|
Post by Admin on Oct 19, 2020 4:40:50 GMT
A must-see field in Moscow With participants limited to one event and Grand Prix hosting skaters based only in their country or region, the more localised fields present a different kind of feel to the Series in comparison to the past.
Without question the deepest ladies’ field of the season will come at Rostelecom, with Kostornaia, Trusova and Shcherbakova all taking their Grand Prix success from last year and vying for one podium. Medvedeva will look to factor in there as well, as will Tuktamysheva and Sofia Samodurova, the 2019 European champion.
Kolyada, the 2018 world bronze medallist, will be tested in the men’s competition in Moscow, with Dmitri Aliev, the reigning Russian and European champion, factoring in, as well as Georgia’s Morisi Kviteshvili, youngster Danielian, as well as Alexander Samarin, Roman Savosin and others.
In pairs, Boikova/Kozlovskii will go up against Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov, 2019 junior world champs, as well as Daria Pavliuchenko and Denis Khodykin.
Keep an eye on the boards While Medvedeva’s switch back to Tutberidze has been highly publicised, there’s been a plethora of coaching changes through the elongated off-season, including the American Tennell going to Tom Zakrajsek in Colorado.
With COVID restrictions in place and crowds not allowed at Skate America (other events are still TBD), skaters must rely more on themselves and their teams to create a competitive atmosphere in empty arenas.
Coaching personnel will become even more important for skaters to bring their best onto the ice in these unprecedented circumstances.
Skaters relying more on themselves and their teams for competitive atmosphere in empty arenas
Should the Grand Prix Final remain unscheduled, skaters will next compete at their national championships, typically held in late December through mid January.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 21, 2020 19:43:02 GMT
Skate America usually is part of a six-nation international Grand Prix Series leading to a Final, but the Canadian and French competitions have been cancelled, as has the 2021 Four Continents Championships scheduled for February in Australia.
The four remaining Grand Prix events, in the U.S., Russia, Japan and China, are to be essentially domestic competitions, and the Final has been indefinitely postponed from its scheduled December dates in Beijing.
The 2021 World Championships still are scheduled for late March in Stockholm; the 2020 worlds in Montreal were cancelled. The 2021 U.S. Championships are to take place at San Jose in January.
“We are so extremely lucky to be competing at Skate America even under difficult circumstances, and I am very grateful we have that opportunity,” Tennell said. “I will try to make the most of every opportunity presented.”
That is why Tennell chose to do U.S. Figure Skating’s virtual competition, the International Selection Pool Points Challenge, even though its two “opportunities” came when she was still settling into Colorado Springs. Despite understandably unpolished and flawed performances, she finished second overall to Mariah Bell and had the highest free skate score in the second opportunity.
Tennell said her goal for this season is to land a triple Axel cleanly. She has come close a few times in practice, landing on one foot, although the jumps so far have mainly been either under-rotated or “cheated” – finishing the rotation on the ice after landing.
Zakrajsek said her first competitive attempt at the triple Axel likely will be at the virtual Aerial Figure Skating Challenge, for which videos must be submitted by Nov. 2, or at one of U.S. Figure Skating’s Championship Series live events later in the fall.
He has been working with her on a different entry pattern to the three-and-a-half-rotation jump and on getting more airtime after the takeoff. It is the only one of the six jump types in skating that has a forward takeoff.
“It’s not just telling her what she needs to do but teaching her how to do what she needs to do,” Zakrajsek said. “As you get more confident in the technique, you will be able to work out the ‘cheat’ on the landing and consistently do a jump that is fully rotated.”
Twelve women have been credited with cleanly landing a triple Axel in international competition, half since 2016. Other than Nagasu, only Tonya Harding was not a teenager when she landed her first, at age 20 in 1991.
That Zakrajsek was able to teach Nagasu the jump when she already was a woman of a certain age by current women’s skating parameters factored in the reasons that led Tennell to stay in Colorado Springs.
“I thought, ‘Hey, if he could teach Mirai, he knows how to teach it to a woman [rather than a teen],’” Tennell said.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Oct 22, 2020 4:27:35 GMT
Nagasu’s triple Axel in the team event at the 2018 Olympics was the only one in her 11 career attempts for which she received a positive Grade of Execution. Six others were called fully rotated.
The most complicated part of teaching the jump to an older skater is avoiding injury. Nagasu has said damage from training the jump led her to need the first of two hip surgeries since the 2018 Olympics.
Tennell’s skating career was threatened by back problems in the 2016 and 2017 seasons. Even though she said her back is much stronger since then, both the skater and the coach said they are exercising caution.
“It’s definitely something I have to watch for, but as long as I don’t overdo it, I don’t really think I have to worry about it,” Tennell said.
“We all love competing, but there is a certain wear and tear that goes with competing and traveling so much. Being able to stay home and train this season might actually help with that.”
Tennell worked out all the choreography for this year’s programs via Zoom with her France-based choreographer, Benoit Richaud. The short is to bluesy compositions by Russian pianist Kirill Richter, the free to a moody, introspective part of Ennio Morricone’s score for the film “Cinema Paradiso.” She and Richaud still do frequent Zoom sessions to refine the presentation.
“I want to show a more mature side, to show I’m becoming a woman now,” Tennell said.
During the early months of the pandemic, when no rinks were open, she found time to return to a childhood pursuit, playing the piano, which she had put aside when skating became her extracurricular priority as a high school freshman.
“I still remember a ton of piano stuff, including old exercises,” she said. “The hardest part of starting again was training my hands to be in coordination with each other. I forgot how hard it was to have my left hand doing something different than my right. It sounds so simple.”
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Nov 1, 2020 4:45:07 GMT
Canada shifted its national figure skating championships from January to February and reduced the number of competitors for the event in Vancouver, allowing more time for skaters to prepare amid the coronavirus pandemic. “The global pandemic has put forth challenges for us all, and our priority is to support the development and goals of our skaters in a safe manner,” Skate Canada CEO Debra Armstrong said in a press release. Nationals, now scheduled to conclude the weekend of Feb. 14, will have two flights of skaters per discipline in junior and senior categories, but not novice competition. Another event, January’s Skate Canada Challenge, a nationals qualifier, was shifted to a virtual competition with skaters participating from their home regions. Nationals is typically a selection event for the world championships, which this season are in Stockholm in March. Canada, the reigning Olympic team event champion, earned at least one medal at every Olympics and world championships from 2005-18, with the streak ending in 2019. Its top skaters are ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier and the pairs’ team of Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Nov 24, 2020 4:37:40 GMT
The pairs arms race is in high gear Who is the “it” team in Russian pairs skating? For the moment it’s Aleksandra Boikova and Dmitrii Kozlovskii, the European champions beating silver medallists Anastasia Mishina and Aleksandr Galliamov by seven points at Rostelecom.
While Boikova/Kozlovskii grew in strength through the weekend, excelling in particular in the free skate, Moscow was missing three-time world medalists Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov as well as Daria Pavliuchenko and Denis Khodykin, two more teams which will no doubt factor into the conversation come nationals.
Russia will be allowed to send three teams to the European Championships in late January, meaning nationals will factor big into that decision – but isn’t the sole factor.
Last year Boikova/Kozlovskii, Pavliuchenko/Khodykin, and Tarasova/Morozov went 1-2-3 at Europeans.
And Mishina/Galliamov aren’t to be counted out, either: They’re the 2019 world junior champions and are only more motivated after a silver-medal finish.
“Even a bad experience is an experience,” said Mishina. “We really wanted to skate clean... we hope next time we’ll be able to.”
|
|