Finlandia onsite reports

I'm not great at "reporting" but I'll try to post some comments about my experiences at Finlandia over the weekend. Hopefully others will too? I know I'm not the only GS poster attending...

Anyway, here I am in Finland. Weather is not as wet as forecasts suggested, so far at least. I considered trying to blag my way into the practices today, despite being told by the organisers that they were not open to the public. But I didn't bother in the end, did a bit of shopping then did a lot of eating, drinking, and watching Poland JGP instead.

Went to the draw this evening. Got worried and a little disappointed because not many skaters were there at first... but they arrived in droves after a short while, via shuttle buses. So it was well-attended after all, although there were still some absentees (eg. most Russians, I think only Stolbova/Klimov and Leonova were there).

As always, it's wonderful to see the skaters interacting with each other, and getting along so well.

The organisers didn't do the usual "pull a number from the bag" draw... instead, the skaters had to pick from a bunch of "goody bags" on a table - each bag had a different number inside (along with the "goodies") on a folded piece of paper...

A few snapshots from the draw:
Yuna Shiraiwa and "hot coach" Yamato
Kevin Reynolds
Gabby Daleman
Boyangman

More tomorrow. Maybe. It looks like it will be a loooong day...

Hi YesWay, I am asking if you will go to Cup Of Russia?
Thank you very much for the reports.

Ender said:

Hi YesWay, I am asking if you will go to Cup Of Russia?
Thank you very much for the reports.

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Unfortunately, no. I think Finlandia will be my last trip this season, to watch in person...

YesWay said:

Unfortunately, no. I think Finlandia will be my last trip this season, to watch in person...

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Too bad, not even WC in Milan?

Ender said:

Too bad, not even WC in Milan?

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'fraid not... extortionate ticket prices for Milan... and we're cutting down on the competitions anyway, due to anticipated changes in circumstances...

BTW, the Finnish skating union has some nice snaps on their snapchat and instagram stories. Account name "skatingfinland"

It's late, it was a long day of practices and competitions, and we rushed back to our apartment to catch the last group of Ladies in the JGP... so my apologies, but this will be extremely short... cos I'm worn out...!

Scrappy singles competitions, clean skates seemed a rarity... I prefer not to pick out individuals and their mistakes, suffice to say I was hoping for much better from such distinguished fields! In the ladies, Sotskova was one of the few who impressed - largely because although she was looking shakey in 6-minute warmup, she delivered when it mattered in the competition...

Hoping for better tomorrow...! We're going to skip the morning practices to get some rest. Maybe I will have time to post a couple of photos tomorrow morning, before we leave for the rink and the first competition of the day...

Elizavera jumped a lot during practice, clean triples after another.

Many skaters were exercising in the same lobby where the fast food restaurants and the entries to the seats are. A little bit confusing because I was thinking am I in the right place.and finally I was not when I went to look for a ladies room. But the security people wdre friendly and understanding. Somebody had removed the no exit sign.

A few random snaps from yesterday:

Peng/Jin

Adam Rippon

Roman Sadovsky

Elizaveta Tuktamysheva

The clapping things again. A security man told couple of little girls to calm down with those things.

Thanks SO MUCH for these reports!! Next best thing to being there...

Wow. This competition has already become one of the most memorable I've been to, but for the "wrong" reasons!

A lot of disappointing performances yesterday... some "issues" at the arena (which I might go into later, or perhaps not because I'm likely to rant at length if I get started)... and the fire alarm went off today during the Men's FS, so the whole arena had to evacuate -_-

Some wonderful skating in the short dance... I love the latin styles so I was pretty much going to enjoy it no matter what... Papadakis/Cizeron were fabulous, loved Stepanova/Bukin, and wonderful to see Hurtado/Khaliavin too.

Hmm. And then came the Pairs FS... gasps and shocks in Stolbova/Klimov's skate Twist was not great, but that doesn't seem unusual for them, and apart from that they looked on fire! SBS jumps and spins and throw jumps were great, I really liked their choreography and they were delivering it beautifully and passionately... and then those lifts! Heavy fall for Klimov after Stolbova came down prematurely and landed on his foot... so sad for them, but I loved how sympathetic and comforting Ksenia was afterwards. (Especially given that there have been times in the past, when her reactions did not seem so kind ) Well, they managed to hang onto the podium...

Men's FS... ah... men's competitions... never know what's going to happen in a men's competition!

We had 4 men attempt 4Lz in this one competition! It's only a couple of years since the very idea would have seemed laughably ridiculous and impossible, yet here we are...

Brezina was probably the best I've ever seen him, yesterday and today...

Vincent Zhou was technically very impressive, great comeback after yesterday...

Ross Miner delivered an outstanding foot-stomping rabble-rousing performance after the fire alarm and a second warmup! The crowd loved it!

It seems Adam couldn't allow himself to be left out of the 4Lz gang, UR and fall though. Regardless, his "bird" FS was simply wonderful (as ever)...

I thought Boyang was very lacklustre and his performance rather "empty". Frankly, I was disappointed - despite moments of technical excellence. I think he is capable of much, much more than this... and hopefully we will see that as the season progresses...

