Skating Year in Review

2015 is already shaping up to be an exciting skating year (for me as much as anyone else), but before we Zamboni the 2014 ice, here's a look back at the year's most memorable skating moments:

Sochi Olympics
Regardless of the results of the competition, any year deemed an Olympic year goes down in the history books.

Johnny & Tara
They're the new voices of skating, having replaced Scott Hamilton & Co. as lead anchors on NBC's figure skating coverage.

The Hanyu/Han Crash
It was bloody and violent. What more could you ask for in a primetime, major league competition?

Music and Lyrics
2014 marked the first season of competition in which lyrics were allowed for programs in ladies, men and pairs events.

Tonya & Nancy Saga Turns 20
I hadn't started my blog until after this notable anniversary was "celebrated," but we've come a long way since that fateful Nationals in 1994. Two very well-done TV documentaries (one by NBC and the other by ESPN) are worth watching that answer a lot of lingering questions.

And for me, 2014 marks a year of hard work and self-discovery on the ice that I hope continues into 2015.

Wednesday Training Recap

The last two weeks' worth of practices were very encouraging, as my stamina and consistency finally seem to be kicking into gear. The program is coming together, and I feel significantly less like I got hit by a truck at the end of it.

Last night's practice was great, given I was nursing a lingering head cold. Skating is actually pretty therapeutic for a a mild upper respiratory condition like a cold. The gulpfuls of air and the centripetal force of jumps and spins really sucks the snot out of you, quite literally. (Warning, don't skate too near me when I'm sick!) Thus, I was able to have a productive practice, despite the cold.

With the program choreographed, I'm working on nailing some of the more difficult elements we put into it, like this 2toe-2toe combo.

2toe-2toe #figureskating

A video posted by Jessica Marshall (@jess_on_ice) on Dec 12, 2014 at 5:23pm PST

Let's Talk About Japanese Nationals for a Second

Aside from the lackluster performance and sudden retirement of Tatsuki Machida following the Japanese Nationals last week in Nagano (another good use of a former Olympic venue), the results were unsurprising but for one discipline.

Yuzuru Hanyu trounced the men, cute little Satoko Miyahara won the ladies, and Cathy & Chris Reed won the dance.

However I was surprised to see that only one Japanese pair team competed. In all of Japan, there is ONE, single, senior-level pair team. How can that be? The country has never produced any competitive pair teams, this is true. But it does have a robust skating program, and skating champions are superstars over there. Why is there only one???

Let's Talk About Russian Nationals for a Second

The much-anticipated competition was held over Christmas week (Dec 24-29) back in Sochi (good that they're use that arena for something, right?), and produced a few juicy bits of news.

Reigning Olympic champ Adelina Sotnikova did not compete due to an alleged injury, but was still named alternate for Europeans next month in Stockholm. She has a "test" skate coming up mid-January to make the final determination as to whether they'll send her or not.

Elena Radionova and Elizaveta Tuktamysheva went one and two at Russian Nat'ls, followed by unknown teenager Evgenia Medvedeva. But she got passed over on a Europeans berth for Anna Pogorilaya, who finished fourth. (See, the USA is not the only country to pass over their national bronze medalist!)

And then poor Julia Lipnitskaya finished ninth. It's a shame, because I know the reigning World silver medalist is better than that. Maybe she's going through puberty? Either that or the pressure on her since Sochi finally forced her to crack. Sad to see that happen.

In the men's event, Maxim Kovtun ran away with the gold, as did Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov in pairs and Elena Ilinykh and Ruslan Zhiganshin in the ice dance event. In those three disciplines it seems, there's a great divide between Russia's top talent and everyone else.

Reigning Olympic pairs champs Maxim Trankov and Tatiana Volosozhar were also named alternates for Europeans, not having competed so far this season due to Maxim's shoulder injury.

The Russian World team is to be decided based on how everyone does at Europeans.

Machida Retires Unexpectedly

Luu / Wikimedia Commons

Wait, what? Tatsuki Machida is retiring?

He crushed the competition at Skate America! Like, trounced the field. His subsequent performances were not as stellar though, and most recently he finished a disappointing fourth at the Japanese National Championships.

I guess it makes sense to retire after an Olympic cycle. He's the reigning World silver medalist, and at the ripe old age of 24, says he's retiring to focus on school.

Good luck man, we'll miss you in the skating world.

Chattin' with Johnny Weir

As promised, here is the actual interview I did with Johnny Weir, during his visit to my hometown. It aired Sunday.

It was one of the most fun interviews I've done in a long time!

30 Rock Lunchtime Figure Skating Olympics

This.

Selfies with Johnny

I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing one Johnny Weir this weekend. He was in town for a meet and greet with local skaters and fans.

