Colorado Championships 2009

http://homepage.mac.com/jzeles/mhfsa/2009CCResults/2009CCResults.html

Results are up now. Flatt, mroz, and gilles all competed.

Interesting, Gilles beat Flatt in the SP!
I wonder how Flatt's program looked like, I guess she did not hit many of her jumps but again, it's early in the season..

Sad commentary, then. I saw Gilles at Liberty this year, and she was overscored, and really, really looked bad.

Looks like Rachael really came back in the long, though:

1 Rachael Flatt
Broadmoor SC 95.19 1
2 Alexe Gilles
Broadmoor SC 81.99 2
3 Chaochih Liu
Broadmoor SC 65.07 3
4 Katy Jo West
Rocky Mountain FSC 62.02 4
5 Amy Nunn
Rocky Mountain FSC 58.93 5
6 Callie Sheehan
Broadmoor SC 58.32 6
WD Kaitlyn Steward
Broadmoor SC

Brandon Mroz did his SP as an exhibition with grading:

1 Brandon Mroz
Broadmoor SC 66.26 1

and here's the scores for the Ladies SP

1 Alexe Gilles
Broadmoor SC 55.11 1
2 Rachael Flatt
Broadmoor SC 48.47 2
3 Chaochih Liu
Broadmoor SC 46.36 3
4 Erica Archambault
Broadmoor SC 41.66 4
5 Katy Jo West
Rocky Mountain FSC 40.36 5
6 Amy Nunn
Rocky Mountain FSC 35.08 6
7 Callie Sheehan
Broadmoor SC 29.12 7

Is 95 points really a comeback for Rachael? I thought that her score at WTT was 114 or so. Does anybody have a video of her perfomance?

Yeah, and I thought skaters tend to be marked wayy up at home competitions.

^^ I thought that club competitions usually score either very high or very low. So there's really not much that we can say.

Last year Rachael Flatt scored 60 in the SP and 106 in the LP at this competition, so 48 and 95 are really low for her this time. Here's a video of her practice for the SP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtCE1aLJ_VA
She only does doubles here, though a couple of good 2A's, and she's not skating or rotating very fast in general. She looks tired or something, maybe she's been injured? To be honest, it looks like maybe puberty is catching up with her a little. Alexe Gilles (in pink) looked better in the same practice, bigger and higher jumps including some triples, I'm not surprised that she won the SP, and by a big margin.

On the other hand, Rachael scored 59 (SP) and 83 (LP) last year at Liberty. So maybe it's typical of her to start slow at the first competition and work her way up to peak at National's and World's (and the Olympics) toward the end of the season.

I wish we could find out what jumps Rachael and Alexe attempted/landed in this competition...

ETA: I found this article:
http://www.gazette.com/sports/arvada-59872-changes-flatt.html
It says she attempted 3F-3T in the SP, and planned 7 triples in the LP. She must have popped/UR'ed some of the jumps or fallen to score what she scored.

feraina said:

She looks tired or something, maybe she's been injured? To be honest, it looks like maybe puberty is catching up with her a little.

Click to expand...

It also could be that Rachael has been trying to fix her lutz which was marked down as a flutz quite a few times last season. That could cause her flip and lutz to become a bit inconsistent as it was for Mao last season and Miki the season before that.

If you look closely at the triple lutz she does toward the end of video (at around 2:42), you can see that she's finally taking off of an outside edge.

feraina said:

To be honest, it looks like maybe puberty is catching up with her a little.

Click to expand...

I don't think she looks any different from last season. She is simply rather compact and short, in contrast to the taller skaters (Gilles, Kostner etc.) and the very thin ones (Kim, Asada, Zhang etc.).

And she has often peaked later in the season, the year she became Junior World Champion she was always behind Nagasu, with lots of underrotation calls, but towards the big events she always seemed to find her top form.

feraina said:

Last year Rachael Flatt scored 60 in the SP and 106 in the LP at this competition, so 48 and 95 are really low for her this time.

Click to expand...

But she had competed at Liberty before that year. So there was some time to fix levels on spins and footwork etc.

feraina said:

Here's a video of her practice for the SP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtCE1aLJ_VA
She only does doubles here, though a couple of good 2A's,

Click to expand...

