We've been enjoying watching Grand Prix Figure skating competitions every weekend !
Most of the time, my husband and I have same taste and often agree with each other while watching all the performances.
Here are my top favorite performances so far after watching all the grand prix competition.
Jason Brown
Congratulations for winning a first senior grand prix medal in TEB competition !
I'm a huge fan of his skating now !
His short program and long program are my top favorite programs this season.
Jason Brown Short Program at TEB
2013
Jason Brown Free Program at TEB
Both of them are awesome , fun, artistic, beautiful, exciting, wonderful musicality with excellent body moves and choreography.
At the age of only 18, he already has his original style, Jason skating style.
Skating which is full of personality is always interesting to watch.
The music is growing on me every time I watch his performance.
His Irish dance is fantastic !
Because he is skating so fabulous, so the music becomes even more wonderful.
My husband who is usually very picky for artistic part of everything, he also really enjoyed Jason's performances.
When it comes to the men's performances, he only watched Jason and Daisuke , skipping all the others after watching all of them with me, which NBC showed.
Jason has received all level 4 spins and also level 4 straight line step sequences.
All he needs is quad in the future.
Since the PCS are actually not really true art scores, his scores will increase when his reputation gets higher.
I'm so glad Jason type of skater appeared now who has natural artistic talent. His every movement are full of details from toe to fingertips.
He knows how to use body, shoulder, arms and making the hands and fingertips artistic and beautiful besides his musicality.
We both were clapping at the end of the performance.
Thank you for the excitement and your wonderful performance !
I have a very good impression of his personality through his twitter.
I found he is one of the few of the sweetest skaters I've ever seen, who answered to my twitter, and often "Favorited" my messages to him.
What made me so happy is that he is showing his kindness with action, not only the words and also not being too picky for his fans.
I think he is the same with all his fans . I love that he looks always happy, with smiling face like a sunshine.
Besides Jason, in twitter, Miki Ando and Nobunari Oda also have replied to my messages and I was so grateful for it.
Emanuel Sandhu was also replying to me, when I was still using MySpace.
I feel like in these private times , they show their real personality honestly
because most of skaters or celebrities don't answer to their fans, they only reply to famous people or people who they can feel special for them.
Daisuke Takahashi
Daisuke Takahashi SP at NHK Trophy 2013
Daisuke Takahashi FP at NHK Trophy 2013
I was so glad to see he won at NHK trophy after disappointment of the result in Skate America.
but just heard he got injury and need to take a rest at least 2 weeks and has to withdraw from GPF.
I felt so bad to hear that.
Hope he will get speedy recovery and will be able to attend Japanese Nationals and Olympics.
For about his programs and performances,
My husband and I both really enjoyed with both of his programs this season.
He is always fantastic to watch , have never disappointed me.
Both of his programs were so much fun with interesting choreography.
As usual his movements and expression was sooo fun and super musical and I really love his sense of humor, expression.
His movements has freedom , naturally musical and has grace and well yin yang balance, and artistic ,throwing caution to the wind, especially for the dynamic part of movements.
For the dynamic moves in the step sequence, besides him, only Stephane Lambiel was able to do this kind of freedom movements, which shows true artist.
I've heard that he and Mao Asada will retire their competitive career after finish this season or Sochi Olympics.
They have been the two biggest skating stars in Japan, so if they retire , Japanese skating world will have different air.
Since he is a Japanese skater, rarely can see his ice show performance in the USA on TV so I will surely miss his skating.
It will be great if he will be able to win gold at Sochi Olympics, since I think he is the best skater artistically, technically if he skates clean.
For artistic part, Daisuke and Jason have natural artistic talent who pick up easily and fast.
I really wish him speedy recovery and will be able to compete at Japanese nationals competition.
Yuzuru Hanyu
Yuzuru Hanyu SP at GPF
Yuzuru Hanyu FP at GPF
We liked and really enjoyed this season's Yuzuru's performance at GPF !
I'm surprised his improvement of his artistry this season.
His posture is much better than last season and his movements and musicality also.
Within a very short time, I really think he is very talented.
