I must again state how horrible the tech panel(s) have been at this event. No edge call on the Lutz and no underrotation call on the toeloop? Those were obvious (the same with Caroline Zhang's Lutz).
Mao is extremely lucky that a stricter caller wasn't at this event because both of her Triple Flips could have gotten a <. I would probably give the benefit of the doubt, but they were both absolutely at least 1/4 turn short. Ditto for her Triple Loop (with which she was gifted by the judges to not receive -GOE for that landing).
This new jump technique is not working for Mao. She is needlessly focusing too hard on the Flip entry when it never received edge calls and rarely received < anyway. As a result of trying to take the entry on a cleaner edge, she is losing height and just making it MORE prone to < calls. That problem seems to have carried over to her Loop, where she is focusing too much on the takeoff rather than just exploding off the ice. In general she also seems to be waiting too long to start rotating.
I'm also highly confused by the changes that have been made to her spins. She is not doing her solo sit spin with the difficult flying entry, dropping the base value by .6, and she changed her final FCCoSp4 to a FCoSp4, which is worth .5 less. I realize she may not be able to do a FCCopSp4 anymore because of the changes to the new rules, although I actually don't think that's true with all of the different variations she is capable of, but there's no reason why she should be throwing those points away on the sit spin. I mean, she's clearly removing the flying entry from the sit spin so that it can be used as a level feature for the FCoSp4, but she could just do a regular CoSp4 with backward entry instead of a flying entry to achieve the level; they're worth the same base value.
And I'm STILL infuriated by the overall choreographic changes that were made to this program towards the end of last season.
This is the worst Mao has ever been at the peak of a season. Not at all what I expected.
But Mao just lost her mother a month ago. This could not not have affected her training and mindset. I think people's expectations should be a little lower at this time, no?