- Joined
- Apr 14, 2014
Love the caricature of Adam. My memory is failing me at the moment, but which team USA member does this again???
Max Settlage, I believe.
Love the caricature of Adam. My memory is failing me at the moment, but which team USA member does this again???
yup
looks like he can be spoiler too! but he will need for Chanyu to really have a splatfest though.....
still, good luck to him
Max Settlage, I believe.
Ashley, wow, what a wonderful performance, it's a miracle to me why she isn't more popular, especially in her home country. Lovely jumps and great performance, I really liked all her emotes and the sexiness. As far I can tell, she seemed to have a very good execution of her elements, very clean.
I'm American, and I'm as perplexed as you are about that. It may be that the negative voices are louder and/or more persistent than the lovers of Ashley. She does speak her mind, and some people don't like that.
I can say that I only discovered how much I like her when I saw her in person. It's her presence I hadn't caught onto before.
And I'm very much with you on all of your observations. She skates with her heart and for the audience. I love that, and her playfulness, everything. I'm one hundred percent in her corner. Since I "discovered" Ashley, I've found many more like myself who love her.
they are not only supportive, but also have a very good understanding of what happens down there on the ice.
The fall in the SP gave me some pain in my groin and hip. But again it was worked on and it is feeling better every day.
I tried to not lose anything else and hey, I am OK with that, I had two falls ...
So, did any of that, the tweaked ankle, the hip and groin pain, did it influence you in the free?
It was very difficult ... but it is very important for us to reinvent ourselves and constantly make breakthroughs
Of course I am aware of the risks. There is a 50 percent chance I would fall. But still I think we need to take as many risks as the male athletes do so that in the future we can achieve more elements.
Everyone can make mistakes, look at the Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu, there is nothing bad or terrible about that.
Stephane suggested music of Peer Gynt and I wanted something with a symphonic orchestra and when I heard it for the first time, I knew that this is going to be my music.
Yesterday, wasn´t a good day for me, but this is something you need to forget about and go back fighting on the ice, I am not a negative thinking person, you know and what is done is done anyways. I am happy that I could pull myself together and show all my jumps that I can do.
Yesterday I was not so confident, it is harder than last year, but I am pleased that I was able to skate an almost clean performance and could leave yesterday behind me.
I think that, for me, because I am one of the older girls, I need to use my maturity as one of my strengths, and so I felt a sexier piece was going to help me get there, and it's fun.
I was at Stars on ice and was supposed to learn a number with other skaters, but instead, I raced to the boards and grabbed my phone - texting Shae, telling her that I had found our music.
It was practice for me and another opportunity to train the program under pressure for nationals and worlds. So, I just had to go out and deliver that performance. For me, it's just going to be about keeping my head on straight.
For me, I just have to get myself to a point where I can believe in my training.
When I sat down and looked at what I wanted to do this season and what I knew I needed to stay competitive, Raf and I…looked at every single jump separately to figure out individually where it could be improved upon.
He, literally put me on top of a mountain and made me train run-through after run-through. So I came here with altitude on my side and I was just ready to go.
Our foxtrot ('Heartbreak Hotel') didn't best suit the traditional sense of a foxtrot. It was a big problem, because the short dance is all about paying tribute to these traditional rhythms. And when we went back to the drawing board, our team decided that we better pay tribute to the waltz and the polka with a new program.
For the first week, we had no time to focus on our free, it was all about the short and it was needed. Yet our Free Dance is in a constant state of development, since the day we started.
Despite how sometimes things can get you down and sometimes you just can not find your luck, in the end it´s not so bitter after all and it is a Mantra we use in our life's.
We couldn´t be more pleased with how the competition unfolded, we were able to come together and were able to perform the best we could for right now.
We skate together since we were children, the stars came together so to speak and we went through a lot already, so what is one missed year if you have 15? I am proud of my partner and I am happy that we can skate together.
Six months without skating is a lot, we missed it and are just glad to be back. It is a very emotional moment, I see it in Katya´s eyes, it really means a lot for us.