We both felt like Johnny Weir had appeared again on ice when we saw his Free program.
I found it's funny he is doing everything what Johnny was doing before he gets started, like making sign of the cross and also doing an arm and shoulder type of twist like Johnny used to do, while talking to himself something, maybe it's a " let's go " or " Just go !" type of action.
His free program costume also making him look like Johnny Weir as well.
I think it's fit him. it's a better look when seeing it from far away than close distance. I'm not crazy for the lace part but the design of the costume makes his body-line look beautiful.
He was putting emotion really well with the music Romeo & Juliet.
I still prefer unique original style rather than someone's copycat , but if it's so well done, it's fine.
For his short program, this was awesome, really masterpiece performance.
Super speedy , powerful, musical, and fun !
Nobunari Oda
While I felt bad for Daisuke, I was glad to hear that Nobu got the opportunity to get to Grand Prix Finale.
I really like this season's both of his programs especially his free program.
My heart really moved while watching him at NHK !
Nobunari Oda FP at NHK 2013
His jumps are killer for me.
Also I think his artistry this season really improved and has more grace , and the choreography is wonderful.
Ray said he is great, but would like to see more dynamic attack to match when the music is dramatic or energetic.
I agree, I feel music has ups and downs and he needs more sharp dynamic movements when the music is up, not only soft graceful movements all the way.
but for dynamic movements , except for Daisuke or Lambiel, it's not easy to have completely freedom of flow of steps like them, like the wind.
Overall, I really enjoyed with his performances.
I like the music also, it's a great music for Olympics to make audience excitement.
I really hope he will be able to qualify the Olympics.
Because it's so ridiculous if such a wonderful talented skater like him won't go to Olympics.
I also really enjoyed with his programs this season.
When I first time saw Adam's skating on TV, it was Exhibition event in US Nationals 2008.
At that time, I felt like he's like a junior version of Johnny Weir. Adam was working with Nicholai Morozov and his movements were elegant and graceful.
However after that, I felt he lost his artistic movements and elegance . I haven't been impressed with his performances until this season's NHK Trophy.
However, this year, I've heard that he was working with Tom Dickson for the choreography, so I was curious about his programs.
And I feel he has really improved his artistry alot.
Like he is starting to recapture the potential he has, that I felt when I first saw him years ago.
Great job !
Tatsuki Machida
Tatsuki Machida SP at Skate America 2013
It was so nice to see his successful season by winning two gold medals in grand prix events.
After the disappointment of last season's GPF and Japanese Nationals even though he was successful in his GP competitions, this is amazing come back.
Only in his short program at grand prix finale, he lost mind balance, maybe from too much pressure ?
But in his free program, he skated wonderfully, almost clean skate.
Matchi sounds also really analyzing about how to control his mind toughness as well, getting out of the comfort zone by moving from comfortable American ice rink to Japanese rink and also making hard schedule by getting up really early in the morning to training from basic, then go to University, and then again training in the evening.
He said by doing this, he can improve his mind toughness because during the competition, he can face really tough environment.
For my review of his performances,
He is a beautiful skater who has sensitivity of movements.
His quad and triple axel are fabulous, with wonderful flow, and very smooth landing when he is on like Skate America.
For his firebird program, even though technically, this season's firebird has quad and more difficult program, I felt last season's his interpretation was more impressive. His movements were more musical last season.
Only lacking part was dynamic movements, like Oda, he is cautious for dynamic movements.
This season his short program is beautiful.
Honestly, I loved his last season's short program more than this season's because everything looked more unique but it's always good to have something different from last season's program.
In Rostelecom Cup, he looked cautious and didn't look fully showing his ability because of maybe pressure ?
I can imagine that it's so crazy situation for top Japanese men's skaters this season for Olympics qualification.
I wish there were at least 4 spots for Japanese men for Olympics.
Mindset
Whenever I watch skating competition events, it's always inspiring the winner's mindset, because I think figure skating competition is a mind game.
Actually not only the figure skating but in all the things we do in life, it's always mindset comes first whatever we do to succeed.
