- Joined
- Jan 15, 2010
Maybe she'll come back with a vengeance next year. Who knows?
I certainly hope she does.
I certainly hope she does.
According to an article, she injured her hip/back when she fell on triple Lutz in SP. you know, she's very tiny.
She said she fought through the LP with the pain. hope it's not that bad.
I think at Worlds she was very tired. Based on how most people skated at this event, I think everyone was very tired and clearly it effected their skating. Worlds was kind of a splatfest. So while she didn't wow me here, I think she still has potential. I just think it might take her a little longer to become competitive, but I do think she has it in her. She had a bad competition here but that doesn't erase the promise she showed at 4CC and the Olympics. I tend to think Brian will do a good job with her. She's not likely to ever be a Yuna, but very few people can be an Olympic champion anyway. I look forward to seeing her next season and I'm trying not to take her results here too seriously, twice she scored about 55 points for her SP and over 100 points for her LP so I think that is really where she is at now, which is pretty good for someone who just turned 16.
From what I've seen of Kwak so far, I kind of agree - she doesn't really strike me as a skater with great potential. She's extremely awkward for a skater of her age -- compare her to Yuna at 16 or even Mirai. She also doesn't seem to have the competive spark in her eyes that you see in the very top skaters. I saw a documentary of her and another skater-- she's a very nice girl though.
It's really kind of depressing if you think about the current state of Korean figure skating. All the potential skating talent has been sapped into short track, which is really Korea's national sport. I did read an article that the number of registered figure skaters doubled from about 150-300 since Yuna's 2009 World's victory, so there is some hope that Korea can produce another Yuna soon, but in reality it probably won't happen by the next 10-20 years.
The reigning Korean national ladies champion is 12 years old so I'm not so sure about that, she has all her triples at age 12 so she may have quite a future ahead of her.
I don't know about Kwak, I like her skating but I feel like I'm in the minority. Yes, she is awkward but so are most 15 year old girls. She has the highest TES in the SP at 4CC this year too! I tend to think Orser wouldn't agree to be her coach if he did not think she had potential. I think we need to wait a couple more years for her to grow up and see how her skating develops before we can decide about her. I always have things for the underdogs though, not everyone is phenomenal at 16 but that doesn't mean they won't be great later, look at Joannie! At any rate, she is adorable and I hope to see her on the Grand Prix next season!
One other thing, when Orser talks about when Yuna came to him when she was 16, he mentions how she could do so much technically (3-3s, etc). Yuna was already a star when she started training with Orser, and through working with him she became an even bigger star. Where Kwak is a little awkward and not as technically strong as Yuna was at that age, if Orser can turn Kwak into a great skater it would be a very impressive accomplishment, showing just how great a coach he is. Yuna was the junior world champion when she came to Orser, it was no surprise that she became Olympic gold medalist 4 years later. I believe Orser is a great coach and if Kwak continues to improve in these coming years it will reinforce this idea even more. I always likea good underdog story.
^^Uh...have you compared her to skaters her age such as Mirai or Rachel? They are so far ahead of her and they are not even the top-level skaters. I was also speaking from the standpoint of having seen a nearly 2 hour Korean language documentary on her, which provided an in-depth coverage of her life as a skater. From it, I got a very good idea of her personality--she seemed like a very cheerful girl, but not particularly serious about figure skating or anything else. Hence, why I had thought she had lacked the "competitive spark".
That's my point, I'm not going to compare her to either of them or Yuna. Their (MJ vs Mirai or Rachael) training/coaching situations are not comparable and that plays a big role in how they develop. And as I mentioned earlier she clearly didn't have the raw talent that Yuna does, though MJ does have talent.
As others said, she could be a late bloomer. I know this is a sport where you peak before the age of 20, but there are great examples of people who really came into their own later. Joannie Rochette was in 17th place in her first Worlds, when she was 17. She won her bronze at the age of 24.
All I'm saying is there's something about her I like and I think she has the potential to surprise.