2018-19 European Ladies' figure skating | Page 2 | Golden Skate

2018-19 European Ladies' figure skating

eppen

Medalist
Joined
Mar 28, 2006
Country
Spain
There are some juniors/emerging seniors who are promising - Lucrezia Beccari from Italy will still be junior this season (born in December 2003), but she did quite good last season in the junior circuit. Anita Östlund from Sweden competed already in seniors last season, has the goods but we'll see if she can compete consistently. Some of the Finnish girls show promise - Sofia Sula has grown a lot of height from last year and that maybe showed a little in Austria. Plus apparently she was trying out new jump combination(s).

I don't know whether they will be able to get to the Russian level ever, though. Their field seems soooooo deep at the moment that it seems unlikely that in the next couple of years anyone but Russian ladies will make it to the top of the podium at Europeans. But these things move in waves it seems - Russian ladies dominated the European scene in late 1990s/early2000s and then they just disappeared for a couple of years from the podium almost completely until the development probably fro Sochi brought them back again.

E
 

leoleo

Medalist
Joined
Jul 5, 2018
I just want to say thank you Russia for landing us such a beautiful skater :agree: France might actually go somewhere in the future with this girl. :hap10:
 

Orlov

Medalist
Joined
Jun 19, 2018
The question of sending kids to Russia is hard to answer. For me as a parent it would be extremely hard to send my child anywhere on bigger part of year, thats for sure.
Don't sell yourself short there (не прибедняйтесь), Oleg Vladimirovich :)
 

plushyfan

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 27, 2012
Country
Hungary
I believe Ivett Toth has potential and Hungary has some other promising girls. We have no enough ice rinks and it seems we have no enough good coaches . The trainings are concentrated in 3-4 cities.
 

lavenderblossom

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 24, 2017
I just want to say thank you Russia for landing us such a beautiful skater :agree: France might actually go somewhere in the future with this girl. :hap10:

Don't forget you have Laurine Lecavelier in seniors, with a personal best of 188 :roll5: Last season for her was rough, but when things come together she has high scoring potential.
 

yume

🍉
Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 11, 2016
Don't forget you have Laurine Lecavelier in seniors, with a personal best of 188 :roll5: Last season for her was rough, but when things come together she has high scoring potential.

I love how Maé is always forgotten and underestimated. Last season i think everyone thought that she had no chance to beat Laurine and go to olympics. She maybe doesn't have the best potential scoring now, but she stills there and maybe can improve with a healthy knee.

Julie Froestcher will be senior this season so it will be interesting to see what she can do. I hope at least a challenger for her since she doesn't have a GP.
 

Jeanie19

Record Breaker
Joined
Oct 20, 2017
Country
United-States
Two juniors that I like a lot that I hope will continue to improve.
Lara Gutmann of Italy and Kim Cheremsky of Aze.
 

Bluediamonds09

Medalist
Joined
Sep 8, 2016
I love how Maé is always forgotten and underestimated. Last season i think everyone thought that she had no chance to beat Laurine and go to olympics. She maybe doesn't have the best potential scoring now, but she stills there and maybe can improve with a healthy knee.

But, the judges do not care for Mae. It’s crucial to have the judges like you.

Laurine had a rough season last year because of the coaching change, troubles with her Visa, etc. At least I hope that was the reason, because she does have high scoring potential.

Ivett is not very consistent unfortunately and doesn’t have high scoring potential.😕

My favorite Loena Hendrickx just needs to go out and be 90% or more for the first few competitions and that’s how u get your scores to rise and rise.
 

yume

🍉
Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 11, 2016
But, the judges do not care for Mae. It’s crucial to have the judges like you.

Laurine had a rough season last year because of the coaching change, troubles with her Visa, etc. At least I hope that was the reason, because she does have high scoring potential.
.
Yes the judges don't like her or like her less than Laurine. But that doesn't mean that she can't get some results. Last season was not easy for her too. She was still recovering from an injury and skated all the season with something on her knee. That doesn't stop her to beat Laurine 4 times.
I agree, Laurine have higher potential scoring but Maé is not completely dead. I don't think improving her potential scoring is absolutely impossible for her. She has room for improvement on TES at least.
 

Tolstoj

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 21, 2015
European figure skating needs to be collectively reformed just like US figure skating just reformed itself. I honestly think there needs to be a European development meta-federation... one that put's on a European novice and junior championship and/or it's own internal grand prix(like Russia's Cup of Russia events) and then gives funds to those who do well. And maybe have it serve as a qualifier for junior worlds and/or the junior grand prix as IMO there are too many skaters at the events IMO. I honestly think many of these skaters would have more fun in a "euro skate league" rather than going to grand prix events/junior worlds and then getting wrecked by Russians. Figure skating would be better for spectators with more Europeans who are competitive, fewer non-competitive Europeans at the big events, and some specialized events for the mid level skaters.

