No, in real time most of Loena's jumps looked suspect and should have been flagged. Then the review would have confirmed they were cheated jumps. Amateur hour stuff it was clear in the broadcast in real time she had suspect jumps her body was always facing completely the wrong way on landing as often she is. I don't know how an expert can miss all of this then suddenly wake out of the slumber for the next two skaters Nastia and Nina and ding them for everything. In real time, Nina's jumps didn't look any worse than Loena's, if anything better.
2024 European Championships Women's Free Skate
- Thread starter dorispulaski
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No, in real time most of Loena's jumps looked suspect and should have been flagged. Then the review would have confirmed they were cheated jumps. Amateur hour stuff it was clear in the broadcast in real time she had suspect jumps her body was always facing completely the wrong way on landing as often she is. I don't know how an expert can miss all of this then suddenly wake out of the slumber for the next two skaters Nastia and Nina and ding them for everything. In real time, Nina's jumps didn't look any worse than Loena's, if anything better.
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That's just nonsense.
I'll post proof in the coming days.
Let's forget about Loena barely landing a fully rotated jump across two programs, the PCS is absurd especially compared to Nina.
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I just have to say -- what an improvement in the scores for Livia Kaiser! Definitely the one to watch. Lines; musicality; big, beautiful jumps. I hope the next season will see a breakthrough for her.
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I'm late to the party here, but what has happened to Kimmy? Has she been ill? She's painfully thin.
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I have to say the last group really made the difference in an otherwise pretty weak field.
Kaiser for me is too gangly and carries a weird hunched posture that is distracting.
After the usual Loena (will somebody please explajn me what is it about her?) and a Gubanova that put me to sleep, I found myself rooting for Pinzarrone. She should work on speed, if she wants to be judged fairly.
Kaiser for me is too gangly and carries a weird hunched posture that is distracting.
After the usual Loena (will somebody please explajn me what is it about her?) and a Gubanova that put me to sleep, I found myself rooting for Pinzarrone. She should work on speed, if she wants to be judged fairly.
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Loena is a brilliant skater and deserved to win this event, however what I can't figure out is why her two programs are the same style, and not far from one of her programs last season. (I can't remember which one.) Lots of shimmy and head bopping over the course of several programs gets real old. I hope she branches out next season as she now seems rather one dimensional.
This is her normal body shape.
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I have just caught up with the final flight and the medal ceremony, really really happy Loena finally got her European gold 
And I love her new black pants in her FP! Suits the program much better and it really accentuates her legs during her fabulous spins.
But biggest impression for me has to be Livia Kaiser. 2 clean programs and amazing 3Lz-3T!
And she actually had 2nd highest TES in the FS with 68.52, first was Nastya at 70.73. Loena's TES was 'only' 67.46, so it's really her PCS that got her the gold (deservingly). And Nastya was actually 2nd in PCS with 66.83 - so the judges actually liked her program and her performance. In fact she got 8.50 for presentation!
As for Loena's programs, I don't hate them as much as some people here. Her FP is actually growing on me, I think this was the best she ever performed it. And as polarizing as they are, Loena's programs are fun and engaging. I'll take them anytime over boring, generic programs
I do want to see her doing different styles, but the way I see it this style is her comfort zone plus the judges definitely like it too, so I don't blame her for playing with her strong suit to secure the European gold after what happened last year. Now that she got the gold, I'm curious to see what she'll do for her programs next season
And I love her new black pants in her FP! Suits the program much better and it really accentuates her legs during her fabulous spins.
But biggest impression for me has to be Livia Kaiser. 2 clean programs and amazing 3Lz-3T!
And she actually had 2nd highest TES in the FS with 68.52, first was Nastya at 70.73. Loena's TES was 'only' 67.46, so it's really her PCS that got her the gold (deservingly). And Nastya was actually 2nd in PCS with 66.83 - so the judges actually liked her program and her performance. In fact she got 8.50 for presentation!
