2021 Worlds - Ladies Recap

The French poet Louis Aragon famously wrote that l'avenir de l'homme, c'est la femme (the future of man, is woman), but the opposite appears to be true in figure skating.  Ever since 2010, men's figure skating has been inexorably trending towards a high-risk, high-reward quads arm race in which the judges tacitly encourage a cynical type of numbers-crunching skating thinly disguised as choreography by improperly lumping together the skaters' Programs Components Scores with insufficient differentiation.  Hence we witness certain performances by the men that consist mainly of going from big jump to big jump punctuated with certain perfunctory movements here and there (as if by random chance) not only scoring insurmountably huge Technical Elements Scores, but also near-perfect Program Components Scores as well.  True, there have been events where wonderful, soulful skating has come out on top, but for a long time, these competitions have appeared to be pleasant aberrations rather than the rule. 

At long last, ladies' skating has finally followed suit during the second half of the current 2018-2022 Olympic cycle, ushered along by Eteri Tutberidze's indomitable wave of assorted Russian ladies skaters.  Undaunted by the physical realities of the post-pubescent female body, Ms. Tutberidze has revolutionized ladies skating with her emphasis on a certain type of jump technique that relies on pre-rotation, quickness of rotation, and above all, the low body weight of pre-pubescent female skaters.  Ms. Tutberidze began the revolution with the non-axel triple jumps (Julia Lipnitskaya, Evgenia Medvedeva, among others), but she has recently cornered the market on ladies' triple axels and quadruple jumps as well (Anna Shcherbakova, Elizabet Tursynbayeva, Kamila Valieva, Maiia Khromykh, among others, as well as recent Tutberidze student Alexandra Trusova).  This type of jump technique, combined with Daniil Gleikhengauz's cluttered programs utterly leeched of intangible qualities that would lend them genuine artistic or thematic heft, has dominated ladies figure skating in recent past.  All others are just trying to catch up, with varying results.  Given the high-risk, high-reward approach of the jumping arms race, the disappointingly messy, mistake-ridden ladies event at the 2021 World Championships is only a harbinger of future ladies competitions to come.  One needs only to look at the many messy men's events at the beginning stages of the quads arms race . . . 

Anna Shcherbakova is our newest ladies World Champion, placing first overall with 233.17 points in total.  Although Ms. Shcherbakova fell and under-rotated her 4F and made several noticeable spin bobbles in the LP, she skated the SP mostly cleanly (aside from a bobble on the steps) and fully deserved to win the world title overall.  That said, however, watching Ms. Shcherbakova, I get the exact same feeling that manifests when I watch a beautiful and talented young pairs team comprised of a tiny prepubescent girl and an older not-that-tall dude: this is a race against time . . . and I can't commit.  Indeed, Ms. Shcherbakova's skating gathers together some of the best and worst qualities of the Tutberidze skaters: on one hand, true competitive grit and technical ambition, but on the other hand, poor jump technique that nonetheless passes muster under technical panels asleep at the wheel due to an uncanny ability to land backwards on the blade, and superficial programs with random transitions and generic posing pasted in.  Based on her non-competition and off-ice videos, Ms. Shcherbakova is clearly not incapable of genuine musicality and performance ability, but her relatively weaker skating skills and Mr. Gleikhengauz's paint-by-numbers approach to choreography largely limits what Ms. Shcherbakova shows in competition. 

Of course, this doesn't appear to matter much to the judges at 2021 Worlds, who were definitely sniffing the smelling salts when showering Ms. Shcherbakova with huge scores the moment she stepped onto the ice in the SP.  Indeed, while Ms. Shcherbakova skated well overall, aside from the fall on the 4Fq in the LP, her other mistakes--the trip in the step sequence in the SP, the spin mistakes in the LP--were curiously overlooked.  For example, Ms. Shcherbakova's pleasant but unremarkable SP step sequence received mostly +4s and even a +5 GOE despite the obvious bobble and shallow edges.  One could  take issue at Ms. Shcherbakova's (generous) PCS as well, but given that the PCS Ms. Shcherbakova received were far from the most egregious at this event, let's save it for another day . . .

