2020-21 Russian Ladies' Figure Skating

[happycamper2554]

December 5-8.

Predictions:

In seniors the main competition will be between Kostornaia, Valieva and after the Rostelecom also Tuktamysveva's chances can't be ignored. My estimation is that Kostornaia won't restore her 3A into the competitive form yet, but even without it she had higher score at the stage 4 than Tuktamysheva at Rostelecom. It's of course only a vague comparison, but it shows she can aspire for victory. As for Valieva, with her it will depend on how clean she can be. If she will skate as she did at the gala in sunday, I doubt she could be defeated, but but it seems she sometimes can be too nervous. Tuktamysheva's performace from the Rostelecom will be probably her golden standard, unless she adds her quad into the program I don't think she can perform better currently.

In juniors the big draw will be between Petrosian and Zhilina. Veronika already does quads, though her attempt at the previous stage was unsuccesful. She also did 4Lz in training if I'm not mistaken. Adeliya has shown very good skating at the stage four, though not without mistakes in the free program. Recently she added 4T into her portfolio, but I don't know whether it's competition ready.

Do we think the Fed will exempt the people who competed at Rostelecom? Zhulin implied S/K have already qualified for Nats. If we are following the rules they should have to do a second event. I think it would be fair for Kostornaia, Tuktamysheva, and Gulikova to not have to compete.

 

[Jontor]

Seems promising! Though I'd love to see Valieva land a 4T like that again.

I also think that Tsibinova will be there...well she needs to if she wants to q for Nats.

 

[Jontor]

Question:

Sasha's combo 4T+1Eul+3S was first marked 4T+Seq+1Eul+3S. but the TP later removed the 'seq' mark.

Sasha did put in an extra turn after the 4T into the Euler. So doesn't that make it a Sequence?
Or...doesn't an extra turn in combos make the second jump not count?

 

[Amei]

I freaking swear Sasha had one bad competition, coming off an injury no less, and suddenly everyone (including RusFed) is like, okay yes so she's done for. Did she not beat Anna in overall scores for the Russian Cup? Did she not just perform a three-quad program two weeks ago? Did she not just win two Russian Cup events? Did she not just beat Kamila and Daria a month ago? The talk about Sasha in recent days is making her out to be someone who hasn't landed a quad in like two years, not someone who hasn't landed one in one program (she even landed one in the six-minute warmup that day).

For starters at this point I don't think there's been anything officially announced that she had injury, and considering she was jumping in the exhibition and did not alter her FS content at all means that if she was injured then there still some culpability for not changing her layout and having her jump in the exhibition or the injury doesn't matter in relation to her performance. I replied to you on a similar comment you made 2 days ago - this isn't a 1 off bad competition for her, this is her 4th out of 6 competitions in less than a year where it can reasonably be said she performed poorly or far below expectations. And there were still mistakes in the 2 competitions that she won, she got the benefit that she had the technical content over her competitors to absorb her mistakes - which is the same story that happened last year and the end result was that when she went against more clean athletes with the quads or triple axels she lost.

Why do people keep spreading the rumour that Sasha was injured?
Has she or anyone in her team actually confirmed that or is it just the same rumour spread by the unofficial fan club on IG?

Sasha, after her FP, said she doesn't know what happened and at the gala she was doing 3Lz out of a cantilever and things like that, which isn't something a skater coming off an injury would do.

I've not seen anything announced by an official source, only fans circulating it around, probably trying to make an excuse for her poor performance in the FS.

 

[Vlad Karigov]

Yawn. You would be singing another tune if this was a different skater.

What, now read minds ... that's the bad thing about fans who blind themselves to their idols that they should defend them solely because of what they did on ice and not because of the nefarious circus shows they do believing themselves to be coaches ...

 

[rollerblade]

Question:

Sasha's combo 4T+1Eul+3S was first marked 4T+Seq+1Eul+3S. but the TP later removed the 'seq' mark.

Sasha did put in an extra turn after the 4T into the Euler. So doesn't that make it a Sequence?
Or...doesn't an extra turn in combos make the second jump not count?