As for Loena's programs, I don't hate them as much as some people here. Her FP is actually growing on me, I think this was the best she ever performed it. And as polarizing as they are, Loena's programs are fun and engaging. I'll take them anytime over boring, generic programs
I do want to see her doing different styles, but the way I see it this style is her comfort zone plus the judges definitely like it too, so I don't blame her for playing with her strong suit to secure the European gold after what happened last year. Now that she got the gold, I'm curious to see what she'll do for her programs next season
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It's said she has been going through a huge growthspurt (while already being rather tall), so I really hope it's mostly the relation to her height that makes her look so thin and that she will at least develop more muscles when she's done with her teenage development. Also I was thinking the hairdo and colour and make up added to the perception. I hope so.
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Congratulations 
to all
to all
Now that the thread is pretty much wound down, I'm going to get on my soapbox and propagandize over the need to change how figure skating is organized.
Europeans is better without the Russians. And I say that because and not in spite of also believing the RuNats bronze medalist Valieva, even in her reduced state, would have beat everyone here and it would not have been close.
Besides having the best competitors, two factors that make for good competitions are novelty and parity. People inherently want to see something new and parity allows for both hope and tension. And everyone is a bit nationalistic and the amount of hope and tension they'll feel is often going to correlate with having someone from their country that is in the hunt for a medal. Media outlets have to take this into account when thinking about what to cover.
With the Russians, women and to a lesser extent pairs often are essentially RuNats 2.0 and when someone else wins a medal it's often about how the Russian screwed up rather than how well the other skater did. It's hard to even get excited when an unexpected skater has a great skate. It's really not a great story to be telling and I find it hard to think this appeals to broadcasters.
European medals are more important in receiving financial support for European skaters than it is to Russians. The sports gets suppressed a bit in Europe with Russia taking half or more of the total European medals pretty much every year.
So, what reasonable ways are there to create pan-EU competitions without Russians.
Simpy kicking them out isn't workable as long as Euros is mirrored by the 4CC and would invite mockery and ridicule.
Euros could be turned into a kind of pan-European nationals that would serve as a qualifier for Worlds. Far more spots would be given out than a typical nationals but it would likely reduce how many Europeans go to Worlds which many wouldn't like.
My prefered idea is to replace the Grand Prix with a few tournaments which are somehow differentiated with one another similarly to how tennis has grass, clay, and hard court seasons and where the qualifiers take place in regional conferences(I like US+Can, EU, EU sans Russia, Asia). I've wrote more about it here and here.
There's a huge amount of potential ideas for what could differentiate the tournaments. A few random ideas off the top of my head: Incentives for performing 3A/Quads later, falls = 0 points but let jumps be repeated, let step sequences be unsequenced, etc etc etc. Events could have themes or lighting could be changed. There's a lot that can be done.
Top level women's skating is going to be Russian, Japanese, and Korean for the next 20 years. I actually have more hope in China coming through and being able to compete at the top than i do in Europe, Canada, or America though I have a slimmer of hope in the US. There will likely never be another Russian junior women's skater without a 3A or quad. Europe, Canada, and the US should focus on regionalism because fiddling with the rules are not going to them anywhere on the global level.
Europeans is better without the Russians. And I say that because and not in spite of also believing the RuNats bronze medalist Valieva, even in her reduced state, would have beat everyone here and it would not have been close.
Besides having the best competitors, two factors that make for good competitions are novelty and parity. People inherently want to see something new and parity allows for both hope and tension. And everyone is a bit nationalistic and the amount of hope and tension they'll feel is often going to correlate with having someone from their country that is in the hunt for a medal. Media outlets have to take this into account when thinking about what to cover.
With the Russians, women and to a lesser extent pairs often are essentially RuNats 2.0 and when someone else wins a medal it's often about how the Russian screwed up rather than how well the other skater did. It's hard to even get excited when an unexpected skater has a great skate. It's really not a great story to be telling and I find it hard to think this appeals to broadcasters.
European medals are more important in receiving financial support for European skaters than it is to Russians. The sports gets suppressed a bit in Europe with Russia taking half or more of the total European medals pretty much every year.
So, what reasonable ways are there to create pan-EU competitions without Russians.
Simpy kicking them out isn't workable as long as Euros is mirrored by the 4CC and would invite mockery and ridicule.
Euros could be turned into a kind of pan-European nationals that would serve as a qualifier for Worlds. Far more spots would be given out than a typical nationals but it would likely reduce how many Europeans go to Worlds which many wouldn't like.
