Sasha on the new "youth movement"

[rtureck]

In Sasha's time the "baby ballerina's" were Sasha, Naomi Nari Nam and Jenny Kirk. Sasha won a U.S. championship, two World medals and Olympic silver. Jenny was a world junior champion. Naomi had a promising start wih a U.S. silver, then fell prey to injuries before launching a comeback in pairs.

How will the new babies -- Caroline, Rachael and Mirai -- fare? Among them they already have three world junior championships, a U.S. championship and a senior Grand Prix Finals appearance. As of now, the sky's the limit.

In Sarah Hughes' time, Sarah the OGM did real well. How soon do people forget about Sarah. Hughes consistently beat all the other baby ballerinas in ISU competitions leading to olys 02

Sasha not a jumper in her younger days?! That's ridiculous. Sasha (even though she didn't even have a consistent 3-3) was one of the earliest female figure skaters to go barking up the quad tree (quad salchow, which she only managed to land in practice). Maybe if she spent the extra time training the quad on training a good 3-3, she could have had it.

Yeah I was there, saw her landed the quad sal in practice, and the Cohen hyping machine was hyping her to be the first woman to land a quad for years. You are right, maybe if she spent more time practicing the jumps, she maybe she could have it. Under COP, the skater with the whole package wins. Cohen did not lose to Arakawa on the basis of jumps. They both landed five triples, in fact Cohen rotated 2 extra triples in the air, but fell on one and badly scratched out of the other. It will be too easy to blame on the jumps. Cohen lost to Arakawa on the second mark the non jumping part too. If she returns, Zhang and Nagasu will beat her on the spins, so yes it is not all about jumps. IMO Zhang and Nagasu (Mao too) are able to achieve that perfect split in a spiral without dropping their backs like Sasha.

 

[chuckm]

Zhang and Nagasu can also do the I-spin without a hunched back, like Sasha. Dick Button commented negatively on Sasha's back position in the I spin on that video that all the Sasha lovers are rhapsodizing about. In that same video, Sasha also nearly fell out of one of her spins (and she wasn't even doing the difficult change-edge variations that the skaters are doing now). At 15, she couldn't begin to execute the intricate spins 14-year-old Zhang and Nagasu do so easily.

 

[ChrisH]

"I was definitely burned out and felt the need for a break,'' Cohen said. "I'll decide about 2010 soon, but I have a very petite body type and my body is the same or better than it was because I learned to make it stronger and had all these years to learn about myself. So I'd be confident if I did (come back) ...

If that's true, she should definitely come back.

"The girls are trained differently now than I was,'' she said. "I wasn't trained as a jumper. These girls, they're trained to jump from a younger time and in the new scoring system and in a generic way. It is different than when Michelle (Kwan) and Kristi (Yamaguchi) were skating and it was not so much a jumping competition.''

I agree with this. Having the technical specialist look at slowmo replays in search for jumps to downgrade has made the sport more of a jumping competition. With the advent of slowmo, the 1/4 under-rotated rule should've been increased to 3/8 or 1/2 under-rotated for a jump to be downgraded.

 

[fourclover]

If that's true, she should definitely come back.


I agree with this. Having the technical specialist look at slowmo replays in search for jumps to downgrade has made the sport more of a jumping competition. With the advent of slowmo, the 1/4 under-rotated rule should've been increased to 3/8 or 1/2 under-rotated for a jump to be downgraded.

I disagree. If they are skaters doing incorrect jumps and getting the same score as the ones who to text book jumps, how is that a competition? If that were the case, the ones who fit the judges' personal artistic or technical "tastes" would win the medal. What baffles me is that Sasha seems to be categorizing herself with the great "artistic" skaters in history only because she can't do difficult jumps

 

[rtureck]

If that's true, she should definitely come back.


I agree with this. Having the technical specialist look at slowmo replays in search for jumps to downgrade has made the sport more of a jumping competition. With the advent of slowmo, the 1/4 under-rotated rule should've been increased to 3/8 or 1/2 under-rotated for a jump to be downgraded.

Actually Kristi landed more triple lutz/triple toe combo as a show skater (yeah after she won the olys) than Sasha. I believe Sasha landed one triple lutz/triple toe (I mean a clean one).

Kwan landed more 7 triple jumps programs than many skaters.

 

[Mathman]

In Sarah Hughes' time, Sarah the OGM did real well. How soon do people forget about Sarah. Hughes consistently beat all the other baby ballerinas in ISU competitions leading to olys 02.

My bad. How could I have left out Sarah?!

To me, the defining victories in Sarah's career were not necessarily her convincing (if surprising) win at the Olympics. IMHO she made it to the elite level in 2001 when she overtook Maria Butyrskaya in both the Grand Prix Finals and the World championship to establish herself as one of the top three skaters in the world.

Sarah's other impressive victory came at the 2003 U.S. championships. She had been pretty much written off that year -- and indeed, I think she was already looking forward to the next stage of her life -- but she still had enough gas in the tank to beat a heavily favored Sasha for the silver medal. Sarah was so overlooked that in an interview after the event was over, Tatiana Tarasova lamented that it was such a shame that sasha didn't beat michelle and had to settle for second place. :think: