Preview - World Championships

So this week marks the start of the 2011 World Figure Skating Championships, now held in Moscow instead of Nagano after the devastating events in Japan. So who are the contenders to watch?

Mens

Reigning Champion: Daisuke Takahashi
Forerunner for Gold: Patrick Chan
Potential Challengers: Amodio, Kozuka, Takahashi, Joubert, Brezina

Patrick Chan is definitely the main contender for this event - his performance at Canadian Nationals included a quad toeloop in his short and TWO quad toes in his long, and he's going to want to match that in Moscow. However, I suspect his competition will come from the 2014 kids, Florent Amodio and Michel Brezina, who have a history of consistency in competition that Chan does not. Brian Joubert, Takahiko Kozuka and reigning gold medalist Daisuke Takahashi will also be trying to take the gold. The mens event is undoubtedly one of the most exciting of the whole competition as it is notoriously hard to predict, especially with such a deep field.

Pairs

Reigning Champion: Qing Pang and Jian Tong
Forerunners for Gold: Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy
Potential Challengers: Pang/Tong, Volosozhar/Trankov, Basarova/Larionov

The pairs event seems to be a two-horse race between Pang and Tong and Savchenko and Szolkowy. The Germans won at the recent Grand Prix Final by over 20 points; however, their lack of jumping consistency may be their downfall. The Russian team will also be the main challengers hoping to take a home gold - both Basarova/Larinov and Kavaguti/Smirnov have a good chance, but all eyes will be on Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov. It'll be interesting to see if their gamble in partner-swapping paid off - their sizable win at their only competition so far, the Mont Blanc Trophy, seems to suggest so!

Ladies

Reigning Champion: Mao Asada
Forerunner for Gold: Yu-na Kim (?)
Potential Challengers: Asada, Csizny, Kostner, Ando, Flatt, Murakami

This ladies event marks Yu-na Kim's return to competition after her gold medal win in Vancouver, but how will she fare after a whole season out and a messy split from coach Brian Orser? Mao Asada has had a very mixed season but she's been known to pull a winning performance out when it's been least expected, so she might take a surprise gold. Also hoping for a medal will be Alissa Csizny, riding high on her Grand Prix Final win, and her teammate Rachael Flatt, as well as Japan's Miki Ando and Kanako Murakami.

Ice Dance

Reigning Champion: Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir
Forerunner for Gold: Virtue/Moir
Potential Challengers: Davis/White, Pechalat/Bourzat

This is also a event which marks a return to competition; it is Virtue and Moir's first full competition of the season, as they were forced to withdraw from both Grand Prix assignments, Canadian Nationals and the long program of Four Continents due to Virtue's injury struggles. It'll be interesting to see if Davis and White have managed to leapfrog over their training mates due to their extra practice time - after all, they've always been a very close second! Pechalat and Bourzat will also be fighting for a medal, fresh after their huge win at Europeans.

So that's my predictions/round-up - who are your picks? Also I've posted the dates and times of each event below - enjoy! I'll also be blogging about each event and live-tweeting.

World Championships (Moscow Times)

Monday, April 25
14:00 Qualification round: Men

Tuesday, April 26
12:00 Qualification round: Ice dancing
15:30 Qualification round: Ladies

Wednesday, April 27
13:00 Men's short program
18:30 Pairs short program

Thursday, April 28
13:30 Men's free skating
18:30 Pairs free skating

Friday, April 29
13:30 Ladies short program
18:30 Short dance

Saturday, April 30
13:30 Ladies' free skating
18:30 Free dance

Sunday, May 1
14:00 Exhibition

Ready for Worlds

Worlds starts tomorrow and, as with all post-Olympic Worlds there is a real chance for some skaters who are usually low down in the top ten to potentially gain a medal. Here's my preview.

Men

Notable Absences: Evan Lysacek, Johnny Weir, Evgeni Plushenko, Tomas Verner, Stephane Lambiel
Potential Medal Hopes: Nobunari Oda, Daisuke Takahashi, Takahiko Kozuka, Brian Joubert (though, as someone noted on Twitter, it depends which Joubert shows up!), Jeremy Abbott (same situation as Joubert), Patrick Chan
2014 Kids to Watch: Adam Rippon, Michal Brezina, Denis Ten, Florent Amodio

Ladies
Notable Absences: Joannie Rochette
Potential Medal Hopes: Yu-na Kim, Mao Asada, Miki Ando, Mirai Nagasu, Rachael Flatt, Akiko Suzuki
2014 Kids to Watch: Ksenia Makarova, Mirai Nagasu

Pairs

Notable Absences: Shen/Zhao, Volosozhar/Morosov
Potential Medal Hopes: Pang/Tong, Zhang/Zhang, Mukhortova/Trankov, Savchenko/Szolkowy, Kavaguti/Smirnov
2014 Kids to Watch: Denney/Barrett

Dance

Notable Absences: Domnina/Shabalin, Belbin/Agosto, Delobel/Schoenfelder
Potential Medal Hopes: Virtue/Moir, Davis/White, Faiella/Scali, Pechalat/Bourzat
2014 Kids to Watch: Cappellini/Lanotte

Agree/disagree? Comment below!