Flatt landed a 3Lutz and 3F at the end of the video, which appears to be the first part of the 6-minute warmup before the SP (so there were probably more triple and 3-3 attempts by her before the end of the warmup). FYI, this video was shot by the journalist who wrote the Colorado Springs Gazette article about Flatt that you linked to in your post.

I wish we could find out what jumps Rachael and Alexe attempted/landed in this competition...

Click to expand...

I know someone who had access to the detailed protocols and passed along this jump info to me...

Flatt's 3F+3T was downgraded in both her SP and FS. She also doubled the Lutz in her SP (automatic -3 GOE) which accounted for her low SP score. I'm told that Flatt's "Sing Sing Sing" SP was well received. She landed 4 triples in her FS (3F in the 3-3 combo, 3Lz, 3Lo and 3S), fell on a solo 3F, and doubled the second Lutz. As others have already mentioned, this was her first competition of the new season (and she's not even required to compete this summer due to being in the Team A funding envelope).

Alexe Gilles landed all her jumps in the SP -- 3Lz+2T, 3F, 2A -- but only 3 of her 7 planned triples cleanly in her FS, highlighted by a 3F+2T+2Lo in the 2nd half. This was the debut of her FS to "On the Town" by Leonard Bernstein. BTW, I thought her skating at Liberty looked fine for an early season SP debut in mid-July.

Brandon Mroz skated a SP exhibition (program debut) and I heard that he went for but had errors on the 4T and 3A, and landed a 3Lz+2T combo. Like Flatt, he's also not required to compete this summer due to being in the Team A funding envelope.

2009 U.S. novice champ Joshua Farris (scheduled to make his JGP debut in Lake Placid) also debuted his programs in competition here. He landed a 3A in his SP (first time in comp.!) but then had problems with his other 2 jumping passes. He fell on the 3A in his FS and reportedly landed at least 3 other triples cleanly.

ETA: The main purpose of summer comps is to get your new programs out in front of the judges and technical panels under competition conditions. If a skater scores really well in the summer/early fall, that's a bonus. If a skater scores lower than expected, well, that usually just means they need more mileage on the programs and more training in general. The skaters aiming to make the 2010 Olympic/World team have to be sure to pace themselves smartly.

Thanks for all the info, Sylvia! You're right, she does do a 3F and 3Z at the end of the practice video. They were so easy and light that I thought they were doubles.

She probably is working on her lutz, with those two doubles in the SP & LP. She seems to be doing a deeper right back outside edge before getting onto the lutz take-off edge, giving the entry a more "swingy" look. Well, if this can help her get onto a stronger outside edge on the lutz take-off, then whatever works works.

I wonder what her PCS were. 48 seems kinda low even for a downgraded 3-3 and popped solo triple. A clean SP with a ratified 3-3 usually nets a score in the low 60's (unless you are Kim, Asada, or Kostner, then you'd be in the 70's), and a downgraded 3-3 in the mid 50's, and having -3 on a 2Z instead of what Flatt normally gets on a 3Z with an edge call, which is around 5.6, means the loss of another 5 points. Maybe it's the lower levels on spins, footwork, and spirals, as some postulated.

Is she planning on doing any more summer competitions? If she typically needs a couple of competitions to iron out the kinks, then maybe it'd benefit her to do one more summer comp before jumping into the GP's.

While summer comps are only practice comps in a sense, and it's more about putting the programs out there and getting feedback than getting them perfect early in the season, I do feel like in the past, strong performances in the summer comps were predictive of how the skaters did later in the season. For instance, Alissa put out very strong summer programs, and that heralded an especially strong season for her. Ashley Wagner came out with a much more refined and mature look, and vastly improved presentation under Priscilla Hill's tutelage, and she too had a good GP season (with greatly improved PCS) and also a strong LP at National's. Rachael did very well at Colorada Championships and then had a great season. Caroline did well at Golden West, and also had a strong season except for the early-season dip due to injuries/growth spurt. In contrast, Mirai, Kimmie, Emily, Bebe all had unremarkable summers or avoided summer comps, and their seasons didn't go well either.