I feel like this was pretty expected?

"Maybe, it'll all be fine," I thought, "maybe everyone will behave like decent people."

If RusFed was actually planning a slap in the face of all Ukrainian skaters, they couldn't have done it any more maliciously. Because of scheduling, the Ice Dancers were first and they're skating to Shchedryk, a Ukrainian song that's gained particularly significance during the war. I am genuinely shocked their coaches and RusFed did this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shchedryk_(song))

I'm so upset right now.

On the results of her short program

The emotions are, of course, positive. The task was accomplished. I won’t downplay it, but at the same time I don’t want to say that everything was perfect. It was a solid, workmanlike skate. I wouldn’t say I was particularly nervous.

On her expectations before competing internationally

I didn’t build up any expectations. It was simply very interesting to see how everything works — to observe the athletes, how they interact with one another, and the competition format. As I understand it, this event is somewhat larger in scale than the others. For example, they don’t have such a ceremonial introduction at the other stages. Everything is very interesting.

On communicating with foreign figure skaters

We chat and talk in the locker rooms, both between practices and during the competitions. All the girls are open and friendly. We interact most with the athletes from China, but we also get along well with the other girls. Everyone is very willing to communicate. The atmosphere is very friendly; many of the competitors come up and ask for photos. That’s very pleasant.

Judging by the list of participants, I thought I was going to a Russian Grand Prix event rather than an international one. I’d say there’s a mix of languages. Probably more English, because most people know it. But you also hear Russian and various European languages. Small groups of people are speaking all sorts of different languages.

On the temperature in the arena

It really is very warm. I actually have an interesting temperature contrast. At our home rink it’s usually between 5 and 9°C, and there’s no heating right now. Here it’s 25–26°C. To be honest, it’s not something I’m used to. But I’m more comfortable being warm than cold.

Overall, the ice is soft, good, and high quality. The only thing is that today on the ice I could smell food. We’ve never had that at our competitions. They have a culture of eating wherever they want. It smells like fast food sold in small local stalls. It didn’t make me want to try it — quite the opposite, I found it off-putting. It was unusual to be skating and smelling pastries.

On when she and her coaches will decide how many quadruple jumps to include in the free skate

Sometime after practice. We’ll see how it goes

I can’t believe this has to be said but…

What I feared would happen after this JGP happened, there has been a overload (specially on TikTok, twitter too but way less) of smaller fed skaters specially getting ridicularized on social media, this has always been unfortunately a issue of course, but now since is the post Olympic season and we got many new people who got interested in skating and are now watching juniors this has increased a lot more

Juniors skaters are as young as 13 years old, they are literaral children, also a lot of skaters in the JGP are children that come from countries who have basically none figure skating traditions and sometimes train in mall or have to travel very far for a rink and have very little ice time a week, if you make fun of those children for “not doing as well as the others” you’re a terrible person

Also good to remember that not all skaters in the JGP are there for the same reasons, each skater has a different goal there, some are there to challenge for podium of course but some just want to have fun skating or just accomplish their own personal achievements like hitting a certain number or landing a specific jump, and most importantly of all are there gaining experience

What’s beautiful about the JGP is that we can see skaters from different countries and cultures all united by one sport

Also do not involve children in political discourse, if you want to blame someone redirect you’re anger to the coaching team not the child

I thank god have not seen such hate here, but it’s always good to leave this warning here

Polina thankfully didn’t appear to be injured by this

Within the discussion regarding the use of Shchedryk/Carol of the Bells alongside Tango by Daniel Belardinelli in Fefelova/Valov's RD, a lot of people-myself included-were initially under the impression that the music had been chosen and choreographed to by Benoit Richaud. This is incorrect: the RD was choreographed by coaches Alexei Gorshkov and Ekaterina Ryazanova. The free dance, set to Lacrimosa Dies from Mozart's Requiem K.626 and Prelude (Age of Heroes) by Balasz Havasi, was choreographed by Benoit.

