Mao Asada | Page 46 | Golden Skate

Mao Asada

If Mao is healthy and wants to skate, I say, let her skate. The results are just a bonus at this point. She's a legend, and nothing she does from here on out could change that. In fact, I'm curious about how she'd perform, now that the pressure is off and she has nothing left to prove. Team Japan would be glad to have her back, and her presence will push the world's other top skaters.

YesWay said:
Yes, her UR calls were bad enough (and sometimes pretty dubious)... but the edge calls could be even worse. She already rebuilt her jumps once, so I imagine if she still has any UR/edge problems, they're probably here to stay.

(BTW - it bothers me, the amount of power that now lies with the technical panel. There are often consipracy theories about the judges, but really - if you were going to fix a result, it takes far too many judges to do it. Whereas you could probably fix a result with just one corrupt member on the technical panel...)
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Edge call isn't a big deal. Mao can replace her 3Lz in the LP with a 2A, which she can do in her sleep. And probably change the -2Lo-2Lo to a -2T-2Lo just to guard against Zayak. It'll remain a very competitive layout.

I agree about the tech panel though. I'm always suspicious when they're given too much power, which is my issue with this !/e thing.

If she does though, perhaps she will lead a Russian 3A charge. I mean, all those Russian juniors seem to start out with 3Lz-3T as standard... and tano jumps. If one does it, seems like they ALL do it :-D So perhaps 3A wil become their next standard "must have" :-D
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I don't think Elena, Yulia, or Anna have any chance of making 3A--their axels just aren't good enough. But maybe Adelina can do it.
 
it bothers me said:
one[/I] corrupt member on the technical panel...)
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I totally agree with you. This is what I thought about the call on Mao's triple axel at 2012 4CC's. Also, the downgrades on Mao in the Worlds 2014 freeskate (to mention but one other occasion) made me irate because the jumps looked great and fully rotated and because the judges gave close to +1.5 GOE on average for all three jumps before the tech crew dropped the scores so dramatically. That would have given Mao a score of 145 without those ur calls alone. That was one of things that made watching skating in 6.0 more enjoyable to me: no rapidly disappearing tech scores on the counters for certain skaters. I also think that GOE and rotation should be determined based on what is observed with the naked eye like the fans do in real time and that this should be the basis for being penalized just as is done in football. In her last competitive skate, Mao ironically got some of her highest GOE on the very jumps that were subsequently downgraded.

On a more positive note, I found this HD video of Mao's performance at 4CCs 2008. One of the things I like best about this performance is how happy Mao is at the end in the K&C. She is like a bright beautiful beam of sun light.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SRzmSP9VHc
 
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As for Yuzuru's 3A
According to Asahi news, He said about it when he was 15yo that at during the training He keeps watching what she’s landing triple axles so he was able to picture and feel the sense of it unconsciously then he’s trying to embody her jumps with his body while imagining it, thus he ended up being able to land a 3A..(hope my English is understandable)

So I meant that he learned it from “Mao’s 3A” :)
 
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I think Mao's 3A is special because it's not about the power or jumping ability but more about the technique and the timing. It's amazing that a thin lady with her frame can pull off such a jump.
 
I just wanted to cross post what Sandpiper said about Mao in the Liza Tukt 3A thread:

Sandpiper said:
Tonya was a stronger natural jumper than Mao... but there's no way her triple axel was superior. It's extremely crooked in the air; in fact, it's a classic illustration that falls--not just UR/edge problems as the ISU seems to think--are also caused by bad technique. Mao, on the other hand, at least made the best of her abilities: She has a very tight rotation and is--most of the time--straight in the air. I personally will take the triple axel achieved through technique and hard work, and performed a record number of times, over the triple axel that's done by "jumping big" and landed only a few times.
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People keep putting Tonya's 3A in the same league as Midori's and downplaying Mao's 3A, but I'm glad someone else thinks the same way as I do about it.
 
Meoima said:
I think Mao's 3A is special because it's not about the power or jumping ability but more about the technique and the timing. It's amazing that a thin lady with her frame can pull off such a jump.
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THIS!!! Has any other woman with her frame done one 3A that was clean like Mao (Not Meissner) and as long as she has (12 years - 12-24 years old)?
 
