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Post by Admin on Oct 6, 2019 4:05:35 GMT
Trusova won the free skate-only Japan Open with a quad Salchow, a quad Lutz and two quadruple toe loops, though some of the landings weren’t crisp. She was given positive grades of execution on three of the four jumping passes (two were in combination).  Trusova earned 160.53 points to beat a field including Olympic and world champion Alina Zagitova. Video of Trusova’s skate is here. Her performance caused Nathan Chen, who won the men’s event with four quads, to post Instagram videos of her replays with the caption, “mind BLOWN.”  Trusova is in her first year as a senior international skater. In her debut last month, she posted the world’s leading free skate and total scores by more than 10 points each. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 10, 2019 3:29:40 GMT
Double world junior champion Trusova had already shown she would be a force in her first senior season with victory in last month's CS Nepela Memorial in Bratislava. But this was the first time she was coming up against the top seniors in 2019-20.  The longer free skate gives her maximum opportunity to show off her array of quads, and she did so to great effect in Saitama dancing to music from 'Game of Thrones'. Trusova opened with a quad Salchow which she just about held onto followed by a better quad Lutz.  Then came a quad toe loop-triple toe loop combination and a double Axel followed by a somewhat scrappy quad toe loop-Euler-triple Salchow combo. A triple Lutz-triple loop combination and another triple Lutz and an excellent spin sequence ended a high-quality routine. While her quads were not executed perfectly, they were all landed cleanly to guarantee high technical elements scores and give an indication of what could be to come later this season. That gave her the edge over training partner Zagitova, outscoring her 160.53 to 154.41, with Kihira almost 10 points further back. Chen and Uno were reportedly transfixed by Trusova's skate with the American so impressed that he posted a video in Instagram showing replays of her four quads with the message, "mind BLOWN". Zagitova skated a clean programme with triple Lutz-triple loop and triple flip-double toe loop-double loop combinations the highlights.  Kihira chose not to unveil the quad Salchow she has earmarked for the season, instead opening with a triple Axel as she did in winning the Autumn Classic last month. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 10, 2019 19:30:20 GMT
Chen dominates men's event Earlier in Saitama, Chen was simply irresistible in the men's competition as he returned to the scene of his second world title.  Dancing to a medley of songs from the Elton John biopic 'Rocketman', the 20-year-old opened with a triple Lutz-triple toe loop combination before landing a quad flip followed by a quad toe loop-Euler-single flip combo. Then came a triple Axel, a quad Salchow and a quad toe loop, but a scintillating routine was marred slightly when he singled what should have been a triple Axel. However, he was soon back on track with a dazzling step sequence to 'Bennie and the Jets' and was rewarded with a big score of 189.83 to lay down a serious marker for the season. Uno attempted just two quads in his skate to a cover of Robyn's 'Dancing On My Own', but fell on the quad toe loop. He scored 169.09 to just beat Zhou into second place. Javier Fernandez - who retired from competition after winning a seventh straight European title - delighted the crowd with his skate to Rossini's 'The Barber of Seville', the music with which he won his first world title in 2015. The Spaniard's lack of quads meant he was always likely to struggle on the scoring front and he was fifth, just behind Japan's Koshiro Shimada, with Deniss Vasiljevs of Latvia in sixth. |
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Post by Admin on Oct 16, 2019 18:10:25 GMT
Young women are turning the quadruple jump into a key element of singles skating, pushing the technical side of their discipline forward at a pace that seemed unimaginable only three years ago.
It is far too early to tell where this will take the sport’s leading ladies. To quintuple jumps? Hip replacements? Olympic and senior world titles? A sport dominated by willowy young teens? Ephemeral brilliance rather than memorably long-lived excellence?
Suffice it to say that the present includes future shock for a sport that seems to be moving ever further from its past as ballet on ice and turning into a form of gymnastics on ice.
And, as the 19th Century American orator Wendell Phillips put it, “Revolutions never go backward.”
At the 2018 World Junior Championships, Alexandra Trusova of Russia, then 13, won the title and gave a preview of coming attractions by cleanly landing a quad toe loop and a quad Salchow in the free skate.
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