SEQ is when you don't take off on the landing foot in a combo. It was changed after review... probably because she spun out on the 4T landing, instead of "step-out" they initially thought. (just my guess)

 

[zanadude]

I think Valieva should go back to Exogenesis.

She took your advice! Albeit as an exhibition routine...

 

[ali0125]

No, I shouldn't:

Alina was voted the most popular female ATHLETE in Russia three years in a row (2018/19/20).

As for Kamila, you just need to compare the views of her programmes to the ones of other juniors, and the reactions to her performances by the live audiences vs the other juniors.

Then you put "junior" in front of the "most popular" for Kamila if you were referring she's the most popular junior lady skater in Russia.
Also, I don't know what is the scale of that "most popular female athlete" vote. When we talk about popularity, you at least count the number of instagram followers.

 

[lopsilceci]

Then you put "junior" in front of the "most popular" for Kamila if you were referring she's the most popular junior lady skater in Russia.
Also, I don't know what is the scale of that "most popular female athlete" vote. When we talk about popularity, you at least count the number of instagram followers.

So, in your eyes, youtube views don't count as a measure of popularity, but the number of instagram followers does?

 

[Magill]

So, in your eyes, youtube views don't count as a measure of popularity, but the number of instagram followers does?

Maybe I start by saying that I am pretty sure Kamila (among juniors) and - in particular - Alina are very popular in Russia and whatever I say is not meant to deny this fact. My remarks are of general nature as I see this question of YT views recurrent in this thread.
THE most popular is always tricky because it really depends on how you define "popularity" and subsequently how you measure what you have defined. Using different definitions and different indicators you quite often end up obtaining different results. Number of YT views is quoted often because it is very easy to obtain - you just check the YT and it is shown there. Still, it is not very informative because it says nothing of the number of viewers. You can imagine a small group of die-hard fans watching a clip 24/7 and arriving at the same result as a huge number of people watching it just once each. For the same reason it can be very easily manipulated by PR agencies etc. so it is not very reliable. Therefore it is not considered a very strong indicator. Number of Instagram followers is a stronger indicator because it shows the number of "unique users" i.e. individual followers. That's the difference. Indicators based on the number of individual "unique" users (accounts, IP addresess etc.) would usually be considered stronger and more reliable as more informative and more difficult to manipulate, although, again, it all depends on your definitions and purpose for which you need the numbers.
In any seriuos study you would obviously use more than one indicator to arrive in somewhat reliable result.
NO offence meant to any skater or their fanbase.

 

[Vandevska]

She took your advice! Albeit as an exhibition routine...

The post you quoted is from October 11, are you storing posts to be petty about them later?

 

[yume]

Good news for me since it means Zhenya's maximum is 240+, but I still don't believe it.

I guess I should.

Yes, everyone gets a PB there. Or at least a SB.
That 160 was so unrealistic.

 

[kolyadafan2002]

Question:

Sasha's combo 4T+1Eul+3S was first marked 4T+Seq+1Eul+3S. but the TP later removed the 'seq' mark.

Sasha did put in an extra turn after the 4T into the Euler. So doesn't that make it a Sequence?
Or...doesn't an extra turn in combos make the second jump not count?

I think it gets more confusing when people jump salchof off two feet. Sometimes it can look like a different jump, and sometimes it looks like they made a mistake by putting the other foot down.

Unfortunately (because I like to see it) very few people do one foot salchows anymore.

 

[Novalis]

December 5-8.

Predictions:

In seniors the main competition will be between Kostornaia, Valieva and after the Rostelecom also Tuktamysveva's chances can't be ignored. My estimation is that Kostornaia won't restore her 3A into the competitive form yet, but even without it she had higher score at the stage 4 than Tuktamysheva at Rostelecom. It's of course only a vague comparison, but it shows she can aspire for victory. As for Valieva, with her it will depend on how clean she can be. If she will skate as she did at the gala in sunday, I doubt she could be defeated, but but it seems she sometimes can be too nervous. Tuktamysheva's performace from the Rostelecom will be probably her golden standard, unless she adds her quad into the program I don't think she can perform better currently.

