Are They Coming Back...

[gsk8]

Aljona and Bruno doing their first triple twist after a year break

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKjm84fqIW0/?igshid=1lfvfnvjlhgb3

 

[sworddance21]

My 2 cents - besides all that has already been said - is that Evgenia would have had a better shot of making the Russian team if there had been no pandemic and she could have stayed at the Cricket Club. She was improving hugely there and would have continued to do so, I think. I don't know if her trajectory will continue upward having gone back to training in Russia.

 

[Skater Boy]

I would be very surprised if Gogolev made the Olympic team for Beijing, but I think he'll be around and contending for the following Olympics, if all goes well.

For Japanese ice dance, I expect team Ko/Ko to go to Beijing. If there's a miracle and Japan wins two spots, then Takahashi (and Kana) has a good chance of getting the second one.

I suppose the road to Daisuke making it to the olympics are

\He and his partner finish second in Japan
Worlds' go ahead without Canada and Russia or the US With France gone they would go up a good six spots

I wonder what Dai'splanswere - was it to just tr ice dance or was it to make a world and olympic team. Anything is possible - an injury or retirement cold move them up too. I do wonder about Aliona why is she showing these tricks. Unless she is teasing us all and or likes the limelight.

Was there a comeback also for Rika Hongo? In watching the ladies from Canada I have to say I think I would go with Gabby D for the second spot. Nothing against Shumacher and I never really understood exactly what Gabby went through unlike Gracie but I just hope these ladies can skate for themselves. Daleman has an easier route by far to Beijing than Gold. Sheis almost there already ifnot there.

It is hard to believe that skaters like Alina, Evgenia, Liza are really not even thought of as threats for the Oly team. The battle seems to be Anna, Aliona. Alexandra,, Kamila. and maybe one other junior coming up.

 

[Skater Boy]

Aljona and Bruno doing their first triple twist after a year break

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKjm84fqIW0/?igshid=1lfvfnvjlhgb3

Already wonderful. But I wonder why they are even p racticing - olympics. Can't be a show I assume. Our Never Enough girl maybe throwing her hat in the ring. Come Megan if Aliona can do it so can you.

 

[Skater Boy]

I think the one with the biggest chance for the Oly team is Takahashi with his partner. But in order to qualify, Komatsubara/Koleto would have to either be injured which noone wants, or mess up big time, or Kana/Daisuke would need to improve hugely in just one year. Or maybe they'll just be happy with participating in the Team Event?

I don't think Alina wants to compete anymore, and that's fine. She has the most important medals under her belt, and it seems she's quite happy with shows now.

It seems to be an impossible uphill battle for Evgenia, but if for some reason she heals and is pristine clean, while Liza, Trusova and Kostornaia struggle, there's a sliver of a chance. But then, I think Usacheva is going senior next season, and she's been very consistent, so who knows.

It's highly likely Gogolev will stabilize his jumps once he's done growing, but I don't think that will be next season yet. All of Nguyen, Sadovsky and Messing are much stronger than him at this point.

I bet that Mirai, Savchenko and Carolina are done with competing for good.

Fingers crossed for Gracie and Gabrielle, who are both brave in attempting a comeback despite having confidence issues. If a miracle happens for Gabrielle's self-confidence, she could make the team. Gracie faces a much tougher field, and I don't think she has much of a chance to be I on the team, so I just hope she finds joy in competing again. She doesn't seem to have it unfortunately, so I could see her retiring instead.

The ones I have been wondering about are Weaver/Poje, has there been an official statement from them re. retirement? If they came back, I could see them challenging at least Marjorie/Zachary.

I hope Tursynbaeva comes back, BTW...

I thought ET was still practicing/competing? As for Weaver and Poje I don't think they are coing back. I believe if Canada had a decent shot at an olympic team medal they would come back but that looks unlikely - USA, Russia and probably China or Japan.

Can Japan send a dance team just for the team event separate from dance. Other than Dai is a a national treasure there is no real good reason to send him if he doesn't win the spot.

 

[chuckm]

Mirai Nagasu had hip surgery after the Olympic season. She has been skating and has regained some triples, but not the 3a. She is done as far as competitive skating is concerned.

