kwanfan1818
RIP D-10
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I just hope Gogolev can go back, train up the senior program, and treat Nationals like another competition on the way to Jr. Worlds. He's had enough of a roller-coaster of a JGP season!
He had 87.62 in the SP at sectionals with 4S-3T, 3Lz, 3A. 154.13 in the FS with 1Lz and 3T to open. His JW skate was a bit stronger than that. If you take the value he got for the ChSq at Sectionals (3 BV + 1.2 GOE) and add it to his JW scores, you get 158.96.Agree with your analysis of Asher.
I was thinking the opposite for Gogolev. I do think he was graded correctly with PCS in low 7s in Vancouver. What I'm expecting at nationals is mid to high 7s in PCS if she skates well. Add in another element and if he cleans up his URs and lands the lutz, I would say 170 is possible in the long with mid 80s in the short if he's mostly clean. If all skate well the only guy who can beat that is Keegan; Gogolev would be neck and neck with (or slightly ahead of) Nam. The rest would fall somewhere behind.
I don't think World Juniors are an option, I think there a certainty.Obviously, he's too young to go to Worlds or Four Continents, but World Juniors is definitely an option.
I would definitely send Orzel. The only thing Phan has over him this season is the JGP bronze, and that came down completely to the fields they skated in.Yeah, I don’t think that Phan and Orzel have been up to Stephen’s level so it seems pretty clear that Stephen should go to Jr Worlds and the only question is who should join him. And in my view, Orzel should have the inside track for the second spot although I expect they will just go by nationals results.
I would definitely send Orzel. The only thing Phan has over him this season is the JGP bronze, and that came down completely to the fields they skated in.
Gogolev was hyped as the favorite to be JGPF champion before the GP series started, was crowned JGPF champion after he won Slovakia, had a weak JGP at a home JGP that was meant to be his march of triumph into the top seed based on combined score, did not make JGP initially and only did when another skater withdrew, and then competed JGPF in the same city of his most difficult program and against the podium from that event. I don't think I'm overstating the case, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Gogolev was hyped as the favorite to be JGPF champion before the GP series started,
No, he absolutely was. Obviously nobody knew how he’d actually do competing at this level, since that regularly poses challenges for skaters just moving up, but he was widely discussed as a major contender, and, if he skated well, the favourite.He was not hyped prior to GP.
I liked Asher a lot as a competitor but he was disappointing for me as a commentator. He's brought in because he has some expertise about ice dance but all he talked about was music, feeling and star factor. Nothing technical, nothing to help viewers understand the sport. (I may also be annoyed that he called Bach elevator music...) Dylan was much better.
I think it was hype because no one really knew about him as a competitor.
I love Liz but agree. I wish she'd cut back the commentary a bit although she had interesting things to say. I think she was really excited to be there. I liked Asher. But I really liked Dylan! He was fabulous! He is such a natural: intelligent, funny, knows when to talk and when to be quiet. MORE please!Should I have been surprised at PJ Kwong letting Elizabeth Manley effectively talk throughout a huge portion of the singles short and free skates this weekend? That was quite a lot of running commentary - not necessarily incorrect analysis mind you, but sometimes superfluous.
From the journalist point of view you had a benchmark career ending with an Olympic gold medal won in a team event. But what did you feel when you’ve already decided to finish your career, but haven’t announced it yet?
– If I say that it was easy it’ll be a lie. It was very difficult and scary. Probably, these are normal human feelings when it comes to changing your life forever. For more than 20 years my life could have been described in two words: “Patrick is a figure skater”, and everything else has been all about it. At some point, as I grew older, I began to wonder who am I actually outside the ice? How can my future life develop without figure skating? How to plan it from scratch? Now, when all these worries have subsided, I cannot but admit that I chose a very proper time to leave. Taking into account the current tendencies in men’s single skating, I would have been just swept out of the way if I hadn’t taken this step myself.
It seemed to me that you were pretty close to finishing your career four years ago, when you took a one-year break after the Games in Sochi.
– You don’t even imagine how close. I was absolutely lost after those Games. I just suddenly realized that I can’t do anything else except skating. Then, I began to think about the future, to think what would be interesting to me, could I be happy, could it happen that this new life would fit into the sad wording “Patrick is a former figure skater”? These four years from Sochi to Pyeongchang helped me a lot to figure it out.
There is a version that in 2015 you came back to figure skating just because of the Olympic team event.
– To be honest, in 2015, I didn’t even think about it. I returned to a comfortable zone for myself, where everything was thoroughly known to me: how to train, how to perform, and where every hour of my life was clearly scheduled. Then, naturally, the question arose “Why am I doing all this?” I knew perfectly well that I couldn’t fight for individual medal anymore – I missed that boat in Sochi. And the team event has become an excellent motivation. A very strong one, by the way. I didn’t have such before Sochi.
You said so calmly that I you missed the boat…
– What’s the big deal? When an athlete realizes that he will not be the first, even if he skates the program of his life, it hurts, but actually this is the most valuable experience that sport can give. At this moment you really start to understand what is the most important thing in your life. Medals? Nonsense! Any medal is just a momentary material thing. If you make it the only meaning of your life, then you will be left with nothing, if you don’t win. Even if you win. To have a long life in sport, and so it doesn’t become a torture, you need a completely different motivation, an ability to enjoy even very hard work, an understanding that you skate because you want to, because you love it. And this should be at the forefront. Just a few think about it. You need a certain inner maturity to realize it.
In your sports collection there are three Olympic medals and five more, including three gold ones, from World championships. Which of these awards …
– Is the most memorable?
Not. Brought you, strange as it may sound, the biggest disappointment?
– This is definitely individual silver in Sochi. It has been a long time before I accepted this result and stopped considering it a terrible failure.
Has it something to do with the fact that Yuzuru Hanyu, who won the gold medal, didn’t skate the best way in Sochi?
– Yes. The door was open. But I wasn’t able to take advantage of it. Now when time has passed, I must admit that the result was fair. I just wasn’t ready to become an Olympic champion. And if so, then I didn’t deserve a gold medal. But in Pyeongchang, I had the feeling that the time has come. I matured to become a champion, even if it was just a team event.
However, you had mistakes.
– It’s different. It is a bit strange to explain this, but these are different things to be ready to fight for a medal and just to desire it. The undoubtful pros of that defeat in Sochi – it made me wiser. In sports, we often become hostages of the result: how many Grand Prix Finals you have, how many medals, how many titles. Behind all this, it is somehow forgotten that skaters, even such incredible ones as Evgenia Medvedeva and Alina Zagitova, are living people, not animals who can be chasen with a whip from medal to medal. And they are not robots. They have emotions, this is as much the part of their career as the performances, and who knows what remains in memory of the fans. I myself felt like a robot before the Games in Sochi, I was programmed only to win and I really broke when this program wasn’t completed.
This was likely already posted awhile ago: Nam Nguyen interview with John Wilson Blades
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwArsoDqFwg
Nam gives some interesting and quirky responses. It really can't be the junk food that makes him skate better! I'll have to check out the way Brian Orser grabs and hands over skate guards to his skaters.
Cool that Nam enjoyed working with Kurt Browning for this season. Nam's love of Gene Kelly era films to hang out in sounds delightful. I've heard that Kelly and his wife hosted fun dinner parties with a stellar guest list back in the 1940s. BTW, Kelly's co-star in Singing in the Rain was Donald O'Connor.
John Wilson Blades' interview with Nam Nguyen (16 mins.), uploaded on August 3, 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQNI3HDstv8
Kurt Browning helped him create his free skate to La La Land.