It's a good job the action is starting later today, because I made out my Men's predictions this morning, and only realised there now that I hadn't actually posted them!
Right, finally finished watching the Men’s FS from Europeans, so now feel qualified enough to make predictions (although, I still haven’t seen the 4 Continents FS either, because I was worried about the British Eurosport commentators giving away the result from Europeans).
Anyway, I knew exactly who I was going to have as my Top 6 – Orser’s Boys; the “陈-Brothers”; Boyang; and Shoma. But, I was being pulled in all possible directions for what order to put them in.
In previous years, it would be easier, as you would just put Orser’s boys at the top, and then try to sort out the others. But, Nathan doing umpteen quads in his programmes this season has really mixed things up. He is now ahead of Javi on the absolute PB list by 3.5 points.
That said, we haven’t seen Javi perform to his full potential this season yet. Although his absolute SB’s for the FS and the overall score were from Nationals, his SP score there was 5 points lower than it was at Europeans. Of course, although he won the title at Europeans, we all know that his FS did not go well. In fact, it was a full 12 points lower than what he scored for it at Nationals and at the Cup of Russia. So, we know he is capable of getting a much higher overall score from these programmes if he can skate them both clean.
On top of this, Shoma joined the 300 club a couple of weeks ago at the Coupe de Printemps.
Quite frankly, any of them could win the World title. And I am sure all of them will try to pull something extra out of the bag for Worlds. So, I have made my predictions based on their best performances of this season.
For the remaining two, Patrick’s absolute PB was 6 points higher than Boyang’s absolute PB. But Boyang scored his at 4 Continents last season, whereas Patrick scored his at the Trophée de France in 2013. Looking at their SB’s, there is practically nothing to separate them.
I know I’m taking a chance, but I just have a feeling about Patrick.
The guys that made up the rest of the Top 10 in the absolute PB list were also the same guys that were in the Top 10 according to how they performed this season. However, the orders they were in were vastly different! So, for these positions, I went with my gut.
I did make one deviation, though. I pushed Kovtun out of the Top 10, and replaced him with the guy who was 11th on the absolute PB list, Alexei Bychenko. I have been really impressed with his progress over the past couple of seasons, and would like to see him break into the Top 10 at Worlds for the first time.
Yes, I know my predictions would mean that Russia would not get three slots for the Pyeongchang Olympics. But, Kovtun is so inconsistent that you just don’t know which version of him is going to show up each day. When he is good, Kovtun is brilliant. But when he is not good, Kovtun is awful.
The Ice Dance predictions will follow some time before they start. But, it’s going to be interesting doing them, as I haven’t seen the Ice Dance from either Europeans or 4 Continents, and have no hope of seeing anything before tomorrow!
Caroliza_fan
SENIOR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
Men
1. Nathan CHEN, USA
2. Yuzuru HANYU, JPN
3. Javier FERNANDEZ, ESP
4. Shoma UNO, JPN
5. Patrick CHAN, CAN
Just for fun
6. Boyang JIN, CHN
7. Mikhail KOLYADA, RUS
8. Jason BROWN, USA
9. Denis TEN, KAZ
10. Alexei BYCHENKO, ISR
