Evgenia was amazing! She should definitely be in the lead. But even so, her score was way too high. Yes, tanos, 2nd half bonuses, and dominating the junior ladies field in the previous year will give you a lot of points. But the judges were still honestly a bit too generous with her GOE and PCS. Nice spins, good step sequence, but the scoring of the program was very bizarre.
Gracie skated much better than I expected. Her 3Lz-3T was beautiful and it's too bad she doubled the flip. I'm not too sure why she is even trying it in the first place, considering that the chance of her getting good GOE for it are very low (at least lower than the loop). PCS was too high, but overall I think she had a great performance and hopefully she can do the same (or even better) tomorrow.
No surprise from Satoko. Still consistent, has good presentation and spins, but still lacks a lot in jumps. I'm sad to say that her jumps really make me cringe a lot, and since the judges think that too, they're marking her lower on other aspects of her skating. While her PCS seemed fair (although very slightly lower would've been fine too), the judges are clearly telling her to work on those jumps, because their way of judging apparently puts the jumps first. So no matter how well Satoko does executing her non-jump elements, if she doesn't fix those jumps they will not score her higher.
On the other hand, Karen was a surprise. I honestly did not expect her to skate that well. After that big underrotation on the 3T I thought she might've made some more mistakes, but she put up a gorgeous performance. Yulia seemed more into the program than Finlandia, but the program still feels awkward to me. I thought she would've gone ahead of Karen, but I'm okay with the score they gave her. Alaine was also good. Overscored PCS for sure, but overall I liked her performance today. Too be honest though, almost all the PCS scores in this event were VERY questionable. And most of the skaters with the questionable PCS were the ones judged at least a bit too high. Anyways, it's too bad that Alaine's combo turned out bad, but it was actually not too distracting for me while watching the rest of the performance.
Other than Miyu and Haruka, everyone else seemed honestly disappointing to me. Their mistakes made me get really distracted from the performances. I hope that they could have better showings tomorrow. If they do have better showings however, I'm scared that the judges will probably undermark them by a lot since they're skating early.
Gracie skated much better than I expected. Her 3Lz-3T was beautiful and it's too bad she doubled the flip. I'm not too sure why she is even trying it in the first place, considering that the chance of her getting good GOE for it are very low (at least lower than the loop). PCS was too high, but overall I think she had a great performance and hopefully she can do the same (or even better) tomorrow.
No surprise from Satoko. Still consistent, has good presentation and spins, but still lacks a lot in jumps. I'm sad to say that her jumps really make me cringe a lot, and since the judges think that too, they're marking her lower on other aspects of her skating. While her PCS seemed fair (although very slightly lower would've been fine too), the judges are clearly telling her to work on those jumps, because their way of judging apparently puts the jumps first. So no matter how well Satoko does executing her non-jump elements, if she doesn't fix those jumps they will not score her higher.
On the other hand, Karen was a surprise. I honestly did not expect her to skate that well. After that big underrotation on the 3T I thought she might've made some more mistakes, but she put up a gorgeous performance. Yulia seemed more into the program than Finlandia, but the program still feels awkward to me. I thought she would've gone ahead of Karen, but I'm okay with the score they gave her. Alaine was also good. Overscored PCS for sure, but overall I liked her performance today. Too be honest though, almost all the PCS scores in this event were VERY questionable. And most of the skaters with the questionable PCS were the ones judged at least a bit too high. Anyways, it's too bad that Alaine's combo turned out bad, but it was actually not too distracting for me while watching the rest of the performance.
Other than Miyu and Haruka, everyone else seemed honestly disappointing to me. Their mistakes made me get really distracted from the performances. I hope that they could have better showings tomorrow. If they do have better showings however, I'm scared that the judges will probably undermark them by a lot since they're skating early.