What are Mao Asada's chances of becoming Olympic Champion in 2014?

[Skater Boy]

Well I do see potential in Mao but counting against her is that she has had two full seasons to correct her jumping issues AND OR get the triple axel. This is not a puberty issue at this point. i appreciate she had to deal with her mom's death, sadly many of us have to deal with such tragedies, I know she has tonnes of fans who adore her but if we step away we can see the potential; however, one has to wonder - has she really made any strives over the last few years. ARtistically - probably not. Spins - same. Jumps no real huge improvement. Even outfits not huge strives there either - but relatively little impact too I am sure some or many will disagree. Don't get me wrong I like Mao a lot but I am just trying to be objective. Still I do believe for some reason she could pull off Oly gold - just not as strong of a ping as before.

[eyria]

Well I do see potential in Mao but counting against her is that she has had two full seasons to correct her jumping issues AND OR get the triple axel. This is not a puberty issue at this point. i appreciate she had to deal with her mom's death, sadly many of us have to deal with such tragedies, I know she has tonnes of fans who adore her but if we step away we can see the potential; however, one has to wonder - has she really made any strives over the last few years. ARtistically - probably not. Spins - same. Jumps no real huge improvement. Even outfits not huge strives there either - but relatively little impact too I am sure some or many will disagree. Don't get me wrong I like Mao a lot but I am just trying to be objective. Still I do believe for some reason she could pull off Oly gold - just not as strong of a ping as before.

I think you're right in some ways, Skater Boy. Mao has not improved as much as I'd hoped. When she announced post-Olympics that she was switching coaches and reworking her technique, I was really hoped it would lead to a better, stronger Mao. However, it hasn't happened. Her jumps are about the same, or worse. I'm glad she's now trying and landing triple Salchow; however, she's mostly lost the triple Axel. So technically things are not improved.

However, I do feel Mao has grown artistically. Last season especially, I really saw a change. I thought she improved a lot in terms of connecting to the audience, not previously a strength of hers. I felt like she looked at the audience more, projected more to the crowd, and expressed herself more freely. Also, I felt Liebestraum was a beautiful program that really highlighted the grace and lightness of her skating. So, I do think artistic growth has occurred.

[mary01]

I think you're right in some ways, Skater Boy. Mao has not improved as much as I'd hoped. When she announced post-Olympics that she was switching coaches and reworking her technique, I was really hoped it would lead to a better, stronger Mao. However, it hasn't happened. Her jumps are about the same, or worse. I'm glad she's now trying and landing triple Salchow; however, she's mostly lost the triple Axel. So technically things are not improved.

However, I do feel Mao has grown artistically. Last season especially, I really saw a change. I thought she improved a lot in terms of connecting to the audience, not previously a strength of hers. I felt like she looked at the audience more, projected more to the crowd, and expressed herself more freely. Also, I felt Liebestraum was a beautiful program that really highlighted the grace and lightness of her skating. So, I do think artistic growth has occurred.

I for one, think that considering how she has made such huge changes by changing her jump technique, changing coaches, changing the way she trains, focusing on putting back 2a-3t, 3s, 3lutz, practicing the 3-3 again after so long... it's really very big changes she had to go through during a very little time, i think considering how much she has changed and how long changing or just regaining a certain jump takes, it's really amazing how many changes she has had so far during so little time. ofcourse the difficulty can be discussed, but her layout now looks nothing like the layout she had two years ago, and that alone says alot about her changes. and I also don't agree when it comes to spins her spins have changed quite a bit looking at what she did just two years ago too. I sometimes still find it incredible when i think that the skater from Bells of moscow and Liebestraum is one and the same. cause the style, jumps, spins, spirals, steps everything is soooo different.

I also sometimes notice that people sometimes forget how many changes she has had at the same time, i myself forget that at times, but that is because I have such high expectation of her, and it sometimes just suddenly strikes me, how much i myself expect of her, when knowing how many difficult changes she had to go through during the same time she lost her mother. no wonder she was exhausted and soo skinny when she showed up at worlds.

as a side note- i think Mao now looks a lot healthier now, she now looks the same as in 2008 and that's really nice to see.

