2014 NHK Trophy Ladies Free Skate 11/29

[Cyn]

Riona needs to learn how to use her arms -- heck, she needs to learn how to bend them!

....And stop flailing them - the airplane arms are worse than Meissner's were.

 

[Alchamei]

That was a great performance! I loved it!

 

[chezzu]

Riona's jumps

 

[taltaltel]

Wow, great skate from Riona She flutzes, but other than that she is quite solid overall.

 

[Totentanz]

Wow Kato, nice program with high quality jumps. TES is looking really high.

 

[Blades of Passion]

WOW! That was technically so strong and had some surprisingly well-done delicate touches.

 

[Mista Ekko]

Wow at that tech score (If it holds)

 

[mirai4life]

She will beat Polina.. ehehe

 

[Wo|flax]

Riona fab and crying congrats bb

 

[Krunchii]

Riona had the skate of her life but I'm not really interested in her skating, she doesn't use her arms very well, program is forgettable

 

[Cyn]

Kato's jumps are quite good, but she has seemingly zero connection with the music. The choreography is also rather empty - a lot of jump, skate skate, jump, skate skate jump, skate skate spin, etc.

 

[Sasha'sSpins]

Not my favorite but good job by Riona. Kind of avant-garde program.

 

[dress]

go gabi!

 

[Scovies]

Aw. Good for her. She really needs to work on her presentation (a lot of her moves look very unfinished), but awesome jumping.

 

[Shayuki]

As I started watching this from about the halfway point, I said "What, she had a 3-jump combo left??" out loud when she already was at 53 tech score at that point.

The competition definitely needed this kind of a performance, happy for her~ It will be her new record by a huge margin.

 

[ks777]

very difficult to do a tano salcow!

 

[satine]

"Interesting boot covers. Looks like she's got little ears"

 

[Mrs. P]

Wondered the same thing Mrs P about possible growth, etc issues. Glad to have your keen eye and mad stats skills with us tonight.

Aw, that's sweet. Thanks.

So in 2013 Nationals, she barely broke 100 (101.70) despite doing a 7-triple program with two 3-3s. The technical panel was hard on her. She got edge calls on BOTH her flips and 4 URS including a << on her -3T in her 3F-3T.

National panels tend to be a bit more leanient, so you know the URs were pretty obvious if she got them here.

This was likely the reason, they opted to send three senior girls (Samantha Cesario, Courtney Hicks, Yasmin Siraj) to Jr. Worlds instead of her, despite being the Jr. champion.

But when she got the JGP, the URs and edge calls were gone. So she must've worked on them.

***
Kato killed it!

 

[firal]

Riona just needs to be more polished, but that was good! Love the emotion from her coach!

 

[Blades of Passion]

Eww, underscored.