We are very happy just to be here and skate for the audience. Today it was difficult with our nerves, but we are happy to be back with you.
It was a personal victory for us, to overcome the difficulties and show that we are still capable of skating together.
Anna Karenina is a historic drama, it just isn´t enough to smile or show sad faces. We have to feel what we skate, we need to be these people like when Dima kissed my hand. Of course, we were a bit overwhelmed today, having lot´s of Adrenaline in us, so it might wasn´t perfect, but we are trying.
Overall, we are quite happy, especially after the problem in the short, so for our next GP at Moscow, we definitely need to clean our Waltz up and ya, I would had liked that we get higher PC´s, but I guess it shouldn´t be this time.
We tried to skate with more feeling and expression, but also without too much weight
In Canada we were able to fight and I hope we will do the same at Moscow.
We’ve been skating really well all week. This summer went well as far as preparation goes. We really believe in our programs. The competition this week was a tremendous experience for us. It was a great way to start off the Grand Prix series. The Audience was fantastic, it almost felt like skating at home!
It's great for us to have characters to play, especially when it is a short dance. It really allows us to show our funny side, humor. It's a little bit cheeky but still has that elegance of a waltz. I'm really proud of the program. We've been working with some fantastic people.
It was definitely not one of my best skates, but I’m glad that I fought through. It was actually the first time I tried the triple Lutz-triple loop in the second half. I’m really satisfied with how I didn’t give up after the quad that I made an error on.
I started off really strong, a little bobble on the quad-triple, so I had a bit less speed going into the Axel. I had less momentum. And a big part of my triple Axel this year is having good flow into it. But the experience has been phenomenal, being able to be back with everyone.
My score wasn’t good in the short program. I popped the quad toe and the Lutz combination was not good. So I didn’t get the points in the short program, but I believed that I can do it (today). So I was able to do all my quads in the free skating
It was a high stress, challenging competition for me. I didn’t feel good on the six minutes warm up, I was distracted, you know more my thoughts than physically. When I stepped on the ice I skated with no thought of who is around and who is watching.
Its a great feeling physically, if you just go out and do what you have been doing day after day and we do have good and bad days and today was a good day for me.
Physical, we are all here for a reason, we are well trained for this level. As for me, it´s all mentally in competition. In my SP I wanted to show people that I am back and I was like a puppy with all his friends, it was just excited to be here and I think this was a little hard to control and it is also a new program, so different challenges await me there.
The Free, is more a calming program, with several moments where I can calm down and gather my thoughts and not panic and obviously the audience enjoyed both program, so it was really exciting.
It was challenging to decide if coming back was really what I wanted. The biggest reason why I came back was surely the training and having a purpose and having a goal, every day. As much as doing shows, it was really boring at times, doing nothing while all my friends were at the rink training. It´s a lot about the environment, the competitions, my friends at the training center...
It was my first time, sitting at first, in a Grand Prix event. Skating after two World and Olympic medalists was definitely a different situation for myself and I am glad I kept my composure.
This wasn’t our best skate, but I am glad that after the mistake, we pulled ourselves together and skated with emotions.
We can say that after a not so good short, we came back and delivered our elements. A few levels still need some working and we will go back to review our skates and improve what´s slacking.
Yes, in our free program I am the conductor and she is my muse, my music. The program is like a small concert.
We need to find our own ways and stand out, it can not always be about love, we try to offer a variety of programs and not just become a copy of Tatjana & Maxim. We still love them however, they are our idols and to skate with them at Moscow is fantastic.
Competitions in Canada are always in great heights and it can be tiresome at times, especially in the second part of our program, when we were pretty tired, but we managed and are very happy to have skated like we did.
It wasn’t perfect, it was a little shaky, we had to fight for a few things, but it was a good performance. I think we showed improvement in the areas that we wanted to.
Before we skated it felt very challenging. We felt pretty nervous. We just put a lot of pressure on ourselves. We really wanted to go out there and have a great performance.
We both came in and we really didn't speak to each other as much as we normally do.
I just decided to do the quad, like in the last minute, I am so proud, this is what I was dreaming of.