[Hanaka]

Well I do see potential in Mao but counting against her is that she has had two full seasons to correct her jumping issues AND OR get the triple axel. This is not a puberty issue at this point. i appreciate she had to deal with her mom's death, sadly many of us have to deal with such tragedies, I know she has tonnes of fans who adore her but if we step away we can see the potential; however, one has to wonder - has she really made any strives over the last few years. ARtistically - probably not. Spins - same. Jumps no real huge improvement. Even outfits not huge strives there either - but relatively little impact too I am sure some or many will disagree. Don't get me wrong I like Mao a lot but I am just trying to be objective. Still I do believe for some reason she could pull off Oly gold - just not as strong of a ping as before.

Objective?
Do you mention the same Mao who kept falling all over the ice in the 2010-2011 season and about whose speed of skating, spirals and spins even some of her fans complained when she was with TAT, when she was actually training alone most of her time in Japan far away from her coach.
I think I must go and look up the English word "objective" in the dictionary once again now.....

[skateluvr]

Hmmm where are Mao's die hards in this thread. I still feel she could medal or take gold in Sochi. I don't think Miki will be back, ever. Losing this season will be too cosly. Akiko is fab but can she hold up and not injure at her age? Carolina if even really fit melts at Olympics. Kanako could surprise. I am assuming Ladies team going to Sochi might be Mao, Akiko, Kanako (or Haruka Imai?) Is that how our Japanese fans guess the Oly team?

Yuna Kim, Ashley Wagner will be strong and who knows about Leonova/Sotnikova/Tukt/fill in /////Russian name. So Mao has stiff comp at home and world. I still feel she brings beauty and elegance. Ladies will maybe be not totally decided as in 2010.

It will be incredible if we have a repeat yuna/mao battle. Not likely, but possible.

[chapis]

Ok,Mao of course has posibility to win OGM. I think that contenders will be Mao, Ashley, Akiko, Liza and Julia. But if Yuna really come back , Mao winning is almost imposible, the most probable is Yuna having a good performance, but it doesn´t matter, at least for the judges because she is the female version of Patrick Chan, so she will obtain the gold medal , the performance is not important. For me the most important is that Mao will do her best performance, she is capable, her past Olympic season started terrible, but the o games and worlds were really good, she is the type of person that give everything in the big moments. Mao almost never fall but her under rotations kill her, and I hope she don’t include the 3a. We all know the Olympic games is when everyone that usually don’t watch fs watch it, they must watch to Mao and the incredible she can be.

[cooper]

Ok,Mao of course has posibility to win OGM. I think that contenders will be Mao, Ashley, Akiko, Liza and Julia. But if Yuna really come back , Mao winning is almost imposible, the most probable is Yuna having a good performance, but it doesn´t matter, at least for the judges because she is the female version of Patrick Chan, so she will obtain the gold medal , the performance is not important. For me the most important is that Mao will do her best performance, she is capable, her past Olympic season started terrible, but the o games and worlds were really good, she is the type of person that give everything in the big moments. Mao almost never fall but her under rotations kill her, and I hope she don’t include the 3a. We all know the Olympic games is when everyone that usually don’t watch fs watch it, they must watch to Mao and the incredible she can be.

well, yuna did not win the 2010 and 2011 world championship. yuna did not fall 4 times and won. and yuna doesn't have a STORNG FED to help her. so what makes you think the judges will help her win? you're acting like mao is the only one who is doing her best and other skaters are not. with the new rule under cop, yuna cannot do her usual 2/3 in free skate anymore without the 3loop which is her least favorite jump. it was mao and her team who decided to focus on 3A and forgot about the other jumps.

[mary01]

well, yuna did not win the 2010 and 2011 world championship. yuna did not fall 4 times and won. and yuna doesn't have a STORNG FED to help her. so what makes you think the judges will help her win? you're acting like mao is the only one who is doing her best and other skaters are not. with the new rule under cop, yuna cannot do her usual 2/3 in free skate anymore without the 3loop which is her least favorite jump. it was mao and her team who decided to focus on 3A and forgot about the other jumps.

