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Sui Wenjing and Han Cong after their short program at the 2019 World Championships.

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POETIC CINEMA

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4CC Free Dance Mood Board

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madison chock and evan bates after their free dance at 2019 us nationals

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You give me fever when you kiss me Fever when you hold me tight

— Madison Chock & Evan Bates perform their free dance at the 2019 U.S. Figure Skating Championships

+ bonus snaps:

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Olympic website pulled all the full footage of PyeongChang figure skating events and I’m 💔

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Probably the funniest gif you will see today. ha ha ha ha Click on link to view. 

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The highs and lows of Russian Nationals.

Bonus:

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how to sell a slip on your final lift, +2.37 GOE

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Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya and Harley Windsor

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Guys, scrap the GPF, the REAL bloodbath you’re gonna wanna see next week is the showdown between all the Senior Pairs at the 2019 Australian Figure Skating Nationals…

Check out this INTENSE line up of all the competitors:

Oh. 

Uhhhhhh…never mind. 

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Interview with Katia (in Russian)

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shoma uno after his free skate performance || 2018 NHK Trophy

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lilah fear and lewis gibson’s choreographic sliding movement at skate america 2018, also known as “maybe this knee sliding stuff won’t be so bad after all”

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Some thoughts from Alexandrovskaya/Windsor after the SP at Skate Canada 2018

This was also the Grand Prix debut for Australians Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya & Harley Windsor. Although the team has already competed at the Olympics and two senior Worlds, this was their first senior Grand Prix. The Australians had a quite decent performance of their “Never Tear Us Apart” SP. Windsor unfortunately doubled his side-by-side triple toe loop, which cost them 3 points in base value. However, the rest of their elements were mostly good. Artistically, the program needs more connection, both to the music and between the partners, but it was a solid effort overall. They scored 60.77 points for fifth.

Alexandrovskaya & Windsor talked afterwards about their recent coaching change to Richard Gauthier and Bruno Marcotte in Montreal. “It’s so different,” said Alexandrovskaya. “So different between the Russian coaches and the Canadian coaches. Because it’s a different system. Different technique.”

“Yes, it was a really big change. It took us a lot longer than we expected to adjust,” Windsor agreed. “Just their training style, their mentality going into the training here. But now we’re settled in a lot more, and we’re quite liking the change. So I think it’s better for us, long-term. We’re still slowly getting used to it. It’s only the first season with new coaches, so we’re still trying to figure out what works for us with them, and vice versa.”

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Short interview with Alexandrovskaya/Windsor after the FS at Skate Canada

Australian team Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya & Harley Windsor landed some good elements in their tango free skate (level 4 triple twist, nice throw triple flip, death spiral). However, they had small mistakes on three jump elements, and their lifts and spin were a bit on the slow side. Ideally, I’d like to see the Australians carry more speed into and out of their elements, as they visibly slow down before some elements. Artistically, their tango program had a studied, step-by-step feel to it; it didn’t really flow or feel very connected to the music. Their PCS marks were mixed, with some scores up in the low-7s, but a handful dipping into the high-5s. Still, they improved on their long program at U.S. Classic, earning a season’s best 106.18 to place seventh in the LP and overall.

Afterwards, the Australians expressed satisfaction with their performance, particularly considering the changes they experienced during the off-season in switching coaches to Richard Gauthier and Bruno Marcotte.

“I think it’s better than our previous competitions. We’re slowly moving forward, and we’re starting to understand now what it’s like to be in senior events,” Windsor said. “But overall, for our first senior Grand Prix, I think it was okay. There’s still a lot of work to do, obviously. I can’t say I’m disappointed with it, but I’m not satisfied with it, either.”

“We had [a] long break after the World Championships,” Alexandrovskaya said.

Windsor concurred: “We started off a lot behind where we should be, in physical form—just because we had such a long break after Worlds, and the whole relocation of coaches and training. I think we’re on the right track. But we’re still a little bit behind of where we want to be.”

Alexandrovskaya & Windsor discussed the factors that led to their decision to change coaches.

“We reached a certain point in juniors. And we wanted to take the next step and really try and move up in seniors and start to become more of a proper senior pair, rather than just juniors who are kind of in the mix. We don’t want to just be participating in competitions, we actually want to be competitive skaters. So we thought that the move here would help us with that,” Windsor explained. “And it’s slowly happening, but it takes time.”

There were some issues with their previous coaching arrangement. “We had a lot of complications after Worlds and Olympics. In Russia, there were a lot of complications with coaching, with ice, with going there with visas, a little bit with the Russian federation,” Windsor explained.

“It was just a whole lot of things that were playing a factor. And it was just a big mess, for a while,” he admitted. “We weren’t sure what we were going to do—if we were going to continue to skate, if we were going to move somewhere. So that’s why we took such a long break, because we didn’t know what we were going to do.”

The team decided to explore other coaching options. “I knew Bruno through competitions previously, and had spoken to him,” said Windsor. “And knew they had a really good track record, obviously, with Meagan [Duhamel] and Eric [Radford]. And I got in contact with Bruno and Richard, and asked if we could come for a tryout sort of thing and see how the whole thing would work. So far, we’re liking the change.”

Alexandrovskaya & Windsor discussed the differences between their previous Russian training style and the Canadian approach. “I think the biggest change is the mindset that everybody has,” Windsor said. “Here, we work a lot more on not just elements, but actual presenting and skating.

“Before, when we were in Russia, it was more just elements, elements, elements. We never really had time to work on the in-between stuff that the top senior pairs do,” Windsor went on. “So that’s why our technique is still a little bit hit-and-miss at the moment. But it’s because we’ve been working so much on trying to commit [to] the program better, and we’ve done a lot of changes to our short and long program. It just takes time to blend everything together. And hopefully by next competition, we’ll improve more—be a bit fitter and a bit more confident with our program,” he concluded.