2014 Olympics Mens Free Skate

[cheerio2]

The interesting thing is that I thought Orser had some awesome "nerve-steeling" advice/approach to help his athletes be mentally calm for the Olympics. But I guess that was all Queen Yuna.

 

[chloepoco]

Congratulations to Brian Orser on his second consecutive student winning an Olympic gold medal!

We can all say would've could've should've--but at the end of the day, it's what was put out there at that particular time. Congratulations to Hanyu, Patrick and Denis!!

I felt the scoring overall was pretty fair, except for maybe Machida--he was marked really low.

 

[Ziggy]

If it means more guys trying quads, yes. I do not want to go back to 2010 when guys will avoid the quad in the SP and stick to just one quad in their LP just to play it safe. It's a bit selfish to want higher technical difficulty, but as you said it's important for the sport to move forwards.

Not for me. I couldn't care less about the quads. I'd much rather see more interesting/complex programs than for example Brezina or Amodio skating all the way around the rink doing backward cross-overs into a quad and then all the way around the rink doing backward cross-overs again into another quad. Zzzzzz...

I don't mind the rewards for landing the quads. I mind the little penalty they get for falling on them. The points of a triple lutz? Really. No. I don't think 4 points is enough penalty for a fall on a jump either.

Rotating the jump is the hardest part of it, technically, though. A minimal lapse of concentration, a tiny rut in the ice, moving your shoulder 1mm backwards - all of those can make a difference between a clean landing and a fall and no skater is ever 100% consistent.

Can someone explain to me the 3Lz-1/2L seq that Hanyu got on his protocol? He put his foot down after the 1/2L so the 3S would have been called in sequence?

You can't put your foot down during a jump sequence. Once you put your foot down, nothing past that point gets called.

I believe when you do a 1/2 loop, the combo ends up being called as a sequence. i.e. you can only do a 1/2 loop as part of a sequence combination.

The rules were changed after last season. Half-loop is called as 1Lo now.

 

[tulosai]

Oh god, Jeremy. *face palm*

To me it is honestly funny. He is a choker, period. Even his biggest fans admit it. Maybe we don't have to go 'do what he does' but as he may have noticed there are many other skaters out there who do not choke at every opportunity, and contrary to what he seems to believe most of us have had our own situations in life where it was choke or not choke. Not only figure skaters experience these moments.

Whatever. I honestly hope he will someday pull his head out of his butt.

 

[BlackPack]

No way. He had fantastic programs and great competitions, winning GPF and his silver with Garden of Souls/Blues for Klook at Worlds 2012. I wouldn't have wanted to miss this, never. I'm so glad he carried on after 2010 and the lacklustre 2011 when he was thinking of retiring. His knee was never the same after his surgery and it started to hurt this season again. That's why he wasn't competitive on the jumps anymore.

I agree. He performed a few masterpieces after 2010. But he never really won another Worlds/OM, especially when he deserved to (2012) ... Dai is one of the few people I'd love to watch just skating and performing in any capacity, competition or not.

 

[bekalc]

Rotating the jump is the hardest part of it, technically, though. A minimal lapse of concentration, a tiny rut in the ice, moving your shoulder 1mm backwards - all of those can make a difference between a clean landing and a fall and no skater is ever 100% consistent.

Rotating and landing on your blade is what makes it skating.

 

[amateur]

the programs I most enjoyed watching, in order:

1. Jeremy Abbott
2. Dennis Ten
3. Han Yan
4. Chan
5. Jorik Hendrickx (probably mainly this high because it was early in the competition, hadn't seen him before, and I wasn't invested in hoping for any outcome.. but anyway I enjoyed his skating, hope he develops well)

Daisuke should be on there somewhere for sheer skating quality, but that softer underwhelming program mixed with the occasion have me blanking on him.

 

[SquishyDumpling]

You can't put your foot down during a jump sequence. Once you put your foot down, nothing past that point gets called.

Ah. I see thanks.

 

[tulosai]

I don't mind the rewards for landing the quads. I mind the little penalty they get for falling on them. The points of a triple lutz? Really. No. I don't think 4 points is enough penalty for a fall on a jump either.

This isn't about being mean this is about a competition.

+1 :thumbsup: I think the reward for a quad is appropriate. It is obvious that, despite a LOT of men trying them in their programs, VERY FEW men have them even now, where 'have them' means able to land them even 50% of the time. THey continue to try them, despite abysmal success rates in MOST (not many, MOST) cases because the penalty is such that if you manage to fully rotate it, even if you land on your butt 80%+ of the time and you know that, it is still like having done a triple lutz, and on the off chance that THIS IS THE ONE TIME THIS SEASON you will land it, well, the reward is awesome.

I think that even if the penalty were increased, men would keep training the quad because the reward would ensure that you still can't win any medal without one as long as a few people are around who CAN land them, but fewer men would throw them indiscriminately into competition knowing full well they can't stand up on them to save their life.

 

[BlackPack]

Has Jeremy's quotes from today been posted here already? Been bouncing around different boards so it's kind of hard to keep track. Well in case it hasn't been posted, here's some lovely snippets

More quotes here

Ugh, why does Jeremy Abbott make it so hard to like Jeremy Abbott? I was rooting for him after his free skate and then I hear him open his mouth and it's like :disapp:

Yes, it's damn hard. Everyone gets that. Then retire after it didn't work out after one or two seasons post 2010. Why stay and embarrass not only yourself but everyone else involved? Then you have to have self-indulgent pep talks. It's sickening.

