Hummmm....quite a few thoughts......
To me Alina is still the favorite in every competition she enters, so far we only saw one clean and awesome SP followed by one clean and awesome FP from her (her 238 season best total) and that same FS was better at Japan Open just as the SP was better at Rostelecom. She needs to marry the two when she is going against Rika. And only Rika.
For the rest, all Juniors included, she is heads above them in scoring and will remain so for this whole season.
Hard thing is, because Figure Skating is a judge dependent event, scores don't travel that well around different competitions. Some judges might be repeated but the whole panel will be different. What happened at GPFinal across all disciplines can be a great comparison of that pool of skaters with the performances they were able to give there.
That said....it's pretty clear now that it will take the equivalent of a "figure skating nuclear arsenal" to get above Alina at the podium. And by that I mean a 3A+combo by a competent jumper that also has skating skills and ok spins or a well executed Quad by a Senior. Rika can do quads by the way, and, she said so herself, she has her sights on Beijing and she wants to win an Olympic Gold Medal, she is really playing a 3 year game. If Rika only did a single 3A in either program that would still require a flawless execution of that and Alina making mistakes to win against her, with the 3A+combo she has the reserve she needs.
To me Alina should be playing a short term "holding pattern game", going for her goals to skate clean (she has so far, not a single fall this season guys) and deliver the best possible outing of each one of these programs (her SP and her FS). It is my only big dream for her this season, that she can achieve that, the podium placement of this combination of performances is really not important to me.
She should take this time (this season) to further develop her skating skills, her spins, her execution of the step-sequence and all the nook and crannies that make up her PCS to advance it still and build sustainable skills that I know she has (we've seen it at shows). Watching her skate (immaterial of the jumps results) has been a great experience this year, she never lets go of her PCS goals even when jumps don't go her way, as she keeps at it it will get amazing, it's already a whole lot of awesome, watching everyone skate at seniors she is the only one that brings me joy to watch and the only one I could re-watch for hours on end. I also really like Satoko's performance, she is currently the other one I could re-watch, but the overall thing is I just like Alina's package better.
I am a fairly new skating fan, watched on and off for a few years in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, mostly Olympics and a few competitions when I passed them by as I was channel surfing in between those years, so I'm the kind of person the ISU is looking forward to add to their rank of fans. I'm an uneducated newbie.
ISU I have news for you: if Alina wasn't competing I wouldn't watch a single competition this year. Not a single one. I wouldn't sit home for it on a rainy snowy Sunday afternoon and I certainly wouldn't get up at 3am for it. I'd be back to YouTube video watching Yuzuru and Nathan performances only (like them both for different reasons), and if Satoko came up as an automatic suggestion to either one of those I'd watch her video. Thanks to Alina I met other Ladies I now like to watch alongside her, key here is alongside her (not in her place or when she isn't in the mix).
Japanese Channels are getting my money so I can watch Alina, ISU you would get my money too if you sold a worldwide pass (I travel too much for geo-restricted websites), I bought International Figure Skating magazines because of Alina. Alina can sell me two popsicles, an ice gel pack and a bikini in a frozen park the middle of winter.
So I hope Alina is also playing a "long term attack plan", and I'm sure from all evidence we have seen that she is playing it, this plan will include tackling harder tech. I feel crazy looking at someone doing two (count them, two) 3Lz combos in her FS and saying: hey, let's tackle harder tech. But "in it to win it" means that you have to keep pushing yourself to get as far into the tech as you can. Alina did that already, she is going to do it again. Sadly no rest for the weary.
And this weary choose to keep going. With a Gold Olympic medal already around her neck (the dream of everyone else in the field and what is pushing them, she already has), right on from an incredible season of daring feats and intense preparation she called upon herself to rise up to the plate again. ISU thank your lucky stars that she did because I'm sure there are many others like me out there that are watching, not even blinking, just for her.
Alina is Yuzuru material guys....in the making before our very eyes.
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