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Post by Admin on Nov 4, 2019 6:18:19 GMT
The women’s award ceremony at the figure skating Grand Prix in France descended into a comedy show, after a local official mistakenly gave the gold medal to a US skater instead of the Russian winner. http://instagram.com/p/B4YWsAgjEvJ Alena Kostornaia, 16, who won her first-ever senior Grand Prix in Grenoble, burst into laughter after discovering that her medal had been awarded to American counterpart Mariah Bell, who finished third.  The awkward confusion was caused by Christophe Ferrari, the president of the Grenoble metropolitan area, who was invited to award medals on Saturday. Ferrari, who apparently didn’t have enough experience of presenting medals to professional athletes, hung the gold around the neck of the third-place finisher.  |
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Post by Admin on Nov 4, 2019 22:56:02 GMT
Gala Exhibition | Internationaux de France 2019
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Post by Admin on Nov 5, 2019 21:09:14 GMT
Ice Dance Free Dance | Internationaux de France 2019 Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron led in the ice dance competition after their rhythm dance at the Internationaux de France on November 1.  Four-time world champions Papadakis and Cizeron “debuted their aerobic-themed dance to selections from the musical ‘Fame’ on the Grand Prix level in their home nation in Grenoble,” NBC Sports reported.  Papadakis and Cizeron pleased the French home crowd by keeping up their winning run in ice dance events since their February 2018 Olympic silver, scoring 222.24 points for the win after their free skate on November 2.  Of the 1980’s theme of their latest rhythm dance, Cizeron said, “It’s really fun for us that it is really different. It’s different from what everyone else is doing, and it’s different from what we’ve been doing. It was a kind of a challenge to work on this program and make it fun,” according to the International Skating Union, NBC Sports reported. |
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Post by Admin on Nov 6, 2019 21:08:27 GMT
The kiddie corps of Russian women has been even better than expected – and expectations were very high.
Anna Shcherbakova, 15, Alexandra Trusova, 15, and Alena Kostornaia, 16, each has easily won gold in the first three events. Shcherbakova took Skate America by 10-plus points; Trusova won Skate Canada by 10-plus points over reigning Grand Prix Final champion Rika Kihira of Japan; and Kostornaia took Grand Prix France by nearly 20 points over reigning world and Olympic champion Alina Zagitova of Russia.
It is likely that only Kihira, at the season-ending NHK Trophy in Japan, can prevent Russian women from sweeping gold in the six events. That has happened in only one of the four Grand Prix disciplines; Russian men swept in 1998-99 and 1999-00, an era when some skaters did three events instead of the current two.
The three young Russian women have posted the three highest free skate scores in the two seasons of the revised scoring system.
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Post by Admin on Nov 7, 2019 4:36:20 GMT
The jump revolution in women’s skating, with quads and triple Axels, has had a bigger and faster impact than expected – even though women cannot do quads in the short program.
Trusova’s four quad attempts (three clean) helped her wipe out Kihira’s 7.95-point edge after the short program at Skate Canada. Shcherbakova’s two clean quad Lutzes carried her from fourth after the short (7.5 points from first) to the title at Skate America. Kostornaia’s three triple Axels (even the one under-rotated in the short) were difference-makers in France.
And these stats, courtesy of skatingscores.com: Four women – Trusova, Shcherbakova and juniors Kamila Valieva of Russia and Alysa Liu of the United States, the latter two winners of two Junior Grand Prix events each this season – have done 19 jumps credited as quads in international events (including the free skate-only Japan Open) this season. There had been only 22 other jumps called quads in the previous history of the sport.
The success rate for women’s quads is the big change: Last season, just five of the 16 jumps called quads got a positive Grade of Execution (another got a neutral 0.0). This season, 16 of the 19 jumps have positive GOEs – 12 of them at 2.30 or higher.
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