In the previous post I looked at the posture of seven skaters, Jason Brown, Donovan Carrillo, Nathan Chen, Yuzuru Hanyu, Yuma Kagiyama, Shoma Uno and Deniss Vasiljevs, during the short program of the last Olympic Games. I looked at the basic moves, the pushes and some glides. These are details that can make us understand a lot of the skaters’ abilities, of how much they interpret the program instead of limiting themselves to perform the required technical elements. Not for nothing, even in the simple cool downs it is possible to see the quality of Hanyu’s skating. Now I will focus on some of the movements that characterize the various programs, movements that for the sake of comparison I have arbitrarily divided into some categories. I start with the spiral.

Spirals

I wrote that not everyone does all kinds of movements. The most obvious case is in the spiral: at least in this short program, almost none of the skaters I have watched have done one. A spiral takes time, so it is easier find a spiral in a free skate, especially if the edge is held for a long time. And precisely for reasons of time, long spreads eagle and ina bauer, or hydroblade and cantilever, are rarely part of a short program. Let’s see what the skaters have done.

From the almost frontal shot, Brown’s pose is not very beautiful, from the side, that we can see in the video of the National Championship, the effect is much better. The whole movement doesn’t last long, at most a couple of seconds, but the position Brown has reached is not easy, it requires a certain amount of elasticity (and Brown has plenty of it) and also a good sense of balance. Too bad about the way he puts his foot on the ice at the end.

I would have something to say about the way Brown starts this spiral. The way he lowers himself is ugly, his butt constantly sticking out. But, after that moment, what does he do? Do you see the extension of the legs? Brown is in split, with the free leg very high. And this for three seconds. Then he puts his foot on the ice, and ends his turn with a pivot. None of the others do anything like that, because nobody is able to extend their legs like Brown does.

The section on spirals is very short, it started with Brown and ends with Hanyu, because none of the others have done anything that can be called a spiral. Sure, it can be a choice. If they have done anything else, they may have given up on the spiral. Have they done something else? We’ll see.

Hanyu doesn’t do a split. In training, or on show, we have sometimes seen him reach Y position, in competition, at least not in recent years, I remember none. Brown has more leg extension than Hanyu’s. Hanyu is elegant from start to finish. He starts by bending the legs, without his butt sticking out, he just pushes himself, extending his leg completely, and makes a fluid movement. The free leg, arms, back and head move in unison. It is the movement of a dancer.

In the last post I posted a series of screenshots in which Hanyu was in a similar pose. I had inserted them into the glides, not the spirals, because there the movement had been shorter. Here Hanyu remains on one foot for three seconds, because after reaching the arabesque position he returns to the vertical, with the same fluidity as before, and continues to slide on one foot. The perfection of the program, which must be recognized in Composition, is also in this: Hanyu begins with a pivot, followed by a forward arabesque, tells the first part of his story, also inserting a technical element, and concludes this part of the story with a backward arabesque followed by a pivot. I don’t know if the idea was by Jeffrey Buttle or Shae-Lynn Bourne, or even by Hanyu himself, who now collaborates extensively in making his choreography but, whoever had it, is a genius. And Hanyu’s making is flawless.

We can notice a difference. When Hanyu is moving forward, his left arm also extends forward. Relaxed, not tense, but still looking for something that is there, just in front of him, and Hanyu is immersed in himself, in his world. When he’s going backwards, he’s more upright, more defensive. Something did not go as he would have liked, he retracts, and in fact his left arm no longer reaches forward, and in the right one, while retaining a beautiful line, there is less abandonment, as there is less abandonment in the body, which it is more upright. Hanyu’s head looks forward. Something has hurt him, or let him down, and he’s pulling back. The message is transmitted from his entire body.

When Hanyu gets up from the arabesque position, decisively but elegantly and capturing all the notes, even if this cannot be seen from the screenshots, he continues his glide, then does a brackets (excluded from my screenshots). The beauty of his body lines is absolute. Art, without forgetting the technical aspect.

Balancement – one foot

Not everyone has done a spiral, indeed, almost nobody has done it. It is not mandatory to do it, as long as the skater does something else. One of the requirements of the components is that the skater move putting his axis out of balance. Did they do it? We see.

Relatively simple position of balance, but with a but. Brown has shifted on one foot, and to lean slightly in this way, and regain balance as he does, simply by shifting the weight of the body and letting himself fall on the free foot, is not difficult, even if the arms, which shift the weight of the body to the opposite side from the supporting foot, make balancing a little more complicated. The most interesting thing is the opening of the legs. We have already seen Brown’s spiral, we will see several splits. There is no doubt that Brown knows how to do splits in all directions and that he stretches his legs well, and this ability to stretch is something that must be recognized in the components. I also notice that he eventually goes on the toe picks. This is not difficult in itself, but it denotes an interest in working with the whole blade and not just some parts.

