Euros 2022 Liveblog: Ladies Short Program

Quick hits-men's and pairs

So far we've seen short programs from the Men, pairs and ladies is ongoing as of the time I'm writing this (scroll down for that). 

To be real, I didn't watch the men's short program or most of women's because it's being aired SUPER early in the US. 

However, on the men's side, what I would usually think of as the top contenders are not competing. Specifically athletes like Mikhail Kolyada and some of the other Russian men, as well as top competitors from Italy and France are not at this year's competition. The only competitors who finished in the top 10 last year at Worlds are Evgeni Semenenko (now sitting in 3rd place) and Kevin Aymoz (sitting in 10th). I have to be honest, I wasn't super familiar with any of the competitors on the start list-and partially that's because there aren't a lot of European competitors on the men's side that could reasonably vie for the podium at Worlds or Olympics. It's possible that some of those competitors I mentioned opted to skip this competition-why risk catching plague if you've already made the Olympic team? This being said, Russia still has quite a chokehold on this competition with athletes sitting in the top 3 spots. 

In the pairs competition, Russia (not at all surprisingly) took the top 3 spots as well. Mishina/Galliamov had a great skate, but are still less than a point ahead of Tarasova/Morozov-Tarasova struggled landing the throw and put a hand down. Boikova/Kozlovskii sit a little further back in 3rd, Boikova doubled the planned side by side triple jump. If things go to plan, the top 3 will stay as they are with reigning world champions Mishina/Galliamov marching to Beijing as European champions-a title they didn't have when they won worlds last year. 

Live blog from women's last 2 groups


Live scores are available here

Alexia Paganini-SUI

2nd competitor in this group to chose a tango for the SP-I like it. 3 lutz, 3 toe combo is ok, first landing is a little rough. 3 loop well landed. Rushes the 2 Axel but well done. Nice positions on the spins. Taking time to look and smile at the judges, using the last 3rd of the program to bump up those PCS scores. Nicely done. 62.32 into 3rd. 

Eva-Lotta Kiibus- EST

Loving the outfit, not vibing with the music off the bat but we'll see. 3-3 combo is strong. 2 axel is good. Biellman is good too. She's giving a lot of personality and I love it. Last triple is rough (flutz?), will lose GOE points on that landing. Strong footwork, lots of attitude. Spins are a teensy slow at the end. Definitely my favorite so far-but not her best. 59.16 lands her in 9th-but highest PCS so far. That is correct.

Niina Petrokina- EST

Nice double axel, clean. 3-3 becomes 2-3, but gets positive GOE. Leaning out of the circle on the last triple but lands it without too much struggle. Little wild on the footwork, she's really trying to sell it. Nice positions on the last spin, but juuust misses the end of the music. Nice program, but I think the music is a little too much for her. 58.3 puts her in 11th place.

Alexandra Feigin- BUL

Nice opening double axel. Looks a little tentative there and in the warm up too because of that giant wrap on her knee. 3 flip, 3 toe, but 2-foots both landings. Crowd clapping along with her. Nice triple loop. She's not giving us much performance so far but technically it's good. Very perfunctory performance but given her knee issue she might just be glad she finished without issue. 56.78 into 14th. 

End of this group onto the big guns! Gubanova from Georgia is our leader with 67.02

I don't usually get to listen to the event announcers at these kind of competitions-do they always talk about skaters like they're narrating a dating profile? Why do they keep telling me what skaters like to do in their free time? Also based on all the biased American coverage I've ever heard I'm surprised that so many middle of the pack skaters at Euros have such nice triple triple combos! Just shows you kids, American sports commentary is shit. 

Ryabova's outfit is FIRE. 

Alexandra Trusova- RUS

Here we go! Opening triple axel attempt not successful, ouch on those GOE. Triple flip is nice and clean. Love the cantilever. Triple lutz, triple toe very nice. Technically strong, performance quality is just ok though. Technical score will take a big hit. 41.44 for TES, 34 for PCS? Kiibus' which was highest before that had PCS of 30 and that was MUCH better than this. Judges got drunk during the warm up-I was not watching the same program. 75.13 into first (duh). Her seasons best is around 77. 