Over and out

So the last medal has been decided! Yu-na could not be a more deserving champion. What a performance! Between her and Mirai, Rachael, Mao's triple axels and of course Joannie, it was quite a competition. Thoughts and analysis potentially coming soon...and now just got the gala to look forward to!

Speaking of looking forward to (Worlds), Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto have announced that they're joining Lysacek and skipping Torino. This means that the Olympics was probably Tanith and Ben's last competition; we'll miss them!

formspring.me

Are you as drained from this whole skating thing as I am? Also, which ladies are you looking forward to seeing skate next week?

Yes, very much so. As I've mentioned, I'm totally sleep-deprived and emotionally drained from watching many of my favourites falter. But I'm drained in a good way, I think! Ladies, I'm looking forward to Yu-Na, obviously, but my favourites are Joannie Rochette and Sarah Meier, who I've been a long-time fan of, so I'm hoping they can both nail it. Rochette's long is spectacular!

Ask me anything

Bloggers - Being Respectful?

Aaron from Axels, Loops and Spins wrote a great post about the snarking and bashing that happens on a lot of figure skating forums. But what about it coming from actual bloggers themselves? Phil Hersh has long been attacked for his Chicago Tribune articles, but I felt this one really took the biscuit. He did a question and answer session (of questions he made up himself!) Notable quotations include:

"Czisny and Kostner would clean so much of the ice with their bottoms the resurfacing job would be much easier."

"Yuna Kim could stand still for four minutes, and she still would deserve higher component scores than Rochette at her best."

"There is everything to like about Belbin-Agosto and Davis-White as people and performers. And performers is the key thing, because that is all ice dance is about. It's all in the eye of the beholder -- great entertainment, archly camp at times, incredibly hard to do well...and no more a sport than ballet."

Now, I don't know about you, but as a blogger I would never say things like that about skaters. People might argue about how high Rochette's PCS scores are, but to say that about her is clearly not true, and Hersh knows that - in his attempts to make an entertaining, controversial blog post he is merely putting down skaters who do not deserve criticism like that. Bloggers are allowed to question, of course they are, that's our job. But flat out put skaters down? I think not.

Furthermore, I'm not a professional blogger; I get no money for this, I just do it for fun! But Hersh is EMPLOYED by the Chicago Tribune, as well as other publications to write about skating, and so has an obligation to write fairly and honestly, I feel. I hardly have to mention how his writing skills are not reflective of his professional blogging position; at one point he says Rochette got Level 2s "on all three of her four spins".

I should add, this is not a personal attack on Hersh. I don't mean this in an offensive way, as I am merely questioning his post and opinions. He has some good points in his post as well, and attempts to apologise to Jenny Kirk after criticising a very excellent post she made about Cohen's Grand Prix withdrawals (with limited success!)

Do you agree with what I'm saying about Hersh's post? Judging by the comments at the bottom of his article, many others are outraged/exasperated/amused at his post. Or do you think this post is just giving him a wider audience, and catering to his controversial style of blogging?

Rostelecom; what'll happen?

That's right, it's time for some predictions from Rostelecom Cup of Russia! THough considering how unexpected the TEB results were (Savchenko/Szolkowy in third!) my predictions will probably spectacularly wrong.

Mens

Mens is probably the hardest to predict, since who knows how Evgeni Plushenko will do? It's his first competition since his success at the Torino Olympics, and he's been looking very solid in competition, but how will he fare against Johnny Weir and Takahiko Kozuka? They're the three skaters I predict for a podium position, now that Patrick Chan has withdrawn. Others to watch at the event will be Kevin van der Perren and Florent Amodio, who will be making his senior Grand Prix debut.

Ladies

Mao Asada will be hoping to to win after Kim beat her hands down in Paris. It'll also, reportedly, be the last performance of her current short program to "Masquerade", as she plans to change it after this event to her exhibition piece, "Caprice". The two skaters that will surely be rounding off the podium are her fellow teammates and supporter at Trophee Eric Bompard Miki Ando, and the American Ashley Wagner, who recently started her own Youtube vlog series I think another skater who might manage to sneak up to a podium place is Alena Leonova, who recently won the Findlandia Trophy. I also have to wish Jenna McCorkell luck; according to her Facebook, she had huge difficulties obtaining a visa to come to the event and so I hope all that effort doesn't go to waste for her.

Ice Dance

All eyes are going to be on Meryl Davis and Charlie White, especially now that Domnina and Shablin have withdrawn from the event. Their team mates Vanessa Crone and Paul Poitier will also be at the evnt, and will be likely to make the podium, unless the Italian couple, Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte get in the way. I think these three will be a cinch for the podium, but Ekaterina Rubleva and Ivan Shefer might also have a shot. They also have an advantage as they're skating in front of their home crowd, but trying saying that to someone like Brian Joubert!