Well as far as i read Chapis comment, she never mentioned that yuna fell 4 times, you yourself have come to that conclusion. When chapis stated kim was the female version of patrick Chan she probably meant that the judges always favor her, no matter what she deliverers, her PCS score always remains the same just like Patrick Chan(just think of 2010 worlds fs). seeing the inflation she got at vancouver was the biggest indication of how set the judges where on giving her the gold, even if she were to make BIG mistakes. of course it's not her fault that she received those crazy scores, but the fact that the judges favor Kim is no hidden secret. so being worried about is only natural part of being a fan.

Then there is the thing with the JP fed, you know i have never felt that there was such a useless federation like the jp one, they really don't know how to promote there skaters at all, if one wants to have have a good promoter i think Orser would be the perfect one for that job.

I really hope this threads topic remains the topic that is discussed, and with this we close the Mao/Yuna discussion.

[cooper]

Well as far as i read Chapis comment, she never mentioned that yuna fell 4 times, you yourself have come to that conclusion. When chapis stated kim was the female version of patrick Chan she probably meant that the judges always favor her, no matter what she deliverers, her PCS score always remains the same just like Patrick Chan(just think of 2010 worlds fs). seeing the inflation she got at vancouver was the biggest indication of how set the judges where on giving her the gold, even if she were to make BIG mistakes. of course it's not her fault that she received those crazy scores, but the fact that the judges favor Kim is no hidden secret. so being worried about is only natural part of being a fan.

Then there is the thing with the JP fed, you know i have never felt that there was such a useless federation like the jp one, they really don't know how to promote there skaters at all, if one wants to have have a good promoter i think Orser would be the perfect one for that job.

I really hope this threads topic remains the topic that is discussed, and with this we close the Mao/Yuna discussion.

favoring what? the fact that yuna did not win the 2010 worlds doesn't mean the judges are favoring her. we can all argue about the free skate but the fact that she didn't win her 2nd world title. chan won even when he falls 4 times. yuna never in her entire career won with 4 mistakes. check your facts straight. and regarding the Vancouver olympics, well all the skaters' scores that night were inflated. even mao's scores was inflated when she had 2 mistakes in the free skate. but it doesn't change the fact that yuna beat asada fair and square.

korean fed doesn't influence anyone in the ISU. yuna earned her spot in the history without a strong fed and tradition helping her.

[jaylee]

Well as far as i read Chapis comment, she never mentioned that yuna fell 4 times, you yourself have come to that conclusion. When chapis stated kim was the female version of patrick Chan she probably meant that the judges always favor her, no matter what she deliverers, her PCS score always remains the same just like Patrick Chan(just think of 2010 worlds fs). seeing the inflation she got at vancouver was the biggest indication of how set the judges where on giving her the gold, even if she were to make BIG mistakes. of course it's not her fault that she received those crazy scores, but the fact that the judges favor Kim is no hidden secret. so being worried about is only natural part of being a fan.

Name a single competition where Yu-Na has won a competition controversially. PCS has never made a difference in her overall placement (she would've placed the same, or sometimes even higher, had you judged the competition solely based on the technical score). Unlike with Patrick Chan, you won't be able to, because she never has. She lost 2010 Worlds. She has never won a close competition where it could have gone her way and where a little advantage in PCS would have given her the win. She lost 2011 Worlds, she lost 2008 GPF, she lost 2008 Worlds. The margin separating her and the victor was about 2 points each time, and the judges could've given her the win via PCS, but they never did. Her placements and victories have all been based first off the technical mark. Oh, so she did win the 2010 Worlds FS and 2008 GPF SP--not a big deal, since the overall placement was correct. Had Mao properly rotated her triple axel in the 2010 Worlds FS and her 3/3 in the GPF SP to begin with, she would have won those segments, but since she cheated the jumps but landed it with the appearance of being clean, her fans believe the performance was better than it was, and remain outraged that she lost technical points and didn't win that segment of the competition. But she still won overall, so I just don't understand the outrage.