Was I talking about leg extension? High kick. Great movement. If someone just swings of the free leg not too high, Brown shows us that the leg can be lifted above the head.

The first two images are from Beijing, the others from the National Championship because the shot from Beijing was bad. Immediately after a spin Brown balances himself on the toe picks. I would say that the fluidity, the continuity between one movement and another, is all there. And even though he stays in balance for a short time, Brown tests his sense of balance.

Sometimes the movements are short, but Brown is constantly trying to do something.

Brown does not always remember what elegance is, and it is a shame, but what he does is demanding, a minimum error is enough to transform a movement that does not award points in a catastrophe. The difference between those who do nothing between one technical element and another, and those who work on their balance, those who choose to move the center of gravity outside their body and then to regain their balance, as if nothing had happened, deserves to be awarded in components. It takes very little for the blade to slip, or the toe picks to become embedded in the ice, even for great skaters. A moment of distraction, and the disaster is done. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, look at what happened to Anna Pogorilaya – a few months before she had won world bronze, she was no ordinary figure skater – right before her short program at the 2016 Grand Prix Final. Such an incident, and the GOE of the step sequence disappears, and probably also the PCS are significantly reduced.

Another high kick. In the first he was moving, this he did while standing, adding a choreographic movement of the arms. Elbows out are a feature of this program. I have some doubts about their beauty – and I don’t expect skaters to always do only classic movements: a program that I fell in love with at first sight, many years ago, was Bonzo’s Montreux by Kurt Browning, the short program with which he won the 1993 World Championship, and on that short program his moves are anything but classic – but Brown’s body, especially in the last screenshot, isn’t particularly good. The judges do not see the screenshots, some details can escape. The whole for me, despite the continuous flow, is of an elegance that is there in some moments and in others not.

These are two movements that follow one after the other, as you can see from the seconds. The first is somewhat reminiscent of the pose that Brown had had over a minute before, and that I inserted between the spirals, even if this time the leg is lower, the second reaches the more classic position of the spiral, but for a real spiral Brown should have held the position a little longer. Maybe I could have put this screenshot in the glides, but making clear distinctions is difficult. The first movement is backward, the second forward. The free leg is very high, and the gesture is completed by a choreographic movement of the arms. To me the position is not exciting, but they are personal tastes. I am more bothered by the way in which he concludes the gesture, with his bottom out. For a skater capable of staying balanced in difficult positions, and reaching elegant positions, like Brown, this is a notable flaw.

Every now and then the TV direction decided it wasn’t nice to see the movements in their entirety. Carrillo shifts his center of balance slightly outside the body and stops on the toe picks. The final pose, and how he exit from it, is a mystery.

Carrillo is not elegant. His program is characterized by energy and exuberance, it is pleasing to the eye, but elegance is not something we can ask to him. But he goes down repeatedly, and getting up and down makes him tired, and he shifts his center of balance out of the body, so he takes risks, he has to be careful how he moves if he doesn’t want to do disastrous mistakes.

I would have something to say to the television director… however Carrillo lowers himself again, and in the third screenshot it is evident that it is not a position with the equilibrium is simple. It does not last long, the balance is played on the speed of the movement, but Carrillo tries to do some risky things.

The first thing we see Carrillo do in this series of screenshots is a jump, but the non-listed jumps will have their own section in another post. After the jump, as soon as he lands, he raises his free leg, then lowers it by rotating. The movement is too short to be considered in the spirals, but Carrillo must be acknowledged for having combined two different movements to create a fluid, interesting and risky movement.

Twirl. If looked at casually, the movement can seem a twizzle, and the twizzle is part of the difficult turn. But in a twizzle the skater skate on the blade, with a flat edge, and the risk that the blade slips, that the skater loses his balance, is high. The twirl is done on toe picks. Chen stands on the toe pick, has planted himself well in the ice, and spins on the toe pick. Movement is much simpler. On a choreographic level it is still beautiful to see. As with one of the swings I commented on in the previous post, the result is that Chen does a bit of a scene, but it doesn’t do anything special. Mind you, it’s not like he, or anyone else, always has to do something difficult. They wouldn’t be able to skate for two and a half minutes, let alone four, if they just did hard things. But moving the equilibrium axis is expressly required to have high marks in components, and if there is a nice choreographic movement here, the axis of equilibrium has not been affected in the least.

I tried, ok? I assure you that I have tried. I looked for a moment when Chen would test his sense of balance. I don’t think the twirl can be counted, the skate is firmly planted in the ice and Chen’s balance axis is perfectly vertical. But somewhere I wanted to put the twirl, to witness a moment in which he worked on the choreography. And then there’s this moment here. He has just done a mohawk. Between the first moment, when he’s on his feet, and the last, when he’s back on his two feet, a second goes by. I would say he hasn’t been on one foot for long. He is almost perfectly vertical. True, he bends his right leg in front of the left. It’s such a short movement (look at how much the background behind him changes when he has his leg raised) that I struggled to capture it, because I wanted the moment when the leg is higher. And look at how wide his legs are in the end: he got unbalanced just a little, then put his foot down, legs apart, to make sure he didn’t lose his balance.

Better than nothing? I went back a few years to a skater who was not known for his artistic skills.

This is Elvis Stojko, in the short program of the 1995 World Championship. That year, with the second short program and the best free skate, Stojko confirmed himself as world champion ahead of Todd Eldredge and Philippe Candeloro. Stojko has always been criticized for the artistic aspect of his programs. I just finished reading Christine Brennan’s Edge of Glory. I will comment the book, for now I will limit myself to re-proposing a passage (page 105) that I had already posted on twitter:

“It’s a sport.”

Athleticism was one part of the equation. Bur what about presentation? According to some experts, Elvis didn’t have any presentation. He maintained, of course, that he did, that his martial arts style–with black leather accountrements and jumps that reached the rafters–was artistry in the ’90s men’s figure skating.

Elvis was on one side of the argument. On the other side were people who said his skating reminded them of a man with his feet stuck in drying cement.

“Tedious, two-footed approaches… an utter lack of artistry,” was the way the Chicago Tribune’s Philip Hersh analyzed Stojko.

Okay, now look at Stojko and at Chen, and tell me if what Chen did was harder than what Stojko did at his time. And also look at the time: Stojko remained on one foot for over four seconds, crossing the entire rink. Or, always speaking of balance, Stojko did also this:

It’s another five seconds on one foot, in a not-so-stable position. Perhaps not so elegant, but he tests his balance. The curve helps him keep the balance, sure, but Stojko still needs to have good body control to complete this movement.

Hanyu just landed the combination. At the start of my series of screenshot he is on the landing foot, and without placing his left foot on the ice he does two rockers, then puts his left foot down, lifts his right, and stretches for a moment, getting up on the tip of the skate. Not content with having done something difficult upon exiting the most challenging of his technical elements, he completes the movement with his arms. His left arm is stretched high, making the gesture of reaching out more elegant. The right is lateral, on the side of the raised foot, in order to complicate the balance a little. It’s only a moment, then he gently lowers and pushes, as he has to pick up speed for the impending spin.

I hope that the proposals we have seen circulating on changes in the PCS do not pass. One proposal talks about rewarding the speed of skating, but for speed already exists short track. Figure skating doesn’t need to become a bad copy of another discipline. For the moment we talk about the use of effortless power to accelerate and vary speed (it is one of the criteria of skating skills), and the fact that after a combination Hanyu performs two difficult turns, stops completely and then manages to find the speed for the spin – a total of three seconds pass between the landing of the 3T and the start of the preparation of the spin – it is remarkable.

This is another moment I didn’t know where to place. Hanyu just landed the 3A – and I’m not here discussing what he did before that 3A – I just look at the after. At landing he has his left arm bent. This is something that unbalances a lot. The risk of falling, or stepping out, is very high. He didn’t make any of these mistakes, but his GOE suffered. I will write about GOE on another occasion. He risked the GOE because he prioritized the PCS, and the PCS should recognize what he did. And, right after that, Hanyu did a twizzle. A twizzle between a very difficult triple axel, landed like that, and just before a spin. And to complicate his life, even in the twizzle he holds the arms asymmetrically. Let’s recap the difficulty of a twizzle: a flat edge, on a curved blade, during a rotation, raises the risk of unbalancing. His arms are not outstretched, which would give stability. They’re relaxed, soft, and loose, which slows down the speed, as if in his nature the twizzle don’t do lose speed already. This is just before a spin, where Hanyu needs speed.

His center of gravity will not be shifted out of the body, but here Hanyu has played a lot with his sense of balance and his control of the body and the blade.

Illusion turn. I would say that here the center of gravity is quite outside the body. And, even if I have inserted it between the glides, also the position that Hanyu holds before the second pivot, which I have looked carefully in the previous post and more briefly here, could be inserted between the equilibrium positions.

It was difficult also with Kagiyama to find a moment in which he tests his sense of balance. Kagiyama makes many hops (and in these screenshots there is also a hop), many little steps, but he is practically always straight. This is where he works the most on balance. Better than nothing, but Carrillo did a lot more than him.

Immediately after a succession of two swizzles, Uno stops briefly on one foot and stretches out. He might seem to have a similar stance to Hanyu’s, apart from the fact that what they did just before is very different, but the way they hold the stance is also different.