Patrick Chan's skating has never been my cup of tea because of his lack of artistry and heavy robotic movements with straight arms and stiff upper body most of the time.
I haven't seen any artistic improvements of his movements of body, shoulder, arms, hands, fingers, and emotion since when I first time saw his Four Season program when he was 17.
However, his mindset has been often successful and it's impressive.
He does have winner's mindset.
In GPF, he said he might have fear before he skated.
It got the result.
but still he skated well in his free program even though he was not the winner of the event.
Human's mind is really unstable, so no wonder it can lose the mindset within a second.
Another impressive skater for mindset is Yuzuru Hanyu.
One of the most impressive things about Yuzuru is his mindset.
He has just became 19 this month.
Only 19 !
He already has winning mindset, unlimited to challenge whoever is above him. The GPF was held in Japan his home coutry, so many people seem to think his scores are inflated.
Yuzuru also not really satisfied with his performance. while he sounded appriciating to receive that huge score, he is very humble, shaking his head in the kiss & cry .
Also in his interview, He said that in Skate Canada and TEB, he was thinking about Patrick Chan, difference between himself and Chan's skating.
He was analyzing that how much difference he is having between him and Chan, and how much effort he needs to be close or reach to his level of skating.
This kind of competition mindset can lose focus on his skating and performance. but in GPF, he was more focusing on his skating , focus to enjoy his performance as best as he can rather than focusing on beating Patrick.
This mindset got successful.
I feel this is the key of mindset. " Enjoy !"
Nobunari Oda who won bronze medal in GPF also said similar thing in interview about his mindset.
He said his theme of this season is " smile ".
His mother told him " Go enjoy your skating as much as you can ! " before he skated at Free program.
and this made him to feel and think like even how many times he fall on jumps, he can enjoy the performance.
His programs this season are really fun to watch and we can see he also really enjoy skating. I think this playful mind can make successful mindset.
In Olympics season , I can see all the countries are trying to promote their strongest contenders. and people are often complaining about inflated scores from hometown bonus score to their strong skaters who they want to promote.
Other countries are doing the same. and we are watching the sports. I feel like only country which doesn't give big bonus score to their favorite country man/lady is France.
I noticed that since last Olympics season.
Limit of two skaters each country will get benefits and federation will choose which skaters they want them to push.
I won't complain about the scores anymore like I was in the past.
For ladies, we enjoyed Samantha Cesario and Akiko Suzuki's both programs the most this season and repeatedly watched them.
Samantha is a really artist who cares every detail of her movements, so it's just gorgeous to watch. She performed her Carmen beautifully with passion and with her own style.
Also I really love Akiko's skating since last season because her movements of arms, hands, fingers, body really improved and have good yin yang balance. very musical and beautiful to watch.
We also like the performances from Anna POGORILAYA , Kanako Murakami, Valentina Marchei, Julia Lipnitskaia, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, and Mirai Nagasu.
Also really liked Haruka Imai's skating.
We found she has great artistic potential , and has beautiful movements.
We look forward to seeing her future.
For Mirai Nagasu, I liked her artistry in NHK performance but not really impressed with her Rostelecom cup while her jumps looked much better with full rotation.
For Mao Asada, I usually loved many of her performances in the past, especially her last season's Swan Lake program, especially her straight line step sequence and also her Nocturne program in 2006 , and her last Olympics ( Vancouver olympics )'s Free program.
But this season, her movements looked casual and no artistic sensitivity of her hands and finger.
I feel like maybe the choreography is not showing her great artistic potential.
I prefer her 2006 season's Nocturne program.
Adelina Sotnikova is using Saint Saen's Rondo Capricianno , but the orchestra for it she is using is not great, so my husband didn't like it and couldn't continue watching.
I feel music she has used is distracting her performances.
Last season's her Free program music was awful, too. Hopefully she or her coach will find better music with great orchestra or performer.
There are skaters I haven't seen and want to see like Zijun Li, and Satoko Miyahara, Elene Gedevanishvili, so I would love to watch them whenever I have more time.
Next competition events will be Japanese Nationals !
I'm so thrilled to watch it. I wish best of luck to all the skaters.