That's a really good article. And you can really see a difference in the height and rotation of Ross's jumps since he has been training harder since Cup of China, especially the triple axel.
Ross and his dad often start the season at Liberty, so we are no strangers to his skating.
Here's some videos of Ross over the years, including several of the development of his Casablanca LP this year:
Thanks for the vids, dorispulaski! It really shows his improvement in even just a few months! It's very reassuring to know that Miner's success at nationals was not a fluke, but the result of a conscious effort to be a better skater. Here's hoping it pays off at worlds.
He used the phrase "squandered my opportunities in the Grand Prix" and talked having to reassess his life and training regimen in order to repay his parents for the sacrifices they had made for him.
I'll be happy if he just skates his best at Worlds, no matter how the judges place him. I would like to see him get the 3t on the 3lz3t combo in the SP though.
But this sort of thing is why the fall series in not always a predictor of condition at Worlds. Sometimes skaters are massively better, because the GP results were a kick in the pants to them.
I'm thinking of both Ross and the Shibutanis, from the US. If you took the Shibutanis' fall series SD results as a predictor, you'd be sure they would have major flaws in the Golden Waltz. However, at Nationals, they got level 4 in both Golden Waltz segments and were foot-perfect in general. Big difference. And Ross's 3A was underrotated and scratchily landed in the GP. At Nationals, it was HUGE and well landed (three of them).
Using Ryan Bradley's past 3 years, you'd assume he would never do a triple axel. I don't think he landed more than one (if that) in any competition. He not only landed all 3 triple axels at Nationals, he landed them all in the practices. I'm still trying to figure out what happened to him this year.