 

[amateur]

The interesting thing is that I thought Orser had some awesome "nerve-steeling" advice/approach to help his athletes be mentally calm for the Olympics. But I guess that was all Queen Yuna.

Well, even if he does, he can't also skate the programs for the student, via voodoo ritual or something.
I wouldn't say Hanyu fell apart with nerves at all... he made 2 mistakes, one notably on the most difficult move there is, where the miss was almost expected. The other source of "let down" in this performance might be due to Hanyu's well known stamina issues.. not a coaching failure.

 

[fredtx121]

"I would just hold my middle finger in the air and say a big 'F you' to everyone who has ever said that to me because they have never stood in my shoes.
"They've never had to do what I had to do. Nobody has to stand center ice before a million people and put an entire career on the line for eight minutes of their life when they've been doing it for 20-some years. And if you don't think that that's not hard, you're a damn idiot.
"So some people can handle it better than others, but everyone has that mental struggle, everyone goes through the same doubts. I am not alone. They just come at different times and different moments. Some people have their moment at the Olympics, and some have theirs at the national championships.
"I'm proud to be standing here. I'm a four-time national champion and a two-time Olympian, and no one can take that away from me. So whatever people have to say about me, that's their own problem because I'm freaking proud of what I've done and I'm not going to apologize for any of it."

Oh Jeremy, Just when people started to like you again and give you credit for finishing your SP after your fall. Yes like others had said, it's time to retire.

 

[Ziggy]

Rotating and landing on your blade is what makes it skating.

And a high chance of that landing not being perfectly balanced is also what makes it skating. It's not a sport where it's realistically possible to be super consistent because the balance point is so precarious.

 

[Ophelia]

The interesting thing is that I thought Orser had some awesome "nerve-steeling" advice/approach to help his athletes be mentally calm for the Olympics. But I guess that was all Queen Yuna.

Hanyu was pretty steely during the SP. Despite his two falls in the first half of his LP, he really held himself together to deliver the second half of his LP cleanly. Patrick on the other hand, started off great with the quad and then just imploded afterwards.

 

[BlackPack]

No he doesnt. For that to have happened he would have had to skate really well and still lose to Hanyu skating just as he did. Which is what poor Ten was subjected to by the awful judges at the farcial 2013 Worlds. Nothing close to that here.

True.... except for a while he was winning most major competitions despite what he actually put on the ice. Not anymore.

 

[ucrgirl]

Lost the FS by less than a point. Lost the overall by about 4.5

Oh. I guess I was just looking at the FS totals.

 

[Ziggy]

+1 :thumbsup: I think the reward for a quad is appropriate. It is obvious that, despite a LOT of men trying them in their programs, VERY FEW men have them even now, where 'have them' means able to land them even 50% of the time. THey continue to try them, despite abysmal success rates in MOST (not many, MOST) cases because the penalty is such that if you manage to fully rotate it, even if you land on your butt 80%+ of the time and you know that, it is still like having done a triple lutz, and on the off chance that THIS IS THE ONE TIME THIS SEASON you will land it, well, the reward is awesome.

I think that even if the penalty were increased, men would keep training the quad because the reward would ensure that you still can't win any medal without one as long as a few people are around who CAN land them, but fewer men would throw them indiscriminately into competition knowing full well they can't stand up on them to save their life.

If reward and penalty aren't symmetrical than you are increasing the factor of random chance versus skill.

 

[cheerio2]

I agree. He's going for the quadruple butt-jump because it gets him 6.50 anyways and he knows it. Why actually go with a programme you can excel doing?
I also don't particularly agree (although, again, I'm not a regular fan ) with the idea that there is a "forward" direction of a sport and that it implies a higher degree of difficulty per se. In other words , did this final go "forward" or "backward" compared to 2010?

But how much does the 6.5 from the 4S it really help him? If he had done another 4T instead and gone clean, he could have 13 points. But then he would have to eliminate a 3L which is max 9 points if amazing (although it's basically impossible to get +3 GOE on your last, 10th big jump in a program). But in any case, the 4S with fall only nets him 2.5 points at most, but his PCS could easily have dipped by that much (or more) with a major fall, so he could not have logically been planning to fall on the 4S.

 

[tulosai]

If reward and penalty aren't symmetrical than you are increasing the factor of random chance versus skill.

I mean that is sort of my point though- I don't think they are currently symmetrical and I think it is increasing the factor of random chance. It's just my opinion though- I make no secret of the fact that many people here know much more about the men than me. I usually am buried in my ice dancing hole

 

[Mathman]

Here is the Washington Post's report on Abbott.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...es-out-at-critics-discusses-olympic-pressure/

(After waking up sore the morning after his fall in the short program), "Determined to complete the final Olympics of his career, the 28-year-old Abbott mentally ran through his planned free skate Friday morning and swapped out loops for alternate jumps. Then he wrote down his three goals for the performance on his iPad, as he always does, and showed them to his coach, Yuka Sato.

"She took the device from him, erased all that he had written and typed just one wore: 'Skate.'"