Here is my review for some of men's world figure skating championship below,
Men
Overall Results
1. Javier FERNANDEZ ESP 314.93
2. Yuzuru HANYU JPN 295.17
3. Boyang JIN CHN 270.99
4. Mikhail KOLYADA RUS 267.97
5. Patrick CHAN CAN 266.75
6. Adam RIPPON USA 264.44
7. Shoma UNO JPN 264.25 4
8. Max AARON USA 254.14
9. Michal BREZINA CZE 237.99
10. Grant HOCHSTEIN USA 237.25
Congratulations on all the medallists !
In this men's world championship,
Shoma Uno
My favorite is Shoma Uno's performances, both SP and FP.
Yes, he made some errors but the way he moved on ice was charismatic and impressive.
I've watched both of his performances a few times already.
I love the short program music, it's very unique and the choreography is interesting. His movements are well-balanced. His first spin combo , especially bent let lay back camel spin looked hard though.
Great 4 T and 3A , and love his steps a lot.
For his free program, I love his expression and the choreography and movements.
But it will be better if he uses more hands and finger tips movements sensitively to make beautiful artistry.
He is still 18 years old, so he has a lot of potential in the future.
I just love seeing him, even just crossing on ice.
Whenever Jason Brown is not in the competition, he is the only skater who makes me watch men's skating.
I'm so happy to have found my new favorite skater this season.
Javier Fernandez
Overall, I thought Javier Fernandez deserved to win.
I'm not a fan of his skating but I like his Free program performance in this competition.
He looked nervous in his SP, maybe it was from pressure as defending Champion ?
but in his free skate, he looked fully on and relaxed , and being himself while skating.
He is not an artist, and I find no beauty in his skating, but his skating skill and jumps technique are amazing. and the choreography itself was interesting.
How he uses his body and arms and hands are not my taste but the rhythm with music was good. I think that kind of Free program fits him.
I think mentally, his girl friend Miki Ando's devoting support has been helping him. It's very important to have a partner or family who can give skaters confidence to be successful.
I'm also wondering why many of Brian Orser's students are successful ?
Is it because he is lucky to have students who are very talented ?
But Fernandez and Hanyu started getting high scores since they started working with Orser.
So I suppose he must have something to pull out talented students potentials and also he is practical and smart to make programs which can benefit from the system.
Of his students, I only liked Yuna Kim's Danse Macabre performance in the past.
His programs are practical and may be excellent for this scoring system, but I rarely felt impressed from my heart.
Yuzuru Hanyu
I love seeing his triple axel jump.
It's always perfect with smooth landing.
He and Fernandez look like great rivals for each other, they have been working under the same coach.
They push each other so both are improving a lot.
Figure skating is a mind game, so whoever sets up their mind perfectly wins. In this competition, Yuzuru lost mind balance during the practice time.
But in his Short program, he fought for it and made a successful result with clean skate, landed all the difficult jumps.
However, I was not so crazy to watch the ending part , he shouted using not polite words in Japanese with angry face.
I don't know who he was shouting to, but it was a competition event where there are many audience.
So I feel showing appreciation to the audience is very important.
Also the program music was Chopin's ballade which is very elegant and refined.
I love the music, so his informal words ruined my feeling at the end.
That kind of energy can not get good result so I was not surprised to see his score in the Free skate.
He has huge reputation since he won Olympic title, so it didn't affect to get world medal, but lost to get a second world title.
I suppose he knew about it, he regrets that he got upset with Denis Ten who he had issue with during the practice time, while Yuzuru's program music was playing.
No matter what, those energies affect the result. But in his free skate, he showed deep appreciation to the audience.
He usually always says "thank you very much" to the audience when he finishes his performance.
I respect his mind toughness and he is a great motivational skater for me. Technically, he is a wonderful skater, especially his jumps.
and very brave to challenge difficulty.
Artistically, I think he needs to work on his rhythm and artistic movements.
but since he has been getting high PCS, he may not have noticed this.
The choreography of his SP Chopin's Ballard was empty to me.
There was not any particular choreography , it was mainly arm movements , there was no pantomime, no impressive expression and body language.
My husband said he feels the same way.
For Yuzuru's free program, he lost mind balance and had some error with jumps.
Artistically , there was also not a clear choreography , there was arm flapping, and doing element to element, had only power and speed.
It could be a story telling choreography, but there was no body language and expression based on the story using the music.
I think the problem of his movement is that his shoulders are stiff when his arms are moving. He is better than Jeremy Abbott's shoulder stiffness though.
But if he can figure out how to use his shoulders better during arms movement, his artistry will get better.
