Can't help but wonder what these different directions were. I wonder if some of this was in reference to his programs. He said more than once that he wanted to skate to certain kinds of music and was told no. He had said he wanted his Olympic program to be skated to crowd-pleasing upbeat music, and it wasn't. Personally, I think he was never invested in last season's long program. So of course I also can't help but wonder now if he allowed himself to be swayed towards this year's LP music when it initially wasn't his choice. I liked his mom's words about him becoming more independent. It's a learning process and moving forward, I'm sure he'll learn to take charge and to assert himself where he needs to. I have a good feeling about his career and the direction he's going, but I'm also positively giddy about Colorado's election results, so maybe that's part of it.
Yeah, he wanted to do Hamilton as a free skate, right? Which actually would have made FAR more sense. The SP was pretty good, but an FS to Hamilton would probably been far more epic and what he had envisioned for himself. Oh well.
I agree he never was fully on-bard the FS -- though I thought it was quite lovely and beautiful -- it had the potential to be something special, but yeah doesn't matter if he's not into it. But yeah, the red flags went up for me in the articles before GPF when he had to come up, literally, on a story on what the free skate was about. You never heard him do that with The Piano/Scent of Love -- his skating allowed him to do do that for him. And when he brought back the Piano program for 4CC and had that one last special moment with it to win the bronze, it was really obvious to me the difference as far as investment. It made me wish that he brought back The Piano at Nationals -- maybe the result would have been the same, but at least he was far more comfortable with it.
And it's obvious with the SP, he's full-on board with that program too. No fancy explanation required.
I really notice how much more assertive he's been with himself, even in off-ice stuff. For me, it's most apparent in how he's embracing a more mature look after getting the haircut. He knows he looks good and he's definitely showing off more, not to mention he's liking all the tweets from all the 20-somethings (maybe older, ha) that are like "OMG, you look so good/hot/whatever." He likes the attention.
I think it's great he's training with people like Yuzu and Zhenya, who are also quite assertive in how they approach in their skating. I feel pretty good about where he's going too.
OT me too re Colorado election results!
Re Jason: my guess is more likely he was talking about the decision whether to stay with Kori, going back to 2014. I’m sure he got a lot of input that he should move because he was maxed out. I’m sure he felt loyal to her. I remember when he went to Frank in 2016 how hush hush and mysterious it was at first and how Kori showed up at the end of the summer and it was like so happy we’re together again for another year. When asked about it later he said something about how he was used to going away for outside input each summer...I never did buy it. He never looked better than the fall of 2016 before the injury. And again in 2017 before Worlds he went to Frank. I think he just couldn’t face that it was time to move on, especially - and this is just a wild guess - knowing what it would mean financially to her. All the injuries in the past couple of years got in the way of facing that bc he had to focus on recovery. Well, that’s my thought anyway.
Huh, so you're saying his decision to do those training sessions with Frank was a 100 percent Jason-driven decision? Or at least Jason with USFS? Interesting theory.
To give Kori where credit is due -- he did get a national championship and a 4th place Worlds finish under her belt. And she did managed to help him get through the stress fracture and help him have a respectable finish at Worlds 2017. I think there really wasn't an opportunity not only because of the injury, but also because he was still getting relatively good results. It really had to take something drastic like being off the Olympic Team for him to realize it was time to move on.
I just read the Skating article again, and I found this quote also interesting. "I wanted to find a coaching team that valued both the jumps and the performance one in the same." You can read between the lines --that wasn't the case with his previous coaching situation. Rohene definitely loved doing those transition-heavy programs and Kori seem very much about maintaining clean programs. I honestly supported that approach because he did get good scores/results. But in hindsight, itreally didn't work out for him when it came time to be on the big stages. That's why I think I'm really OK about his inconsistency for now -- it's EXTREMELY annoying to see him pop the 4S and have all these errors -- but at least he doesn't have to deal with the "Will I or Won't I" aspect of whether he will do the quad. He has a chance to do it every time. There's a plan and he gets to stick to it.