 

[Amei]

My 2 cents - besides all that has already been said - is that Evgenia would have had a better shot of making the Russian team if there had been no pandemic and she could have stayed at the Cricket Club. She was improving hugely there and would have continued to do so, I think. I don't know if her trajectory will continue upward having gone back to training in Russia.

In practice Medvedeva looked better but in competition she was less consistent when she was with Orser. I don't think she was necessarily on some "upward" trajectory with Orser.

 

[Shayuki]

In practice Medvedeva looked better but in competition she was less consistent when she was with Orser. I don't think she was necessarily on some "upward" trajectory with Orser.

She wasn't on an upwards trajectory, she had her worst seasons ever with Orser.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

All this comeback chatter is head-shaking to me. This I mean in the sense that it's a shame we have to talk about athletes 'coming back' to compete in the sport of figure skating. It would have helped the sport and the skaters had the powers-that-be not felt threatened by pro skating competitions. Those champions who wished to continue competing would have been able to further grow in the pro arena, which IMHO would have continued to strengthen the eligible arena and enrich skaters who weren't exactly done with the rough and tumble. But they'd have no need to leave the eligible rat race for a year or two and then decide to come back just to have another chance at the Olympics.

Of course, there would probably still be those who wished to return simply to experience another Olympics. But those who never desired to stop skating and competing could have moved on to a pro career, like in the old days. Paul Wylie, Kristi Yamaguchi, Rosalyn Sumners and many other memorable skaters had wonderful pro and show skating careers, but all that is dead now. And it hurts the sport on so many levels.

I'm not interested in seeing Aljona/Bruno skating in eligible competitions again. But I would love to see them skating in pro competitions.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

I don't see why Gogolev couldn't return, but his issue is that his jump technique is horrible

How did this happen? Was it always the case? I remember thinking when Gogolev was eleven and being touted as a young quad phenom, "My God, don't rush this kid. Don't pile over-expectations on him because he can land quads." SMH

 

[karne]

In practice Medvedeva looked better but in competition she was less consistent when she was with Orser. I don't think she was necessarily on some "upward" trajectory with Orser.

She wasn't on an upwards trajectory, she had her worst seasons ever with Orser.

Because Orser was making her rework her technique, just like he did with Jason. And as he told both Evgenia and Jason, it would be a hard 18 months-2 years before they saw results.

Jason stuck it out, and was rewarded. Evgenia unfortunately was injured, and then left.

How did this happen? Was it always the case? I remember thinking when Gogolev was eleven and being touted as a young quad phenom, "My God, don't rush this kid. Don't pile over-expectations on him because he can land quads." SMH

Nah, his technique was always pretty bad, people just got blinded by the quads. It has deteriorated since, however.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

In practice Medvedeva looked better but in competition she was less consistent when she was with Orser. I don't think she was necessarily on some "upward" trajectory with Orser.

I wouldn't blame Orser for your perception. Neither do I blame Evgenia. She was sorely disappointed at the 2018 Olympics. I felt she should have won if it was going to be only between her and Zagitova. In actuality, Kaetlyn Osmond had the best overall talent, but they didn't rep her as battling for gold due to her tendency to have competition nerves. Plus in the past, injuries had hampered her momentum. That Osmond fought hard to top off her career with Olympic bronze and World gold is greatly to her credit.

There are a lot of factors involved in the difficulties Evgenia faced in training at The Cricket Club. I admire her for taking the chance to try something bold and different in order to grow. As I said earlier, Evgenia has the heart of a lion! It's not a small thing what she achieved along with all the obstacles she tried hard to overcome. Eteri's factory would always have been a huge stumbling block no matter had Evgenia stayed in Russia after the Olympics or not. That she tried to strike out for something new in order to improve should not be looked down on.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

Nah, his technique was always pretty bad, people just got blinded by the quads. It has deteriorated since, however.

That's too bad, as well as sad. Why did the quads blind his coaches and/ or his parents into thinking he needed to be pushed and promoted at such a young age? I knew at the time that it was over-the-top to pile so many expectations on him. The same goes for Alysa Liu at 12 and 13 years of age.

I guess if Raf can't help Gogolev fix his technique, who can?