CarneAsada said:
I just wanted to cross post what Sandpiper said about Mao in the Liza Tukt 3A thread:


People keep putting Tonya's 3A in the same league as Midori's and downplaying Mao's 3A, but I'm glad someone else thinks the same way as I do about it.
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Tonya had the worst looking 3A out of Midori, Mao, and Liza. SHe was always waaaay off axis when she did her jumps. She did maybe 2 good ones out of the 4 that was ratified. Mao did better 3A at twelve than any of Tonya's.
 
Franklin99 said:
THIS!!! Has any other woman with her frame done one 3A that was clean like Mao (Not Meissner) and as long as she has (12 years - 12-24 years old)?
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I think no one with any frame did it as long (not even Midori, in competition I think she did it from 1989-1995). Ludmila Nelidina did a clean 3A once in 2002 but everything else in the program was horrid, though her frame is more like Mao's. The only other one is I think Yukari Nakano, who did about 4 clean 3Axels from 2002 to 2008, but she never once got positive GOE, they never looked good in real time while Mao's landed plenty that looked good without slow motion.
 
gotoschool said:
I totally agree with you. This is what I thought about the call on Mao's triple axel at 2012 4CC's. Also, the downgrades on Mao in the Worlds 2014 freeskate (to mention but one other occasion) made me irate because the jumps looked great and fully rotated and because the judges gave close to +1.5 GOE on average for all three jumps before the tech crew dropped the scores so dramatically. That would have given Mao a score of 145 without those ur calls alone. That was one of things that made watching skating in 6.0 more enjoyable to me: no rapidly disappearing tech scores on the counters for certain skaters. I also think that GOE and rotation should be determined based on what is observed with the naked eye like the fans do in real time and that this should be the basis for being penalized just as is done in football. In her last competitive skate, Mao ironically got some of her highest GOE on the very jumps that were subsequently downgraded.
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Let's not forget Sochi, where she should have easily sailed past 145 and likely broken (or at the very least come very, VERY close to) Yuna's 150.06. It was certainly higher than Adelina's 149.95, which isn't a score but a price tag for a low-grade espresso machine I got at Costco the other day. Come on: 8 triples to 7 without any UR or weird bobbles, incredible footwork and tremendous speed. Mao was underscored only because she happened to skate early that night. Had she made the final flight with that FS she would have made the podium there.
 
^I think Mao should've received a WR for that. Not so much the podium, but I think she deserved fourth place. I know lots of conspiracy theories are floating around, but in the case of Mao's LP, I think it was mainly the skate order. The judges weren't ready to give the high PCS yet and the tech panel was pickier on the earlier groups. We see this many times, when people get "double-punished" for bad SPs.

Regarding triple axels: I think people lump Midori and Tonya together because they skated in the same era, had similar builds (short, muscular), and both jumped big. But in terms of air position and technique, they weren't alike at all. Midori's 3A was hardly ever tilted--which was probably why she actually landed that darn jump with some amount of consistency. :biggrin:
 
Sandpiper said:
^I think Mao should've received a WR for that. Not so much the podium, but I think she deserved fourth place. I know lots of conspiracy theories are floating around, but in the case of Mao's LP, I think it was mainly the skate order. The judges weren't ready to give the high PCS yet and the tech panel was pickier on the earlier groups. We see this many times, when people get "double-punished" for bad SPs.

Regarding triple axels: I think people lump Midori and Tonya together because they skated in the same era, had similar builds (short, muscular), and both jumped big. But in terms of air position and technique, they weren't alike at all. Midori's 3A was hardly ever tilted--which was probably why she actually landed that darn jump with some amount of consistency. :biggrin:
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i don't buy this, Mao was one of the main contenders going in and one of if not the most accomplished skater going into the games, calling this coincidence would be a great understatement, not only did she not get the pcs and goe bonus the other top skaters were getting, her ps and goe scores were lower at then it was all season at the Olympics, while she delivered a historic performance with 8 triple and get level 4 on all elements that made my blood boil, and also made lose faith in in the judges and the Olympics in general.
 
I agree and I honestly think had Mao skated in the last group, or even the second-to-the-last group, she would've broken 70 in PCS and received higher GOE. I guess it's psychological? Judges are so conservative with marks in the early warm-up groups, thinking that the best will always come later. I think that had Mao skated that perfect FS with a good SP, the judges would've actually given her the gold, because Adelina's camp reasons out that she has harder tech content which is why she beat Yuna. But they wouldn't be able to pull that same line of reasoning with Mao. Assuming that the Russian scandal is a thing (and I hope not, because I am a fan of Adelina too), Mao I think was the only one able to put a stop to it.

