2024 Riga Cup Women's Free Skate

[tsuyoboogie]

Fully aware that Ikura is no longer as consistent as she was during Novice so not necessarily trying to make excuses for her FS performance, just stating an observation
As someone who has been watching her skate for years and seen this program (on screen) likely more times than most, it looked to me like she needed to adjust her program and path into her jumps to accommodate the for smaller rink
Ikura usually covers a lot of ice but in this competition I felt like she was confined to a box, skating around in a circle to avoid getting too close to the walls
Very, uncomfortable to watch~

 

[DemTuppesSeine]

I see what you mean. I think she touched the wall once in the beginning because she was getting too close to it...

 

[Jeanie19]

Fully aware that Ikura is no longer as consistent as she was during Novice so not necessarily trying to make excuses for her FS performance, just stating an observation
As someone who has been watching her skate for years and seen this program (on screen) likely more times than most, it looked to me like she needed to adjust her program and path into her jumps to accommodate the for smaller rink
Ikura usually covers a lot of ice but in this competition I felt like she was confined to a box, skating around in a circle to avoid getting too close to the walls
Very, uncomfortable to watch~

Smaller rinks are hard for some skaters, especially skaters that skate fast.

 

[RafaelAstro]

Yelim Kim for example

 

[Jeanie19]

Yelim Kim for example

And Deniss Vasiljevs.

 

[RafaelAstro]

I think it's pretty strange considering how she did in the short program and domestically until this specifically free program, she looked very tense

 

[katymay]

Mao. I love her dress and this program.

I was disappointed in both programs. I felt the choreo and music were nothing special, forgettable actually. The Estonian girl had intricate interesting choreography and transitions that I can't wait to watch again. Yes, Mao deserved to win, but it was sort of a 'meh' for me today. I know Mao can land a 3A in her sleep, and today was just a fluke, but the other jumps were a bit underpowered. Also, perhaps it is the way the program is structured, but she didn't have her usual speed either, the little german girl (sorry, don't know the names yet!) had better ice coverage and speed.

 

[4everchan]

Fully aware that Ikura is no longer as consistent as she was during Novice so not necessarily trying to make excuses for her FS performance, just stating an observation
As someone who has been watching her skate for years and seen this program (on screen) likely more times than most, it looked to me like she needed to adjust her program and path into her jumps to accommodate the for smaller rink
Ikura usually covers a lot of ice but in this competition I felt like she was confined to a box, skating around in a circle to avoid getting too close to the walls
Very, uncomfortable to watch~

I agree that it looked like the first pass didn't work out because of that. There was no room to fire a combo. At the same time, it's something that is part of the learning path. She did well enough in the SP. Maybe the LP, she's so used to it, that it was harder for her to manage. In the end, it's the same for everyone. Skaters who do skate on larger ice have to adapt for the smaller sizes and those who skate on smaller ice, need to adapt too because otherwise, they lack ice coverage. I am not a skater, but I swim. There is a huge difference swimming in 25m versus 50 m pool. Timing, stroke, pacing, speed versus endurance..., in the end, everyone swims in the same pool during the competition, just like they all skate on the same ice.. but yes, I do think it was the issue for Ikura and I was very sad to see her underperform like this.

 

[pesto]

"In the FP i am portraiting a unbehaved girl"

What a delightful bit of Swinglish! Unbehaved girls ftw.

 

[gsk8]

 

[gsk8]

 

[gsk8]

 

[gsk8]

 

[gsk8]

 

[JeanA]

One thing that I found interesting was how the commentator whose name I can't remember because he never bothers to learn the competitors' names either, made a comment about how Shimada, now in her THIRD season of juniors, is maintaining motivation. Umm, she needs to keep that junior level motivation until after her junior 2026-27 season. She's got three more seasons of being a junior. Let's hope she maintains this motivation that even the commentator mentioned about.

ETA: The commentator's name is Mac Enreety. If I'm mispronouncing his name, give me a break, I'm not from his country, so why would I want to try to pronounce his name correctly since he gives no such respect to others wrt his job?

 

[LazyFuzai]

Mao: Much better program,but still nothing that would impress.The most two things for her that were giving her adv were both falls.Thats not good for sure.

Goidina: Impressive choreo for this program with great execution.There still minor things when she can enter few poses better into music,but that was really good.Maybe a bit too much hand work Techically wasn't bad either,but wasn't something good aswell.