In juniors the big draw will be between Petrosian and Zhilina. Veronika already does quads, though her attempt at the previous stage was unsuccesful. She also did 4Lz in training if I'm not mistaken. Adeliya has shown very good skating at the stage four, though not without mistakes in the free program. Recently she added 4T into her portfolio, but I don't know whether it's competition ready.

There was news that Sofia Samodelkina is also back for this one. So her injury wasn't that bad. This is why I'm expecting her to be in the mix, probably even the favorite.

 

[JazzUp]

Then you put "junior" in front of the "most popular" for Kamila if you were referring she's the most popular junior lady skater in Russia.
Also, I don't know what is the scale of that "most popular female athlete" vote. When we talk about popularity, you at least count the number of instagram followers.

Again, I shouldn't - because I wrote that Alina & Kamila were "two most popular ladies' skaters in their respective categories in Russia". I hope you know that in FS we have senior, junior, novice categories?

As for the scale of the "most popular female athlete" vote, in 2018 & 2019 the polling by phone was done by VTsIOM (All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre, sort of a Russian Gallup), in 2020 it was done by MatchTV (VTsIOM does the polling by the end of the year, so it's not available yet) on four different sm platforms with registration for votes confirmed by sms minimizing bot activity - all three times polling was done among thousands of Russians.

Don't worry though, after stages of denial and bargaining, acceptance (of the fact that Alina & Kamila are the most popular ones at the moment) will definitely come in the end, I'm positive

 

[Alex65]

Question:

Sasha's combo 4T+1Eul+3S was first marked 4T+Seq+1Eul+3S. but the TP later removed the 'seq' mark.

Sasha did put in an extra turn after the 4T into the Euler. So doesn't that make it a Sequence?
Or...doesn't an extra turn in combos make the second jump not count?

I think the Seq sign means a change of edge between jumps. Since the mark has disappeared, it means the rib has not changed. The turn led to a decrease in GOE.
I will add that, in my opinion, some skaters, like Ryabova and some others, could have a mark Seq for their combos, since their technique forces them to change edges between jumps. However, the judges don't care at all.

 

[Novalis]

And wasn't Sinitsyna coming back for this one as well. I seem to remember some positive news about that. Medvedeva is surely out though

 

[Skatesocs]

Then you put "junior" in front of the "most popular" for Kamila if you were referring she's the most popular junior lady skater in Russia.

They kind of did, indirectly.

invite the two most popular ladies' skaters in their respective categories in Russia,

At least I took "in their respective categories" as "junior lady " for Valieva, vs "senior lady" for Zagitova.

edit: oh lol they already responded, nvm.

 

[silveruskate]

What, now read minds ... that's the bad thing about fans who blind themselves to their idols that they should defend them solely because of what they did on ice and not because of the nefarious circus shows they do believing themselves to be coaches ...

Yet I'm not even a Plushenko fan. Your attempt at mind-reading was unsuccessful.

 

[Skatesocs]

Question:

Sasha's combo 4T+1Eul+3S was first marked 4T+Seq+1Eul+3S. but the TP later removed the 'seq' mark.

Sasha did put in an extra turn after the 4T into the Euler. So doesn't that make it a Sequence?
Or...doesn't an extra turn in combos make the second jump not count?

I was curious how they called that too. Usually, I think they just call it First Jump + 3S + SEQ, but here they threw in the +Eu as well, and called the sequence after the first jump.


What happens on those calls usually is a weight shift onto the right foot for the salchow. You could look at Patrick Chan's 2017 Worlds LP with his 3A+2S sequence. He had a hand down on the 3A, and as he tried to correct it, he falters and shifts his weight onto the right foot. Or Hanyu's 2014 Sochi LP with his +3S sequence.

Here, we see Trusova three turn out of her 4T, and they had the call as 4T+SEQ+Eu+3S. I am guessing they initially thought the 4T was two-footed and that she shifted her weight too much onto the left foot. Or that when she was three turning out of the jump, she did something wrong in their eyes (a double three out of a jump between a combo is "allowed" but takes a GOE deduction. So they probably would have thought she shifted her weight incorrectly during it for them to call it a sequence).