My prefered idea is to replace the Grand Prix with a few tournaments which are somehow differentiated with one another similarly to how tennis has grass, clay, and hard court seasons and where the qualifiers take place in regional conferences(I like US+Can, EU, EU sans Russia, Asia). I've wrote more about it here and here.
There's a huge amount of potential ideas for what could differentiate the tournaments. A few random ideas off the top of my head: Incentives for performing 3A/Quads later, falls = 0 points but let jumps be repeated, let step sequences be unsequenced, etc etc etc. Events could have themes or lighting could be changed. There's a lot that can be done.
Top level women's skating is going to be Russian, Japanese, and Korean for the next 20 years. I actually have more hope in China coming through and being able to compete at the top than i do in Europe, Canada, or America though I have a slimmer of hope in the US. There will likely never be another Russian junior women's skater without a 3A or quad. Europe, Canada, and the US should focus on regionalism because fiddling with the rules are not going to them anywhere on the global level.
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You can't change major competition formats based on the state of the sport here and now. There is zero, absolutely zero certainty in the future of Russian sport. It's way more prudent to move Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries to 4CC to equalize number of countries and participants
My proposal has no dependency on how good Russia is. The conferences are completely flexible. My inspiration are the conferences in American high school and college sports and those conferences are also flexible yet people find a lot of meaning in them.
Regardless, people like to say that talent comes in waves, but I'm a huge skeptic of this notion. Talent comes in waves when there's is a deficiency in developing novice talent in an organized manner.
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I need to amend the above statement because I don't like it anymore. Waves definitely happen. One big success can inspire a big group to take up the sport. A wave can come through a good coach. But good organization and infrastructure can maintain success and avoid it being wavelike.
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Russia now has both the organization and infrastructure that even if much of the money went *poof* they would keep rolling along for a long time. Watch the Moscow qualifiers for the youth nationals this week and tell me with a straight face there is "zero, absolutely zero certainty" in the future of Russian women's figure skating. The only uncertainty comes from the war.
Central Asian and Middle Eastern Countries except Israel are already 4CC.
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Is it?
Reduced state? That's unkind. It's a sport where everything is much more difficult for a female if they are taller than 160cm (Kamila would be a little under 170cm), and has characteristics almost always missing in other top skaters (look at the podiums for Russian and Japanese Nationals). I've never seen someone go through such abrupt physical changes yet maintain a high level. Still her base value at nationals was 8 points better than the next best girls in the free skate, 13 points higher than the champion. She rarely cheats on her landings as well whereas cheated landings in final 3 was the rule not the exception (I will post more proof in the coming days). All girls were great in the top 4 they achieved close to their maximum no major errors.
Of course, you can't just kick them out because they are stronger. It is a sports contest after all.
You say it is better without Russians.
USA in men's basketball at the Olympics has won 16/19 golds, last 7/8, if they sent their best players no team would get within 30 points. The women 9/12 golds, the last 7 of them they have won. I hope no-one considers kicking them out of the Olympics to make it more interesting.
Ethiopia the last 5/7 gold in men's 10,000m, last 3/4 in the women's event, 5/9 total, this should be celebrated.
Kenyans have won 3/4 gold in men's marathon.
In the women's 100m sprint, Jamaicans have won the last 4 gold, swept the podium twice, had 2 on the podium twice. This is effectively Jamaican Nationals 2.0. I hope they don't get kicked out there isn't an alternative competition created which seeks to exclude them to make sprint events more exciting for everyone else.
If you want to watch skaters perform against reduced competition, this is what Challenger and GP events are for.
Sure, maybe they could set up a EU only championship but it would be a minor event.
Sorry, but there was intrigue or surprise in the women's event. The top 3 is the top 3 most would have predicted (the only question was how harsh they would be with Gubanova), with the eventual gold medalist very easy to predict maybe one of the easiest predictions of all time. Not to mention Belgium locking out two spots on the podium. It's almost Belgian Nationals 2.0!!!
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Just realised that I never finished off my discussion about the skaters born in the 1990's.
1st Loena HENDRICKX (1999)
9th Julia SAUTER (1997)
11th Josefin TALJEGARD (1995)
12th Emmi PELTONEN (1999)
16th Aleksandra GOLOVKINA (1998)
17th Nina POVEY (1994)
And for all of them apart from Peltonen, this was the highest position and the highest score that they had ever achieved at the European Championships. (For Emmi, this was actually her lowest finishing position at Europeans. In terms of final score, it was lower than this week in the 2017 and 2018 editions, but higher than this week in the 2019 and 2020 editions).