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

Already wonderful. But I wonder why they are even p racticing - olympics. Can't be a show I assume. Our Never Enough girl maybe throwing her hat in the ring. Come Megan if Aliona can do it so can you.

Meghan Duhamel and Eric Radford are not coming back to compete eligibly. If Aljona is planning to, I wonder what she did to convince Bruno? Nothing can repeat the magic come back from 4th place in the short that they pulled off in 2018.


Why do you feel it's 'hard to believe'? Alina was lucky to come back and win 2019 Worlds. She had poor jump technique and her cross-overs were horrible, particularly during the post-Olympics season. Liza has been amazing with all she's accomplished. Obviously, a huge reason why all of these ladies don't have a chance is Eteri's factory churning out phenom after phenom. There's a glut of young talent. And many of them will have a battle royale to make Russia's Olympic team.

It is hard to believe that skaters like Alina, Evgenia, Liza are really not even thought of as threats for the Oly team.

 

[zounger]

Alina was lucky to come back and win 2019 Worlds.

.In this way you never know, maybe she is still lucky.

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

.In this way you never know, maybe she is still lucky.

Yes, she was lucky, but luck runs out for certain enterprises, particularly in the figure skating realm.

 

[zounger]

Yes, she was lucky, but luck runs out for certain enterprises, particularly in the figure skating realm.

So you consider that someone was unlucky that season or just Zagitova was lucky?

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

So you consider that someone was unlucky that season or just Zagitova was lucky?

Figure skating and indeed life always have elements of luck involved, bad or good. Only one person or one team wins Olympic gold in any given year. A lot of factors are involved, some that athletes have control over, others that they do not.

The fact we were told that Olympic gold was only between Alina or Evgenia is one thing. Looking at it in that respect, most definitely Alina was lucky and Evgenia was unlucky. It could have gone either way down to the wire. We'd need to ask the judges what swayed them toward Alina over Evgenia in the end. Likely the bells and whistles of Alina's programs helped her, which isn't to say she was not talented, determined and competitively consistent. I do think Alina was somewhat over-rated. And she was indeed fortunate, but she also worked hard to be in the position for luck to smile down on her. Evgenia worked equally as hard, but for her it wasn't to be.

 

[zounger]

Figure skating and indeed life always have elements of luck involved, bad or good. Only one person or one team wins Olympic gold in any given year. A lot of factors are involved, some that athletes have control over, others that they do not.

The fact we were told that Olympic gold was only between Alina or Evgenia is one thing. Looking at it in that respect, most definitely Alina was lucky and Evgenia was unlucky. It could have gone either way down to the wire. We'd need to ask the judges what swayed them toward Alina over Evgenia in the end. Likely the bells and whistles of Alina's programs helped her, which isn't to say she was not talented, determined and competitively consistent. I do think Alina was somewhat over-rated. And she was indeed fortunate, but she also worked hard to be in the position for luck to smile down on her. Evgenia worked equally as hard, but for her it wasn't to be.

You talked about 2019. So who was the unlucky then/there ? Was it only Zagitova the lucky and everyone else unlucky?

 

[BlissfulSynergy]

You talked about 2019. So who was the unlucky then/there ? Was it only Zagitova the lucky and everyone else unlucky?

As I said, luck is always involved in figure skating. I spoke about this earlier, so my views should be clear regarding 2018-2019 season for Alina. She had problems all season, so definitely yes she was lucky to win Worlds that year, something she failed to do after the 2018 Olympics

Part of the reason Alina won Worlds in 2019 is that she prepared and willed herself to be at her best for that competition. The judges were quite happy to reward her, which gave some additional credence to the Olympic favor they had bestowed on her the previous season. I think Alina's reputation as Olympic gold medalist helped her, particularly in the scoring (which I felt she got overly high PCS, and generally high scoring across the board in both sp and fp). The judges tended to ignore Alina's labored crossovers.

In that competition, there were others who skated well. Tursynbaeva had a great season and she was fortunate to win silver. There was possibly a bit of over-scoring in her case too, but she was landing the quad and she looked pretty good. Evgenia was fortunate to earn bronze, but she surely wanted more.

Luck and politics are always factors in figure skating scoring.