Ashley or Gracie? | Page 2 | Golden Skate

Ashley or Gracie?

janetfan

Match Penalty
Joined
May 15, 2009
Ashley has some of the best jumps in the biz. Her skating is one of the best and her artistry has improved vastly.

I reckon she will be a World Champion soon if she keeps making a name for herself with her consistency and the overall level of her skating.

With the return of Ando, Kim and who knows a renewed fire in Asada it's going to be one heck of a year.

I am also excited for Kostner and Suzuki. I do hope Akiko is going to kill it this season.

Tuktamysheva will certainly be in the mix together with Gracie.

Caroline is looking ferosh lately, so it's going to be exciting.

And I expect Adelina to be in the mix if not to win Wolrds ths season.

But I hate to make predictions coz when it comes to skating....ice is slippery :)
 
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Pepe Nero

On the Ice
Joined
Dec 11, 2011
Here is Gracie's new SP .....(remember, it is early in the season).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAHHpRcsuI

Thanks for sharing this link, janetfan. Gold reminds me in almost every way, down to the costume, of Agnes Zawadzki. I hope Gold will be able to skate clean LPs, which I don't think Zawadzki has yet done even once at the senior level. I don't think Gold's SP looks junior-ish, but I would be shocked if she were able to get 7s or higher in any of the PCS categories with it.

I think Nationals is likely to play out in a way that will belie most of our predictions. But if I had to put money on it, I'd say Wagner will win again. She will have a PCS advantage over Gold to help her even if she makes mistakes. In my fantasies, Czisny wins the gold or the silver.
 
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Joined
Aug 16, 2009
I think Nationals is likely to play out in a way that will belie most of our predictions. But if I had to put money on it, I'd say Wagner will win again. She will have a PCS advantage over Gold to help her even if she makes mistakes. In my fantasies, Czisny wins the gold or the silver.

In your dreams and mine, Pepe! Alissa is such a joy to watch that I always hope for her to excel. I fear it's not to be this year, but we can always cross fingers and aspire.
 

kalle

On the Ice
Joined
Aug 28, 2003
You summed it up very well.....

Here is Gracie's new SP .....(remember, it is early in the season).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAHHpRcsuI

Watching the winner of the first JGP this season I see little in common in the level of maturity Gracie shows here.

Not a problem if iGracie is not up to Kwan-Yuna standards yet - but still a heck of alot more mature looking than the newest Russian baby whose skating makes Tara look like a mature Grand Dame skater :)

But hey, the Russian girl is great but only 13. She looks and skates like a 13 year old.


Gracie is looking stunning but there is something about her arms..reminds me a bit about Kimmie Meissner in her early days.
I hope she will work on it as she has everything else.
It is refreshing to see an American lady going for a harder technical content and it seems like others are following with Wang/Hicks
attempting 3/3 on the JGP circuit..
 

hanca

Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
If Radionova beat a clean Gracie I would probably stop watching figure skating.

Like I said Radionva makes Tara look like the "Queen of all figure skating."

My gosh, I admit she is a great 13 year old skater but posters who say Gracie is still a junior need to watch a little closer.

Janetfan, I struggle to understand why when you want to lift Gracie up, you have a need to kick someone's success down. Especially a success of 13 year old girl. As I said, you are comparing incomparable. Radionova cannot beat Gold this season because Gold will be competing in seniors, whereas Radionova is just old enough to compete in juniors. If you really want to compare Gold to someone from Russian youngsters, compare her to Sotnikova, Tuktamysheva and Lipnitskaya. Or, if you still insist on comparing her to Radionova, make the comparison fair - Radionova is 13, what were Gracie's results when she was 13? Radionova was 5th at the seniors nationals (in a very strong field) and 3rd at the junior nationals. As far as I am aware, Gracie did not qualify to compete at senior or junior nationals when she was 13. I do agree with you that Gracie is a good skater, but there really is no need to try to reduce someone's else's results. In year or two, when Radionova can skate in seniors, we will see which of them will be better.
 

janetfan

Match Penalty
Joined
May 15, 2009
I would like to point out that you are comparing a fresh junior (junior at her debut) with someone who is going to compete as a senior! Of course Radionova looks like 13 years old, because she is 13 years old. That is the reason why she skate at junior grand prix (and why she is allowed to skate there only from this season). Whereas Gold is going to be competing at seniors. And as you mentioned the 'Russian babies', I would like to point out that one of them beat Gracie at Junior worlds 2012 and another beat Gracie at World team trophy...

