2013 Worlds Men LP

wallylutz said:

Indeed, all those people on GS suddenly demanding that Ten be handed the World title never even talked about this guy before - hey, some didn't even know he existed prior to this competition. What does this say? Ten is at the right place and time. My assessment of his performance tonight is that the scores he received had some psychological boost based on what happened before him. After Chan's skate, I felt extremely disappointed and really didn't want to see him win another World title with such a skate - for his own good and his future development. I am sure many on the judging panel felt the same way too. Therefore, Ten's superior performance became the closest thing to put a nicer cover page on tomorrow's ISU main news site, as opposed to having to describe the World Champion as having two falls and 4 errors in total. If it were not for the fact there was a strong knee-jerk reaction to a "Anyone but Chan", Ten wouldn't have received such high scores, not even close.

Don't get me wrong. I first saw him at the LA Worlds in 2009 and was very impressed. What I saw tonight up close is a guy who still needs polishing in terms of his in-between and presentation. Not quite at the level to be a solid top 5 in the world, yet. This does not mean he shouldn't be top 5 or on the podium. Rather, in this competition he was better than most but the result is due to poor performances on the part of other skaters who would have easily beaten him if they had skated to their potential.

You take note of each and every poster who is claiming Ten's robbed in this thread and wait till next season. Trust me, many of them will quickly be changing tune and claim memory loss just as fast when they no longer need Ten to verbally abuse Chan.

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Look I agree with you Wally that Denis got a little lucky a lot of men didn't skate well...However, this is suppose to be a competition not a political game.

Part of what makes sports existing at least the good ones is that people can come out and pull surprises....That its not predetermined sometimes someone can pull the upset.

It would be one thing if Patrick had skated similar to how Joubert skated when Daisuke one the free and Joubert won based on the short. In that skate Joubert just played it really safe, he still though skated well. I could live with Patrick winning in that case.

However Patrick and a lot of the top men were terrible. Daisuke got hit hard for being terrible-why didn't Patrick.

Denis Ten may need some polishing (although I will say I think in terms of emotions he's better than Patrick) however I would hardly call Ten a sloppy he skater. He's actually a beautiful skater. A part of me prefers the Rach passionate Ten.

He presented high quality technical content in terms of jumps, excellent spins and a great performance that won him a standing ovation from the guy who was in firsts home country.

Denis was the only skater in the competition who presented two beautiful programs (not just one) and displayed consistency throughout.

Will he continue to do this in the future- who knows. It may have been his Buttle moment although he is very young. However the point of the matter he did do that. And his performance was far more watchable than what Chan put out.

You want to talk about in betweens, well in betweens are good but there was nothing wrong with Ten's program, it was a lovely program, and he actually EXECUTED his program well.

Its figure skating not figure falling. Staying on your feet and executing your elements should actually matter. I'd have no problem if Chan had fallen once and skated beautifully for the rest. Patrick is a gorgeous skater. But what he put out tonight was not gorgeous skater and didn't merit the highest P/E score of the evening.

Your whole well nobody talked about Ten in the past highights the issue for everyone. The feeling that Chan is the preedetermined winner. And that it doesn't matter how Patrick skates, the other skates have to be picture perfect and Chan can get away with falling at least 2/3 times. Its ridiculous. nobody considers falling 2/3 times in your performance a good program... Or skating at its best.

If you can't understand how great it would have been for the sport for somebody to be able to pull out a surprise worlds win. How needed it is for the sport's credibility....

There's too many posts that I would like to reply to at this point, but my personal opinion on the matter is that this Worlds is far, far from anything we'd like. Elaboration need not be given, as it would be pretty much redundant. I do agree on other placements, but not the major ones that have been discussed thus far. Great job to Fernandez and Hanyu for giving it their all, and I feel for Daisuke, hope the Olympic spirit is still burning in him. I also feel for Joubert, he may not be everyone's favorite, but I admire how long he's been in the game. My friend and I couldn't understand why he was marked so low when the scores were just up (I was, sadly, unable to watch live), but it's justifiable. What could have been if he had been able to perform another triple.
So far, V/T's gold is the only indisputable placement.

Skater Boy said:

Well if we are having fake champions we must have fake medallists we would have a huge list - Carolina Kostner, Evan Lycacek, S/S from Germany, Kimmie Meisner (blah), lindemann, Chait and S, ...

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Wait. How are those "fake" champions? As far as I know, they skated the best the night that it mattered and were within striking distance. :scratch:

I watched the performances and Ten was cleaner by far however the program is sufficiently weaker than Chan, Hanyu, Takahasi, Fernandez et al when it comes to pcs. He just doesn't have the presence or confidence - his skating was a bit tentative.

Skater Boy said:

Well if we are having fake champions we must have fake medallists we would have a huge list - Carolina Kostner, Evan Lycacek, S/S from Germany, Kimmie Meisner (blah), lindemann, Chait and S, ...

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at least they dont fall multiple times like Chanflated Fraud

aftertherain said:

Wait. How are those "fake" champions? As far as I know, they skated the best the night that it mattered and were within striking distance. :scratch:

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Not true - plushenko skated the best at the 2010 Olympics. Not HIS best but the best. No one was close.