You have a very selective memory as you don't recall the numerous competitions where Mao has had meltdowns, damaging her technical score, but the judges' high PCS "favored" Mao "no matter what she delivers." Mao has had far, FAR more meltdowns than Yu-Na, but still gotten high PCS, so basically, she's more comparable to Patrick Chan than Yu-Na is. (To a certain extent, btw, Mao, Yu-Na, and Patrick DO deserve relatively high PCS even when their performance has errors, but I find it highly unfair to focus on Yu-Na and Patrick but leave out Mao. And Yu-Na has had the fewest meltdowns out of the three of them.)

Can you say the same about Mao, that PCS has never made a difference in her placements? You won't be able to, because I've done the math, and PCS has helped Mao by compensating for a lower technical mark. So your and chapis's insinuations are dead wrong--it's Mao whose performance doesn't seem to matter, no matter how many mistakes she makes, she benefits from high PCS and the judge's benevolence, not Yu-Na. (Don't understand your complaint about inflation at Vancouver--Yu-Na was perfect, she got a perfection bonus; other skaters weren't perfect, but they got inflated scores as well.)

The same argument that you make about Yu-Na's PCS can legitimately be made about Mao, so I would be very careful about slandering Yu-Na the way that you do (as you've been doing throughout this thread and in numerous posts). In fact, Yu-Na has never fallen 4 times or made errors on 4 jumping passes with her PCS remaining sky high. Oh, wait, but let's look at Worlds 2012--Mao Asada made errors on 4 jumping passes (5 if you count the flutz call), and her PCS was second only to Caroline Kostner's. That's a FACT. Her technical score was the lowest of the top 13 ladies skaters in the FS, but her PCS was so high, it helped her place a more respectable 6th in the FS.

http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc..._FS_Scores.pdf

Then there is the thing with the JP fed, you know i have never felt that there was such a useless federation like the jp one, they really don't know how to promote there skaters at all, if one wants to have have a good promoter i think Orser would be the perfect one for that job.

The JP Fed managed to get the ISU to break tradition by allowing senior ladies to attempt a 3A in the SP as the solo axel jump, when only one lady in the world was capable of doing so, giving that ONE lady an enormous competitive advantage over the rest of the field. This was discussed in detail on this forum. Unlike with the men, allowing them to do a quad in the SP as the solo jump did not give any one man an advantage because there were numerous contenders capable of landing a quad. But the same cannot be said for the ladies. That rule change was an obvious result of the JSF's influence and evidence. It was unfair, corrupt, and appalling. And Mao HAS benefited from this rule this quad. You may consider them useless, but they are certainly not powerless.

I really hope this threads topic remains the topic that is discussed, and with this we close the Mao/Yuna discussion.

Here are some on-topic, relevant facts for you. Who is the last Olympic ladies silver medalist to win Gold at the following Olympics? Sjoukje Dijkstra, 1964.

Who was the most recent ladies Olympic medalist to improve upon their placement at their next Olympics? Nancy Kerrigan, who won bronze in 92 and then won silver in 94 (special case since those Olympics only came 2 years after). That's it. Other medalists--Michelle Kwan and Irina Slutskaya--dropped from silver to bronze at their next Olympics. Lu Chen managed to repeat bronze (but she was a mess in 1998).

Who were the most recent ladies skaters who didn't medal at their first Olympics, but improved upon their placement at their next Olympics, winning a medal? Sasha Cohen, Irina Slutskaya, Shizuka Arakawa, and Joannie Rochette competed at multiple Olympics, came away without a medal at their first, but later won a medal(s). However, it should be noted that they had not yet reached the peak of their career at their first Olympics. After their first Olympics, they continued to rise, moved into the prime of their careers, and got better international results that preceded their Olympic medal wins. Shizuka won 2004 Worlds before winning 2006 Olympics; Joannie got her first world medal in 2009 ahead of her 2010 bronze, etc.

