- Joined
- Dec 29, 2011
I wouldn't like it at all. Hanyu needs a worthy challenger and I don't see Han or Brown being that skater. Hopefully Ten will stay and be a worthy competitor. Kovtun has potential too.
I'd take Han over Ten. Han has better basic skating, his 4T and 3A have better quality. You can argue with his programs and his not-up-to-snuff interpretation abilities (for now), but I don't find Ten to be all that better in those regards. He's a fine skater, but his programs are empty and he tends to look very focused on the technical part of his performances. If Han manages to get it together and get more consistent, I think he'll leave Ten behind him in the coming years.
Don't know about Kovtun. He has difficult jumps and seems very determined to improve in every other aspect of his skating, but I can't see him challenging Hanyu. His jumping technique looks like it will hold him back, IMO. That doesn't mean you have to like me idea of the perfect next quad though
pangtongfan said:Dont be surprised to see much lower than expected scores for Stolbova & Klimov (though they still might win if V&T arent there, S&S bomb, and nobody else skates that well), Lipnitskaya, Kovtun, and almost all the Russians skaters minus I&K who I suspect even the ISU want to see as the team to beat this quad.
I really hope this doesn't happen. Even moreso for I/K, I know they're great skaters, but P/B should have a fair rematch. It would be so amazing to see them win a world title bofre they retire.
The main fous of the whole scandal was so much on the ladies event, I felt the other disciplines are being overlooked. So while I agree Lipnitskaya might get some back lash, I'd say Kovtun should be relatively save (and probably, if they'd compete, V/T would still get sky-high marks even for things they don't deserve too).