Hanyu has extended his arm horizontally on the side of the free foot, and his head is also turned to that side. Uno has his arm extended horizontally on the side of the supporting foot, and his head is also turned to that side. For Uno it is much easier to keep the balance, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Hanyu’s right shoulder and hand are relaxed, Uno’s left shoulder and hand are stiff. Uno is tilted slightly, as we seen in the previous screenshot takes advantage of that tilt to get out of the equilibrium position. Hanyu moves forward, so he has to control the weight to send it not in the natural direction, but in the direction he wants.

For a moment Uno takes the same position as Kagiyama, only that Kagiyama has shifted on one foot with a little hop, Uno does it with a run, and comes out of that slight imbalance exactly as Chen did: spreading his foot and letting himself fall in a stable position.

I point out a detail: at the beginning of the series of screenshots, Uno makes a choreographic movement with his arms. Uno does a lot of choreographic movements with his arms, too bad really often he is not doing anything with his feet.

I looked at Chen’s twirl, I also look at Uno’s. Uno’s is shorter, and the exit position isn’t the most elegant.

Uno, like Hanyu, does an illusion turn, a movement that requires a good sense of balance.

Compared to the two sets of screenshots I’ve already posted, Hanyu’s and Uno’s, I’ve added a screenshot for each skater. I wanted to see how much each of them lifts their free foot. The shot is not exactly the same, and taking the precise moment is not easy, but I would say that Hanyu lifts the foot higher and lowers the torso more, bringing it closer to the supporting leg. And there is another interesting detail: Hanyu has his arms pointing downwards. In practice he is more leaning forward. His balance is very forward. The slightest mistake, and Hanyu falls with his nose stamped on the ice. Uno restrains, limits the movement, without getting too unbalanced. The two skaters perform the same gesture, and at the same time perform two different gestures, one immersed in the flow of movements (and among other things, just before this illusion turn Hanyu had made a jump), the other holding back, worried not to make mistakes.

Edit: I add another difference, noticed while I watched again the video to check another detail. Uno’s illusion turn is traveled. If you look at the third screenshot of the first row, the support leg, the left, is aligned with the leftmost of the two rings at the bottom. In the last screenshot of the same row, the leg is aligned with the right ring. While spinning Uno lost control and slipped on the side. Hanyu no. He places his foot on the ice, and completes the rotation where he started it.

The judges do not have the possibility to make this type of comparison, so perhaps it is time for the ISU to find a solution, because it is not possible that the competitions are judged so roughly that the difference in quality of what is proposed by the skaters disappears, when it is not completely overturned. And Uno skated right after Hanyu. Even though the judges could not watch screenshots of the skaters, they had to be able to notice some difference in the way Hanyu and Uno skated. If not, they should not judge at the Olympic Games.

Uno almost always has the butt out before and after each movement, carriage is not his forte.

I probably should have put these screenshots in the glides, but also doing the typology divisions was tricky, I changed idea several times and I did a few little messes. Okay, Uno’s movement is reminiscent of a movement we have already seen done by Chen and Hanyu.

Uno is the one with the straightest supporting leg. This means that he cannot raise his free leg as much as Hanyu does. They are different choices, equally valid. Uno lifts his leg as much as Chen does, but overall his position is better, with a more difficult balance to maintain.

I just realized a funny detail about Vasiljevs. Looking at his pigtail, you can tell if he moved quickly or not. In this case, at first Vasiljevs was leaning slightly to the left, then he suddenly straightened up. The moment he straightened up, he lifted his left foot, so the movement is complex, he had to coordinate his upper body with his lower body. Immediately afterwards he extends his leg forward, for balance, and leans back. How much control does it take, how much confidence does it take in its ability to slide on the blade, to lean back like this? Vasilievs has excellent body control, and a very good sense of balance.

In this case Vasiljevs leaned forward. Not the best of shots, but the Latvian skater is able to maintain balance even in a low position, during a curve, and with his weight shifted forward.

As for the position of the blade, it seems to me that it is somewhere between a twizzle and a twirl, I leave the evaluation to others. The interesting thing is that Vasiljevs is spinning on himself leaning backwards. How difficult is this gesture? How much control does he need? If I had already praised Vasiljevs in the first series of screenshots, here he shows us that he is a wonderful skater.

Three skaters, Brown, Hanyu and Vasiljevs, in different ways showed that they have a very good sense of balance. Two, Carrillo and Uno, have a good sense of balance. I have some doubts about Kagiyama. Chen… Chen has done very little. And, unlike Kagiyama, he has not even do a glide, nor his strokes are more than simple moves in function of the speed. These are not small details. Skating is not just about jumping, or moving from one side of the rink to the other. What control does Chen have of the skate? I’m not sure that the marks he received in components are correct.