Pairs

Again, it'll most likely be a home victory in this event; Yuko Kavaguti and Alexander Smirnov will be looking to improve on last year's silver medal. However, they'll have stiff competition from Pang and Tong, who won the Grand Prix Final last season. The bronze medal has Keauna McLaughlin and Rockne Brubaker's name on it; they'll be competing at the event for the first time. This'll be an exciting event, seeing how these pairs fare.

I'm going away this weekend (to Paris, again!) so won't find out whether these predictions were correct or not until Monday.

Maths to make your head hurt

Over at Ice Network, Sarah and Drew were looking at Yu-na Kim's fantasticly huge scores:

We were pondering Yu-Na Kim's exceptionally high, world record-breaking total score and wondering how she would have stacked up against the men. Since the men's components are multiplied by 2 in the free skate, and the ladies only by 1.6, and since men are allowed eight jumping passes instead of seven, we had to bust out the calculators!

If you multiply Yu-Na's components by 2 instead of 1.6, they would be 85.50, so her total score for the free skate, exactly as she performed it in L.A., would have been 148.69, and her overall score would have been 224.81. This would have earned her fifth place in the men's free skate, sixth overall. But since she would have been able to do an additional jumping pass, we'll give her a conservative 3.85 (the value for a double Axel in the second half). This is a guessing game, of course; who knows whether she could add another jump and land it. We think she could.

If she did, even with 0 GOE, she would have had 228.66 in total and finished fifth in the men's competition. Yet another very impressive statistic from Yu-Na.

That's how amazing Kim is. Watch her SP and LP below and judge for yourself.

Worlds Post Part One

Well, the skating season is basically over!. And what a season we've had. As you may have guessed from the title, this blog is dedicated to the Worlds. There's been so much drama this week that only a really long post can cover it all, so I've split it into each discipline.

I'm going to do "awards" for each discipline, starting with the Ladies

Most Unexpected Meltdown: This is the most obvious award - poor Carolina Kostner. After her fall at the Europeans, where she lost her title, everyone assumed that she would come back on fighting form and be in with a chance of a medal position. Having to skate straight after Kim's fanatastic performance can't have been easy, and she obviously was seriously lacking in confidence as she started to skate. Overall, her LP was absolutely heartbreaking; one landed jump, one fall, one hand down and the rest of her jumps were popped. Huth looked very dismissive of her as she sat in the Kiss and Cry and a 12th place finish was definitely not what she was looking for.

Most generously marked: Yu-Na Kim. Both her and Brian Orser's shock at both sets of he marks were adorable to watch but they were the only ones who it suprised. She was absolutely amazing, however, so perhaps only a slight overscoring. Also, Rachael Flatt's short program put her ahead of some much more deserving skaters; a bit of home bias, shall we say?

Best SP: For me, Joannie Rochette. Her short program is just so fantastic and she really deserved her silver medal.

Best FS: It's got to be Yu-Na Kim, there's no real way around it. Her performance was just magical, even with the screwed salchow.

Best Costumes: Joannie Rochette. Both her SP and LP dresses are classically beautiful yet simple enough that they don't detract from her performance.

Skater that "wuzrobbed": Mao Asada; yes, she had a fall, but to land one triple axel and attempt another and STILL not get on the World podium is pretty much a travesty.
Best Kiss and Cry Moment: It's a three-way tie of the emotion that Sarah Meier, Elene Gedevanishvili and Alena Leonova showed after their free skates.

Best Comeback: Elene Gedevanishvili! Who would have expected her to skate as cleanly as she did after her track record? She's a huge talent and so it's definitely onwards and upwards for her. An hourable mention goes to Miki Ando; after last year's mid-competition withdrawal, no-one expected her to get on the podium.

Best "Fighter": Candice Didier. She had a hideous fall and slammed into the barrier partway through her LP; she was almost carried off by the medics. Despite obviously being in seriously severe pain, she finished her program. What a star.

Mens' awards are coming next. If you disagree with what I said (and I'm sure some of you will!) then leave a comment.

Predictions for Worlds - Ladies

Ladies is possibly the most mundane prediction to do, unfortunately. It's pretty much a guarantee that it'll be a Yu-Na/Mao showdown in LA, and I'm leaning towards it being Yu-na's year. Her performances have been getting huge scores all season (she set a new world record of 72.24 points in the short program at 4CC) and she's definitely proved she has the assured consistency for a win. However, Mao is almost as like to defend her title, so it'll definitely be a two-woman race for the gold. Joannie Rochette also could get gold; she did beat Mao Asada at Trophee Eric Bompard this season, and came 2nd at 4CC. The European contenders are Carolina Kostner, who'll be hoping to bounce back from her second place finish at Europeans, and Laura Lepisto, who should be flying high on her surprise win there; there's always a chance she could buckle under the pressure, however. Miki Ando and Fumie Suguri will also be competing for a long shot at the podium, though frankly it's unlikely it'll get anywhere.

Program of the Day is Mao Asada's winning FS from last year's World Championships. Her comeback after she face-plants on that triple axel is quite astounding, a definite winners performance. Could she repeat it this year? You can watch it here. I always aim to find a video that I can embed but there is not a single one of her FS which does not have "embedding disabled by request"!