2019 Rostelecom Day 2

1111bm said:

Oh, is that by any chance the same guy as here?? :think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPqkH9VSLlY&t=231

(always had me wondering why a, I assume, stranger from the audience was hugging her...)

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No it's not him.

Orlov said:

It is often shown on TV when the reaction of the stands is shown. At the stage in France he was with Alina's Russian group of fans. (Here Peter is standing right under the inscription "France" in the left corner of the screen) They say that he's a good guy))
So don’t be offended by him too much - he is just big fan

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No, I was not offended - I asked him as polite as I could to be quiter and so he was. A very nice person, indeed.

Mishaminion said:

Isn't a lot of this "change the rules, change the scoring ... talk that goes on also people trying to impose their likes on figure skating as a whole?

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I think it is more that the ISU has it's own vision of what the sport should be. To me, the current situation can be compared to the state of ladies' skating in 1984. Elaine Zayak burst on the scene as the most prodigious jumper ever seen. At the 1984 World championships she landed 6 (count 'em, SIX) triple jumps in her LP! It was impossible not to give her the gold medal.

But at the ISU Congress later that same year they discussed the fact that 4 of those jumps were toe loops / toe Walleys repeated over and over. They passed the Zayak Rules and later came up with various versions of the Balanced Program Requirements in order to acknowledge that just jumping, jumping, jumping is not what distinguishes an outstanding figure skating performance. The rules that are in place now (no quads in the SP, only one repeated quad, only 7 jumping passes allowed altogether, etc.) are consistent with the concerns that they had back in 1984.

What do "the people" think about all this? Dunno.

Mathman said:

I think it is more that the ISU has it's own vision of what the sport should be. To me, the current situation can be compared to the state of ladies' skating in 1984. Elaine Zayak burst on the scene as the most prodigious jumper ever seen. At the 1984 World championships she landed 6 (count 'em, SIX) triple jumps in her LP! It was impossible not to give her the gold medal.

But at the ISU Congress later that same year they discussed the fact that 4 of those jumps were toe loops / toe Walleys repeated over and over. They passed the Zayak Rules and later came up with various versions of the Balanced Program Requirements in order to acknowledge that just jumping, jumping, jumping is not what distinguishes an outstanding figure skating performance. The rules that are in place now (no quads in the SP, only one repeated quad, only 7 jumping passes allowed altogether, etc.) are consistent with the concerns that they had back in 1984.

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Tbh I don't think it's comparable. The Zayak rule is there to prevent the skaters from becoming one-trick ponies and encourage them to show more variety. Sasha's "problem" is that she shows several kinds of high-scoring "variety" that no one else can show. Actually it's the opposite of Zayak.

Btw.: Didn't Zayak win Worlds in '82, not '84? 1984 was already Witt's big time when she won everything. She would have won '82 as well even against Elaine's six triples. Katarina attempted five herself but had three stepouts.

Thank you for your reports Sam. It’s very interesting hearing from your POV, it makes me feel I was there.

The most boring GP event so far. Very weak field in both single disciplines, predictable podiums, programs that all of us had seen many times already.. As I already predicted before - Miyahara couldn't ever hope to get on podium here - unlike it was in China - as she would be unavoidably destroyed here by TP in any case. The reason for this I can't discuss here unfortunately as I risk to being banned again ))
That said, the judging was disgustingly biased as always - this time it was clearly proRussian though. Huge, shameless, through-the-roof overscoring of Samarin's, Ignatov's and Medvedeva's PCS and GOEs, blatant ignoring of Medvedeva's multiple URs while applying opposite approach to noticing almost all Satoko's URs, ignoring 3Lz+3Lo Trusova's UR.. it was just a feast of inconsistent calling about which RusFed so sincerely complained before I am afraid this event is gonna do a bad job for presenting RusFed concerns in positive light for ISU now.
Still, it was miles better than the work of TPs at previous events since they didn't try to make up dubious calls for judges favorites rivals at least - it's the most awful practice one can imagine in a judging. Nevertheless applying different standarts of strictness for various skaters in the same event - in addition to boosting pushed skaters scores - is pretty much shameful practice - whether it's common for "home inflating" phenomenon or not.