I did not bring up who beat who but for some reason you felt it necessary.

Glad you agree that Radionova, as wonderful as she is looks and skates like a 13 year old.

I was commenting on Gracie's level of maturity. She just turmed 17 last week so hopefully she would look and skate with more maturity.

Nobody here is claiming she is a wunderkind. We might even call her a late bloomer of sorts.

Here is Radionova's impressive debut at the JGP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpQrgiMV3eM&feature=plcp

I think she skated better as the program went on and easy to see her great potential. I was surprised that her posture seems a little weak, other than that she is a phenom.
 
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hanca

Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
You summed it up very well.....

Here is Gracie's new SP .....(remember, it is early in the season).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IAHHpRcsuI

Watching the winner of the first JGP this season I see little in common in the level of maturity Gracie shows here.

Not a problem if iGracie is not up to Kwan-Yuna standards yet - but still a heck of alot more mature looking than the newest Russian baby whose skating makes Tara look like a mature Grand Dame skater :)

But hey, the Russian girl is great but only 13. She looks and skates like a 13 year old.

Well, actually you did bring her up first, not me. All I did was remind you that comparing a senior to junior (4 years younger) is unfair. What a surprise that 17 years old looks more mature than 13 years old! Hallelujah!
 

ImaginaryPogue

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 3, 2009
I do think that Wagner and Gold are the one-two tandem heading into this season and I believe that the US Federation wants it that way. I wouldn't be shocked in Zhang interrupted that duo (like Wagner, she made massive improvements this past season). Anyone else would be a genuine surprise to me.
 

Mrs. P

Uno, Dos, twizzle!
Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 27, 2009
In addition, Gracie has already put down the gauntlet having shown that that she has more difficult content this year. I wrote this over on FSU:

Last year tech content (Senior - WTT)

3Z-3T 10.10
2A-3T 7.40
3L 5.10
3F 5.3
2A-2T-2T* 6.71
3Z* 6.60
3S* 4.62
TOTAL: 45.83

This year
3Z-3T 10.10
3F-1L-3S 10.0
2A 3.3
3L 5.10
2A-2T* 5.17
3Z* 6.60
3F* 5.83
TOTAL: 46.10

For perspective, Ashley Wagner had the highest Jump BV at 2012 Worlds at 44.81. And at Nationals 2012, it was Angela Wang (who made a major comeback to go from 16th to8th), who had the highest Jump BV at 41.93.

Also PCS is more than whether she looks artistic or senior. She should score decently in some of the technical categories (skating skills and transitions), esp. the transitions. She has a ton of them in her programs.

As for Ashley Wagner -- she is the defending champion, so certainly she is in the mix. Also looking at her from now to back in 2010, she is definitely as fit as I've ever seen her. (She's always been pretty fit, but I'm saying she's even more so.)
 

dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
Country
United-States
Unfortunately, Ashley still has edge calls, and if anything, the judging we've seen so far in the JGP has been even tougher. So it is hard to say, given that we haven't seen this year's judging in seniors, to say which will do better on the GP. It should be Ashley because of her great Worlds showing last year, but Gracie is a force of nature :)
 

cashley

Rinkside
Joined
Jul 5, 2009
Janetfan, I struggle to understand why when you want to lift Gracie up, you have a need to kick someone's success down. Especially a success of 13 year old girl. As I said, you are comparing incomparable. Radionova cannot beat Gold this season because Gold will be competing in seniors, whereas Radionova is just old enough to compete in juniors. If you really want to compare Gold to someone from Russian youngsters, compare her to Sotnikova, Tuktamysheva and Lipnitskaya. Or, if you still insist on comparing her to Radionova, make the comparison fair - Radionova is 13, what were Gracie's results when she was 13? Radionova was 5th at the seniors nationals (in a very strong field) and 3rd at the junior nationals. As far as I am aware, Gracie did not qualify to compete at senior or junior nationals when she was 13. I do agree with you that Gracie is a good skater, but there really is no need to try to reduce someone's else's results. In year or two, when Radionova can skate in seniors, we will see which of them will be better.

I totally agree with you. It is not fair to compare a 17 year old to a 13 year old. Technically we should compare Gracie to other skaters when they were 17. By the time Mao and Yuna were 17 they had both won Junior Worlds and medaled at Senior Worlds. Gracie is late coming onto the scene and last season was beaten by younger competitors. This doesn't mean, however, that she won't go on to do well in seniors but I'm reserving judgement on her for the time being. Saying that though I'm not a huge fan of her at the moment, not quite sure what all the hype is about?!
 

