Sunday, January 9, 2011

This and That


It is a new year and there is a new video of the Japanese Media obsessing over Mao Asada.


Marley and Brubaker won their first official competition as a pair.  They didn't have much competition, but scored just over a 150 in Torun, Poland.  They performed a throw double lutz and triple salchow.  They did side-by-side triple toe+double toes and double salchows.  While their elements may not appear super difficult just yet, it appears that they more go for more challenging throws than Americans are accustomed to doing.

Kohei Uchimura practiced a quad-double on the greatest endorsement from Tumble Track ever.





Videos from the Detroit Skating Club send off:

Czisny and Marlie


Weaver and Poje and Jeremy Abbott


Tomas Verner


Hubbells




Georgia got off to about as good of a start as can be anticipated considering their depleted team.  One interesting thing was that Gina Nuccio did bars and floor, while Hilary Mauro did not do floor.  All fall, we've heard Jay Clark tout Mariel Box on vault.  Mariel's 9.575 was the lowest vault score for the team.


Shayla had a rare miss on her toe-on tkatchev but didn't come off the bar.  She wound up being off for the rest of the routine and fumbled the dismount.  It was a routine she likely won't forget for a long time.


To Shayla's credit, she did come back and hit her beam routine.  One bizarre lineup decision had Cassidy McComb as the beam anchor instead of Shayla.  Cassidy is an athlete who has an internal need to do the All-Around and have a real role on the team, but she is actually looking good this year and doesn't need the extra ego boost.  Putting her up last on beam is reminiscent of the Romanians trying to 'hide' Mirela Tugurlan in the compulsory beam lineup in Atlanta.


Christa Tanella had a slow start to her season last year, but at least had balance beam down by the post season.  A year ago, she was unable to get through a bar routine at this time.  Her bar routine was looking good until the dismount.

On beam, she had a major wobble on her side somi and then failed to stick her (still) very piked gainer full dismount.


Tanella may have one of the easiest floor routines since Janelle Dantzscher, but she hit it.  Note that they went ahead and just decided to tuck the punch front in the last pass in order to avoid the issues she had a year ago.

Gina Nuccio showed up in the lineup in a big way, winning bars and floor.

7 comments:

  1. What the hell has Alyssa been doing since GPF? She's skating so slow and she can't land any jumps... I'll be really disappointed if she skates like this at Nationals. :(

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  2. That vid of Mao is hilarious!! Love the Geisha look on her lol!

    I'd have to agree what is up with Alissa? Can't do one single jump? Even the d-axel? Yikes.

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  3. Yay for Gina! She looked sharp on bars. I was surprised to see her on floor - thought she wasn't going to be doing anything but bars initially, but she performed well. Now let's wrap her in bubble wrap so she can stay healthy!

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  4. Marlie look great! And I can't wait to see Marley/Brubaker at Nats.

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  5. The Alissa video is private! Darn. I wouldn't put too much weight on an exhibition anyway. Alissa didn't look great in her exhibitions in the fall too. I'm really pulling for Alissa and Jeremy at Nationals.

    Marley/Brubaker were attempting sbs 3S not 2S- she popped hers. Their program is Addams family but has nothing at all to do with the music. They're somewhat raw and unpolished, but I thought they looked good. The triple twist and death spiral were weak. She looks about four feet tall, so that has probably helped her learn pairs pretty fast. But everything does still look new, he wasn't throwing her very high on the throws and one was a double, and at time the lines and extension weren't great.. If the other US pairs skate well at Nationals, this new team definitely shouldn't win, but it was a fine performance. The one team they went against was an utter disaster, don't know who they were.

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  6. Umm Anonymous @ 3:48 PM: The video of Mao is not meant to be "hilarious." It shows her traditional coming-of-age ceremony and is not a reference to geishas.

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