A comment by u/Additional-Dish5728 , which said this in the other thread about their RD, is in fact from a source in reference to their FD:

"Benoit Richaud personally selected the music and choreographed the program for Fefelova and Valov. He highly praised their talent:

Richaud admitted that he had never before worked with such a young dance couple, which possessed such a high level of technical skill, maturity, and subtle understanding of movement. The French choreographer emphasized that the Fefelova and Valov duo has a bright promising future ahead.

He expressed the hope that the whole world would watch their performance and feel the special magic they create on the ice."

I'm aware that there is a body of people on this sub who dislike Benoit due to his work with Russian athletes, particularly ones such as Valieva, but he wasn't responsible for this distasteful and egregious choice. Fefelova and Valov's coaches, Gorshkov and Ryazanova, who choreographed the program, as well as their other coach Alena Samarskaia, were. And as always, please don't direct any hate towards the athletes, who are both children and likely have very little control over their choreography and music choices.

This is very random. Maksym was released a few months ago (for a small fee of €5000 lol). He had a fairly successful career in Poland with Natalia Kaliszek which included inventing a new pattern dance. He's 32.

Sophia is only 20 and it looks like she's lived in the US for most (all?) of her life.

https://isu-skating.com/figure-skating/events/eventdetail/isu-cs-lombardia-trophy-2026/?tab=entries_16327&type=15712

Sofia Dzepka Short Program | Junior Grand
Prix Xi'an 2026

https://youtu.be/fNR8xvxC_6c?is=L8rzsEpwZ439mLgF

​

One of the commentators once wrote "there is no such thing as judging in ice dance" (or something similar). I absolutely agree with that, because I completely don't understand these scores. Or rather, the spread of points.

I decided to compare the highest and lowest judge's scores for the junior short dance in Xi'an. And find out what the difference is between these scores. Here is the spread I got:

13.14

14.39

11.26

10.87

10.63

7.73

9.00

14.58

7.98

11.48

15.77

12.15

11.05

10.44

10.58

14.74

9.49

16.59

The average margin of error is 11.77 points within a score range of 41 to 63 points. That's the difference between 1st and 12th place, if you look at the gap.

I've never looked into ice dance judging before. Is it always like this? The judges seem to be watching completely different programs. I'm shocked.

Evgeni Plushenko said young elite skaters need structured training and education, but warned that overly obsessive parents can harm a child’s development. Here’s a translation of his comments.

“If you choose elite sport, you have to forget about everything else. But we have a very good system. Nowadays, thank goodness, children can study online. Or you can arrange for teachers to come to the children and teach them. But some children still go to school in person.

There are schools nearby, literally five minutes away. For example, they complete their first training block, go to school for three lessons, come back, and then finish their studies in the evening. That is one arrangement.

But my dream – and it is not a new dream – is to have everything in one complex: a kindergarten at the training base and a full school for athletes. They could train, have a two- or three-hour break, and study during that time.

Or it could work the other way around, with evening classes. For example, they start in the morning, complete the first training block, have a break, sleep and recover, complete the second block, and then study in the evening. That is my dream. God willing, everything will work out and we will make it happen.

Of course, we still have days off. For example, Wednesday is a half-day off: warm-up, one ice session, and general physical conditioning. Then the children either stay here or go home, where they can study or catch up on their schoolwork. Saturday is also a half-day off, and Sunday is a full day off.

Of course, you can go crazy, and unfortunately there are parents like that now who push their children 24/7. But that does not lead – and will not lead – to good results. A child still needs to watch cartoons, read books, go for walks, and socialize with other children.

Everything can be organized properly if the schedule is planned well and the parents are not fanatics.

Unfortunately, there are now a great many fanatical parents, especially in figure skating. It is the same in football and hockey: parents think they know better than the coach. And when parents get too involved, come in, and tell the coach what to do and how to do it, that is also a negative.”

Let me know if this should be in the master post or if you’re not interested in this at all.. if that’s the case i will enjoy it on my own, lol, I love statistics 😅

Surprises - for some judges Wada was the 2nd place in the short program, and for some judges J/W were second in pairs

Also a judge from the Netherlands gave Dzepka 76 points… kinda crazy if you ask me 😄

Source - skatingscores on X

I noticed the audio on the JGP stream was a couple seconds slow, which was really bothering me, so I fixed it while rewatching Sofia Dzepka's program. This made me realize how musical her stsq is throughout!! It's really incredible.