Though like many of you, I think the perfect FS came out of circumstance and would not have happened had she gotten the perfect SP she wanted. IMO she was relatively underscored in the Olympics, but I guess it's more of a case of everyone else being so grossly overscored. Worlds 2014 though... now that was underscoring at its finest.

Gosh, I miss Mao.
 
chezzu said:
I agree and I honestly think had Mao skated in the last group, or even the second-to-the-last group, she would've broken 70 in PCS and received higher GOE. I guess it's psychological? Judges are so conservative with marks in the early warm-up groups, thinking that the best will always come later. I think that had Mao skated that perfect FS with a good SP, the judges would've actually given her the gold, because Adelina's camp reasons out that she has harder tech content which is why she beat Yuna. But they wouldn't be able to pull that same line of reasoning with Mao. Assuming that the Russian scandal is a thing (and I hope not, because I am a fan of Adelina too), Mao I think was the only one able to put a stop to it.

Though like many of you, I think the perfect FS came out of circumstance and would not have happened had she gotten the perfect SP she wanted. IMO she was relatively underscored in the Olympics, but I guess it's more of a case of everyone else being so grossly overscored. Worlds 2014 though... now that was underscoring at its finest.

Gosh, I miss Mao.
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I miss her tons. Even though I like Elena, and Satoko. No one can replace Mao
 
I thought the URs on the 3Lo in combination and the 3T in combination were kind of...odd. The 3A was more under-rotated than those jumps, yet they gave her credit for the Axel, but not the more fully rotated 3Lo and 3T?? Anyway, I personally came up with 146-ish when I scored it.

I think her jumping is one of my favorite things about her. Not just the Axel, but all of her jumps have this softness about them that no other skater has. And I absolutely LOVE her 3F-3Lo combination!
 
anyanka said:
Let's not forget Sochi, where she should have easily sailed past 145 and likely broken (or at the very least come very, VERY close to) Yuna's 150.06. It was certainly higher than Adelina's 149.95, which isn't a score but a price tag for a low-grade espresso machine I got at Costco the other day. Come on: 8 triples to 7 without any UR or weird bobbles, incredible footwork and tremendous speed. Mao was underscored only because she happened to skate early that night. Had she made the final flight with that FS she would have made the podium there.
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At Sochi, Mao was allowed to have only the triple axel and then she was short changed or given rock bottom marks in everything else like in GOE, PCS and downgrades on the 3 flip and loop and the 2A / 3T which looked fine. Mao did not get even close to +1 on any of her jumps, while other contenders were given over +1 even on ones that looked under-rotated. The consolation is that it will be remembered overall as the greatest moment of the SOchi Olympics and historically as one of the greatest performances ever for the reasons mary 01 mentioned: level 4 steps and spins and 8 triples, not to mention the consummate emotion and sincerity of expression. I definitely think it should have been a world record.

I also agree with mary 01 that Mao's scores had little to do with skating order, since COP is not supposed to consider skating order and since I doubt that Mao's scores would have been the same had she been from another place. The skating order argument is like getting punished more than twice for the mistakes in the SP. Just another example of how the scoring system is unjust. This is like a baseball team being given a two run deficit to make up for the next two World Series games because they lost the first one by a large margin, since the LP is worth twice as much as the SP. I wonder how this would go over in terms of fairness in baseball. Then to be even more unfair, the skating order deflation is carried into subsequent competitions, hence Mao's deflated 138 in the LP at Worlds.
 
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MAXSwagg said:
I thought the URs on the 3Lo in combination and the 3T in combination were kind of...odd. The 3A was more under-rotated than those jumps, yet they gave her credit for the Axel, but not the more fully rotated 3Lo and 3T?? Anyway, I personally came up with 146-ish when I scored it.

I think her jumping is one of my favorite things about her. Not just the Axel, but all of her jumps have this softness about them that no other skater has. And I absolutely LOVE her 3F-3Lo combination!
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I totally agree with this, her jumps were also the first thing that caught my attention when i watched Mao the first time, she just has this effortless and thrilling jumps, and by thrilling i mean that she does them out of nowhere and with no preparations. I love it when she suddenly does her 3lo and 3s out of nowhere, or when she does does several jumps right after each other. like the 3f-2lo-2lo and then 3lo in the fs, or the 3a and right after the 3f-3lo.
 
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