2022-23 JGPF Junior Men's Short Program | Page 6 | Golden Skate

2022-23 JGPF Junior Men's Short Program

The thing that excites me the most about Lucas is that not only is he a beautiful skate, he appears to be a good competitor. In the JGP, even though he didn't have the highest technical, he managed to squeak out on top by doing everything that he could with quality. I was a little frustrated that he kept including the 3A in the short when he couldn't do it cleanly during the Junior Grand Prix, but even when he made a 3A mistake, every other element still scored very well. In fact, the 3A has improved from each competition, from a fall to a step out to clean! Today, even though he finally got the 3A, he didn't get carried away, and still did all the rest of the elements very well.

Even though Lucas on paper seemed the favorite as he was the only one who had won both of his competitions, I didn't think he had the scoring power to outscore clean skates from others. When Nikolaj skated so well, I got really nervous for Lucas, especially because it looked like he under rotated the 3A in the warm up, but his speed and confidence in the entry to the jump during the SP immediately caused me to relax.

The interesting thing is that in both of his prior competitions, it doesn't appear that he is planning on jumping a 3A, but his first 3T clearly seems like a placeholder for a quad. He has uploaded a clip of a quad in practice a while back... so I'm curious as to what his layout will be this time in the free, and whether or not he will be able to maintain his position.
 
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