Kolyada made some huge and bizarre mistakes... and unexpectedly, he didn't make it onto the podium

Had a chat with Roman Sadovsky outside the arena, during the fire alarm evacuation. He is so tall now! Still charming of course. Hadn't realised he was no longer at Cricket Club? Oops

Cool and stylish Luhta stuff is going for nice discounts, at the stall inside the arena. SWMBO was magnetically drawn to it, and our bank account is now rather more empty...!

Well. Looking forward to Ladies FS tomorrow - everything to play for! And the free dance of course!

The highlight of the day for me was the SD of Gabriella and Guillaume. They were amazing, I'm a big fan. They and the Danish couple were the best for me.
I had a great seat, row 7, and I saw nicely the expressions when they did the pattern.
I got nice photos of Betina and Sergei and Stepanova/ Bukin off ice and one of Gabriella on Friday and Guillaume on Saturday.
I wonder what happened to Roman Galay, FIN, I saw him in the audience. Doesn't he compete anymore... I saw Rahkamo and Kokko, too, on Saturday. It was another long day, I left at 9.40 a.m. and returned home at 23.45.

YesWay said:

Had a chat with Roman Sadovsky outside the arena, during the fire alarm evacuation. He is so tall now! Still charming of course. Hadn't realised he was no longer at Cricket Club? Oops

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Although his ISU bio hasn't been fully updated to reflect this, Roman himself has stated in July that he's just under 6 feet (so I assume he's 182 cm). He's one of several TALL Canadian men's singles skaters which also includes Nicolas Nadeau, Conrad Orzel and Nam Nguyen; I even mentioned in the 2017 Junior Worlds thread that Nadeau, Sadovsky and Orzel were probably the tallest men's singles contingent to ever be sent to an international competition.

Kurt Browning had reported during the CBC commentary of Junior Worlds that Roman had returned to Tracey Wainman a week before this event; the young man had suffered from various injuries while training at the Cricket Club, which almost never happened when he was the YRSA (Roman withdrew from the Bavarian Open because of these injuries), plus he and Orser had disagreed about whether or not he should compete at Junior Worlds: https://vimeo.com/210127113

I saw Maria Sotskova and she had some kind of heals. She is tall, maybe one of the tallest female skaters ever? I checked and she is now 173 cm.

TT_Fin said:

I saw Maria Sotskova and she had some kind of heals. She is tall, maybe one of the tallest female skaters ever? I checked and she is now 173 cm.

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She looks a tad taller than Kostner when they stand side by side. But I think Polina Tsurskaya is a tad taller than Maria. Polina Edmunds who was also here is quite tall if not taller than those three.

TT_Fin said:

The clapping things again. A security man told couple of little girls to calm down with those things.

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Question: Does anybody know what's the word for those cardboard clapping thingys?

Ah, that horde of little skating fan girls (I think they were all girls?) on Saturday, close to where I was sitting, arrhythmically clapping away... They were soooo cute and a bit annoying at the same time, but you just can't be too grumpy with them and their enthusiasm!

Haven't watched the comp vids yet, but it'll be interesting to hear how much of the out-of-time percussive track they provided made its way to the audio.

On Sunday, the audience highlight for me was this super perky & out-going little girl wearing her sparkly peach princess dress and sturdy winter boots combo (very stylish!) prancing up and down the stairs & twirling around & kicking her legs between the skaters' performances. I think it's safe to say that if she's an aspiring young skater, she's a singles skater and not synchro girl!

(Sorry Team USA men & pairs who provided good audience support for team mates & various other skaters during ladies FS and FD, you would've gotten my Audience Award had it not been for that peach princess!)

Thanks to everyone who posted onsite reports.

My thoughts:

The arena is beautiful. I love that there are no plastic barriers as in Ondrej Nepela two weeks ago.
They were smart in that they sold roses to throw on the ice. I think they made a good profit with those
Food was very expensive, unfortunately.

The audience was supportive of all the skaters, especially if they made mistakes or something happened outside their control (like the fire alarm or when Fedor Klimov has issues with his boot).

A couple sitting near the judging panel had flags of loads of countries, not just the ones you expect, like the US, Russia or Japan. Loved that.
I had a good time talking to other fans. A lot came from Finland, obviously, but there were quite a few who had flown in as well.
Figure skating is definitely popular in Finland. Emmi Peltonen seemed a favourite with the kids, she's surely inspiring to a lot of them.

The fire alarm might have been much more disruptive, had the audience not been so calm and easy-going about it. The two skaters who had to redo warm-up were cheered extra afterwards.

I loved the competition. At home, I don't watch much pairs or dance, but I love seeing it for real. The people sitting near me were dance fans and their enthusiasm was buzzing around me when it started.
Vincent Zhou's quads were also great to watch.
This was also the first time I really enjoyed watching Maria Sotskova. She showed fire in her SP.
It was also cool that Maral-Erdene Gansukh was there to represent Mongolia:thumbsup:


All in all, a great experience! Thank you, Finland:agree:

I really hope that next year the metro will go from Helsinki to Espoo.. We've been waiting for it for about 3 years. I didn't like waiting for the buses in the rain...
I forgot to mention that I saw 'Rocker skating', Jackie, many times on Saturday.