Elizaveta Tuktamysheva placed third in both the SP and the LP, but second overall with 220.46 points.  Ms. Tuktamysheva's presence at Worlds--her first appearance at Worlds since 2015, the year she won her world title--truly forced a war between heart and mind.  The former, because one cannot help but admire Ms. Tuktamysheva's perseverance, longevity, and obvious love for the sport despite six straight seasons of being left off the Russian worlds, European and Olympic teams.  The fact that Ms. Tuktamysheva made it to Worlds in the first place was a triumph, and her silver medal was simply the cherry on top (her tears of joy in the kiss-and-cry after her LP were particularly affecting).  Unfortunately, there is also the latter: Ms. Tuktamysheva's limitations as a skater, which have not improved much since 2015.  Her choreography is of the minimalist, arms-heavy Mishin variety (i.e., dismal), her skating skills weak (lack of speed and ice coverage were particularly tragic), and her jumps were telegraphed in from Siberia (again, it would be nice if all this were more reflected in the PCS, but that seems like a foregone conclusion at this point).  During the lamentable faux-Asian LP, even Ms. Tuktamysheva's vaunted jumps looked-off kilter and were far from her best with their various crunchy landings and under-rotations.  What was good about the LP, however, is that Team Mishin appeared to have finally found their calculators and ditched the mathematically sub-optimal jump layouts Ms. Tuktamysheva was tinkering with earlier this season. 

Overall, it's somewhat ironic that Ms. Tuktamysheva was able to win the silver here with her second-worst LP performance this season--well, at least the SP was solid with a good 3A.  Perhaps the judges were feeling generous and wanted to give Alexei Mishin bonus points for properly keeping his mask on over his face?

Alexandra Trusova completed the long-awaited Russian sweep of the ladies world podium by vaulting into third place overall with a 12th-place SP and a 1st-place LP.  An apt illustration of how convoluted the standings ended up being at this event, no?  After imploding in the SP with a shaky 3F and falling on the 3Lz (and thus failing to tack on the second-half of the jump combination), Ms. Trusova clearly felt that she had nothing to lose and went for the 5-quad LP.  Well, what is there to be said at this point?  The sheer technical ambition was ferocious and somewhat awe-inspiring, but also insane. Given the base value Ms. Trusova was going for, the TES was decent despite the fact that Ms. Trusova could only land two of the five quads properly (4F!, 4Lz-3T).  One cannot help but question the wisdom of going for a layout that Ms. Trusova had so little chance of ever landing cleanly--surely it would make more sense to go for a still-impressive three-quad layout that has a much better chance of actually being clean and netting 100+ points in TES, as opposed to the 88.04 TES Ms. Trusova managed here at Worlds?  But given the various (admittedly unsupported) rumors that Ms. Trusova left Ms. Tutberidze and the Sambo-70 team because they were pushing for fewer quads, it's perhaps not surprising that Evgeni Plushenko would OK this questionable strategic decision . . .

Of the various PCS shenanigans going on during the ladies event at Worlds, Ms. Trusova's PCS were among the most egregious.  While it looked like Ms. Trusova was attempting to put more effort into improving her PCS earlier in this season, all that work had basically evaporated by the LP here, where Ms. Trusova excised most of the previous choreography from the LP in favor of concentrating on her jump set-ups and basically disregarded the music for most of the program until all the jumps were (finally, mercifully) over.  Based on what she put on the ice, Ms. Trusova's PCS deserved to max out at the 7-range here instead of the 8s she received.  