What does this all mean? Well, basically, history is against Mao as she tries to improve upon her placement from the 2010 Olympics to the 2014 Olympics. Unlike the Sasha, Irina, Shizuka, and Joannie examples, Mao hasn't had the best results of her career in this Olympic quad. You can say a lot of things about what has changed about her skating, but are the results better or similar to what they were in the last Olympic quad, when she was considered a contender for the gold? No, they are not. In fact, if you took out the name "Mao Asada" and looked at her results over the past two years, would you argue that the skater who has placed 6th at Worlds consecutively, 2nd at 4CCs twice, the winner of one GP and silver medalist at another GP (out of 4 GP events), is a contender for the next Olympic gold?

Still, anything can happen, after all, this is a sport in which Sarah Hughes is an Olympic champion. It's not over till it's over, and there's still time left. But if Mao wants to be perceived as the favorite for the Olympic gold (and perception is a powerful thing in the sport of skating), then her international results need to improve ASAP. 4 years ago, if you mentioned to skating fans that Mao Asada had just lost the Japan Open to Ashley Wagner (she placed 16th at 2008 Worlds), they would have been shocked. But it's a sign of how perception--and many other things--has changed that starting off the season with a 2nd place for Mao is actually perceived as a good beginning.

[drivingmissdaisy]

My biggest concern for Mao is she is so far off her peak technically, with no 3/3, no 3A, and a weak 3S and 3Z. I don't think she can medal with her current line-up of jumps, especially when she URs some of the jumps she does do.

[mary01]

you know you should read my post very well jayle, and see what i responded and to what my responce was. if you do that you will realise that what you are rabbing about and what i said are two things with very little in common. so before you or any other yuna fan beginn to attack others, just read what has been stated. if you still feel offended by what i have said, then there really isn't much one can say about kim without someone becoming offensive. we are not all as big fans of kim as you are, we have our own favourites, and I refuse to stop saying my opinion which is based on what i have seen and what is known to everyone in the skating community, just because you refuse to accept it.

[Skater Boy]

Objective?
Do you mention the same Mao who kept falling all over the ice in the 2010-2011 season and about whose speed of skating, spirals and spins even some of her fans complained when she was with TAT, when she was actually training alone most of her time in Japan far away from her coach.
I think I must go and look up the English word "objective" in the dictionary once again now.....

Huh??? I am not sure exactly what you were trying to get at but I do believe she has a chance to medal or even win but two years in competitive skating life is relatively a long time and she really hasn't sorted out the flutz or even decided what is her focus the triple axel or doing all the other triples well. That will afect her chance for gold. If you ar in a state of flux it makes it harder to win gold. Having a coach is helpful. ARtistically I always thought she was amazing. We'll have to see but it has been a while and we have seen her jump between focus on the 3A and the other jumps for the last couple of years and nothing seems resolved or that close to being resolved. Her last attempts at 3A were two footed and under rotated. Fixing the toe loop, lutz and all is still a problem and regaining or gaining a 3 - 3 is also still an issue.

[jaylee]

you know you should read my post very well jayle, and see what i responded and to what my responce was. if you do that you will realise that what you are rabbing about and what i said are two things with very little in common. so before you or any other yuna fan beginn to attack others, just read what has been stated. if you still feel offended by what i have said, then there really isn't much one can say about kim without someone becoming offensive. we are not all as big fans of kim as you are, we have our own favourites, and I refuse to stop saying my opinion which is based on what i have seen and what is known to everyone in the skating community, just because you refuse to accept it.

Any distinctions you could make about my argument not applying to yours are so minor as to be irrelevant (i.e. my argument stands though I use an example of Mao having four jump errors, and not four falls, and getting high PCS). I am not attacking you or others, I am attacking disingenuous statements and claims built on questionable reasoning. I have no problem with you having your own favorite or your obviously not being a fan of Yu-Na at all (let alone "not as big a fan of Kim" as I am ), and I have no problem with different opinions which are based on facts. I have a huge problem with your dishonest claims and statements which are NOT "known to everyone in the skating community", and you're right, I refuse to accept it, and am more than happy to provide plenty more protocols and facts to prove my point and disprove yours.

[l'etoile]

mary01, it's extremely high time that you face the facts and look back at your statements, please.