These skaters are like fine wines. Improving with age. Which is why it is nice to see skaters being given the opportunity to continue competing internationally over a longer period of time.
CaroLiza_fan
I thank you for your reply Skating91, but it's very frustrating reply to reply back to because it pretty much ignores my overall proposal and focuses on a few statements which seemed to have irked you.
On Kamila, the fact is she doesn't attempt the 3A anymore, didn't land any 4T in competition(sure a few in warmups), and is slower. She showed up to one competition looking completely lost with slow spins, a sad step sequence, doing random flopping on the ground that confused the audience on whether it was intentional or not, in an ugly dress that looked like it was a practice one. Yes they improved by nationals to the point that I said that she would have won Euros but that event still worries me in regards to her state of mind, her conditioning, how checked in Eteri is, and the whole general creative processes in that camp. I'm not here to talk about here though so don't bother replying back on this.
Yes it is better... better for getting more media coverage in Europe, creating more regional European "stars", and making European skaters more attractive to sponsors. All of these are worthy goals.
These are hardly relevant examples considering the events I'm proposing are merely qualifying events to a higher more elite competition.
The entire point of my proposal is that the Grand Prix sucks from a media perspective and the Challenger series is pointless and the Grand Prix should be replaced by multiple tournaments with regional qualifiers. You could read the links in my where I describe my proposal more in depth.
On Kamila, the fact is she doesn't attempt the 3A anymore, didn't land any 4T in competition(sure a few in warmups), and is slower. She showed up to one competition looking completely lost with slow spins, a sad step sequence, doing random flopping on the ground that confused the audience on whether it was intentional or not, in an ugly dress that looked like it was a practice one. Yes they improved by nationals to the point that I said that she would have won Euros but that event still worries me in regards to her state of mind, her conditioning, how checked in Eteri is, and the whole general creative processes in that camp. I'm not here to talk about here though so don't bother replying back on this.
Yes it is better... better for getting more media coverage in Europe, creating more regional European "stars", and making European skaters more attractive to sponsors. All of these are worthy goals.
These are hardly relevant examples considering the events I'm proposing are merely qualifying events to a higher more elite competition.
The entire point of my proposal is that the Grand Prix sucks from a media perspective and the Challenger series is pointless and the Grand Prix should be replaced by multiple tournaments with regional qualifiers. You could read the links in my where I describe my proposal more in depth.
We just had an EU(Europe not the EU) only championship and it was a success.
Even so, there was still the hope that things could turn up differently. Hope(anticipation) is what released dopamine. With Russians doing 3A and Quads there is little hope.
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It's kind of like saying that football world championship (or soccer for americans) would be better without Brasil and Argentina. It would not.
Figure skating, unlike soccer, has no means or mechanism of creating regional stars. That is the entire point of my proposal.
This is quite harsh considering the abrupt physical changes, not to mention there's that issue she has had to deal. Powerful men with no respect for her rights make threats that her last two years will have been completely in vain, there is also no hope of performing in international competitions anyway. This all has to have some effect on motivation, whereas at Euros the top 3 women must have been giving 100% because it's the greatest opportunity they will have ever again for a major competition medal. Kamila's short program is the best program of the season, so I think the creative process is quite good. Landing a clean 4T in a warm up is quite an achievement even more so considering the abrupt physical changes. It's just a matter of time before it is restored in competition. You understand she is not the same size as two years ago and those size changes are completely out of her control. Soon this will settle for her and she will carry the same height and weight into every season making it much easier.
The European championships are already quite diluted in the women's event, I don't think a series of events with a lower standard will do anything to help popularity in fact it will do the opposite. People like to see the best compete.
The GP works well people want to see the best skaters in the world. Nationality doesn't bother me if they all come from Japan so be it. I see all people as equal.
It was a great event, it would have been better if all of Europe was allowed to participate.
Maybe they will create an EU Cup where 200 is a winning score each year. You don't get much more dramatic than the Olympic free skate in 2022 when there were three girls with quads fighting for victory.
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