ImaginaryPogue

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 3, 2009
She's an American lady who can jump and who seems to have a good head on her shoulders. We Canadians would love to have someone who fits that description. Or even half of it.
 

janetfan

Match Penalty
Joined
May 15, 2009
I totally agree with you. It is not fair to compare a 17 year old to a 13 year old. ?!

How about this - someone had said Gracie looks like a junior. I said, hold on, let me show you a top junior....and see the difference.

I used Radionova because I think she is great - and therefore able to illustrate my point much better.

Time for both of you to get over it.......:rolleye:
 
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Pepe Nero

On the Ice
Joined
Dec 11, 2011
Also PCS is more than whether she looks artistic or senior. She should score decently in some of the technical categories (skating skills and transitions), esp. the transitions. She has a ton of them in her programs.

True, there are five different categories, but (I thought, Mrs. P, that you might have been responding to something I said above) it is rare to see someone's PCS (from one category to the next) range more than 0.5 to 0.75 points. For instance, no one gets a 8.25 for skating skills, but a 6.5 for interpretation. These things don't seem to be evaluated independently of each other by the judges. This is why I think Gold will have trouble matching Wagner on PCS next season (having seen Gold's SP), even if Gold's skating skills and transitions are very good.
 

janetfan

Match Penalty
Joined
May 15, 2009
True, there are five different categories, but (I thought, Mrs. P, that you might have been responding to something I said above) it is rare to see someone's PCS (from one category to the next) range more than 0.5 to 0.75 points. For instance, no one gets a 8.25 for skating skills, but a 6.5 for interpretation. These things don't seem to be evaluated independently of each other by the judges. This is why I think Gold will have trouble matching Wagner on PCS next season (having seen Gold's SP), even if Gold's skating skills and transitions are very good.

You raise an interesting point.
There are supposed to be five different categories but in 2-3 minutes after watching a Live skate judges have a difficult time accurately processing so much information.

This becomes clear when we see a Joubert score higher marks for TR than Abbott.
If Joubert lands the quad his PCS go up. His actual use of TR becomes irrelevant under the IJS.

IMO this is common rather than the exception......:disapp:

It is pretty obvious to most fans this is bogus - or as I like to call it the "CoP voodoo." :eek:

What judges typically do instead is revert to the more sensible 6.0 and based on who they liked better fill in the scores.

I would always rather see a 5.6 or 5.8 from individual judges so I know what happened as I am watching the event.

Contrary to Cinquanta's beliefs seeing the individual judges' scores helps keep it in perspective and used to raise the interest for the FANS.

If Canada or other federations are still giving their skaters/teams the highest marks why hide it?

........ because it makes it easier to continue biased judging and to hide it from IOC who is still more than willing to ban skating from the Olympics if yet another scandal erupts........:disagree:

When I ponder the great mysteries of the CoP this is what comes into my mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b5aW08ivHU
 
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ctcl

Spectator
Joined
Apr 8, 2012
Grace Gold is one of the best new Jumpers around I think she will take silver at nationals if not Gold She is doing great
 

skateluvr

Record Breaker
Joined
Oct 23, 2011
The hype about Goldie is she has it all. Her SP showed much more elegance. She is maturing fast. There was nothing juniorish about her SP. She looked stunning. Besides beauty, she can jump really well, and she should be able to compete with the best in the world by Sochi. Americans are excited to see this talent develop.

Maybe Yuna had more medals at 17 but I prefer Gracie. No club foot, unatractive legline to notice in every program. Gracie with luck re her health and physical changes could be a major star in skating.

I'll cross genders and cultures and instead of saying which lady excites me this much, I will pick the Japanese rockstar kid Hanyu. He is so wonderful at his age. I think Gracie could be our next big star, and will push Ashley. Caroline is still slow with very mediocre basic skating skills. It detracts from her skating a lot for me. It is of course thrilling to see her 3l/3l last season and the pearl spin will be remembered a long time. I hope she surprises me this season and has much better ice coverage.

Gracie knocked my sox off with her SP dress. She knows glam is good in this sport. Her people are doing great with the all impt packaging for ladies. Someone thought she was like Agnes. Huh? I do not see this at all. Just shows how subjective FS is and how someone sees a superstar and the next "nothing special." I am hoping for Hannah, Samantha, Nina, Angela and the rest too. I expect we will see some great skating at Nationals again this year. I hope confidence fills the building for our ladies.
 
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