I am happy for all the medalists but particularly proud of Shoma. He skates like he's been doing this since forever and he's just so mesmerizing to watch. I know that this comparison has been made many times but he does remind me of Daisuke when it comes to selling a program. You can't help but keep your eyes on him.
Haven't caught up on the news yet but I hope he was happy with his LP performance.
He was! In all the post-free skate interviews he stated that he was really happy and satisfied with his performance (which iirc is a first since......JGPF in Barcelona last season, at least in "real" competition since Japan Open doesn't really qualify as such to me).
Several points he made in post-skates interviews at GPF:
- He was actually happy with his SP performance even with the fall because that was the best he has skated that program, especially the steps sequence (crazily enough he did it even better in practice the same day - the fluidity of movement when you take into account the difficulty of the steps, complexity of upper body movement, the edges and the speed of execution was INSANE; in particular the speed of execution is what's impressed me the most because that's something he's clearly worked on since last season)
- Concerning the free skate he was particularly happy with the jumps
- He was surprised to get 190 (I was laughing incredulously too tbh and I don't think his program deserves 89 PCs for a couple of reasons but then again, judges were generous with everyone so......)
- He said that his performance is not a goal in itself but he sees it as a starting point to build upon and to keep aiming higher: at one point he stated that he'd like to aim at getting closer to Yuzuru's level
- Points that he identified for improvement (from memory, I can't find the link to that interview rn and I think I'm missing one of those points) were jumps, upper body movement and musicality
Finally he's just returned to Japan: video clip of his arrival (also including Satoko Miyahara and Sota Yamamoto) can be seen
here