Suguri Switches Coaches

[Gipson]

From the interviews I recall, Fumie spoke English quite well and was the most comfortable speaking English out of the top Japanese women

[Mathman]

Fumie has been coming to Canada to train with Lori Nichol, for various periods of time, for about 10 years. So by now she has some facility for the language. After graduating from college last year, she said that she was planning to work on her English so she could come to the U.S. for graduate school.

When Shizuka was living in the Detroit area last year, working with Richard Calaghan, she lived with a mixed Japanese-American family, who helped her quite a bit. Even so, she and Calaghan had to rely on a lot of non-verbal communication, IIRC.

Mathman

[Matt]

Yagudin skated to Carmen in one of his early years- may be 1997? I will have to check my tapes.

Yagudin skated a FP to music from "Carmen" at '96 Worlds (with a complete bullfighter costume to boot)--he was 16.

As for Fumie's coaching change, I think Vassiliev is an interesting choice (ITA that Carroll would probably have been a better one; even TT, though she's too busy with Arakawa) . I don't think you can completely write him off though as an effective singles coach. The only real high profile singles skater we've seen him coach is Volchkova, which unfortunately didn't work out. But we have seen a relative amount of success with T&M. IMO, what Vassiliev can bring to Fumie is a certain, consistent fluidity to her skating. We all agree that she's a powerful, speedy skater with good basics; what she needs is a bit more delicacy and softness to turn her into a (more) well-rounded skater. She's already made HUGE progress with this in the choreography department with Lori Nichol (see the "Ave Maria" SP, if you don't believe me); perhaps Vassiliev will help to reinforce this as far as the other elements of her skating go.

It will be interesting to see...

[Miriam Boo]

I believe Fumie speaks English quite well from her brief interviews I watched on American TV. Her father was an airline pilot in Alaska. This is where Fumie initially learned to skate. My guess is that she is more fluent in English than the other Japanese women. Shizuka appears to be less fluent...she understands English very well, but it is more difficult for her to speak.