on the other hand, I say it again, Mai that program doesn't do you any favours! Who thought Doris Day was a good idea? Whoooo? Argh. All in all a pretty disappointing short overall. And somehow a really good example of the judges having it their way. It wouldn't have surprised me if Maria Sotskova would have won the SP. It didn't suprise me that she didn't. And Marin, unfortunately, now has the image of an underrotater. She won't get near those 70 scores again, I guess.

 

[CoyoteChris]

I can't believe I will miss such an amazing competition... it might be worth getting a telling off from my teacher, surely figure skating is not important than microbes in food!

Take it from me. You will learn much more by watching this event about people and life and beauty than you will looking at food microbes...and the food microbes can wait!