Skating Fridays

Competition Video and Analysis

I hemmed and hawed about sharing this video from my competition. In the end, I decide to publish this because as I mentioned last week, there is a lot to learn from it.

The first half went as well as I could have hoped (minus a tiny bobble on my opening spin). After the freak fall on the axel, you’ll notice that I looked disoriented. After watching this video a few times, I’ve concluded that it wasn’t as bad as it felt. The second half of the program felt terrible. But from an audience’s perspective, I covered most of that confusion up pretty well.

And here is my protocol from the event. I’ll go over each element and give my usual commentary so we can all learn together from it.

1. SSp2: This was my level 2 sit spin. I had a minor bobble on the entry and therefore lost some speed. Because of that, I wasn’t able to hold my sit-back variation for 8 revolutions as I had hoped (to earn a Level 3 spin). However, I am happy that I was able to save the spin and still get fairly good marks across the board.
2. ChSt1: My choreographic step sequence has improved. Ever since we switched it from classic footwork to more spiral-like sequences, my score continues to climb.
3. 1F+1T: Flip-toe jump combination. Pretty standard, nothing to write home about. Judges agreed.
4. CCoSp2: This was a brand new spin for me. I was hoping to earn a Level 2 on this, and I was awarded it! My friend sat on the technical panel so she could hear how the they were calling the spin. I received credit for an upright variation and the sit-twist variation. As you can see, this is the element that gave me the highest number of points! I’m super proud of this.
5. 1A: It was fully rotated but I fell. That’s why you see -5 across the board.
6. 1F+1T: This actually should have been a 1F+1T+1Lo but because I forgot my program, I totally left off the single loop and botched the other two jumps. In fact, I wasn’t sure if I had already done a flip-toe before. Oops. I lost 0.5 points just on the fact that I left off the loop.
7. 1S: This was clearly supposed to be a double salchow attempt, but I panicked. The technical panel gave me the benefit of the doubt and awarded me a single salchow. Thank you for your generosity, technical panel!
8. 1A+1Lo: I underrotated both jumps so they got called as such. At least I attempted this!
9. CSpB: I didn’t hold the variation enough so did not get the level called. I was less than half a revolution short. ARGH.

As you can see, despite my slew of errors, my technical score was still over 11 points, which is on the higher end for me. I lost at least 4 points in the technical score from my various mishaps. Of course, these errors caused my PCS to plummet.

Despite my mistakes, I am still proud for finishing. I’ve been dealing with a lot in the past few months, so I am happy that I got out there and did my job.

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