Koositive performance.Really liked entire program and her work in Chsq espiecially.Need some work on technical elements,but overall nice work.

Kushida: Only positive thing about her skate was Chsq.Overall it was tragedy.You skate to music "Little Princess" which is slow and calm with a red agressive colored dress that looks like you are about to charm someone.No sense in this.Nothing make sense about this program + falls in nearly every jump.Misery.

 

[Skating91]

One thing that I found interesting was how the commentator whose name I can't remember because he never bothers to learn the competitors' names either, made a comment about how Shimada, now in her THIRD season of juniors, is maintaining motivation. Umm, she needs to keep that junior level motivation until after her junior 2026-27 season. She's got three more seasons of being a junior. Let's hope she maintains this motivation that even the commentator mentioned about.

ETA: The commentator's name is Mac Enreety. If I'm mispronouncing his name, give me a break, I'm not from his country, so why would I want to try to pronounce his name correctly since he gives no such respect to others wrt his job?

I thought you were talking about Ted. I still smirk thinking of him pronouncing Yerevan as Yarrrr-van all of last season. The Hungarian girl in the JGP last season gave him issues, and the Chinese girl "Cheeky" Gao.

Shimada is quite lucky she has everything to fight for. There are girls the same age group who regularly land multiple ultra-c elements in the same program, who cannot compete in this competition for reasons completely out of their control. If those girls who can't compete can maintain enough motivation to succeed in having stable quadruple jumps for example, then I don't buy the excuse about Shimada becoming bored by it all. No doubt she and her coaches want to prove that she would be still winning all these gold medals if all girls from the same age group were allowed to compete in ISU competitions. If Shimada was landing the 3A and 4T consistently, then she and her coach could argue that we're just not going to push ourselves further but could beat anyone in the world if we had to, but she's landed something like 2 of the last 11 4T's clean and fallen on over half of them (I'll have to go back over this stat to get the exact numbers when I have time).

 

[Jumping_Bean]

One thing that I found interesting was how the commentator whose name I can't remember because he never bothers to learn the competitors' names either, made a comment about how Shimada, now in her THIRD season of juniors, is maintaining motivation. Umm, she needs to keep that junior level motivation until after her junior 2026-27 season. She's got three more seasons of being a junior. Let's hope she maintains this motivation that even the commentator mentioned about.

ETA: The commentator's name is Mac Enreety. If I'm mispronouncing his name, give me a break, I'm not from his country, so why would I want to try to pronounce his name correctly since he gives no such respect to others wrt his job?

Mark actually is the one out of these two commentators to even reach out to skaters themselves for help on pronunciation and information about their training situation and careers before the JGP. Sure you aren't getting confused here? Also, doing things to others you don't like being done to you in fact only makes you a bad person as well, so congrats on that, I guess?

And if you're going to be snarky, at least learn how to count properly, because Mao only has two more seasons in Juniors before being able to move up to Seniors - This one and the next one. You can either be a b*tch or wrong, but you really can't afford to be both.

 

[Jumping_Bean]

Kushida: Only positive thing about her skate was Chsq.Overall it was tragedy.You skate to music "Little Princess" which is slow and calm with a red agressive colored dress that looks like you are about to charm someone.No sense in this.Nothing make sense about this program + falls in nearly every jump.Misery.

...I have a feeling you don't know the source material for this program. The music is not called "Little Princess" but the music comes from the soundtrack of the 2015 movie "The Little Prince", based on the 1943 novella "Le Petit Prince"/"The Little Prince". It's a beautiful piece of writing.
One of the central characters of the story is a rose, which Ikura depicts in her Free Skate.

This was indeed not a good performance of this program, and she's only ever performed it cleanly once in competition, at Jr Nats last season:

 

[lileychristie]

She was Moriguchi Sumitada's original partner IIRC, since she returned to singles I'm guessing skating with a partner is not quite her thing. But then again, she hasn't tried ice dance so

Moriguchi's original partner was Haruna Murakami, not Ikura.
Haruna also trains in Kinoshita Academy with Mie Hamada, so I guess that's where the confusion is

As far as I know, Ikura has never tried ice dance or pairs. It might change though, especially as Kinoshita likes to pair up their single skaters for dance and pairs. Though, if it were up to me I'd love to see Ikura do solo dance