Carolina Kostner is still the best European hope. When she retires, the top non-Russian European skaters will probably be Anastasia Arkhipova from Ukraine and Ekaterina Kurakova who is Russian but is likely going to skate for Poland.

The European ladies with grand prix events are Loena Hendrickx, Laurine Lacavelier, Nicole Schott, and Carolina Kostner with 2 events and then Viveca Lindfords, Mae-Berenice Meite, Matilda Algotsson, and Alexia Paganini with one event. Nicole Rajicova withdrew from 2 events.

Besides Anna Kuzmenko, there are a few more Russian skaters switching countries... and it's something that should be talked about because there's going to be more transfers in the near future... and it'll be interesting to see how this trend is greeted.

Polina Shuboderova is a russian skater who will be skating for Israel. She left Eteri and then injured her foot. It'll be interesting to see what kind of shape she's in. She's fun to watch but don't really expect her to be a medal contender.
Ekaterina Kurakova is a russian skater who is likely to be skating for Poland. She can do a 4S... she pretty good but has had bad outings at the events which decide who goes to the junior grand prix. She did really well in 2016 and 2017 at the Mentor Torun Cup and was the highlight of the galas which is probably why she would be skating for Poland.
Ekaterina Ryabova is a skater from Russia listed to skate for Azerbaijan. Good jumper but kind of lacks in performance.

I think the last two Russian ladies singles skaters that tried to switch countries were Polina Shelepen and Elizaveta Yushenko... both for Israel. It didn't work out for either but their bodies were changing in a way not good for skating and their coaching wasn't as good as when they had good results.

Pogorilaya could potentially skate for Latvia now... looking at Wikipedia, it seems Latvia typically doesn't allow dual citizenship for Russians but marriage is an exception... but in doing so she's be stepping on the toes of Diana Nikitina and Angelina Kuchvalska. I worry about her health though but everything wants to skate in the Olympics.
Medvedeva could potentially skate for Armenia... citizenship should be easy if her father has Armenian citizenship. But I don't think Russia will ever let her switch... at least before 2022. She may have to contend herself with the grand prix and shows and being a sub for worlds.
Cyprus and Belarus would probably be the two easiest countries to switch to... though nobody has yet. But there's going to be a glut of potential transfers and more willingness to let people go. Tuktamysheva has never skated in an Olympics yet and I could see the Fed letting her go.

And there's a few Americans skating for European countries. Nicole Rajicova for Slovakia and Alexia Paganini for the US. They're both at a level where they'd potentially get grand prix spots were they still skating for the US. Sophia Tsintsadze could potentially skate for Georgia.

Olga Mikutina is an Austrian skater originally from Ukraine. She scored in the mid 150s last year but had a bad outing this week. TBH, I'm not that optimistic about her future but wonder what could have been had she gotten better coaching.

They won't ever do that. I don't know if you live in EU or not, but we are all very proud to represent our country and there is rivalry, that's part of the reason we may also never see the "United states of Europe".

Here in Italy besides Carolina, we have Lucrezia Beccari and Lucrezia Gennaro, but most of our ladies have rotation issues, they need to fix that and train 3-3 combos otherwise they are not competitive. I don't know what happened to Roberta Rodeghiero.

Anna Kuzmenko looked very strong, is Laurine still in US with Kori Ade? Two years back she was very solid while last season was a bit of a disaster.

What happened to Angelina Kuchvalska?

Alexia Paganini will continue to compete for Switzerland i think, it's an easier way to get spots for international competitions, she is very promising, if she continue to work on the jumps 2-3 years from now she can be a top skater in Europe.
 

NaVi

Medalist
Joined
Oct 30, 2014
They won't ever do that. I don't know if you live in EU or not, but we are all very proud to represent our country and there is rivalry, that's part of the reason we may also never see the "United states of Europe".

Skaters would still represent their countries... all this would be is an youth participation competition for funding... and potentially a way to cull skaters for junior worlds/junior grand prix. Doing this would allow european skaters an easier chance of gaining a medal of significance.

