I am under the impression that Kagiyama is a little bit on the rule-bending side of things.Well it's the same (or actually worse) story with Erokhov. Junior World Champion with a nice and stable 4T and 4S and then they made him pound that stupid quad flip until he fractured his picking foot three! times in a row. And pooof... his international senior career was gone before it had ever begun. (He's still skating very beautifully in domestic events, just sayin.)
I am a huge fan of quads and multi-quad skaters. For me, it's one of the most exciting things about men's figure skating. But when it comes to a choice between quads and health, I'd rather see the guys skate a few senior seasons with just the baby quads to get used to their adult bodies rather than go all in in their first senior season and aim for the four quad FP. The skaters themselves might disagree though. But that strategy worked pretty well for e.g. Kagiyama.
I also love multi-quads, and I am actually all for multiquadsters getting podiums in both women and men. I just wish Russians specifically stop trusting in the mind-over-body thing and mine for unobtanium until they actually have a guy whose body is not going to stretch out even on broth and rye crackers. Shooting for two men in top ten and three spots would have been doable with quite a few of those guys without charging them with solid multiquad programs. Which, hilariously, only Ignatov had delivered so far.
Last edited: