2026-27 Russian Women's Figure Skating

[Mathematician]

While I disagree about Muravieva (in terms of presentation/artistry I consider her as one of the very best - if not the best - Russian female skaters of today; I usually hate her costumes though), I agree in general that the "obvious" is not really obvious. The opinion of the majority is not the ultimate truth and I don't think that things like presentation/artistry can ever be evaluated completely "objectively". Everyone has their own specific "detectors" and understanding/feeling of emotions. What the skater "emits" might get detected by my "radar" and then reprocessed by my brain in a way that touches me deeply. But a different spectator can view it completely differently.

But even if we drop the emotions factor, the presetation is still impossible to evaluate completely objectively. Everyone has their own aesthetic feeling and, in my opinion, even little details can make a huge difference for one spectator and nothing at all for the other. It can be the expression in skaters' face, minor body or arm motions, the posture, the way the skater positions their feet when doing crossovers, the (lack of) charisma – any of that can potentially ruin the whole image for me. But for someone else the thing that ruined it for me may be completely irrelevant or they may even actually like it. And vice versa ofc. The point is - when for whatever reason you find the skaters performance off, it may become completely unconvincing and then you can hardly assess it as good in terms of presentation. It's like in acting. You can have an actor possessing many qualities, but there can be one little thing that the actor keeps doing that totally ruins the performance in your eyes, while a different spectator may not notice it or may even find it enhancing the performance.

This is not to say that we should completely scratch any attempts to seek objectivity in these things. After all, I do think that when the majority agrees on the level of the performance quality of a given skater, it does say something. I would just avoid making the ultimate conclusions.

But all of this is just applicable to literally anything in any situation or discussion that isn't basically tautological knowledge like math which you're well familiar with, and even some philosophers would question that. Us modern thinkers are all well aware of this circumstance. So I'm sure you're adept enough to understand that our discussions are generally outside the musings over objective truths.

What you said in your other post about Sasha is well true. Like I said this season is a complete mystery with the ladies.

 

[Mathematician]

I actually don't think it's obvious. While I will not question the majority, Muravieva hasn't skated a memorable program yet, at least not one that touched me. They are all in the same sad dramatic style. It's a bit hard to affirm presentation skill in this case. It's like saying the perfume is 1st rate, while you yourself can't stand the smell. Maybe that's her programming, maybe that's how she sees herself, maybe that's the only thing she can present. I've already said a while ago that drama and bad music were a bit overused by Russian ladies, just like slow disco is overused by Canadian ladies, and although I was thrown rotten tomatoes at I still say it, and it's really unfortunate. I am not at ET extremist. I am no one camp's or athlete's fan. Muravieva reminds me a little bit of Viktoria Volchkova. She was also a tall, good-looking skater, technically strong, a bit inconsistent, had some nice dresses. I remember her, but I really couldn't recall a single program. I went to look them up and music is regular for those times, and choreography is pretty generic, that's what I mean.

I'm not responding to all of this but people have been saying Mura skates the same programs every season for a while now and I don't get it lol. From the last 4 seasons she had Carmen, 2 contrasting swan lake programs, horizon of memories and proud. All of these are completely different and constitute the majority of her last 4 years, which means the so-called generic melodic programs constitute the minority of her repertoire. That's all assuming her pilgrims program, romeo and juliet, and her benoit program are the same which they aren't. By the way this claim is also just straight up debunked by her exhibitions. Her lady gaga program was like one of the boldest and most playful programs we've seen from these Russian ladies (even though I didn't like it at all). There was also that weird leopard program but we can forget about that one. I just question if half of these people I talk to are even watching the tournaments or what. I guess people just latched on to ne me quitte pas and proud being similar and haven't changed their position in like 4 years. It's just weird how low tier these claims are. People like or dislike a skater's choreography which is fine but to call it generic is also basically wrong. The swan lake SP for instance was choreographically impossible probably for basically any other skater except Adeliia. Don't think Frolova has the energy for it. Maybe Gorbacheva. Was the carmen choreography generic too lol.

The only real criticism of Mura is just that she has zero competitive mentality.

 

[AxelLover]

But all of this is just applicable to literally anything in any situation or discussion that isn't basically tautological knowledge like math which you're well familiar with, and even some philosophers would question that.

Correct.

EDIT: I'd like to add that my post was not meant as some kind of philosophical nitpicking. The difficulty of objectively assessing presentation qualities of skaters is apparent even in the standards of "normal discussions". I find it interesting that according to your experience, people are more in agreement when it comes to assessing presentation rather than identifying URs. I have a different experience, but most importantly – the disagreements regarding rotations mostly come from the absence of a high quality slow-mo footage of the jumps in high fps. It's not complicated in principle. Yes, there are also cases of disagreements that stem from different people adopting different criteria as to where to start or stop counting the rotation, but that's just a matter of definition. Presentation is a much more complex thing that can hardly be measured to the same level of exactness as jump rotations. Even trying to define (somewhat exactly) what a good presentation is is pretty much impossible (unless we adopt a stupid definition just for the sake of having a definition).