Storylines to Watch: Duhamel and Radford are on a hot streak and they look to collect their third gold medal of the season in Barcelona. The two Russian teams will be battling for a higher step on the podium before Russian nationals and two Chinese teams look to score well against their rivals. Scimeca/Knieirm are the first US pair to appear at the Final in many years- can they move another step up in the international scene with a great skate here?
The X Factor: Kavaguti/Smirnov’s quads are going to be a key factor to which Russian team comes out ahead of the other. Overall, Stolbova and Klimov are more of a polished and powerful team, but if Kavaguti and Smirnov can land two throw quads in the free skate, they can accumulate a lot of points. My predictions: Duhamel/Radford Stolbova/Klimov Kavaguti/Smirnov Peng/Zheng Yu/Jin Scimeca/Knierim Seguin/Bilodeau My reasoning: I think that Duhamel and Radford will be more relaxed and focused on a total performance after deciding they would not include the throw quad lutz in their free skate. I think they’ll be stronger here than we’ve seen them yet this season and will be most consistent for gold. I think Stolbova and Klimov will continue their rise and that their overall skating quality will put them ahead of their teammates, who I don’t think will land both of their quad throws. I think Peng/Zheng had a really tough GP situation, having to compete back- to -back and one of the events being cancelled halfway through. I expect them to have more training time behind them and them taking this opportunity to re-establish themselves as China's number two pair. I hope that the rest of the field has a great event, with clean performances. I love all three of the other teams and am excited to see them skate, even if they may be out of the race, point-wise.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
About the Blog:Reviews, predictions and opinions in the magical, sparkly and dramatic field of figure skating. Archives
November 2017
Categories |