World Figure Skating Championship summed up the season. Men’s single skating this year was very exciting, unpredictable, also because of the Italian figure skater Daniel Grassl. He tried several coaching schools, and at the moment he decided to train with Eteri Tutberidze in Moscow.
Not everyone accepted this news. There were a lot of discussions, if everyone reconciled with the skaters from Russia, who managed to move to other federations, then this is a unique case. One of the world’s top single skaters goes to the Russian coach, who has not the best reputation following the doping scandal at the Beijing Olympics.
Spectators and the public should not worry regarding the athlete, but the loyalty of the judges – yes. It is too early to talk regarding the results of the work of Tutberidze personally, too little time has passed. But we are already seeing certain changes in assessment, especially at the 2023 World Cup.
It should be noted right away that refereeing in Japan is famous for its strictness. At this tournament, we saw confirmation of this, as well as inconsistencies. Some were looked at under a magnifying glass, while the latter received the best marks in the season. In the men’s tournament, net skates were highly rated – there are good bonuses and high components. But even minor blots were very strictly evaluated. The most striking example is not even Italian, but Ilya Malinin. He seemed to jump his six quads, but due to numerous inaccuracies during landings, he remained only in third place.
So Grassal was not forgiven for mistakes. This is best seen in the free program. For her, Daniel received 157.93 points, while not allowing a single fall. On the scoreboard, which is updated during the rental, almost all the elements were in the plus zone, and there are errors everywhere in the protocols. It turns out that all the jumps were reviewed, and on most of them the arbitrators saw underrotations.
What is more surprising is the very low premiums for purely executed elements. Good cascades and jumps were not evaluated by the judges above 3 GOE points, some even gave 0. Low components were put to work for him – Grassl skates terribly, the ice cover on the tracks is minimal, there are no ribs.
At the Grand Prix stages with more dirty skates, with falls, Daniel received 5-10 points more, which is amazing. Typically, ratings go up as the season progresses as the program cleans up. Visually, the rental at the World Cup looks better than what we have seen before. True, the judges do not think so. Even Grassl’s unmistakable elements were rated as modestly as possible.
Here, of course, one can once more mention the factor of especially strict judging in Japan. Grassl had many inaccuracies. If this were the only case, then it can be assumed that there is a certain bias due to the coaching staff. But not only the Italian, but also a number of athletes suffered from such “attentive” judges.
I would say that Grassl was appreciated on the case, like Malinin. Another thing is that earlier the Italians were treated more loyally. It is very interesting to follow the change of emotions on the face of the Italian following the performance. At first he smiled, stuck out his tongue. They warmly embraced Tutberidze. In anticipation of the assessments, everyone was happy, smiling. And then the points appeared on the monitor. And here is an almost silent scene. The smiles disappeared instantly. They thought that Grassl would become an intermediate leader, which would mean at least 8th place at the World Championships, but Daniel received all possible underrotations, the technical score dipped by regarding 13 points. Already at that moment, Grassl was only 5th (in the end – 12th).
Overall presence Eteri Tutberidze at the World Cup angered a lot of people. Vice-world champion Ashley Wagner was just raging on social networks, and not only because of Tutberidze, she did not like the presence of all Russian specialists. In fact, there is a possibility that some of the negative emotions associated with the new coaching staff resulted in the most meticulous refereeing by Grassl. We talk regarding this with caution, but still this factor should not be overlooked. Arbitrators are people and not always they can remain unemotional. Perhaps they wanted to send a kind of message to Daniel – “leave Russia.”
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