NHK Trophy 2014

So, the last of the Grand Prix's is here. It's going to be very exciting competition for the ladies in deciding the last 2 spots for GPF.
For now the ladies qualified are:
Radionova
Tuktamysheva
Pogorilaya
Lipnitskaia
-------------
Wagner; she can still be bumped out of GPF if Gracie, Satoko and Kanako place 1st or 2nd with high enough score. I hope satoko will make it.

Here's the official result page:
http://www.isuresults.com/results/gpjpn2014/index.htm

Have just finished watching ladies. The last group was great. Too bad Kana got hit with an UR again, but overall a great performance. I worry about Satoko, will she ever be able to get her jumps higher? They are beyond tiny. It's such a shame, because she's a great skater with crazy consistency, yet always gets hit with UR's and/or DG.

Gracie FINALLY skated a clean SP, hopefully the same will happen in LP.
Alena was great, but the mark on her SS is baffling.  Sorry, but it's way too high.

Off topic: What the heck is wrong with British Eurosport?! They keep hiring guest comentators who are idiots. I can't stand that Joanne (don't remember her last name) chick. I hate her ever since she had the audacity to call Mao's Rachmaninov LP "empty in choreography, not going much on in between jumps".  I still don't know in which alternate Universe was she watching, because it sure wasn't in this one.
Listening to her comentating the ladies, you'd think she has a personal vendetta against them. I feel for Nicky. I wish they'd just let him comentate on his own if the other two (Simon and Chris) can't make it.

Oh Yuzu... , I don't think he should've competed here, but he did look smiley in K&C. I guess he expected that. I don't know though, how he'll survive the LP tomorrow.

Mura . Hopefully he can win this, if Yuzu can't and almost certainly won't.

Jeremy was gorgeous. Too bad the quads are missing, otherwise he would be right at the top fighting for gold medals.

I love Joshua Farris, he had a nightmare today, but his skating and spins are so beautiful.
I can't wait for tomorrow.

Do you have any videos? I thought NHK was tomorrow and missed the stream....

l-spiralmao wrote:

Do you have any videos? I thought NHK was tomorrow and missed the stream....

You can find videos for all the performances at the following website:

http://www.goldenskate.com/forum/showthread.php?53015-2014-NHK-Trophy-Videos-amp-Results

Here is the link for Kanako's performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZOsMEZp6Rk

Alena's performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDQa-LpIID0

Gracie's Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4xH0vuMN-I

Satoko's performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA5JaZ-UfPM

zarinaballerina wrote:

So, the last of the Grand Prix's is here. It's going to be very exciting competition for the ladies in deciding the last 2 spots for GPF.
For now the ladies qualified are:
Radionova
Tuktamysheva
Pogorilaya
Lipnitskaia
-------------
Wagner; she can still be bumped out of GPF if Gracie, Satoko and Kanako place 1st or 2nd with high enough score. I hope satoko will make it.

Here's the official result page:
http://www.isuresults.com/results/gpjpn2014/index.htm

Have just finished watching ladies. The last group was great. Too bad Kana got hit with an UR again, but overall a great performance. I worry about Satoko, will she ever be able to get her jumps higher? They are beyond tiny. It's such a shame, because she's a great skater with crazy consistency, yet always gets hit with UR's and/or DG.

Gracie FINALLY skated a clean SP, hopefully the same will happen in LP.
Alena was great, but the mark on her SS is baffling.  Sorry, but it's way too high.

Off topic: What the heck is wrong with British Eurosport?! They keep hiring guest comentators who are idiots. I can't stand that Joanne (don't remember her last name) chick. I hate her ever since she had the audacity to call Mao's Rachmaninov LP "empty in choreography, not going much on in between jumps".  I still don't know in which alternate Universe was she watching, because it sure wasn't in this one.
Listening to her comentating the ladies, you'd think she has a personal vendetta against them. I feel for Nicky. I wish they'd just let him comentate on his own if the other two (Simon and Chris) can't make it.

I suppose it is all that "empty choreography" that led to Mao receiving the most tweets of any other Olympic athlete and a huge surge of criticism about her scores not getting a World record  or winning the freeskate even among those who are not her fans. She has beautiful balletic extensions, one legged skating with uncanny flow of every limb, and fewer crossovers than most skaters in her Rach 2 performance.    