I didn't quite know what to expect going into it--having interviewed many celebrities in the past, it's a crapshoot as to whether they'll be cool or not--but I am happy to say that Johnny was polite, polished and genuine during my conversation with him. And he was gracious enough to indulge my need to take a selfie with him.

Selfie w/ Johnny #bucketlist

A photo posted by Jessica Marshall (@jess_on_ice) on Dec 12, 2014 at 8:30am PST

We chatted about a lot of things, and I will post the interview as soon as it airs!

Synchro Worlds

Synchro Worlds is not until April, but folks are starting to get psyched for it! A promo video was recently released, and it captures the essence of synchro. If you've ever wondered about it, what it was, how it worked, watch this video. There is no "i" in "team"!



Synchro Worlds are in Hamilton Canada, April 10-11, 2015.

Grand Prix Final in Rearview

Well that was some great competition. An explosive end to the Grand Prix competition, and a great stage-setter for Nationals and Worlds.

Not to mention it rocked my Fantasy scores. I'm back down to 116th!

For the sake of brevity, I'll just list my observations:

Elizaveta Tuktamysheva is a truck driver. She doesn't look like she'd be a good skater when you observe her getting on and off the ice, based on her posture and sort of mannish build, but once she starts going, she bowls you over. Her jumps are phenomenal. Could use some presentation work, but I'm pleased that she's not a bendy-flexy, skin and bones little girl and she's winning.

I love Ashley Wagner's Moulin Rouge freeskate. She nailed it at the Final and looked better perhaps than I've ever seen her skate. But unfortunately at her best, she's just not good enough to win. And I'm a little annoyed that she wasn't docked for clearly being on the wrong edge on her lutz...

I guess Yuzuru Hanyu is back to crushing the competition. He makes a quad salchow look like butter.

Javier Fernandez continues to get pooped on by the judges. His technical merit was rightly below Yuzuru Hanyu's, but in my opinion, he got majorly screwed in presentation. His performance was so energetic, his interpretation of the music so effortless and spot on...yet his scores were pretty significantly below Hanyu. Hanyu's great, don't get me wrong, but he's not as good as Fernandez, and I wish people would see that!

Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, holy wow. They were AWESOME. I loooove them. I'm so glad they are doing well. Meagan is solid muscle. She looks like she could nail one of those Ninja Warrior obstacle courses. Couldn't be any harder than landing a throw quad salchow? They're the first pair I've ever seen (or at least noticed) do side-by-side combo jumps. So. Many. Points.

And now, on to U.S. Nationals next month, which should be great fun to watch.

Wednesday Training Recap

I was kept off the ice by nasty weather last week, so I started off this week at a bit of an endurance backlog. Making it through the program, even with single jumps, was a challenge, and disappointing after the progress I'd made two weeks ago by skating two days a week.

But I got through it. My coach made a great point as I bent over, huffing and puffing at the end of a particularly trying run-through. "It can't be worse than childbirth, right?" That is...true. #perspective

After another run-through, I launched immediately into two laps (a standard endurance-building tactic for competitive skaters). Halfway through the laps, I tripped on my toepick and went sprawling across the ice. For that, I earned two nasty bruises on my elbows. Here's one at right, lest you doubt my experience. And yes, it hurt. And it still hurts. But this elbow bruise is like an old friend to me. I can't remember a time during my skating career as a child when I didn't have an elbow bruise. I think it's time to dig out the 'ole elbow pads and see if they are still in decent shape...

And now here's a question. It has come to my attention that last year's version of the event I will compete in this March is likely available to watch on Icenetwork.com. And some of the competitors are women I will likely face this year. So, do I scout the competition?

This isn't like football. There are no real strategic advantages to watching the competition. In fact, I've always done better not watching, not scouting. It's not helpful to me, and it generally stresses me out because I begin to compare myself to others. However, I suppose it can be helpful to know what strengths of mine I should be playing up if I want to do well in competition. So I'm torn...

And for your viewing pleasure (or something to make you cringe), here's one of my attempts last night at a death drop combo spin.

Death drop attempt #skating

A video posted by Jessica Marshall (@jess_on_ice) on Dec 12, 2014 at 6:05am PST

Happy Hanukkah!

To all those who celebrate, Chag Urim Sameach.

And now here's a Hanukkah music video by Matisyahu, shot mostly on ice skates.

Grand Prix Final Preview

A month and a half of intense competition is about to climax. (Yes, I meant it to sound the way it sounds.)

The Grand Prix Final may not sound like a big deal when you compare it to Worlds or the Olympics, but it really is. It's a competition where the cream of the crop skate head to head, and we really get to see what they're made of. Here's a list of the qualifiers, based on their results in the last six competitions.