Of the current men's skaters, Jason Brown's movements are very well-balanced, so it looks beautiful to watch.
But many skaters don't care for it and they care only about arm movements, but careless for the shoulders.
It sounds like a small thing but it influences the total balance of artistic movements.
I actually agree with what Rohene Ward ( who is a choreographer of Jason Brown ) said about Yuzuru's artistry.
Hopefully, Yuzuru will find out how to improve his shoulder movement , or maybe his choreographer Jeffrey Buttle will teach him.
I don't understand why Jeffrey was not teaching him and Patrick Chan about this, while teaching their choreography.
Surely Jeffrey knows how to use the body, shoulders, arms and hands, even though he is not using his finger tips much.
Maybe since they have been receiving high PCS, he doesn't feel it's necessary to teach them about it (?)
I like Yuzuru Hanyu's "one wolf type of personality", and always going his way.
I do respect him a lot for his braveness and having a strong desire to get what he wants and achieving it.
Not many skaters can be like him.
Also somehow, his taste of his favorite skaters are similar to me.
About men's skating,
Honestly, we were both not so excited for this year's men's competition since the US Nationals event, after hearing Jason Brown and Joshua Farris withdrew from the competition due to injuries. But we did enjoy with several skaters performances.
International Men's figure skating competitions are becoming more and more quad jumps competitions this season and quad jumps are like required jumps for both programs, SP and FP, for men's skating.
and the scores are even more skyrocketing for some of top skaters.
PCS are also automatically higher for skaters who have good technical reputation if they skated clean.
I see PCS are also part of technical scores for figure skating competitions.
Skating skill and transition. and when those two scores get high scores , other parts of PCS they also give higher.
Or if skaters ( who have reputation ) landed all the jumps including quad jumps, they get all high PCS. What most judges value is different from what we value.
For us, figure skating is a sport and an art , not only a sport and not only an art. This is why it's considered as one of the most difficult Olympic subjects.
Artistry is subjective.
But there is a basic level of skill to master before one can be considered an artist.
And I believe that dance skills ( including ballet, jazz, tap, etc.. ) , acting skills, pantomime skills are required to make good artistry in skating.
But when I see like arm flailing with no particular choreography, no well-balanced line of movements, and then even these performances are judged as artistic and getting high scores, and audiences then call those skaters as artists, because the judges gave them those high scores, then I feel like I'm in the twilight zone.
If there is speed and power, many skaters get high PCS. ( for what ? ) and when skaters get high PCS, they are not improving their artistry anymore because maybe they feel they don't need to improve anymore ?
Top skaters are thinking about only quad jumps , not hearing about how to improve their artistry by taking a dance class or anything they are lacking.
This is how this judging system is influencing figure skating competitions. What everyone is watching is the result of all this.
My husband and I both are not so crazy for quad jumps competitions.
The point for us is whether the performance is interesting or not.
If the performances are interesting, we would watch them over and over.
So for a while we were not watching skating competition anymore and instead were watching Charlie Chaplin 's movies which we found have many art and entertainment.
Many people may not know this, but Chaplin was a great dancer.
He was a natural at it.
I don't know why but I'm always interested in movements.
In the past men's skating competition was always my favorite event.
However, somehow my passion has gone since a few years ago, I don't remember when.
The Golden generation for me was when I started watching men's skating and it was from the 2006 Torino Olympics.
But I had watched many older seasons events as well after that.
and my favorite times are still from 2003 - 2004 season to 2007 - 2008 season.
I have watched those generation's skating performances videos so many times, over and over almost every day.
Because many of the performances never bored me and my husband.
The technical level at that time was much lower than present generation based on the judging system.
But artistically, there were so many interesting performances in those days and it made me to watch over and over and they inspired me a lot.
After 2010's Vancouver Olympics, I was not so interested anymore to watch men's skating except for a few skaters .
A few years ago, we found our new favorite skater Jason Brown.
He is the most beautiful artistic skater now, who has charismatic movements and has his own style.
Sadly he got an injury and could not attend US Nationals competition and so he was unable to get the ticket to World championships.
In this season, we found another new favorite skater, Shoma Uno.
Besides these, present men's skating is all about quad jumps. and I found I'm not interested in a jumping contest.
My husband is even more picky as to who he watches , and his taste in skaters is basically the same as me.
These two skaters Jason Brown and Shoma Uno, their skating has charisma, artistry, and technical as well, so it really inspired us.
Artistry is subjective, so the judges and our taste of artistry are often different. Scores don't matter to us.
I am looking forward to seeing next season to find my new favorite skaters and performances.