However, Joanne did say wonderful things about Kanako and good things about Satoko. I got upset with that ur call on Kanako because I watched the slo mo replay many times and saw that it was fully rotated, so it is beyond suspicious to me as several posters at forms have already written. Here is what the female commentator at eurosport said about Kanako's second 3T, "Perfectly straight, great knee bend, great running edge." The judges are keeping up the tradition of giving overly harsh ur calls to Japanese ladies at home like they did at Worlds earlier this year. I liked Kanako's performance the best of all. She is the only lady to get level 4 spins and steps and she skated with the most passion, speed and flow, yet somehow she only gets 3rd place in PCS. I think she should have been first. Hmmm. Perhaps PCS scores are just place holders, since the overall placements are the same as the PCS score placements for the top 8 skaters.  At times, I thought Mao must have been mentoring Kanako. How did she suddenly become so pleasing in hitting all these wonderful positions and extensions? Even her Biellmann was beautiful with great acceleration of speed at the end. I just hope she doesn't get discouraged because she delivered the most beautiful SP I have seen this season. This was a memorable performance. She should be proud.

I thought Gracie and Alena were quite good, but they didn't move me like Kanako. Alena wasn't quite as good in skating skills in the steps and definitely lacked the positions in the spins comparatively. Gracie was closer (though still not as good to me) as Kanako in spins and she did have a lutz, but her extensions were not as good to me, or her steps, or her expressiveness, though she did skate well.
 
I love Satoko's skating outside of the jumps which seem a little on the low side and unfortunately a huge majority of the score is tied to jumps, way too much in my opinion especially with tech rigging. She is beautiful to watch and I really like her skating, but I admit that I get more grandeur out of Kanako's performance. I still think she should have scored higher in PCS and a little higher in tech but probably still 4th place. I wish she could just get those jumps a little higher. I loved Satoko's FS at Skate Canada, so I am hoping she can pull off a skate like that and that Kanako can deliver again tomorrow.

@wowmao, I agree with you. Yesterday, Kanako was simply amazing. I haven't watched the ladies LP yet, but I see that Satoko is out of GPF.  She needed to place at least 2nd with a score of 121+ for that to happen, sadly, she was 3rd.

I hope that now, all those haters of japanese figure skaters will finally shut up about Japanese getting overscored on their home ice. At EVERY grand prix, the home skaters get absurd overscoring, only in Japan do they not just score them fairly, but they underscore them.

If last years wrolds were held in Russia or USA, and  their skater would skate the way Mao had, can you imagine the score this skater would get ? Above 140 for sure, yet Mao was hit with non existing UR's and underscored in PCS. And her SP WR is not only deserved (unlike what the haters are suggesting), but it should've been much higher. IMO, that performance was worthy of 80 points.

For the life of me, I can't get my head around Kanako's SP score. Much too low. I guess she's like Mao, because of her reputation, all the jumps which are border line get an automatic UR hit, instead of the benefit of the doubt.

Well, the good news is (or not), that with Yuzu's 4th place here he gets to go to GPF. I'd personally prefered if he hadn't, but there you go. Murakami was amazing, Voronov OK, and Mura's nerves really showed.
I wonder what will happen at nationals. Could the trio be Yuzu, Machida, Murakami?

Are Kanako and Daisuke related? They both share the same last name.

This uploader has all the NHK videos, however the commentary is in Russsian.
https://www.youtube.com/user/bimbett/videos

zarinaballerina wrote:

Are Kanako and Daisuke related? They both share the same last name.

Umm... I don't think so.
Murakami is a common name in Japan. (mura = village, kami = upper   )


I feel sorry for Joshua ...
He is such a beautiful skater.
Even without jumps, his LP "Schindler's List" is my favorite performance
along with Kanako's SP "Think of me" in this competition.

silenceisgolden wrote:

zarinaballerina wrote:

Are Kanako and Daisuke related? They both share the same last name.

Umm... I don't think so.
Murakami is a common name in Japan. (mura = village, kami = upper   )


I feel sorry for Joshua ...
He is such a beautiful skater.
Even without jumps, his LP "Schindler's List" is my favorite performance
along with Kanako's SP "Think of me" in this competition.

Wow, it's always so interesting learning what japanese names actually mean.

I absolutely agree with you about Josh. I fell in love with his skating at NHK, I can only imagine how huge his scores are going to be when he'll skate his programs clean. Such a gorgeous skater. And his step seq in Schindler's was to die for.

And Kanako was seriously underscored in SP.