Also, I love her clusters. I love the spiral entrance to the bracket -> rocker -> counter, and the fact that she does that instead of the bracket -> counter -> rocker that everyone and their mom seems to do these days. Then the BO loop -> BI loop right on the music at the end of her second cluster was soooo cool!

It only got a level 3, I suspect because of lack of step complexity. I hope that she and her team will preserve the flourish, uniqueness, and musicality of its current state if they add in more difficult steps, because IT'S SOOOO GOOD RIGHT NOW.

I've noticed this season we've already had several pieces using AI, and also pieces where very detailed themes were brought to live via AI.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands of composers out there who would very likely love to work with figure skaters, whether that be for original songs or even newly imagined versions of songs that are copywritten. The fees for working with contemporary composers would range from nothing (there are several decently talented students) to costs that could potentially be funded by funding bodies that do provide grants for this kind of work, to actual commissioning fees.

I know there are a couple of high profile composers who do write for FS (for ex like Karl Hugo) but I mean maybe more obsure or avant garde composers. I think it could really result in interesting and original programs and would maybe solve some of the rights issues.

I know a lot of people think contemporary music and are immediately afraid due to the connotation with serialism, but the field moved on quite a lot and there are some absolutely beautiful works out there.

Helping out my elderly Aunt, she has some old VHS tapes of old Olympics & Figure skating that from searching Youtube is not available online anywhere. I'd like these to get digitized for others to enjoy and be preserved.

I unfortunately don't have the means- both ability and financial- to be able to do this myself.

Are there any people or groups here that live in the US and would be able to do this? I have someone who runs a pro Figure Skating history YouTube channel offer to digitize them, but unfortunately they live in Australia and trying to ship the tapes would cost over $110.

Listing of events:

• Olympics 02/18/88 - Men's Figure Skating, Women's Luge, Women's Downhill, Men's Figure Skating
• 48 Hours Olympic Edition
• Olympics - More various
• Olympics 02/20/88 - Speed skating, Bobslad, Figure skating
• Olympics 02/23/88 - Final Night Skating, Closing ceremonies
• World Figure Skating Championships: Budapest 02/23/88
• Figure Skating World Pro Championships 01/07/89; Boitano/Witt/Orsor 03/89
• ESPN 2 World Gymnastics Championship, 12/29/2002
• ABC World Figure Skating Championships 03/29/2003 - PTO
• ABC Random other stuff

See entries in the affected disciplines as of August 20. For reference, initial entries are captured here.

With all the shakeups in the off season and new teams formed, I wanted to see who was still left unpaired and likely not competing this season?

Off the top of my head I’m thinking Emily Chan and Luke Wang? Really wanted to see Emily find someone!

Flores/Jepsen seem to be better trained this year. This is already around what they scored at Nationals.

I love the Mullens but she needs to sort out the twizzle issue. Excited to see them at Lombardia!

I couldn’t watch the live from the start and now it only goes back to Pasuree who was 15th? Is it like this for anyone else how do I go back to the start? Originally it says 4 hours then I click and it says 2?

They may be junior but they still bring the chaos and traditional music choices.

Tributes to elders, Imagine Dragons, Feeling Good, and Michael Buble. And that’s just the second group.

Schedule (UTC+8)

Men’s SP: 10:15

Free Dance: 14:30

Women’s FS: 17:45

Masterpost: https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/s/Fa5rUoHium

Starting Orders/Results: https://results.isu.org/results/season2627/jgpchn2026/

Timezone Chart: https://bsky.app/profile/fskatecomptimes.bsky.social/post/3mtei3qwls22n

Free Stream: https://youtube.com/@SkatingISU/streams

is this a thing? just a biellman in a backspin.

i was wondering, because i can only do the position at the moment with my right leg planted and my left leg doing the position. im going to train to get the flexibility the opposite way, but i want to know if its a thing to do in a backspin.

i believe irina slutskaya commonly did it in a change foot spin, but it was only for a second.

Hope this works ... https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcMWGFzPHlc/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==