Obviously YOU got me completely wrong ...
:noshake:
I didn't criticize their old SD per se, I didn't even talk about that; The SD last year was o.k. and judges quite liked it.
The meaning of my post is actually THIS (I hope this explanation will do it):
1) It CAN happen that their new "Latin" SD, which is NOT good at all (THAT corresponds to the statement of Zhulin - SD is nothing but levels (something B/S have issues with)), puts them far behind (like last years worlds) PER SE (without making mistakes by their own).
2) IF this happens, THEN they will have a lot of couples in front of them and THEN they need mistakes from most of those couples in the FD (like last year) in order to close the gap. But something like that doesn't happen this often and probably not two years in a row.
3) What I don't get: it's obvious the SD is very important (V/M won Worlds with that last year). So one should invest in coreography there as well.
4) The marks given by the judges are another story - it CAN happen that B/S will get high PCS no matter what they skate to. Then they will be definitely in contention (if they hit their Levels and key points). It happened quite often in the past. Some of their SD's had a good concept ("chess" and the SD in 2013), but Latin isn't their thing and giving them a coreography that doesn't even try to hide the problem DOES augment the probability that judges take notice of it (composition of the panel becomes important then ...). US and Canadian teams invest a lot of work in their programs (G/P - tango FD last year: a great amount of work was put in those tiny little details - S/B, on the contrary, didn't get into the thing to this degree). They are not save from misfits. But Russian Ice dance doesn't like IJS and has problems with coreography which are not adressed. They win medals at Grand Prix and at Euros, GPF and Worlds are another story. B/S managed to do it with their hard work and two good programs in 2013.
But in 2018 - a good FD, a bit copy and paste Montreal, & an SD far from ideal (at least at the moment - and it's only 4 1/2 months to go)??? Whith that and the fact that IJS isn't appreciated in Russia the success of the past is out of reach.
Why don't we talk about Stepanova and Bukin's debut at Finlandia? I though they did well! Performance was great, skating was clean, and most importantly of all, it was a Latin program. 70.27 debut score!
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