I have to say I’m pretty excited to see this competition! The season isn’t over quite yet : )
Nine medallists from the recent World Championships will be competing (all except Fernandez, Ten, Pang/Tong) so the talent pool is very strong with several major players in each event. Here are the qualifiers: Team Russia 8.517 points; Team USA 7.646 points; Team Japan 6,543 points; Team Canda 6,400 points; Team France 4.993 points; 4.360 points I had to look up the competition format to refresh my memory. In case you need it too- each country will send six entries to the competition: two men, two ladies, one pair and one dance team. The entries receive points for their overall placement after the short and long programs. A first place finish equals 12 points, second is 11, and so on and so forth. A quick thought on the competition in general- when you look at that point system, it heavily favors the countries with strong single skaters, as there are two entries in each of those categories. This is different from the Olympic team event debuted in Sochi, which had one entry per discipline. I’m not saying the WTT format is bad necessarily, but it does seem that countries with strong dance or pairs teams are shot in the foot if they don’t have the singles to back it up. Strong in Pairs and/or Ice Dance: Canada: Leading Team Canada will be World Champion pair Megan Duhamel/Eric Radford, who are still undefeated this season. World bronze medallists in ice dance Kaitlyn Weaver/Andrew Poje will be looking for some big time redemption after being beat for the first time this season at Worlds. Gabrielle Daleman and Alaine Chartrand will compete for the women and Nam Nygen and Jeremy Ten for the men. China: As newly crowned World silver medallists, Sui/Han will be favorites for the medals again in the pair event. Their teammates in ice dance will be Wang/Liu (19th at Worlds). Their best chance in singles could come from either Zijun Li (9th at Worlds) in ladies or Han Yan (10th at Worlds) in mens. Ladies entry Ziquan Zhao and mens entry Nan Song (26th at Worlds) round out Team China. France: World Champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillame Cizeron will be the headliners for Team France in the ice dance event as they look to defend their still-new World title. James/Cipres (9th at Worlds) will compete in the pairs event. Mae Berenice Meite (10th at Worlds) and Laurinine Lecavlier are France’s entries for the ladies. Mens entries include Florent Amodio (9th at Worlds) and Romain Ponsart. Strong in Singles: Team Japan: Reigning World silver medallist Satoko Miyahara will be in the medal mix in the ladies event, along with her teammate Rika Hongo, who placed 6th at Worlds. In the mens event, reigning Olympic champ and World silver medallist Yzuru Hanyu will look to top the podium as the other World podium finishers will be absent. Takahito Mura will join him (16th at Worlds). Cathy Reed/ Chris Reed will compete for Japan (22nd at Worlds) in ice dance and Koga/Boudreau Audet will compete in pairs. Team Russia: Recent World Champ Elizaveta Tuktamysheva will be the gold medal favorite in the ladies event, triple axel and all. The only woman to beat her this season is her teammate Elena Radionova (3rd at Worlds) who is also competing in Tokyo. In men’s, Sergei Vornov (13th at Worlds) and Maxim Kovtun (7th at Worlds) will represent Russia. In ice dance, Elena Ilinykh and Ruslan Zhigashin (7th at Worlds) look to end their first season together strongly. Reigning European Champs Yuka Kavaguti and Alexander Smirnoff (5th at Worlds) will look to bounce back from a disappointing finish at Worlds to podium here in Tokyo. Team USA: Gracie Gold (4th at Worlds) and Ashley Wagner (5th at Worlds) will be looking for some redemption after their disappointing short programs at Worlds to battle for a medal in the ladies event. Fourth place finisher from Worlds Jason Brown can also be in the mens medal mix. In an interesting move, Team USA chose Max Aaron for their other mens entry, who did not make the World team and is apparently debuting a new program. Reigning World silver medallists Madison Chock and Evan Bates will hope to stand on the podium in the ice dance competition while Alexa Scimeca and Chris Knierim (7th at Worlds) will compete in the pairs event. It certainly could be an exciting competition. With Worlds only a few weeks ago, it will be interesting to see how the athletes are performing- will they be hungover from Worlds and ready to end this long season- or- will they be looking to capitalize on another opportunity to compete and end their season well? I will be back early next week to preview each discipline and make some predictions!
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November 2017
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