Anyway, European skating is falling behind. More and more of their top skaters will be imports from Russia and the US... and more and more of their top skaters will be training in the US, Canada, or Russia.
 

hanca

Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
I think with the experience of how EU works, I don’t think there will be many people keen to replicate the same thing within skating. I don’t think many skating federations would willingly joined such a project.
 

hanca

Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Anyway, European skating is falling behind. More and more of their top skaters will be imports from Russia and the US... and more and more of their top skaters will be training in the US, Canada, or Russia.

European skating is not falling behind. After two events of JGP, europe took most of the medals from both events. Yes, it was Russia but Russia is in Europe.
 

NaVi

Medalist
Joined
Oct 30, 2014
European skating is not falling behind. After two events of JGP, europe took most of the medals from both events. Yes, it was Russia but Russia is in Europe.

Eh, in this thread European usually means non-Russian European. I'm mostly concerned with raising the standard of skating from European countries so that the European championships are more entertaining.
 

Tolstoj

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 21, 2015
Eh, in this thread European usually means non-Russian European. I'm mostly concerned with raising the standard of skating from European countries so that the European championships are more entertaining.

Personally i don't quite understand how "cold" countries like Sweden, Norway, and even Finland haven't developed yet a pool of skaters and infrastructures to make this happen.

They don't have financial issues, they are cold countries so people there should be more interested on winter sports,... Yes there were some skater coming from Finland or Sweden but still they are like Carolina (i'd say not even as successful as her), one in 10-20 years with no following.
 

hanca

Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Eh, in this thread European usually means non-Russian European. I'm mostly concerned with raising the standard of skating from European countries so that the European championships are more entertaining.

Oh, so Europeans standards are not up to your standard? What about 4CC, do you think the standard there is higher than at Europeans? Let me see, after all these retirements there will be one decent pair (Sui/Han), nothing that high from USA or Canada... pretty decent ice dance, yes, men too (if one doesn’t mind that they all come from only three countries - USA, Canada and Japan), decent ladies but only from Japan.... so how is that that much better than in Europe?
 

yume

🍉
Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 11, 2016
Oh, so Europeans standards are not up to your standard? What about 4CC, do you think the standard there is higher than at Europeans? Let me see, after all these retirements there will be one decent pair (Sui/Han), nothing that high from USA or Canada... pretty decent ice dance, yes, men too (if one doesn’t mind that they all come from only three countries - USA, Canada and Japan), decent ladies but only from Japan.... so how is that that much better than in Europe?
I think it's more
Men: Japan+USA+Canada+China
Ladies: Japan+USA+Canada+South Korea
Podiums or top 5 of these last 3-4 seasons are made by these countries. There is even Kazhakstan who won in 2015.
 

Shayuki

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 2, 2013
Personally i don't quite understand how "cold" countries like Sweden, Norway, and even Finland haven't developed yet a pool of skaters and infrastructures to make this happen.

They don't have financial issues, they are cold countries so people there should be more interested on winter sports,... Yes there were some skater coming from Finland or Sweden but still they are like Carolina (i'd say not even as successful as her), one in 10-20 years with no following.
Finland's all about ice hockey. That takes cares of essentially all boys.

There also is the typical Finnish "loser attitude" issue with ladies' figure skating where they're just there to have fun and no one takes anything seriously nor is anyone expecting anyone to take it seriously. The skaters say that they never have clean practice run-throughs and it's considered a miracle to have a clean skate. Such a waste.
 

snowflake

I enjoy what I like
Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 10, 2008
Personally i don't quite understand how "cold" countries like Sweden, Norway, and even Finland haven't developed yet a pool of skaters and infrastructures to make this happen.

They don't have financial issues, they are cold countries so people there should be more interested on winter sports,... Yes there were some skater coming from Finland or Sweden but still they are like Carolina (i'd say not even as successful as her), one in 10-20 years with no following.

Off topic, short answer: Living in 'cold' countries means lots of interest in doing winter sports. Most done outdoors on snow like downhill disciplines, snowboard, cross country, biathlon etc. Anyway, actually there is right now a discussion in Swedish sports media about the lack of ice halls(and lots of them close in summertime) and out door rinks for figure skaters and hockey players. Resulting in that figure skating clubs have to say no to people who want to start skating.

Here is one article for those who understand Swedish. It's also about getting children more physically activated by letting them involve in organized sports that they wish to do.


Swedish National team:


Will be interesting to see how Anita develops. Ambitious but inconsistent so far. Selma also in the top group although she can’t compete as a senior internationally until next season

Happy to see Josefin and Matilda keeping on and getting support.

Perhaps the junior group is a bit weak? But there are always late bloomers :)

Congrats to the novices Julia,Tova and Emelie as challengers :thumbsup:

Anita’s toe quad attempt in may.

GO all!
 
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