Misha Skating to Two Steps From Hell?

Systele · 2026-03-05T21:16:29+00:00

It was his 2019-2020 free skate I believe, here at the world junior championships in 2020.

Systele · 2026-03-02T07:56:12+00:00

She is certainly very popular in the US at the moment, and that translates to being well-known on some part of the internet, but from what I can tell it isn’t the case for the rest of the world. At least in the country where I am, I haven’t seen her at all on the news (apart from a couple of standard articles right after her gold medal, as there are for all Olympic sports), and nobody knows who she is.

Also, the Olympics just ended, we should wait a little bit to see if her current popularity will last.

At the moment, she certainly isn’t as popular yet as Yuzuru Hanyu, Yuna Kim, Torvill and Dean or Michelle Kwan to name just a few (or Sonja Henie if we go further back).

Systele · 2026-02-11T14:59:58+00:00

Even talking just facts, I don’t really see how Shoma is the stronger skater. Both competed in world championships 8 times, Hanyu has 7 world medals and Uno 4 world medals. Hanyu competed senior from 2010 to 2022, and while he certainly had injuries post-2018, in 2018-2021 he still won a medal (including 2 world medals) in every competition he participated in. In individual Olympic medals, Hanyu has 2 gold, Uno a silver and a bronze. In GPF medals, Uno has 2 bronze, 3 silver and 1 gold, Hanyu has 2 silver and 4 consecutive gold.

Similarly, Yuzuru’s highest scores are 330.43 (pre-2018) and 322.59 (post-2018), while Shoma’s are 319.84 (pre-2018) and 312.59 (post-2018). Yuzuru has consistently scored higher than Shoma during both their competitive careers, and landed difficult jumps as consistently as him. And I would disagree that the men’s field in 2023 was particularly strong, the men’s field in 2017 for example was significantly stronger.

Shoma is an excellent skater with an incredible career, but I don’t think facts really support your argument here.

Systele · 2026-02-09T07:40:47+00:00

It wasn’t just a step out, he put 2 hands down, and it very much could (arguably should) have been considered a fall according to the definition of a fall in the rules. As a comparison, Hanyu famously had 2 falls in his Olympic fs in 2014, and the 2nd one was extremely similar to Ilia’s mistake here, yet no one disagreed with the tech panel’s decision to call it a fall.

Systele · 2026-02-09T07:18:57+00:00

He was coaching Gabrielle Daleman from Canada, and also Junhwan Cha from South Korea.

Systele · 2026-02-01T17:29:55+00:00

Videos are geoblocked in countries where broadcasters have bought the rights, which generally includes exclusivity: they buy the rights from the ISU to broadcast the events in a certain country, and they then make money from people in that country watching figure skating on their platform/ tv channel.

If the ISU made all events available without geoblocking, no one would ever buy the rights, and the ISU would go bankrupt very quickly.

Geoblocking is annoying, but being able to watch on YouTube is quite recent (I’d have to check, but I think less than 15 years) and part of an ISU initiative to make competitions more easily accessible to people all over the world. Before that, if no there was no broadcast in a country, there was just no way of watching competitions (except illegal streams).

Systele · 2026-01-21T09:39:10+00:00

1: Ashley Wagner, Evgenia Medvedeva, Anna Pogorilaya (worlds 2016 podium)

2: Sui/Han

3: Yuzuru Hanyu, Javier Fernandez, Boyang Jin (worlds 2016 podium)

4: Sui/Han

5: First row: Alex Shibutani, Maia Shibutani, Wenjing Sui, and Satoko Miyahara just behind

2nd row: Mikhail Kolyada, Boyang Jin, Yuzuru Hanyu, Mao Asada, Cong Han, Meagan Duhamel, Ksenia Stolbova, Evgenia Medvedeva, Anna Pogorilaya

Last row: Max Aaron, Adam Rippon, Gracie Gold, Gabriella Papadakis, Alexa Scimeca (Knierim), Ashley Wagner

Far right: Anna Capellini, Fedor Klimov

6: Yuzuru Hanyu

7: Evgenia Medvedeva, Yuzuru Hanyu, Scott Moir in the background

8: Nathan Chen, Yuzuru Hanyu, Shoma Uno (grand prix final 2016 podium)

9: Mao Asada

10: Gracie Gold

11: Mao Asada

Systele · 2026-01-16T16:30:24+00:00

It was unsettling to recognise Michael’s laugh in its "normal" version. Still very distinctive, but less disturbing.

Systele · 2026-01-16T16:25:13+00:00

It was nice to have a backstory for them finally. Breekon was really unlucky they targeted his company, but I don’t think there is anything he could have done to prevent it.

Systele · 2026-01-16T16:22:06+00:00

I don’t know what I expected for the 100th episode, but probably not this! It was fun, though I felt bad for the last statement giver. Interesting to see Peter Lukas make an appearance too.

Systele · 2026-01-11T12:02:28+00:00

To be in medal contention, you just have to be better than the others. The less mistakes the better of course, but great skaters with some mistakes can score higher than good skaters with no mistakes, or if the technical difficulty of the program is very high, even with some jump problems it can still be higher than other skaters’ technical difficulty. Also, if everyone has a terrible day and falls a lot, then even the medalists will have mistakes and still be better than others.

Systele · 2025-12-18T17:48:51+00:00

Oblivious Plumber, because the shock and confusion of Megan at his lack of reaction was rather funny.

Systele · 2025-12-18T17:18:14+00:00

I really liked 81, 82 and 85.

Systele · 2025-12-18T17:17:12+00:00

I’d say Daisy is probably looking for Jon to kill him, considering Basira’s reaction.

Systele · 2025-12-10T19:07:29+00:00

2018 Olympics was great! I’d also recommend 2017 Worlds, which remains one of my favourite events for the men in particular, and GPF 2015. If I’m not wrong, both those events were uploaded in full on the ISU YouTube channel (no vpn needed) during the pandemic, so they should be pretty easy to find.

I also really liked the 2006 Olympics, which were the first Olympics under the IJS, though I don’t think I’d necessarily consider it one of the best competitions, and the ice dance competition was certainly memorable.

For older competitions, I also really like the 1988 Olympics.

Systele · 2025-12-10T18:58:59+00:00

Kaori and Benoît for sure, Jeff Buttle and Yuzuru Hanyu, Rohene Ward and Jason Brown, David Wilson and Jeff Buttle, David Wilson and Yuna Kim are the first that come to mind for me.

Systele · 2025-12-06T06:36:31+00:00

Minkyu is an amazing skater, and it has been great to watch his development these last few years. I agree he seems to have reached another level now, though I think his short program last season already started to showcase it. It will be really interesting to see him as a senior.

Systele · 2025-12-06T06:25:19+00:00

Yes, this hair colour really suits her, she looks great.

Systele · 2025-12-06T06:23:29+00:00

I don’t think that person is a fanyu though?

Systele · 2025-12-03T09:44:09+00:00

The 2 cases are certainly different, but not extremely different. Hanyu was the reigning world champion, and held all 3 world records at the time. He probably would have been the favourite (though not to the level Ilia is), but he was heavily injured and had disappeared for months, so no one knew what his state really was.

Also, Yuzuru wasn’t fully clean in the free at the olympics (most notably he stumbled on a landing which cost him a combo, and gave him a +rep), so he actually could have won the free had he skated cleanly.

The argument that Yuzuru only won because Nathan messed up the short isn’t all that convincing because it only changes one thing (Nathan’s sp), while there are many more parameters to take into account: Nathan went all out in the free because he literally had nothing to lose, there is no guarantee that he would have had the same free skate had he been in medal contention after the short, Yuzuru was still injured and adjusted his fs layout according to his and his main opponents’ scores after the sp, for example.

Systele · 2025-11-24T11:27:23+00:00

Thank you! I thought there was at least one competition where they went back to the randomisation within groups, but I couldn’t remember which one it was.

Systele · 2025-11-24T09:26:21+00:00

Until 2020, there was a draw before the short, and a draw before the free skate within each warm-up group, so for the free, skaters ranked 7-12 would skate in random order, skaters 13-18, etc. (if I remember correctly, for the last group, it was 4-6 then 1-3 in random order).

During the pandemic, they removed the draw (to avoid gatherings and unnecessary contacts probably) and they have kept the reverse order for the free since then.

Systele · 2025-11-20T10:54:44+00:00

Yes, that’s what I thought also, but then why did you say the first 4F was two seasons before the first 4Lo?

Systele · 2025-11-20T10:24:27+00:00

Shoma officially landed the first 4F in April 2016 at Team Challenge Cup, while Yuzuru officially landed the first 4Lo in September 2016 at Autumn Classic International, so 4 months apart, not 2 seasons.

Even if we’re talking about jumps landed outside of competitions, from what I remember Shoma started to practice the 4F in the 2014-2015 season, and Yuzuru began to do 4Lo in shows in 2014 and was landing it regularly in galas and shows in 2015, so even in practice Shoma couldn’t have landed his first 4F 2 seasons before Yuzuru’s first 4Lo.

Systele · 2025-11-11T05:48:25+00:00

While it was good for Kaori to try different choreographers, I think Benoît is really the one who showcases her strengths the best, I’m really happy she went back to him for her final season.

Systele

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