Re: ice dance. Maybe it's not just skaters? Since P/C are having so much success, perhaps some coaches/choreographers are also trying to push their skaters in the same direction? Which is unavoidable, I guess, at least to a certain extent...
Yes, you are right, since the skaters' goal is to rank higher and stand on the podium, they must do something appealing to the judges like P/C did. Like John Kerr said, it was hard not to study what makes P/C successful.
Still, I feel funny seeing so many stationary lifts in ice dance, TBH, I am disappointed with V/M's FS this season, after so many talk/interviews that they want to do something different and offer more styles, if there is only one team should not follow P/C's trend, they should be the one, I hope that their FS can be tweaked differently next week at NHK. After all, V/M's pink Floyd and Latin Dance FS are my favorites.
Yes, although his conditioning seems better than at this point of the season a few years ago, it's still something he can improve.
When he first moved to Toronto there were rumors that he wasn't a huge fan of cross training. I don't know if that was true, but at least judging by competitions, he now seems to take his conditioning more seriously.
I am afraid these were not rumors but the truth

, Javi was not a huge fan of run-throughs, spins, morning practice sessions, jumping too many quads; when Hanyu joined TCC, he wanted to observe Javi's quads, to his disappointment, Javi did not jump as many quads as he expected
Things have changed, as Brian said, Javi nowadays treats skating more like business; a few years ago I could have never imagined that Javi skated to a song like "Danny Boy" in a such elegant & emotional style.
love the Black Betty costume he wore Javi looks good both in black and in other colors. (The huge pink bow tie from the Morozov days, though... I doubt anyone could make that look good )
Black Betty costume is a different one, it has "see-through" fabric :agree2:
The huge pink bow tie jacket plus green shirt plus purple jacket :ddevil: