Men's SP article - Anna Kondakova | Golden Skate

Men's SP article - Anna Kondakova

emma

Record Breaker
Joined
Oct 28, 2004
I don't know where to put this so I'll put it here - thanks so much for these incredible articles! They are so detailed and so full of quotes from so many skaters! Very enjoyable to read. I'm heart broken for some of the skaters in various disciplines but it is really interesting and almost reassuring to hear/read them postmortem their skates and prepare for the next ones.
 

skatinginbc

Medalist
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
“I felt good about my quad toe and then calculated if I should add the triple toe after it,” explained the 26-year-old (Daisuke). “It could be better in order to get a higher score. That is what caused my mistake on the triple toe. I should not have been thinking like that. I am not happy about it, but my overall performance was quite good. I am satisfied that I was able to include a quad toe in my short program.”

Did he mean 4T3T + 3Lz will score higher than 4T + 3Lz3T? Is that true?
 
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Violet Bliss

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 19, 2010
“I felt good about my quad toe and then calculated if I should add the triple toe after it,” explained the 26-year-old (Daisuke). “It could be better in order to get a higher score. That is what caused my mistake on the triple toe. I should not have been thinking like that. I am not happy about it, but my overall performance was quite good. I am satisfied that I was able to include a quad toe in my short program.”

Did he mean 4T3T + 3Lz will score higher than 4T + 3Lz3T? Is that true?

His thinking has puzzled me too. COP is not combo friendly. The GOE value of a combo is the same as just for the first jump. Mistakes on the second jump can incur negative GOE even if the first jump is perfect so the second jump tacked onto a high value jump can drag down the score but will not add value to it. Most skaters do a quad combo in the SP mainly because quads are usually done with a long straight entry and many find it easier to add another jump to it than one with required footwork entry. Chan can add the second jump to either of the non Axel jumps because they both qualify as having step entry. Some other skaters salvaging the missed combo have to take a penalty when they make the later jump the combo for lack of footwork into the original quad.

In Takahashi's case today, since his 3T was the problem jump, it would have cost him less negative GOE value as part of the 3Lz combo than the quad combo because GOE value for 3Lz and 3Lz combo is lower. I don't understand why he thought the 3T well executed would be worth more as part of the quad combo. :confused:
 

treeloving

Medalist
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
May be Dai talk about that it is what he think at the moment (which is wrong)?

Or may be he think it will give better impact to the judges?
 

drivingmissdaisy

Record Breaker
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
Thanks for the great article! It's so frustrating to read AP and Reuters articles about niche sports because they are always so full of inaccuracies.
 

deedee1

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 14, 2007
To skatinginbc, Skate Figuring and treeloving,

Right after his performace, he told to the Japanese media as follow:

"When I landed his quad toe, I instantly knew the landing was not perfect. I had to make a choice upon landing, whether to tack a risky 3T or safer 2T to avoid negative GEO, or rather add a perfect 3T to my later jump which was 3Lz.
Then I thought to myself, with a fraction of a second, that without landing 4-3 combo in SP successfully, I had no chance for winning (against others), so I decided to go for it."
But he also admitted to the media it was a wrong decision to make, considering the landing of the quad was not perfect. That is why he said, "I am not happy about it."

So, I agree with treeloving.

If Dai could have hitted 4T-3T, 3A and 3Lz perfectly, the audience would have gone crazy, so that it would give better impact to the judges and raise his PCS even higher.

I understand, as some of you saying, that if he could have gone for a safer rout; 4T, 3A and 3Lz+3T, he could have scored almost on par with (or over) Patrick.
However, I liked he did not hesitate for going for 4-3. That's is very typical of Dai we knew all along and whom I love. If he wants to win, he will go all for it. He never takes a conservative strategy. Though it turend out a wrong decision to make, I am happy that Dai went for it and he seems to take its resposibility fully to himself (admitting it is his mistake).
 

let`s talk

Match Penalty
Joined
Sep 10, 2009
^ deedee1, you (and Dai) are explaining things to Evan's mentality. I admire your patience.
 

skatinginbc

Medalist
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
I had to make a choice upon landing, whether to tack a risky 3T or safer 2T to avoid negative GEO, or rather add a perfect 3T to my later jump which was 3Lz. Then I thought to myself, with a fraction of a second, that without landing 4-3 combo in SP successfully, I had no chance for winning (against others), so I decided to go for it.
Now, compare it to Chan's:
Sometimes the jump is not perfect or I am too close to the boards, so I have to resort to a triple Lutz-triple toe. If it happens as quickly as it did today, I don’t even have to think about it, it’s automatic.”
It tells me something wrong with Dai's training. Chan was so trained that he simply relied on what he has been doing in the daily practice. Dai was not trained for all possible scenarios so that he had to make a critical decision in a fraction of a second. If he had to think through so many things in just a fraction of a second, how could he expect himself to focus his mental and physical energy on the second jump of the combo?

Thinking too much is Dai's biggest enemy. He should simply rely on his daily practice.
 

mikeko666

Final Flight
Joined
Apr 27, 2011
It tells me something wrong with Dai's training. Chan was so trained that he simply relied on what he has been doing in the daily practice. Dai was not trained for all possible scenarios so that he had to make a critical decision in a fraction of a second. If he had to think through so many things in just a fraction of a second, how could he expect himself to focus his mental and physical energy on the second jump of the combo?

Just give up on him then if you can not trust him and his team. I rather recently became his fan, but even I know it's not easy being his fan as he does not always choose the easiest option. He often chooses the narrow gate instead of the wide one.
 
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Anna

On the Ice
Joined
Jan 26, 2004
Thank you very much for your kind words.

Speaking of skaters dissecting their performances post factum, I stand in awe of Carolina Kostner for her ability to come up with something meaningful to say every time, even though she has been through this song-and-dance for more than a decade.

Her comment about crowd in Nice being so loud that she felt it were Torino Olympics all over again, really stayed with me. In part because she has indeed re-written her history, taking a nightmarish memory and turning it into a victory, which is a beautiful story in on its own right, but more so because it seems to indicate that even 6 years later that failure still weights heavily on her and is on the forefront of her mind. It makes me very sad, given how much she has developed as a skater in that period of time.
 
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Joined
Jun 21, 2003
skatinginbc said:
It tells me something wrong with Dai's training. Chan was so trained that he simply relied on what he has been doing in the daily practice. Dai was not trained for all possible scenarios so that he had to make a critical decision in a fraction of a second. If he had to think through so many things in just a fraction of a second, how could he expect himself to focus his mental and physical energy on the second jump of the combo?

Thinking too much is Dai's biggest enemy. He should simply rely on his daily practice.

Plan your skate, skate your plan. ;) I think that is good advice for 99% of skaters 99% of the time. Many times we see skaters trying to improvise later elements to make up for earlier mistakes, and it backfires more often than not.

Chan, though, says "I can put a triple toe at the end of anything." If that is the case, then he has more leeway than anyone else. If his 4T+3T doesn't work out, he's got the 3Lz+3T in his back pocket.

In the LP, though, a teensy bit of indecision did cost him. On his 3Lz+half-loop+3S, he said later that the landing on the first jump wasn't all he had hoped for, so he got caught between going for the 3S anyway or scaling back to a 2S. He went for the 2S but his training gave him too much height for the lesser revolutions and the whole element went south.

Michelle Kwan used to practice two different endings for her program, one in case she hit her triple-triple, the other if she missed it.
 
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