- Joined
- Nov 10, 2009
I herad that Mao had to lose weight to make it easier for her to jump 3As.
"I will work on triple triples and other triples after Worlds" - Mao Asada
- Thread starter hikki
- Start date
I herad that Mao had to lose weight to make it easier for her to jump 3As.
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2009
I think Mao sorta understands that there's a problem, but she still wants coaches to COME TO HER. This severely limits her coaching options, and though Japan has many great coaches, not all of them can or is willing to go to Nagoya to coach her. To some casual fans (or maybe not so casual fans), it sounds incredibly egotistical, since other skaters don't demand that of their coaches. As a matter of fact, I've never heard of a skater doing what Mao's doing (asking coaches to come to her; refusing to move to where the coaches are, etc.).
I know she said she didn't want to move. Whatever her reasons are, obviously living in Japan is more important than getting the best coach possible. And until she's unwilling to make sacrifices to get the best coaches and so on, it's hard to take her seriously.
I think Mao is losing it. She should stop talking and doing these interviews. She should get some rest and get her body and mind focused in competing at worlds. And after that she should plan for future. If she is going to try different jumps, she should just do them, quietly. Work on her jumps, choreo, costumes, change her coach or whatever. And she should come out when she is ready and shows what she's got. All this talk is only putting a focus on what she has failed to do for this Olympics (hello, shouldn't she have got her triples together for this Olympics) and raising expectations and publicity she does not need.
I think she may have had a bad experience the last time she did go abroad for train. She did say she was unsure about the coaching situation for next season, so who knows. The one thing we know for sure is that she is finally realizing the TAT relationship is not working well. So it all depends on what changes she will make from now.
i couldn't have said it better!
She's got some resolve.
I admire her for that.
I would imagine it's different for every skater.
Perhaps Miki's problem turned out to be much easier to fix than Mao's flutz.
Back to Mao!
I personally have never seen this kind of drive & determination from any skater, except maybe The King, yet not really even him, but I'm not sure.
I'm talking in terms of breaking records, literally trying to be the best of all time, pushing her body to do things that once were thought impossible. It's not enough to win for her, she must win by completing the hardest elements ever done by a female skater, and mayhap being the first lady skater in history to do a man's program ala The King, complete with 7 triples (including two 3axels) & a quad!
She's already on par to breaking Midori Ito's record of landing18 ratified triple axels in competition. Mao has completed 14 thus far, only 5 more to go to break Midori's record.
She's set so many records thus far in her relatively short career, that I totally believe her when she says she plans on breaking Yuna Kim's record at the Olympics. It'll take all she's got, but I can totally see her doing it, complete with a man's program!
This is truly special to see a once-in-a-lifetime skater come round with not only the talent (plenty throughout history have had talent in spades), but also the resolve & determination & mindset to do it! Usually we see a skater with loads of potential, but not the ambition behind it, or else have tons of ambition & drive, but not the talent to make it happen. Here we have an unusual case, a skater that excels in both aspects of skating (i.e. technical & artistic), but MORE than anything else coupled with that rarest of things ~ drive, ambition, the will & determination to be the best ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MAO-CHAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mao doing a "man's program?"
Let's see if she can land a salchow first.
Wow, I guess I didn't keep up with the news.
Didn't know her weight loss was related to that.
I thought she looked thinner perhaps because the pressure to win gold was wearing her out.
She loses weight to do 3A, but then so goes her stamina.
That's a tricky situation.
Hope she can find the right balance.
I think her stamina will be fine, the last 2 season she's had two non stop long programs, and she still managed to do some of them cleanShe's got some resolve.
I admire her for that.
I would imagine it's different for every skater.
Perhaps Miki's problem turned out to be much easier to fix than Mao's flutz.
Mao doing a "man's program?"
Let's see if she can land a salchow first.
Wow, I guess I didn't keep up with the news.
Didn't know her weight loss was related to that.
I thought she looked thinner perhaps because the pressure to win gold was wearing her out.
She loses weight to do 3A, but then so goes her stamina.
That's a tricky situation.
Hope she can find the right balance.
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2009
Mao is soo thin now though! I was watching the final group warm up and she made Mirai look really muscular in comparison. Mao needs to work on her speed and using speed to help her with the jumps, if she learns to do this then she won't have to rely so much on rotating super fast.