Anna Shcherbakova- RUS

Easy opening double axel. Triple flip nicely done. It's giving black swan, lots more performance than Trusova. Slides down on the 3 lutz, no combo-that'll hurt. Without a combo she will lose a required element. No time for her to stick a combo in at the end-oof. 69.05 into second TES were well below what she's capable but she's still in the mix.

Ekaterina Kurakova- POL

Opening triple flip, triple toe is nice, little hesitant going in. Very nice double axel. Is it just me or is she quite tiny? Triple loop a little shaky but landed. Really takes her time before jump takeoff-could hurt her difficulty in the long run. Really nice step sequence. Really not much in terms of performance quality-but a nice skate. PCS is 31.69, little high for me, overall score 67.47 into 3rd. 

Ekaterina Ryabova - AZE

Super fast across the ice. Love the 'tude. 3 lutz-3 loop is ok. 2 axel is good. Nice triple flip. Not sure the costume she has really says mambo to me? It more says mermaid, but ok. Little slow in some of these spins-gets a level 3 for one of them. A good skate-should keep her in the top group for the FS. 65.47 into 5th. 

Kamila Valieva- RUS

Triple axel is WOW. Triple flip is really nice and based on what I'd heard I thought she would be the most perfunctory, but she's showing us something. Actually skating to the music. Triple lutz, triple toe combo is really nice-pause in between and the free leg went way up before picking in. Yea, easily into first. Huge technical score coming and honestly really nice performance quality. 90!!! That's insane. That's a score competitive for a podium spot with the men! 

Loena Hendrickx- BEL

Really nice opening triple lutz, triple toe. Good footwork into double axel. Triple flip very nice. I appreciate that she's really going for some unique shapes in her spins. This is another piece of music that's really big, and her performance quality, while good, is not really reaching to the levels of the music. Nice skate though. 76.25 into 2nd. Honestly a little surprised by that but good for her!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Figure skating's best of the best performances

Image
Allow me to preface this post by saying, while this post might be titled the "Best of the best performances" there's really no way to judge objectively what the best performances are. We could go by the ones with the highest scores, but then it'd be hard to compare against the old 6.0 system, not to mention all the behind-the-scenes politics that goes on in skating. The skating community has agreed as a sort of collective on a couple skates that are all time classics (Torvill and Dean in 1984 for instance), but let's not rehash what some of you may already know, plus I've limited myself to the last 20 years-keeps it relevant enough but allows for a bit of nostalgia (plus this accounts for the time I've been a figure skating fan so it works out nicely). Click headers for the video links and let's go: 1. Michelle Kwan 2004 Nationals Free Skate Most people point to her 1998 performance as the best of her career. I've seen both and I still maintain thi...
Read more

Figure Skating: The basics (Part 2, spins)

Image
So we've covered the jumps-let's move on to spins. This one will be a little harder since, while yes there are general groups/kinds of spins, skaters are encouraged to innovate with positions of free legs, arms, and combinations. In fact under the current point system, it would be incredibly rare to see a layback spin on its own without any kind of change of position or variation. Which is honestly kind of a shame! A layback spin, done perfectly used to be one of the hallmark moves in figure skating-the one they put on magazine covers and what-not. Why do skaters change position so much? The points darling, the points! By changing position, Gumby-ing yourself around etc. a skater can increase the level of difficulty and thereby the base value awarded. In jumps we didn't have to talk about this, because jumps essentially tell you their difficulty level, i.e. a single axel would be (sort of) a level 1 and get a corresponding base value. Well for spins it's a little more s...
Read more

Figure Skating: The basics (part 4, pairs)

Image
 Ok, we've done jumps, spins and you know-ice dance. Let's look at the freaks who do pairs skating (this is a compliment by the way, these people are to be feared and respected at all times, they could literally die at any time doing these tricks). Also as an aside, I'm going to try and be more gender neutral in my terminology going forward-thanks all! Ok let's get into the required elements for pairs skating! Side by side jumps and Side by side spins The side by side elements, are as you would imagine-just 2 skaters doing the same element individually (but synchronized, to make it harder). That's about as complicated as it gets and levels for jumps are pretty self explanatory. Spins are a little more creative in pairs skating than they used to be...to the detriment in my opinion. I get skaters are going for the harder positions/transitions but it generally makes for poor unison in the new judging system. One thing that sometimes gets interesting is when individuals...
Read more