Here are some of my thoughts on the events:

Ladies
It was going to be Russia vs USA, but since Gracie Gold had to withdraw last week due to a stress fracture, it's going to be Russia vs USA vs Japan, with Rika Hongo replacing Gracie. Rika and Ashley Wagner don't stand much of a chance at a medal in my opinion, so this will be an interesting matchup of Russia's top skaters, and preview of what's going to go down at Russian nationals. My money's on Elena Radionova winning, with Elizaveta Tuktamysheva in a close second. When Radionova skates clean, her technical scores are just too high to beat.

Men
If Yuzuru Hanyu hadn't gotten knocked off his game (literally), he'd probably be a contender in the Final. But after a lackluster performance at NHK last week, I'm starting to doubt his commitment to Sparkle Motion. Instead we'll have Russia's Maxim Kovtun, Spain's Javier Fernandez and Japan's Tatsuki Machida contending for the gold, I'm thinking. Kovtun has won the two Grand Prix competitions he did by default in my opinion - he's terribly unrefined on the ice, with little to no presentation skill to speak of (he's almost hard to watch). But he gets high marks for technical merit that make up for it. Javier Fernandez is amazing, but not always consistent. Tatsuki Machida lies somewhere in between the two, with explosive technical merit when he's on, and decent presentation.

Pairs
It is shaping up to be a run for gold between Russians Ksenia Stolbova/Fedor Klimov and Meagan Duhamel/Eric Radford. Both are tied in the points totals. I wouldn't totally count out Yuko Kavaguti and Alexander Smirnov either, but they've shown more vulnerability in competition lately.

Dance
It seems like it could be a thrilling three-way battle between Americans Madison Chock/Evan Bates, Canadians Kaitlyn Weaver/Andrew Poje and French ice dancers Gabriella Papadakis/Guillaume Cizeron. All three teams are tied in the standings, and have given strong performances so far this season.

fwiw, here are my picks:

Grand Prix Final Event
Ladies A Elena Radionova (RUS)	Ladies B Julia Lipnitskaia (RUS)	Ladies C Ashley Wagner (USA)
Men's A Javier Fernandez (ESP)	Men's B Tatsuki Machida (JPN)	Men's C Yuzuru Hanyu (JPN)
Pairs A Meagan Duhamel/Eric Radford (CAN)	Pairs B Yuko Kavaguti/Alexander Smirnov (RUS)	Pairs C Wenjing Sui/Cong Han (CHN)
Ice Dancing A Madison Chock/Evan Bates (USA)	Ice Dancing B Gabriella Papadakis/Guillaume Cizeron (FRA)	Ice Dancing C Piper Gilles/Paul Poirier (CAN)

Noles Fans Say "It's Not Figure Skating"

I'm not a fan of Florida State's football team to begin with, but this just solidifies it. Seminoles coach Jimbo Fisher has twice compared the declining morality of college football to figure skating, lamenting the Noles' placement in the BCS standings (which is currently #2, cry me a river).



In a way, he has a point. If anything is allegedly "worse" than figure skating when it comes to being subjective and judgy (and corrupt), it's college football.

The Skating Waiters of St. Moritz

Back in the 30's, the great skating waiters of Grand Hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland, were the hottest things on ice. Oh how I wish this was still a thing!

I wonder what kind of resume one had to have to get a job as a skating waiter...by the looks of things, they were more comedian than Olympians.

Either way, I very much enjoy this set of photographs of the experience!

Babies on Ice

I am giddy with excitement over what arrived at my house yesterday!

I ordered a pair of skates for my toddler's teeny tiny feet from Babyskates.com. While we haven't yet tried them out on the ice, they arrived in a cute little package (a mere three days after I ordered them!) with a lovely handwritten note and pen from the proprietors of this relatively new online business.

So far, the kid loves them. Can't wait to go skating with her!

Behind the Scenes of Skating

This is a cool video taken behind the scenes at Skate America last month. While it's slightly more glamorous than the backstage scene of your average skating competition, it does a good job of capturing the essence of off-ice warm-up and the nervous, concentrated face of a skater before he/she takes the ice.

US Figure Skating's Newest Hall-of-Famers

This year's inductees to the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame have been announced!

They're not famous, but they've each made significant contributions to the sport. David Santee is the only skater - the former World silver medalist and two-time Olympian is now a coach and as an ISU technical specialist (he worked the Sochi games!). Anne Gerli is a long-time USFS admin who established fast-track program for aspiring judges and inspired the creation of Junior Nationals. And Ricky Harris is often referred to as "the mother of choreography education in figure skating." It's a long, but lofty title! She choreographed for the likes of Brian Boitano, Michelle Kwan and Scott Hamilton.

Congratulations to the "Class of 2015." They'll be formally inducted at Nationals in January.