This girl is not the one who just talks. She didn't talk about 3-3 or other jumps before the Olympics. Instead she talked about three 3As and sticking to Bells. Then she did them.
She did look tired at the latter half of LP. But perhaps it may be because the pressures at Oly are so enormous.
Mao's 3A is very high. I wonder if that has to do with the weight loss.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2006
Mao had her lutz almost fixed. She was getting a few ! and sometimes doubled/popped it, but she was getting better and I think if she had stuck to it a fee more months she would have been fine. I don't know if it was her or Tat that had her stop working on it and devote 90% of her time to her triple Axel. Sure she landed her triple axels, but she missed the easiest jump in her program. That shows me she did not train the whole program enough, that she dis not do full runthroughs, and only did her axels. I hope that whoever she gets as a coach has her train these jumps so she can do them no matter what. Mao certainly has thr ability.
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
Are you sure she had a weight loss, or did she just grow. I have always thought that Yu-na was about a half-inch taller than Mao, but of the podium at vancouver, it seemed as if Mao was about a half inch taller than Yu-na. This could not only contribute to her looking thinner than she was, but problems with her jumps if she had a late growth spurt...
Yea, I did hear a report that says Mao is still growing apparently. It's just her features stayed the same through the years; it's hard to notice any changes to her.
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
It seemed very clear to me on the broadcast that Mao missed her triple toe because she hit a rut in the ice. You can see her skate go PLOP on the entry into the 3toe and her entire body shudder from the impact of skating into a crevasse. We've seen these kinds of ruts make the best trained skaters abort their jumps (Plushenko from a few years back and Yu Na at TEB come to mind). It's really nothing you can train for, it's just a freak accident. Fortunately, it wouldn't have made a difference in the final ranking anyway (it would've only mattered if Joannie did her planned 2axel~2axel sequence instead of leaving the second 2a out). No one should be blamed for it.
Now I do agree that Mao needs to focus on training her other jumps, and that she should consider switching from Tarasova. But her missed 3t at the Olympics was not symptomatic of that.
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2010
Did Asada get her so-called fixed Lutz ratified in competition?
I don't remember it, but I could be wrong.
Besides, I thought that her 3F was getting in trouble when she tried to alter her 3Lz, and this was the main reason for ditching the 3Lz altogether.
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2009
On multiple sites Mao is listed as 163cm (5'4") and Yuna either 164cm (5'4.5") or 165cm (5'5") so I think those heights are accurate and Mao probably just has taller skates than Yuna. Akiko looked about the same height as Yuna in the GPF pictures and she is only 5'3", every skater has different skates and skates add anywhere from 2-4 inches. I read in an interview though that Mao lost 2 kilograms recently to help with her 3a. I'm not sure that's really healthy but it did help her 3a apparently.
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2010
Mao Asada looked like a famine victim to me.
I saw her during the 4CC and was astonished by how skinny she looked.
She appeared even skinnier during the Olys.
I think loosing too much weight in a such short time period has done damage to her stamina.
Otherwise, I don't think she would have underrotated her 3F or catch back of the blade on ice before taking off for 3T.
I remember Kim Yu Na saying a couple of years ago that stamina was a strength of Mao Asada that she was most fond of.
I hope she gets her issues straightened out soon.
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2009
Some Mao fans said that Mao mentioned that 500gram weight gain makes a big difference when she does difficult jumps. I'm not sure how accurate that statement is, but it's pretty scary that she has to be that strict about her weight to land 3As.
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2009
Yeah they are all thin but Mao is the thinnest of all of them. I was watching on tv before the final group went out for the FS they were walking around and Mirai was next to Mao and she has broader shoulders and stronger arms than Mao, standing next to each other Mirai looked really muscly. Most of the top skaters are asian and asians have a very healthy diet and are generally smaller and slimmer than europeans so Miki, Akiko, Mirai, Yuna, etc compared to other asian girls their age would look pretty normal, not too skinny. Joannie and Rachael are about the same height/weight and a bit sturdier than the others but they can still do hard jumps so I don't know how much weight really makes a difference, but Joannie and Rachael are also short and so their weight is still low. Laura Lepisto is skinny but she is also tall so she can be grouped more with Carolina and Kiira.