Karen Chen shocked U.S. ladies figure skating fans and Amber Glenn partisans alike by placing fourth overall with 208.63 points, another testament to the ability of figure skating to surprise.  After several fallow seasons of injury, boot problems, and college, Ms. Chen's fourth-place finish at Worlds against all odds not only represents an unalloyed personal triumph for Ms. Chen, but also is a complete vindication of the USFS' somewhat controversial--but correct--decision to select Ms. Chen for the world team this year over Ms. Glenn.  Here, Ms. Chen was not only the highest-placed U.S. ladies skater despite the presence of her more-decorated teammate, but Ms. Chen's fourth-place finish also played the key role in helping the U.S. ladies regain the extra third spot for the Olympics next season (assuming a third US lady qualifies at Nebelhorn).  

All that noise aside, it's worth remarking on how wonderful Ms. Chen's programs were at Worlds--her Butterfly Lovers' Concerto LP was particularly delightful, insofar as the program was actually choreographed to the music and skated with real nuance and attention to detail by Ms. Chen.  With all the cluttered and random busywork that passes for transitions, choreography, interpretation these days, it's so refreshing to see a properly-paced program that is skated with beautiful flow, stretch and glide.   To me, Ms. Chen was under-marked on her PCS relative to her competitors, especially compared to the three Russian ladies.  Love her trademark spiral with the deep edge and proper extension, gorgeous classic American layback, and the lift on her jumps . . . let's hope Ms. Chen keeps the Butterfly Lovers' Concerto LP for next season so she can have her very own Lu Chen moment at the Olympics. 

In another shocker, Loena Hendrickx also defied the odds to place in the top 5 at Worlds for the first time, with a tenth-place SP and a fourth-place LP that was less than a point away from winning the small bronze medal(!).  Is Ms. Hendrickx's fifth-place finish the highest-ever for a Belgian lady?  It may very well be . . . Ms. Hendrickx's top five placement was all the more sweet in light of the fact that Ms. Hendrickx has missed so many competitions recently due to her injuries.  

Ms. Hendrickx's Celine Dion SP is such a guilty pleasure even with the botched 3F, and the clean Fever LP with the big 3Lz-3T was absolutely thrilling to watch.  Next season, it would be great to see Ms. Hendrickx add a sixth triple to her LP (a 3Lo, maybe?) 

Kaori Sakomoto placed sixth overall with a total of 207.80 points.  Ms. Sakamoto's decision to include the 3Lz as her solo triple in the SP continues to befuddle, given her known flutzing issues and strong 3Lo.  But then again, because Ms. Sakamoto's 3Lz has only been intermittently slapped with the dreaded "e" (particularly domestically), perhaps it makes sense for her team to roll the dice and hope that the tech panel is asleep at the wheel.  Here at Worlds, however, the tech panel was not quite so forgiving--hence the sixth-place SP. 

Ms. Sakamoto's Matrix LP remains one of the more distinctive and memorable LPs among the top ladies this past couple of seasons.  That moment when Ms. Sakamoto pretends to slice the judges with her blade during the spiral of her choreographic sequence right with the music is the most fun judge-centric choreographic moment since Wakaba Higuchi pretended to shoot the judges with a gun in her Skyfall LP.  That said, however, Ms. Sakamoto seemed a bit nervous here and rushed through parts of her Matrix program, leaving a somewhat sloppy impression at times.  If only the judges were capable of more accurately differentiating between the different categories of the Program Components Score, so as to more adequately reward Ms. Sakamoto for her strengths (skating skills, choreography) while penalizing for the areas she needs to work on (performance, interpretation) . . . 

Rika Kihira skated what was perhaps her worst long program performance ever as a senior skater at Worlds here, with her ninth-place LP dropping her from second in the SP to seventh place overall.  Alas, it appeared that her coach Stephane Lambiel's attempt to evoke the spirit of Team Tutberidze by garbing himself with conspicuous Louis Vuitton monograms was sadly ineffectual.  What happened here?  Is it nerves? Is it injury? 

Miscellaneous notes on other skaters:

• Haein Lee - Ms. Lee's Ave Maria SP was dreamy . . .
  
  
• Josefin Taljegard - Ms. Taljegard's Joker-themed LP was so fun! Doubleplusgood for her--love it when ladies skaters are unafraid to go outside the box. 
  
  
• Satoko Miyahara - :'(