Skater Boy said:

I watched the performances and Ten was cleaner by far however the program is sufficiently weaker than Chan, Hanyu, Takahasi, Fernandez et al when it comes to pcs. He just doesn't have the presence or confidence - his skating was a bit tentative.

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Once again "confidence is subjective" The fact of the matter is none of the men in question skated well and in some cases were quite disasterous. Ten got a standing ovation.

We aren't talking about a Timothy Goebel type of skater here.

I am not sure how multiple falls, pops etc shows "confidence"

With the way some people talk, I don't get why we bother have a competition for gold. Just give it to Chan. Let everyone else compete for silver.

VIETgrlTerifa said:

The way some people talk, I don't get why we bother have a competition for gold. Just give it to Chan. Let everyone else compete for silver.

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Like Plushy in 2006, except he never really fell, did he?

aftertherain said:

Like Plushy in 2006, except he never really fell, did he?

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So not like Plushy, Plushenko actually delivered his jumps.

Joubert should have finished in the top 5 - not down in 9th. He didn't fall on his backside like many of the others - all he did was under rotate a couple of jumps.

Still, Joubert skated great and both he and the audience were happy with how he did and Brian can feel good that unlike Patrick and some of the others who undeservedly finished so high, he went out on a high note at his last Worlds.

sky_fly20 said:

at least they dont fall multiple times like Chanflated Fraud

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Lovely nickname! Chanflated Fraud

So I'm going to take a break from all this Chan talk and give my opinion on Max Aaron now that I've seen his FS. So we can go on about what he lacks, but here's what I liked:

-- Speed. Amazing speed. He needs to work on finessing that speed, but what amazes me is that he doesn't have to do a ton of crossovers to get there...in fact while he doesn't have the BEST transitions, he doesn't lack them either.
-- Core strength. I mentioned this when noting his collision on the boards after the 3A. He could have fell, but he definitely had the core strength to stay upright despite crashing super fast.
-- Plan B. When he missed his 4S jump, he smartly replaced the 2A-1L-3S with a 3Z-1L-3S to get extra points. Clearly he had this plan B in the wings.
-- You get the sense that he practices like this every day. He seems to know the program inside and out and really depends on muscle memory when things are off.

So yes, he needs to work on better choreography. And better skating skills. But I think he brings a lot to the table too and I'll be rooting for him (actually I had him as a dark horse a while ago) from here on out.

Max Aaron was impressive for all the above reasons. I'm just not convinced that I'll ever really enjoy his skating. Oh well, all my favorites tend to be headcases, so I should be used to having skaters I don't particularly like experience more success. Glad his fans are happy, and that he can actually deliver most of his planned elements.

Bluebonnet said:

You were talking about the curse. I was talking about that too. What problem? Lysacek was hated by many too at that time.

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The Canadian curse means that Canadian male singles skaters as the reigning World champions have not won the gold medal at the Olympics:

Orser
Browning twice
Stojko

On the other hand every US male singles skater as the reigning World champion has won the gold at the Olympics:

Button
Hayes Alan Jenkins
David Jenkins
Hamilton
Lysacek

VIETgrlTerifa said:

Max Aaron was impressive for all the above reasons. I'm just not convinced that I'll ever really enjoy his skating. Oh well, all my favorites tend to be headcases, so I should be used to having skaters I don't particularly like experience more success. Glad his fans are happy, and that he can actually deliver most of his planned elements.

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That's okay. You are not obligated to enjoy any skater. I promise. I get why some people don't care for him, but I personally can appreciate him for the above reasons and enjoy his programs.

Also I just watched Ross Miner's FS. I was sort of dreading it as the way people were talking it was a complete meltdown. It wasn't. Granted it was far, far from his best, but by no means are we talking Alissa Czisny-level circa last year meltdown. He's had a few bad competitions and I'm hoping it will put a fire under him to improve like it did when he had a poor GP a few seasons back and struggled with the 3A.

It wasn't only a Canadian curse before Vancouver. People simply called it the World Champion's curse since it also happened to Plushenko in 2002 and Lambiel in 2006. I remember many people, who believed in the curse (either sincerely or jokingly), thought Evan would succumb to it as well. Once Scott Hamilton pointed out that the curse didn't affect an American World Champion coming into the Olympics and Evan won Vancouver, then people started to either talk about the American exception or calling it a Canadian Curse.

Ryan O said:

Joubert should have finished in the top 5 - not down in 9th. He didn't fall on his backside like many of the others - all he did was under rotate a couple of jumps.

Still, Joubert skated great and both he and the audience were happy with how he did and Brian can feel good that unlike Patrick and some of the others who undeservedly finished so high, he went out on a high note at his last Worlds.

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I would have like Joubert to have placed higher as well, but his last jump element was not ratified because he repeated too many jumps, not just because he had some under rotations.

bekalc said:

So not like Plushy, Plushenko actually delivered his jumps.

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Plushenko earned his status because when he won an event it was usually because he never fell. 2004 euros he lost and did he fall in 2004 worlds? But anyway 90% or more no falls ever. He was just much much better than chan was in how he won events!

On a side note though, did anyone else notice that Denis' programs both used music from The Artist? I don't know why, but I kind of like the idea of having two programs compliment each other like that. I am all for skaters conveying a story in their performance, and I personally think that this isn't a bad method of doing so. Not that I have anything against contrasting programs to show diversity though.